05.28.13

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Linux Top 3: Puppy, Backbox and Linux 3.10

  Linux continues to grow not just because of any one vendor or particular use case, but because Linux is applicable to so many different use cases.

  Two such very different use-cases were on display this past week, with new releases of Pupply Linux and Backbox Linux

• Is Linux Still Short on Apps vs Windows? Reality Check

  Sometime this July will mark my seventh anniversary of becoming a desktop Linux user. While I may or may not bake a cake to celebrate the occasion, it has gotten me thinking about what has changed in the world of Linux since I entered it — and, especially, how much more usable my Linux PC has become then. And what better way to quantify those improvements than to take stock of just how many apps are now available for Linux users that were not seven years ago?

• Desktop

  • DesktopLinux.com Finally Dies

    A while back DesktopLinux.com changed ownership when the corporation owning it was sold. Since then the site has been rudderless with no moderator/authour and gradually fewer contributors to the public forum.

• Kernel Space

  • Did You Know? – 15 Less Known But Interesting Facts About Linux and Linus

  • Rustboot: A 32-Bit Kernel Written In Rust

    Rust, the general purpose programming language developed by Mozilla for being a safe, concurrent, and practical language, can even be used to write a system kernel.

  • Linux Foundation Adds New Members From Car Software and Gaming Industries

    The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that AllGo Embedded Systems, Suntec Software and Wargaming are joining the organization.

    The demand for devices to become more intelligent and connected in the gaming and automotive industries is driving more demand for interactive entertainment and embedded software in the Linux market. The newest Linux Foundation members are expanding investment in Linux in order to advance software in-vehicle systems and online gaming and leverage the collaborative development model. These and other topics will be discussed this week at the Automotive Linux Summit Spring 2013 in Japan on May 27-28 followed by LinuxCon Japan and CloudOpen JapThe Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that AllGo Embedded Systems, Suntec Software and Wargaming are joining the organization.

    The demand for devices to become more intelligent and connected in the gaming and automotive industries is driving more demand for interactive entertainment and embedded software in the Linux market. The newest Linux Foundation members are expanding investment in Linux in order to advance software in-vehicle systems and online gaming and leverage the collaborative development model. These and other topics will be discussed this week at the Automotive Linux Summit Spring 2013 in Japan on May 27-28 followed by LinuxCon Japan and CloudOpen Japan on May 29-31.an on May 29-31.

  • Graphics Stack

    • Replacing X With Wayland On The Raspberry Pi

      Last week I wrote about the emergence of a new Wayland Weston compositor renderer for the Raspberry Pi. There was a fair amount of discussion about it and since then additional details have emerged.

    • Intel 2.21.8 Driver Takes Care Of COW Regressions

      Just one week after the Intel X.Org driver was updated with support for all known Haswell variants and introducing some new copy-on-write support for cloning pixmaps, a new release has been warranted.

    • Raspberry Pi’s Raspbian Improves Its Performance

      The Debian-based “Raspbian” Linux distribution for the Rasperry Pi ARM development board is now a heck of a lot faster thanks to recent software improvements.

      Raspbian is the Debian Linux distribution optimized for the ARMv7 Raspberry Pi. Older versions of Raspbian are based upon Debian Linux 6.0 on the Linux 3.1 kernel and GCC 4.4.5. However, the latest Debian Linux 7.0 on the latest Raspbian package-set has the Linux 3.6.11 armv6l kernel and GC 4.6.

  • Benchmarks

    • Eight-Way BSD & Linux OS Comparison

      Being benchmarked today at Phoronix is a comparison of eight different BSD and Linux operating systems. The contenders for this performance roundabout include PC-BSD 9.1, DragonFlyBSD 3.4.1, Ubuntu 13.04, Linux Mint 15 RC, CentOS 6.4, Fedora 18, Mageia 3, and openSUSE 12.3. Which of these operating systems are the fastest and slowest for a variety of different workloads? Read on to find out.

    • CPU-Z for Linux?: 6 Free Linux System Profilers

      A system profiler is a utility that presents information about the hardware attached to a computer. Having access to hard information about your hardware can be indispensable when you need to establish exactly what hardware is installed in your machine. For example, the information will help a technical support individual diagnose problems, or help to evaluate whether a system will support certain software or hardware.

• Applications

  • Finally Found A Way To Record Desktop MIDI Output…

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How to get gorgeous looking fonts on ubuntu linux

    • How to produce high CPU load, memory, I/O or stress test Linux server

    • Enable Binary Logs In MySQL Server

    • Multi-disk management for IBM Systems Director VMControl: Part 3

  • Games

    • Free World of Tanks game blasts XBox One away

      Famed for its World of Tanks game, UK and America-based Wargaming has announced details for the version 8.6 update of the game at the same time as its commitment to three front line open-source development foundations.

      Wargaming will now support the Linux Software Foundation, the Django Software Foundation and the Wikimedia Foundation.

      “Wargaming relies heavily on a number of different open-source technologies to help us create our legendary MMO universe, whether it’s using Linux to power our servers, Django to build our web project frameworks or Wikimedia to help us in our research efforts,” said Maksim Melnikau, solution architect at Wargaming.

    • Heavy Gear Assault promises Linux and Oculus Rift support

      The Heavy Gear Assault team are going all-out to get their Kickstarter pledge numbers up. In search of $800,000 USD, the campaign is currently sat on $29,000 USD.

    • World of Diving is an online, undersea exploration game that supports Oculus Rift

      Dutch indie developer Vertigo Games has announced a funding drive for World of Diving, its aquatic exploration game for PC, Mac and Linux that includes Oculus Rift headset support.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Akademy-es 2013 schedule ready!

    As you probably know we are having Akademy-es 2013 just a few days earlier than Akademy in Bilbao, from 11th to 12th of July.

  • News in kdepim 4.11: Header theme (3/3) Grantlee theme generator (headerthemeeditor)

    For helping user to generate a KMail theme based on Grantlee, I created an application: “headerthemeeditor”.

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • One serving of 53 amazing students please

      The accepted students for Google Summer of Code and the Outreach Program for Women have just been announced. I am so happy that we were able to accept 50 students for GSoC.

    • A Summer of Coding — and More!

      Google has just announced the 2013 Google Summer of Code students! And that means that the Outreach Program for Women list is also announced. It’s been some weeks of anxious waiting, not just for the students and interns involved, but also for the whole Krita community, developers and artists. But everyone can breathe again now!

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • Salix 14.0 (Live Xfce)

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Mageia 3 on the loose

      I’ve used Mageia 3 full time since its release and it’s not perfect – but it’s darn close. Nothing is perfect and that is so true for Linux. It’s a matter of what bugs bug you less. I used Mageia 1 for quite a while and I’ll probably hang around in Mageia 3 too. It performs well. It boots really quickly and the desktop as well as most applications are very responsive. Never underestimate the charm of instantaneous results. I have a nice fresh install of Sabayon Linux 13.04 just waiting, but it looks like I may end up not using it.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat’s “Buy” Rating Reaffirmed at TheStreet (RHT)

    • Fedora

      • Fedora 19 Beta Brings Schrodinger’s Cat to Linux Servers

        Fedora 19 Linux is not a thought experiment; it’s a real Linux distribution and it’s now out as Beta.

        Codenamed Schrödinger’s cat, Fedora 19 includes new features that will delight server admins, developers and desktop users alike.

  • Debian Family

    • Debian Project News – May 27th, 2013

      The Debian GNU/Hurd team announced the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release. On the Debian Ports archive you can find the installation ISO images to download (netinst, CD or DVD), as well as a pre-installed disk image which makes it even easier to try Debian GNU/Hurd. Debian GNU/Hurd is currently available for the i386 architecture with more than 10,000 software packages available.

      Please make sure to read the configuration information, the FAQ, and the translator primer to get a grasp of the great features of GNU/Hurd.

    • Elive 2.1.42 development released

      This version includes some misc features like:

      Bug fixes in the automatic date and time configuration
      If you move to another country it is automatically detected and your time is updated to the new location
      Updated firmwares to support a wider range of wifi’s and other devices
      Automatic detection of lvm devices inside crypted filesystem
      Fixed a bug with thumblerd process, which can sometimes block devices from unmounting

    • Debian Linux 7.0 Wheezy: Hands on

      I’ve been experimenting with installing the new Debian release across a number of devices – here’s what I’ve found so far.

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • New Ubuntu Server 13.04 Streamlines Path to Cloud, Virtualization, and Mobility

          Canonical has released a stable version of Ubuntu Server 13.04, a.k.a. Raring Ringtail, promising graphical user interface (GUI) improvements and better performance. This server version of the popular Linux distribution is not a long term support (LTS) release, and comes midway through the platform’s two year development cycle as a prelude to Canonical’s next mascot, the Saucy Salamander, Ubuntu 13.10 set for an October release.

        • VLC 2.0.7 has been released! PPA Ubuntu

• Devices/Embedded

  • Wandboard steps up to quad-core ARM, beefier GPU

    Wandboard.org announced a quad-core version of its Linux- and Android-ready Freescale i.MX 6-based open source boardset. The Wandboard Quad moves up to four Cortex-A9 cores at the same 1GHz speed, provides a more powerful Vivante GC355 GPU, doubles DDR3 RAM to 2GB, and adds a SATA port.

  • Wind River Advances Open Source Innovation for Automotive with iOS Connectivity for Linux IVI Systems

    Wind River®, a world leader in embedded and mobile software, has introduced Wind River Connectivity Solution Accelerator for Linux, which allows consumers to connect their iOS devices to Linux-based in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems.

  • New development board runs Arduino, Linux and Android

Free Software/Open Source

• Another Reason Why Open Source Wins: Fairness

  I’ve written a number of posts looking at less-familiar advantages of open source over closed source, and here’s another one. Proprietary systems can’t be forked, which means that it’s not possible to change the underlying ethos, for example by tweaking the software or using code on a different platform. But you can with open source, as this interesting example shows.

  Fairphone is, as its name implies, built with fairness in mind. That contrasts with today’s smartphones which contain many minerals sourced in a variety of unsavoury ways, ranging from being “merely” exploitative to downright bloodstained. That’s not something we think about much as we play with our latest shiny toy, but Fairphone wants to change that. And of course, as part of its fairness, everything will be open (although it’s based on Android 4.2, so I wonder whether some elements will be closed nonetheless.)

• Migrating to open source needs a plan

  Perhaps you’ve considered migrating your company to an open source desktop productivity suite? There are a host of good reasons for such a move. The most obvious one that comes to mind is to save on license fees, but don’t be fooled. For the migration process to be a success and the full benefits to be reaped, you must invest in the changeover itself. Don’t believe that because you want to save money long term you should skimp short-term. A look at the City of Freiburg’s attempted migration reveals the dangers of treating the new software as a drop-in replacement.

• When It Comes To FOSS, Who Don’t You Trust?

  Probably the best corporate ownership of free and open source products comes from Red Hat, for reasons that should be obvious. Red Hat makes their living developing and supporting FOSS products, so they tend to be excellent FOSS players, obeying both the spirit and letter of the GPL. In addition, they defend the license, because what’s good for free and open source software is good for Red Hat.

  The other side of the coin, the bad players in the free software world, might be best represented by Oracle, who inherited a slew of important open source projects with their takeover of Sun Microsystems a few years back. As we’ve observed before, part of the problem with Oracle is that sharing and software freedom isn’t in the company’s genetic structure. Like many proprietary vendors, they believe in nurturing their clients by using the mushroom philosophy–that is by keeping them in the dark and feeding them plenty of malarkey.

  Oracle also obviously has some conflict-of-interest issues when it comes to one of their most important FOSS offerings, the MySQL database, which probably steers at least half of the worlds websites. Oracle, of course, became one of the biggest companies in tech by selling their own proprietary database. Although in most instances Oracle’s database doesn’t directly compete with MySQL, we know it gripes Larry Ellison’s arse to be giving a database away when he thinks he could be making money selling it.

• BSA Study Demonstrates Open Source’s Economic Advantage

  I love the spring. Not, of course, because of the glorious weather, since we don’t have any. But because it’s time for the annual BSA report on piracy, which is guaranteed to provide me with hours of innocent fun as I go through finding its methodological errors and dodgy data.

• One Small Step for NASA, One Giant Leap for Open Source

  “When you really need performance/weight as in the space program, who are you going to call: an OS designed by salesmen in secret and in league with hardware suppliers,” asked blogger Robert Pogson, “or an OS designed by computer geeks trying hard in the open to get the last bit of performance and reliability out of hardware?”

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla teams up with Foxconn to debut a Firefox OS tablet?

      The two companies invite the press to the unveiling of a new device on June 3, which has rumors flying that a tablet running Firefox OS may be on the horizon.

• SaaS/Big Data

  • Cloud Hosting For Static Sites

    GitHub Pages: GitHub is most well known as a popular source code repository, but they also offer free hosting as part of GitHub Pages. You can use a standard git repository to publish your site, which is how I managed my personal blog for years. For each new article, run the jekyll command line tool, and then push the site to GitHub. GitHub’s Pages takes care of the rest. There is also a web based tool with a few themes and an online markdown editor.

  • OpenStack Brings Open Source Cloud to CeBIT

    The OpenStack® community will take part in CeBIT Australia for the first time when the show opens in Sydney this week, bringing the promise of cost savings, speed of deployment and freedom from vendor lock­in to Australian enterprises. CeBIT will run from May 28th through 30th and will be held at the Sydney Exhibition Centre, Darling Harbour; OpenStack will be on stand O01 in the Cloud Ecosystem section in Hall 4.

• CMS

  • Open Source Blogging Platform WordPress Turns Ten, And Its Community Gets To Blow The Candles Out

    Ten years ago today, WordPress, the open source blogging software, was born. It’s amazing to think that it’s been that long, but considering it had all of the elements that other startups and projects have tried to emulate over the past 10 years, then it makes sense.

    When speaking with WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, you’d think that he was only a small part of the movement that attempted to empower anyone and everyone to self-publish. While that might be partially true, Mullenweg has taken all of his learnings over the years and poured them into the for-profit arm, Automattic.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Between OPW and GSoC, 2013 Will Be a Summer of Awesome

    Earlier I wrote about how this year we are participating in Google Summer of Code and GNOME Outreach Program for Women.

  • !). Stay

    GIFT has moved to using the GIT DVCS. This move is in order to more nimbly manage the source code, during a revamp. Almost done: a shell script for image importing (with caches, and taking advantage of multiple cores!).

  • GSoC: Guile-Emacs and Emacsy

• Openness/Sharing

  • Open-Source House Building

    Think of a world where you could simply download the blueprints of your future home for free just like you download any open source software today. A team of British architects developed just that and they are hoping their project called WikiHouse will radically change the way we think about building homes.

  • Open Hardware

    • A Change in Commerce: Open-Source 3D Manufacturing

      In Shelly’s awesome post on 3D printing,he hints at a future where spare parts will live on files and not shelves.

• Programming

  • CGit Update Adds Exciting Features, Security Fix

    CGit, the widely-used replacement to GitWeb, has out a new release today. Besides incorporating some useful new functionality, it also takes care of a security fix where out-of-date CGit installations could allow arbitrary access to files from the system.

  • OCLint: Another Way For Clang Static Code Analysis

    For those looking at new static code analysis tools, OCLint is an open-source utility powered by LLVM’s Clang foundation to provide a variety of features when inspecting C, Objective-C, and C++ code-bases. In recent testing of OCLint for an internal C-based Phoronix code-base, OCLint proved to be quite useful.

Leftovers

• Health/Nutrition

  • We are not amused: Prince launches scathing attack on food industry

• Security

  • This Pentagon Project Makes Cyberwar as Easy as Angry Birds

    For the last year, the Pentagon’s top technologists have been working on a program that will make cyberwarfare relatively easy. It’s called Plan X. And if this demo looks like a videogame or sci-fi movie or a sleek Silicon Valley production, that’s no accident. It was built by the designers behind some of Apple’s most famous computers — with assistance from the illustrators who helped bring Transformers to the silver screen.

  • PayPal denies teenager reward for finding website bug

    A 17-year-old German student contends PayPal has denied him a reward for finding a vulnerability in its website.

    Robert Kugler said he notified PayPal of the vulnerability on May 19. He said he was informed by email that because he is under 18 years old, he did not qualify for its Bug Bounty Program. He will turn 18 next March.

• Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • F*ck You NRA! Principal Fires Guards, Expands Arts and Sees Test Scores Soar

    In defiance of societal trends, a K-8 principal fired all his public school’s security guards and reinvested in the arts, drastically improving grades and test scores in a school that once “had a prison feel,” NBC News reports.

    Orchard Gardens, of Roxbury, Massachusetts, was founded in 2003, but quickly fell to the bottom of public schools in the state. Of 800 students, “more than 90% qualify for free or reduced lunch, 25% are learning to speak English, and 25% require Individual Education Plans to meet special needs,” according to the pilot school’s website.

  • Did Obama’s Speech Really ‘Narrow’ the War?

    followed the coverage of President Barack Obama’s May 23 speech at the National Defense University, you would think something big happened to the “war on terror.” Specifically, its scope was narrowed, perhaps considerably, as the war as it is currently being waged winds down.

• Cablegate

  • Statement from Jeremy Regarding His Plea

    Today I pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This was a very difficult decision. I hope this statement will explain my reasoning. I believe in the power of the truth. In keeping with that, I do not want to hide what I did or to shy away from my actions. This non-cooperating plea agreement frees me to tell the world what I did and why, without exposing any tactics or information to the government and without jeopardizing the lives and well-being of other activists on and offline.

• Finance

  • Is EVERY Market Rigged?

    Unless you live under a rock, you know about the Libor scandal.

  • Delinquent US student loans hit record high, with over $100 billion past due

    The number and value of overdue student loans has reached an all-time high in the US as nearly a third of 20- to 24-year-olds are currently unemployed, according to a report by the Department of Education.

    With continued concern regarding rising college costs, the amount of outstanding student loans has now reached $1 trillion, making that the largest category of consumer debt in the US aside from home mortgages.

  • UK courts face radical privatisation shake-up

    The idea would establish the courts service as a commercial enterprise, paying its way and freed from Treasury control, with court buildings and thousands of staff put in the hands of private companies. It would save the Ministry of Justice pound stg. 1 billion ($1.56bn) a year.

• Censorship

  • Houston police shut down Kanye West screening at Rothko Chapel

    Houston singer Dominique attended the library screening and said it was shut down due to “technical difficulties.” It was rescheduled for later that night/morning, but police eventually shuttered that screening, too, after a tense back and forth.

• Privacy

  • Labeling Reporters “Criminals,” or Just Complying With the Privacy Protection Act?

    There has been a lot of outrage expressed recently over the contents of an affidavit filed in support of a search warrant to search the e-mail accounts of reporter James Rosen. The government’s affidavit offered the view that Rosen violated the law by aiding and abetting the alleged violations of laws prohibiting the disclosure of classified national security information. Specifically, the affidavit stated, “there is probable cause to believe that the Reporter . . . has committed a violation of 18 U.S.C. 793(d) either as Mr. Kim’s co-conspirator and/or aider and abetter.” To some, the fact that the government would make this argument shows that the Obama Administration is engaging in a War on Journalism. According to this thinking, the Obama Administration is not only trampling on the rights of a free press by going after its sources. Incredibly, they even think of a reporter as a criminal — and are willing to say so in court.

  • Leakers, Recipients, and Conspirators

    Leaks to reporters — and investigations of the leaks that included subpoenas of reporters’ e-mail logs and searches of reporters’ e-mail — have been in the news; see this post by Orin about the AP story and this post by Conor Friedersdorf (The Atlantic) about the Fox News story. I thought I’d say a few things about the First Amendment issues involved in such matters, especially in response to the Friedersdorf post.

  • Yet more Communications Data Bill confusion

    During the debate about the Communications Data Bill, one of the points we repeatedly made was that while this bill was not about reading the contents of messages, but that the details of who you communicate with were still incredibly private information.

  • Snoopers’ Charter – How You Can Stop it Coming Back…Again

    The Snoopers’ Charter is back in the news. It’s come back sooner than any of us expected. We’ve stopped it twice already so we know we can win. What can you do to help stop a revived Snoopers’ Charter?

  • Metropolitan Police were offered access to mobile users’ individual personal information

    The reports suggested that the Metropolitan Police were offered access to mobile users’ individual personal information – including web history, location and spending patterns. The claims were subsequently rejected by Ipsos MORI and mobile operator EE.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Russia Warns Obama: Monsanto

  • Trademarks

    • Trademark Protection: Is Litigation Worth the Cost?

      Anybody who has any involvement with Intellectual Property (“IP”) knows full well that protecting IP means a multi-step process. Obviously, step one is the conception of the invention, idea, trademark, trade name, or other innovation where protection might be necessary. Step two is the decision about what to do with the “new” idea, etc. in terms of the need to try for exclusivity on it –or not. Many “new” things do not need IP protection – and other “new” things may not qualify for it. If the “new” idea fits into the area where protection is desirable and it qualifies, then the next step is to seek legal protection. Of course, such protection will have a cost – whether or not the protection is sought by the inventor/conceptualizer himself/herself or itself (in the case of an organization) or assistance of counsel is required.

  • Copyrights

    • US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits, spyware, ransomware and trojans to attack pirates!

      The hilariously named “Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property” has finally released its report, an 84-page tome that’s pretty bonkers. But amidst all that crazy, there’s a bit that stands out as particularly insane: a proposal to legalize the use of malware in order to punish people believed to be copying illegally. The report proposes that software would be loaded on computers that would somehow figure out if you were a pirate, and if you were, it would lock your computer up and take all your files hostage until you call the police and confess your crime. This is the mechanism that crooks use when they deploy ransomware.

    • Vine, hip-hop and the future of video sharing: old rap songs and new copyright rules

      What does video tool Vine have in common with iconic rappers like the Beastie Boys and the Notorious BIG? More than you think. Like hip-hop, Vine is a way to sample and collect culture — and it may have to run the same legal gambit that rappers did a decade ago.

    • Hollywood Studios Want Google to Censor Dotcom’s Mega

      Two major Hollywood studios have asked Google to remove the homepage of Kim Dotcom’s Mega from its search results. Warner Bros. and NBC Universal claim that their copyrighted content is hosted on the URL and want it taken down. Dotcom is disappointed by the news and points out that constant takedown abuse is restricting access to legitimate files. “This is in line with the unreasonable content industry behavior we have experienced for years,” he says in a response.

    • Commission suggests hacking and hijacking the computers of suspected IP pirates

      Should owners of intellectual property be allowed to attack anyone they suspect of pirating their goodies? That’s a question that was raised last week by the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property.

    • Five Undercover Police Cars Sent To Arrest Single Alleged Movie Pirate

      Police assisted by the Federation Against Copyright Theft showed up in large numbers to arrest an alleged movie pirate in the UK this week. Armed with an emergency search warrant issued out of hours by a judge, five undercover police vehicles containing detectives and FACT officers were deployed to arrest a 24-year-old said to have recorded the movie Fast and Furious 6.

    • Why Are UK Police Allowing Entertainment Industry Employees To Arrest And Interrogate People With Their Help?

      We’ve discussed in the past the oddity of how a UK anti-piracy group, FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft), which is a private organization set up and controlled by large entertainment industry players, being deeply involved in criminal investigations and cases against individuals. In the case against Surfthechannel, FACT was directly involved in seizing and keeping the computers involved and then in paying the police for the prosecution. Even if you can reasonably argue that they should be involved in helping with providing information for the investigation, you’d think most people would agree that that’s where the industry’s involvement should end. They shouldn’t be present on raids. They shouldn’t get to touch or keep the evidence. And they certainly shouldn’t be financing and pressing the criminal case.