Linux is largely written today by programmers working for large companies, but, keeping in touch with its roots, the Linux Foundation is offering travel expenses to the next Linux Kernel Summit for Linux kernel hobbyist programmers.
As desktop Linux's popularity grows, so, too, do concerns about viruses and malware. "Malware will come to target consumers on Linux," said blogger Chris Travers. "When it does, we will need to address the challenges it poses. Everything from code management to repository management will need to evolve to meet such a threat, but it will. The software evolves. The culture evolves. That is life."
Linus Torvalds has released a new release candidate for the Linux 3.11 and is planning to push the next release candidate with the 22nd anniversary of Linux. This release candidate, though stated a “quiet” release fixes the TLB invalidation bug that was old and “really hard to hit in practice”. There were also some other fixes in network drivers, usb sound and filesystems. At the end of the message in The Linux Kernel Mailing, he promises to something more interesting for the rc7 release as it will coincide with 22nd anniversary of Linux.
For those curious about learning more information on Keith Packard's work for DRI3 (DRI3000), he presented at the 2013 DebConf and the video recording is now available.
Now that Mir is living in the Ubuntu 13.10 archive, new Phoronix benchmarks have been conducted to look at the current performance impact of routing the graphics through XMir rather than running an X.Org Server directly on Ubuntu Linux. For this latest XMir testing, the System76 Gazelle Professional laptop with an Intel Core i7 "Haswell" CPU sporting Intel HD Graphics was benchmarked for 2D and 3D environments.
The consequences of losing data can be disastrous for any individual or organisation. The loss of a single hard disk may have huge repercussions; the loss of data with sentimental or financial value. Making file backups is an essential activity for all users, yet many users do not take adequate steps to protect their data. Whether a computer is being used in a corporate environment, or for private use, the machine's hard disk may fail.
Thõ mod is still in development and tells the story of a lonely fisherman whose ship is stranded on a mysterious island during a violent storm.
Estranged is a critically acclaimed Half-Life 2 mod that tells the story of a lone fisherman whose ship is stranded on a mysterious island during a violent storm. The story telling is attractive and though the mod is still work in progress, its enjoyable to play with only a few bugs. The mod has an average rating of 9.1 on Desura.
Unigine Engine developers have talked about their latest round of improvements to their cross-platform visual masterpiece.
While it's still tough to find Unigine Engine games out in the real world that are gaining ground, Unigine Corp continues to see licensees in the VR space and other commercial areas, it appears. A new Unigine Engine development log update was posted on Friday and it covers new support for mesh-based orthographically projected decals on all underlying geometry, a new field spacer node, and renderer improvements.
As I was diving back into Window Maker for this article, it occurred to me that the desktop manager I used for years with Debian is disturbingly similar to the Unity Desktop. It's been clear since its inception that I am not a fan of Ubuntu's new Unity interface, yet it's odd that for years I loved Window Maker, which seems fairly similar, at least visually.
In the weeks before Akademy 2013 I convinced KDE Usability Guru Björn Balazs to lend his experience to a usability workshop I wanted to organize at the conference. The goal was to teach developers how to do 'basic usability testing at home' by guiding users through their application and watching the process. To help developers who didn't make it (and those who did but can use a reminder) I hereby share a description of the process and some tips and notes.
The GNOME Project announced the availability for download and testing of the fifth development release towards the GNOME Chess 3.10 application for the upcoming GNOME 3.10 desktop environment.
The GNOME developers behind the GNOME Settings Daemon application, a daemon run by all GNOME sessions to provide live access to configuration settings and the changes done to them, announced the development version 3.9.5.
After the release of GLib 2.36.4, the development team behind the GLib libray software for the GNOME desktop environment, announced the availability for testing of the development version 2.37.5.
What's new in GLib 2.37.5? Well, the development team implemented the Desktop Action specification, which means that in the case that the app is a DBusActivatable and GApplication, actions from the desktop file are automatically translated into GActions that have been already added to the app using the g_action_map_add_action() API.
The development team behind the famous and popular Evolution email client used in many Linux operating systems, reached unstable 3.10 Beta 1 version earlier today, August 18, 2013.
I spend quite a lot of time reading the pages at Reddit and one of the most common questions in the /r/linux4noobs subreddit is "Which distro should I use?".
The Korora Linux distribution is a project based on the Fedora operating system. Korora takes the latest version of Fedora and tweaks the system to make it more appealing, out of the box, to desktop users. For instance, the Fedora project doesn't provide some multimedia codecs, Flash or VirtualBox. These packages are not included in the parent distribution and are not available through the default repositories. Korora ships with popular media codecs and enables third-party repositories such as Google's Chrome repository, VirtualBox's repository and the popular RPMFusion package repository. Korora also comes with a utility which makes it easy to locate third-party hardware drivers which may be useful to users. As a bonus, Korora ships with the Firefox web browser and includes several useful plugins to make surfing the web more pleasant. Korora 19 was released on the heels of Fedora 19 and shares the same base system and installer.
Korora 19 comes in two flavours, GNOME and KDE. Both of these editions are available as 32-bit and 64-bit builds. I decided to try the KDE version as I was fairly happy with the KDE spin of Fedora 19 when I tested it back in July. The download image for Korora's KDE edition is approximately 2.2GB in size, fairly heavy in comparison with the KDE spin of Fedora. Booting from the downloaded ISO brings us to a KDE desktop with an icon in the upper-left corner of the screen that will launch the system installer. At the bottom of the screen we see the application menu and task switcher. Shortly after arriving at the desktop a welcome window appears. This window offers us quick links for accessing the project's documentation, KDE's user guide and Korora's social media websites. In addition there is a button for launching the system installer.
August, 15th 2013 was Debian’s 20th anniversary. The Debian Project is a massive community-driven open-source project devoted to a single goal: build a free Linux operating system. Debian is well-known for maintaining strictly guarded policies and principles to remain the most stable and secure Linux distribution.
Brian Manderville, the developer of the Descent|OS Linux operating system announced recently on his blog that the upcoming release of his distribution will no longer be based on Debian or anything else.
Canonical, the creators of Ubuntu, launched an ambitious crowd sourcing venture this past June to begin funding Ubuntu Edge, a completely new kind of smartphone. In the short time they gave themselves, Canoncacle has crowd sourced an impressive $10, 288, 472 million in funding on Indiegogo for its Ubuntu smartphone Edge.
Congratulations are due to Canonical for the handling of their Indiegogo campaign to raise funds for the Ubuntu Edge smartphone. The promise of a 4 GB Ram smartphone, with 128 GB of storage, dual-LTE receivers, dual booting to Android and Ubuntu, working as a desktop replacement and a mobile device certainly caught the eye of many people. As a statement of intent for Ubuntu’s mobile edition it can be regarded as a success – most of the tech watching community are now fully aware of what Canonical believes they can build.
Ever wish that you did not have to carry your laptop all over the place? Ever wish that your phone had more storage space, more RAM, more processor speed? What if your phone could actually do everything that your laptop could do and more?
Sorry Pebble – you're not the biggest kid on the crowdsourced block anymore. But hey, at least you got made.
It’s the most audacious crowd-funding campaign in history: $32 million for a limited run of 40,000 high-end “super-phone” handsets.
There's only two and a half days left to Canonical's Ubuntu Edge crowd-funding campaign for building a high-end smart-phone running Ubuntu. Unfortunately, the campaign is still about twenty million dollars short of its $32M goal.
This $35 device, Chromecast, is turning out to be much more than what Google showed or told us. Not only does it turn your HDTV into external monitor for your Chrome tabs, it can also play local content such as videos, images and music via Chrome.
Direct Insight has launched a $200 development kit built around its Linux- and Android-ready Triton-TX6Q computer-on-module based on Freescale’s quad-core i.MX6Quad ARM Cortex-A9 system-on-chip. The kit combines the COM with a baseboard that adds an SD slot and connectors for Ethernet, dual USB, audio, serial ports, and optional capacitive touchscreens.
Editor's Note: This is the fourth article in a new series by SUSE community marketing manager Brian Proffitt for Linux.com called "Reality Check" that will take a look at Linux in the real world. For more in this series see OpenStack is Not the Next Linux, 5 Linux Features You Want in Your Company and Defining the True Success of Linux.
Fresh out of five days at OSCON and all the fun events around Portland that week, a group of devoted hackers came to our Tizen Devlab and Hack to check out Tizen‘s open source, HTML5-based mobile OS, which is being brought to the world by the Linux Foundation with support from Samsung and Intel.
We knew this was going to happen. All latest flagship devices have their 'Mini' sibling, so why should Sony's Honami not have a 'Mini' version? It started with Samsung Galaxy S3 and S4 Mini, followed by HTC One Mini, then came along Motorola Droid Mini and already hinted Moto X Mini, now we have leaked information about Sony Honami Mini codenamed Ray 3.
Mozilla continues to move rapidly ahead with its Firefox OS mobile operating system, which is arriving on phones in many markets around the world. In fact, the OS is gaining enough traction that many observers see it as eventually being competitive with iOS and Android phones, but If Firefox OS is to be a resounding success, it's going to need a very healthy ecosystem of apps to attract users.
Feng Office's tag line is: Unleash your team's potential. It's an open source collaboration platform for teams and businesses that began as an academic project at UdelaR University. Interested students worked on the initial research and development, and today it remains an open source project.
Import MusicXML Direct import of music XML. Improved Rhythm Entry Dotted rhythms in two keypresses
This feature causes runtime data structures to be built at program start up which are used for verifying the vtable pointers. The options std and preinit control the timing of when these data structures are built. In both cases the data structures are built before execution reaches 'main'. Using std causes these data structure to be built after the shared libraries have been loaded and initialized. Using preinit causes them to be built before the shared libraries have been loaded and initialized.
Furniture is probably the last thing on the mind of most open source proponents but now it doesn’t have to be. OpenDesk is a free, open source line of furniture that you can make yourself or order unassembled from a maker with a CNC machine. Not only is the furniture cheap – free if you have the wood and hardware – it’s actually cool-looking.
Last year, we established our definition of an open standard for software interoperability, data and document formats, and the Open Standards Principles that explain our rationale for putting them into government IT.
Now we are working on identifying the specific open standards that will most benefit users of government technology and services. That process depends on suggestions and recommendations from experts on the field — many of whom are outside of government. We need your help.
Things are getting really messy in Yemen at the moment. With soldiers being murdered in their sleep and embassies closing en masse in fear of an imminent wave of attacks and multiple drone strikes, the country seems to be the latest sandbox full of blood in our war on terror.
Not that this warz one is all that new. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) have had a presence in the area for years, their membership rose from around 300 in 2009 up to an estimated 1,000 today. In an attempt to combat this rise in manpower, the US has escalated its infamous drone program, allegedly targeting high-ranking AQAP members. Although, according to reports, they've yet to actually kill any of them.
Is this hit-and-hope policy really the best way to fight al Qaeda in Yemen? Or are these drone strikes, which have a habit of killing civilians, exactly the PR ammo al Qaeda need to lure new recruits in a country that is already as politically stable as a gang of jihadists on a bouncy castle?
An escalation of drone strikes in Yemen highlights the fact that the US public is still in the dark about this use of lethal force
Today, on the 60th anniversary of the coup against Iran’s Mohammed Mossadegh, Foreign Policy Magazine (FPM) reported that the National Security Archive website — an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington DC — has published a document in which the CIA openly acknowledges its involvement in the overthrow of the man who was elected as Iran’s prime minister.
Lady was among 23 Americans sentenced at an Italian trial in 2009, the first time U.S. nationals had been convicted over the programme, operated by the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush during the so-called war on terror.
Mossadeq was a democratically elected prime minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953, when his government was overthrown through the coup. His successor, said to have been chosen by Britain’s MI6 and the CIA, was Fazlollah Zahedi, an Iranian general. General Zahedi had resigned as minister of interior in 1951 because of the criticism he received in handling a demonstration, according to the CIA history.
Former Interior Minister and former leader of APML Mian Zahid Sarfaraz has claimed that Osama bin Laden was not killed during 2nd May, 2011 Abbottabad action by the US Seals and he was arrested in injured condition.
People say reckless things on Twitter, as Grunwald’s defenders pointed out and as some of his more extreme critics, who posted that they couldn’t wait to write a similar defense regarding the drone strike that hit him and other gruesome things, demonstrated. If dumbness were the only issue we’d be done. But this one deserves being talked about a bit more, less because Grunwald still seems a bit oblivious as to what was wrong with what he said (though there’s that) than because it encapsulated something hazardous about the current moment, for journalists, for anyone who cares about civil liberties, and for the political culture more generally. And there’s the issue of the lack of civility on Twitter—but we already knew that one.
The group, which has been assisting ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden after he leaked top-secret documents to the media, posted links for about 400 gigabytes of files on their Facebook page Saturday, and asked their fans to download and mirror them elsewhere.
The Wall Street Journal's latest defense of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), penned by WSJ Editorial Board Member Stephen Moore, fails to disclose Moore's deep ties to ALEC.
Two of congressional Republicans' most outspoken members on the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs on Sunday highlighted the sharp divide within the party on the issue.
Holy crap. They perform 20 million surveillance queries per month? On the bright side, if you assume that their internal auditing really does catch every "incident," it means they have a violation rate of about 0.001 percent. On the less bright side, they perform 20 million surveillance queries per month.
That's genuinely hard to fathom. Is some of that automated? Or is that truly 600,000-plus human queries each and every day? The mind boggles.
EFF filed an amicus brief in an important case known as Du v. Cisco, where Chinese human rights activists have sued the US tech giant Cisco in Maryland federal court. The case alleges that Cisco knowingly customized, marketed, sold, and provided continued support and service for technologies used by the Chinese government to facilitate human rights abuses.
The case arises in part from the publication several years ago of a presentation in which Cisco confirms that the Golden Shield is helpful to the Chinese government to “Combat Falun Gong Evil Religion and Other Hostilities.” This shocking statement indicated not only that Cisco knew of the Chinese government’s strategy of repression of dissident groups, but that it was marketing and customizing its Golden Shield technologies to meet those goals. Shortly after this case was filed in August 2011, China detained the lead plaintiff, Du Daobin, and interrogated him about his involvement in the case. EFF called on Cisco to intervene to help protect the plaintiffs.
An attorney best known for his prodding environmental regulators over their email usage has turned to a new potential ally in the war against climate science: the National Security Agency.
While the NSA has been getting flack in recent months after reports on its secret surveillence programs, Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, he’s so pleased with the practice that he’s using it to further his pursuit of emails and other documents from former Environmental Protection Agency head Lisa Jackson. Horner first revealed in June what many conservatives decried as a “secret email account” that Jackson utilized in her time at the EPA.
A conservative gadfly who has made a crusade of uncovering embarrassing emails at the Environmental Protection Agency wants to tap a new potential evidence trove: the National Security Agency’s electronic snooping program.
Seems like everything gets hacked these days. Baby monitors. White House employees' personal email. Toilets.
Deputy NSA Director John Inglis recently told Congress that analysts "try to be judicious" in analyzing telephone metadata so as not to waste their name studying phone records from "the pizza delivery man." But there are other groups of American citizens whose telephone records likely interest the intelligence community far more than takeout restaurants: attorneys who represent Guantanamo detainees. Journalists. Whistleblowers. Human rights researchers.
Europe's privacy watchdogs are demanding details on the extent of U.S. surveillance efforts in the wake of NSA leaker Edward Snowden's revelations about the PRISM spying program.
The National Security Agency's PRISM operation compels major Internet firms to hand over detailed contents of communications such as emails, video chats and more.
Arguing that congressional hearings and new safeguards recently announced by President Barack Obama might not be enough to ensure privacy rights, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) called for the Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of the National Security Agency's surveillance programs.
There was a showing of the new documentary, Terms and Conditions May Apply late last week in Washington DC, and Rep. Dennis Kucinich stopped by and made some very pointed remarks while discussing the NSA's surveillance activities. The (well-timed) documentary, of course, looks at how companies and the government use and abuse everyone's digital data. Kucinich's remarks are well worth listening to, as he suggests that Congress should abolish the NSA, while also saying that Ed Snowden deserves a ticker-tape parade.
Sick of government spying, corporate monitoring, and overpriced ISPs? There's a cure for that.
Amash Seeks New Vote on Ending Surveillance
The partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, who revealed mass surveillance by US and British security agencies, has been detained under the Terrorism Act, the Guardian reports. He was reportedly stopped at Heathrow Airport but has since been released.
David Miranda, partner of Guardian interviewer of whistleblower Edward Snowden, questioned under Terrorism Act
The detention of my partner, David Miranda, by UK authorities will have the opposite effect of the one intended
In an outrageous and unacceptable attack on press freedom, Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda, was detained for almost nine hours at Heathrow airport in London earlier today under section 7 of the UK’s pernicious Terrorism Act. Miranda was returning to his home in Brazil after a week-long visit with documentarian Laura Poitras. Miranda, whose flights were paid for by the Guardian, was reportedly bringing important documents back to Greenwald on USB thumbdrives.
[...]
It is unclear what the UK government was trying to accomplish by detaining Miranda. Likely, it was meant as some form of intimidation. But surely, it will backfire. Investigating acts of journalism under “terrorism” laws and detaining family members of reporters are hallmarks of authoritarian regimes.
[...]
Take, for example, this report from Human Rights Watch from a year ago: “The Iranian government has been intimidating and detaining relatives and friends of foreign-based Persian-language journalists to obtain information or silence them.”
And until UK government takes swift action to rectify this injustice, other journalists — and their loved ones — should be on alert. Not only was Miranda detained, but Greenwald's journalistic work-product was seized. As Andrew Sullivan wrote, “So any journalist passing through London’s Heathrow has now been warned: do not take any documents with you. Britain is now a police state when it comes to journalists, just like Russia is.”
[...]
Ironically, this incident comes the same day as a long profile in New York Times Magazine of Poitras, who has shamefully been the subject of similar harassment at the border by the US for years, solely because she produces journalism that the United States government apparently does not like. It’s unknown whether the US had any involvement in the detention of Miranda but questions should be asked as to what they knew and when.
The stranger responded with instructions for creating an even more secure system to protect their exchanges. Promising sensitive information, the stranger told Poitras to select long pass phrases that could withstand a brute-force attack by networked computers. “Assume that your adversary is capable of a trillion guesses per second,” the stranger wrote.
On a few occasions, I stood outside in a protest of Arab registration in America where a still unknown number of men went into DHS offices, and never came home. We all watched the surveillance and intimidation of Muslim and Arab communities in America, the UK and Europe and said to those governments, it’s ok, because those communities have extremists.
Now the extra-judicial harassment of journalists has begun. And a bunch of folks are saying “How could this happen?”
Senior MP to seek explanation from police after detention of Glenn Greenwald's partner, David Miranda, at Heathrow airport
Nick Pickles, director of privacy and civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, said: “This is a direct attack on freedom of the press and a chilling reminder that our anti-terror laws are in desperate need of reform. Whoever took the decision to have David Miranda arrested and detained should be named and held publicly accountable for this flagrant abuse of anti-terrorism laws.
Today’s detention of David Miranda, the partner of The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald who interviewed whistleblower Edward Snowden, is a direct attack on freedom of the press and a chilling reminder that our anti-terror laws are in desperate need of reform. Whoever took the decision to have Miranda arrested and detained should be named and held publicly accountable for this flagrant abuse of anti-terrorism laws.
The law Miranda was detained under provides powers to deal with those suspected of involvement with acts of terrorism, not a license to interrogate those with knowledge of the activity of journalists. If a foreign government detained the partner of a British journalist we would rightly be up in arms.
The British government has received international condemnation after the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald was questioned for nine hours over Edward Snowden's NSA and GCHQ leaks.
Brazilian national David Miranda, who was in Heathrow airport en route to Rio de Janeiro, was held under the 2000 Terrorism Act - although Greenwald claims the interrogation had nothing to do with terrorism.
The partner of Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who published classified information on U.S. government surveillance, was detained for 9 hours in London’s Heathrow Airport. On Sunday morning, David Miranda was detained for the maximum allowable time under British Law; his property was confiscated and has yet to be returned, according to Greenwald.
The domestic partner of the journalist who broke a series of stories revealing mass surveillance programs by the U.S. National Security Agency was held for almost nine hours Sunday by British authorities at London's Heathrow airport on his way home to Rio de Janeiro.
London: British police have detained the live-in partner of a Guardian journalist responsible for leaking reports on US surveillance programme for nine hours under terror laws, prompting Indian-origin lawmaker Keith Vaz to seek an explanation from Scotland Yard on the issue.
[...]
"It is an extraordinary twist to a very complicated story," Vaz told BBC today. "I will write to the police to ask for the justification of the use of terrorism legislation they may have a perfectly reasonable explanation."
Greenwald has written a series of stories revealing mass surveillance programmes by the US National Security Agency.
On August 12 the California Senate Appropriations Committee sent to the floor a bill making it more difficult for residents of the Golden State to be indefinitely detained under provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
This week Facebook’s ban-bot went berserk; Github went down; and all Google services collapsed for a few minutes, taking 40% of the Internet with them. Just another week on the Internet, then. We love our centralized services, until they let us down.