Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 14/12/2012: Baldur’s Gate, Cinnamon 1.6





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • Linux is Free and it Shows
    On Android you don't bother which bootloader to load - grub or lilo, which DE to choose from - KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Blackbox (there're a dozen others), how to set system initiation - systemd, sysvinit, innserv... how the sound and audio subsystems talk to the rest of the system, bla..bla..bla... Here these ugly system software work under the hood, users are unaware of it for a lot of good reasons. This is how the big G establishes order in an otherwise chaotic open source model of software development.


  • Deadline looms for Linux Light project
    LAMP-powered Light project needs $700,000 kickstart.


  • Web inventor to keynote at Linux conference
    The inventor of the web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, will be the fourth keynote speaker at the 14th annual Australian national Linux conference, the organisers announced today.




  • Kernel Space



  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments

    • Cinnamon 1.6 Improves Workspace Efficiency
      The Cinnamon Desktop is becoming more impressive with every passing update. This release is the product of over 600 changes. Linux Mint 14 is the first distribution to ship with 1.6. Cinnamon 1.6 gives users a more convenient workspace management interface.


    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • SpaceFM Development Notes
        SpaceFM depends directly on bash, rather than just a general shell, so that custom commands and plugins are running in a well-defined, consistent environment. You can always use other kinds of script in SpaceFM, but the initial data integration is done with true bash.

        SpaceFM Dialog, a built-in feature of SpaceFM which allows custom commands to integrate dialogs into it (along the lines of zenity or yad), is also designed to have a predictable usage. Same for the socket commands which allow you to tap into and alter the GUI as its running.

        So overall, while SpaceFM may grow, or even its GUI toolkit or other key components may someday change, the goal is to provide a continuity to the user experience, and to honor the customizations the user has added. One big reason for this is that I am one of those users, and I don’t like having my stuff broken!


      • Testing GNOME 3 on family members






  • Distributions

    • Archbang 2012.12 Review: Simple, light and fantastic
      My interest on Arch Linux is increasing with every passing Arch based distro review. Last week I used Bridge Linux and was fascinated by it. This week I spent considerable time in learning as well as using Archbang, another Arch Linux based operating system with Openbox window manager. It gave me performance comparable to Puppy Linux and I replaced my Lubuntu 12.10 installation with Archbang on my HP Pentium 4, 2.4 Ghz, 1.5 GB DDR RAM desktop. To say the least I am more than fascinated by its speed, versatility and ease of use.


    • New Releases



    • Red Hat Family

      • RPM Fusion Now Available For ARM Based Devices
        RPM fusion is a unofficial RPM repository which hosts some of the restricted software that Fedora developers dont want to ship. Also, it contains some non-free software like Flash which are not available in Fedora official repos. Fedora is available for ARM devices, but unfortunately, there was no RPM fusion repo for ARM, so users couldnt listen to MP3 and other restricted formats. But from now on, you can add the repo to get non free codecs.


      • RHEV 3.1 – an overview about the new features


      • For Red Hat, Whitehurst changed his ways
        Having worked as operations chief for Delta Airlines (NYSE: DAL), Jim Whitehurst came to his role as CEO of Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) with the belief that he’d give directions and they’d be followed. That’s the take Whitehurst himself shared in a recent forum.

        But when he got to the open source company, he found that some of his orders were followed while others were not. “He joked that he told his wife that he thought he might have to fire many senior leaders due to insubordination,” writes Forbes blogger Peter High.


      • Red Hat and Citrix Named In Top 50 Companies to Work for in 2013


      • Fedora

        • New Fedora Magazine for Users and Developers
          Máirín Duffy blog today of a new Fedora magazine in the works for Fedora users and developers. The idea sprang from marketing brainstorming and a desire to revive Fedora Weekly News, or revamp it as a new online publication to promote Fedora. Two guesses what it run on...

          Actually, Duffy said that the new magazine has been set up on Wordpress blogging software on top of an OpenShift server. OpenShift is a platform as a service by Red Hat. She then explained briefly the mechanics of that for those interested. The skeleton is currently located at http://wp-fedoramag.rhcloud.com, but one could safely bet they'll secure a better addy than that soon enough.






    • Debian Family

      • Star Wars Christmas Light Show Powered by Raspberry Pi and Debian
        There's no doubt that the Raspberry Pi is an amazing little PC, but its users continue to make up new ways to show the device's might.


      • Derivatives



        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Advocacy Development Kit Packaged


          • BeagleBoard XM Powered File Server Using Ubuntu
            Single Board computers like Raspberry pi and BeagleBoard have found wide range of applications among DIYers. This post tells you how to install Ubuntu headless server on a BeagleBoard single board computer and then configure it as a File Server using Samba (almost like a NAS). BeagleBoard XM is an OMAP3 board and works very well an ultra low power file server for my LAN and serves all types of media to my HTPCs running XBMC and my Raspberry Pi powered digital picture frame. So here is how to do it.


          • Flavours and Variants











  • Devices/Embedded



    • Phones



      • Android

        • New Tricks for New (and Old) Android Phones
          There's a new crop of Android phones out there — and a new set of hidden shortcuts to make using your phone even easier. And even if you have an older model, I'll share my favorite tools to get you the same functionality you would get with a brand-new device.






    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets







Free Software/Open Source



  • Singapore needs Silicon Valley’s open source culture, says Meng Weng Wong of JFDI


  • Video: a good year for open source in 2012
    Goldman Sachs reported late last week that Windows has gone from dominating 97% of the computing market to 20%.


  • Limerick migrates to Zentyal’s open source email solution
    The city of Limerick, located in mid-west Ireland and, which at a population of about 110,000, is that country’s third largest city, has chosen Zentyal to migrate to an open source email solution.

    Zentyal is an open source solutions provider based in Zaragoza, Spain. Zentyal is the company’s main software offering, a server platform based on Ubuntu.


  • Web Browsers



  • SaaS



  • Databases

    • MySQL 5.6 to ship in early 2013
      Oracle's enhanced open source database will be ready for general availability in early 2013 and the company is working on a future version with a pluggable UI, more NoSQL options and revamped architecture for web and cloud computing,




  • CMS



  • Funding

    • BountyOSS: A Crowd Funding Site For Free Software Projects
      We have heard about crowd funding sites for software, games and sometimes hardware ventures too. Kickstarter, Indiegogo, etc are leading croud funding sites in the world today. However, the world missed a site just for Free Software. This is where BountyOSS fills the gap.




  • BSD



  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Interview with Kovid Goyal of calibre
      In this installment, I interviewed Kovid Goyal, the creator and lead developer of calibre, via email.


    • GNU Press debuts GNU beanies!
      Keep cozy this winter in our navy blue beanies with GNU embroidered in white on the side. They are 100% cotton, and the embroidered GNU logo is 2.16"H x 2.6"W. Pair the beanie with our hoodies in either the Free Software Free Society or GPLv3 designs, and you'll stay warm this winter while representing free software!




  • Project Releases



  • Public Services/Government



  • Licensing

    • What open source licensing could learn from Creative Commons
      I have been a critic as well as an admirer of Creative Commons. Last year, here on opensource.com, I noted that the CC license suite, though inspired by open source licensing, was at odds with norms of libre culture licensing by embracing, under a single legal brand, form licenses that prohibit commercal use and creation of derivative works. The result, I complained, was "a general confusing dilution of the meaning of 'openness' in the context of cultural works" and confusion on the part of both authors and users of CC-licensed material. Creative Commons has recognized at least some aspects of this problem in the course of its work on the 4.0 license series. (For example, there has been an interesting recent proposal to relabel the controversial NC licenses with "Commercal Rights Reserved.")




  • Openness/Sharing



    • Open Data

      • Make your street an open street
        The Open Streets Project should be your first stop if you’re interested in entering the open streets game. This collaborative project aims to help document Open Streets projects (so add yours to the map!), connect activists working on these projects, and provide them with the tools, resources, and facts to make projects a success. Check out their guide, click through examples of projects in communities everywhere, and reach out to learn about best practices and get help with challenges.








Leftovers



  • Science

    • Team Solves Mystery Associated With DNA Repair
      ust copy its DNA. Specialized proteins unzip the intertwined DNA strands while others follow and build new strands, using the originals as templates. Whenever these proteins encounter a break -- and there are many -- they stop and retreat, allowing a new cast of molecular players to enter the scene.




  • Defence/Police/Aggression



  • Cablegate

    • Media Oddly Silent on WikiLeaks Proceedings
      Some thoughts about Army Pfc. Bradley Manning's pretrial hearing, which concluded this week.

      Manning, of course, is charged with leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the website WikiLeaks and, at his trial in March, will be pleading guilty to certain charges while rejecting the military's contention that he "aided the enemy" in doing so.


    • Tomana to prosecute WikiLeaks suspects
      The leaked cables released minutes of meetings held by political leaders with US government officials where they divulged sensitive information about the country and their respective parties.

      Turning to another issue, Tomana vowed to continue prosecuting people arrested for allegedly insulting Mugabe saying the President was different from any ordinary citizen.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • At ALEC Meeting, Indiana Regulator Advises Coal Companies on Delaying EPA Climate Rules
      This is the case with the recent American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) meeting in Washington, DC. Leaked documents obtained by Greenpeace reveal that ALEC's anti-environmental jamboree was inundated with coal money and featured an Indiana regulator advising coal utilities on delaying US Environmental Protection Agency rules to control greenhouse gas emissions and hazardous air pollution.




  • Censorship

    • US and UK refuse to sign UN's communications treaty
      The countries had objected to calls for all states to have equal rights to the governance of the internet.

      But the breaking point was the addition of text relating to "human rights".

      It marks a setback for the UN's International Telecommunication Union (ITU) which had said it was sure it could deliver consensus.

      "It's with a heavy heart and a sense of missed opportunities that the US must communicate that it's not able to sign the agreement in the current form," said Terry Kramer the US ambassador to the World Conference on International Telecommunications (Wcit).

      "The internet has given the world unimaginable economic and social benefit during these past 24 years."




  • Civil Rights



  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights

      • Belgian Newspapers Agree To Drop Lawsuit Over Google News After Google Promises To Show Them How To Make Money Online
        As we've been reporting, there's been a movement underway in many countries to argue that something like Google News -- which displays headlines, brief snippets and links to full news stories on newspapers' own websites -- somehow violates newspaper copyrights. This makes no sense logically, especially given just how much those same sites likely spend on "search engine optimization" to try to get better ranked in search engines. The only explanation for it that makes sense is the most obvious one: the newspapers are struggling to find ways to make money these days, and they see that Google is making a lot. Hence: come up with a plan to force Google to fork over some of that revenue. Of course, the very first to do this -- years before Germany and France and others got into the game -- was a group of Belgian newspapers who sued Google for sending them traffic. Amazingly, a local court agreed with the newspapers and told Google to pay up. Following this, Google removed those newspapers from its index, leading the newspapers to freak out and demand to be put back in.








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