04.08.14
Posted in News Roundup at 1:18 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Drones
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An artists collective has unfurled a massive poster showing a child’s face in a heavily bombed area of Pakistan in the hopes that it will give pause to drone operators searching the area for kills.
According to #notabugsplat, named after the description given to kills on the ground when viewed through grainy video footage, the artists – with help of villagers – unfurled the giant poster in a field in the Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa region of Pakistan.
The hope is that it will increase awareness of drone operators of human cost, or ‘collateral damage’, when drones are used to attack targets on the ground.
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Illegal U.S. drone strikes continue (the Long War Journal says there have been eight drones strikes in Yemen so far this year), but efforts to curb the use of killer drones have made remarkable headway this year.
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Provincial security chief, Gen. Abdul Habib Syedkheli also confirmed the death of 12 Taliban militants including the two senior Taliban leaders.
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Up until now, there have been only estimates of deaths from drone strikes from organizations such as Human Rights Watch and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The lack of accurate data means that the public cannot form fully informed views on the costs and benefits of American drone policy. The availability of hard data is critical in order to legitimize American military actions for other countries and to ensure that no one branch of government monopolizes military decision making on drones.
Drones themselves are not undemocratic, but the current system of secrecy and opaque decision-making is questionable. Drones have the potential to do great harm, which is why separate branches of the U.S. government must carefully monitor their use. There are undeniable benefits of using unmanned aircraft, but the government, especially President Obama, must stay vigilant to ensure that the ends really do justify the means.
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What sets us apart from other countries, however, is that our population – if not our politicians – genuinely believes in the values espoused by our constitution. I also have faith that our democracy is receptive to change. Being American means that we have a responsibility to make sure that we feed the bright light that is the American experiment while being conscious of the shadows our choices create. Our drone policy is a heck of a shadow.
Venezuela
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Venezuela isn’t as divided as its right-wing opposition would have you believe.
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Progressives should be less concerned about how people are protesting and more concerned about who is mobilizing and what they’re fighting for.
Ukraine
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Both protests in Kiev, Ukraine and Bangkok, Thailand kicked off in late 2013.
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Power Abuses and Looting
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General Motors Co. is shielded from legal liability for nearly all accidents that occurred before its July 2009 exit from bankruptcy. That protection has emerged as one of the most controversial aspects of the automaker’s ignition switch recall.
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On December 21, 2013 Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, posed for the cameras holding the official decree ending the 75-year history of the national oil company, PEMEX. The decree also closed the era in which Mexico’s electrical generating and distribution system had been under the control of two public institutions—Central Light and Power (LyFC), from 1960 to 2009, and the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), from 1937 to 2013. In a literal sense, neither PEMEX nor CFE will cease to exist, but they will quickly become mere shadows of what they were: the two largest firms operating in Mexico. In response to these comprehensive changes, noted public intellectual Arnaldo Córdova has acknowledged that “the Constitution is dying,” while Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas declared: “Never, throughout our history as an independent nation, has the country seen such a dismantlement of the protections to our sovereignty and self-determination.”1 For its part, the Mexican government immediately saturated the news media with full-page ads, the most prominent of which declared: “The oil will continue to belong to the Mexicans.”
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One duo now on death row embezzled roughly $25 million from the state-owned Vietnam Agribank. Their co-conspirators caught decade-plus prison sentences.
In March, a 57-year-old former regional boss from Vietnam Development Bank, another government-run bank, was sentenced to death over a $93-million swindling job.
According to Vietnam’s Tuoi Tre news outlet, several of his colluders were sentenced to life imprisonment after they confessed to securing bogus loans with a diamond ring and a BMW coupe. And last week, in an unrelated case, charges against senior employees from the same bank allege $47 million in losses from dubious loans.
None of this would impress Bernie Madoff, mastermind of America’s largest ever financial fraud scheme. The combined amount from all three Vietnamese cases adds up to less than 1 percent of his purported $18-billion haul.
But these death sentences nevertheless are high profile scandals in Vietnam.
That’s the point. Human rights watchdogs contend that splashy trials in Vietnam are acts of political theater with predetermined conclusions. The audience: a Vietnamese public weary of state corruption. But these sentences also sound loud alarm bells to dodgy bankers who are currently running scams.
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London’s housing market is being turned into a billionaire’s casino…
Privacy
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Not so, according to a post by Jeremy Gillula, a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). In a blog he complains that most Web sites still don’t support HTTPS Strict Transport Security (HSTS), a standard that was approved in the fall of 2012 by the Internet Engineering Steering Group.
NSA
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Supreme Court declines an early look at a challenge to the NSA’s bulk collection of American’s phone records — but that doesn’t mean it won’t hear the case down the road.
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The move isn’t surprising, as it is unusual for the Supreme Court to allow escalations straight from district courts without letting the US Court of Appeals have a go at it first.
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Lawyer Larry Klayman won the first round of the case against America’s top online spying agency in December, when District of Columbia Judge Richard Leon found in favor of the plaintiff, saying the NSA tactics were an “arbitrary invasion” that was “almost Orwellian.”
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“British intelligence agencies do not circumvent domestic oversight regimes by receiving from US agencies intercept material about British citizens which could not lawfully be acquired by intercept in the UK”.
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The National Security Agency (NSA) has been flooded with thousands of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from journalists, civil rights groups and private citizens who have asked the agency to turn over the top-secret records that former contractor Edward Snowden leaked to the media, Al Jazeera can reveal.
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Sensitive government committees aimed at boosting India’s cyber security and formulating its internet policy have featured intensive participation by representatives of US telecom giant AT&T, a company with a record of voluntary participation in online spying by the US, and a strong interest in ensuring rules of the internet road favour large corporations.
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When the original Captain America movie came out, many wondered how well it would play in massive new Asian markets like China. Would a superhero movie with an in-your-face, pro-America message fare well? Well, the first movie in the franchise was a bit weak outside the U.S. — it grossed $194 million in all international markets combined. Fairly mediocre.
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When it suits them — and when events affect their bottom line — these companies like to make a stink about democracy and free speech. After humblebragging about calling President Barack Obama to complain about NSA snooping, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivered a paean to the Internet’s utopian spirit:
Together, we can build a space that is greater and a more important part of the world than anything we have today, but is also safe and secure. I’m committed to seeing this happen, and you can count on Facebook to do our part.
Sounds good!
But while Facebook claims to take seriously the security concerns of its billion-plus users, it’s also in the business of mining and exploiting its customers’ data.
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When federal prosecutors charged Colorado resident Jamshid Muhtorov in 2012 with providing support to a terrorist organization in his native Uzbekistan, court records suggested the FBI had secretly tapped his phones and read his emails.
But it wasn’t just the FBI. The Justice Department acknowledged in October that the National Security Agency had gathered evidence against Muhtorov under a 2008 law that authorizes foreign intelligence surveillance without warrants, much of it on the Internet. His lawyers have not been permitted to see the classified evidence.
Snowden
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No legal means exist to challenge mass surveillance, said NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, testifying to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
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On Monday, the Ridenhour Foundation announced that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and journalist Laura Poitras will be awarded the Truth-Telling Prize for their collaborative efforts to expose the U.S. government’s massive online surveillance operations.
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Hayden
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It would appear that former NSA and CIA boss Michael Hayden has some anger management issues to work out. We thought he was just a little nutty in the past — calling Snowden’s supporters internet shut-ins and insisting that Snowden himself (a non-drinker) was bound to end up an alcoholic. But in the past few days, he’s gone somewhat ballistic in attacking various elected officials and government employees in a manner that sounds like he’s literally asking to get into a fist fight.
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Michael Hayden, the former director of the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, told a student audience Monday that missiles fired by drone aircraft were often so useful in removing enemies from the battlefield that the negative secondary effects were worth accepting.
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Nearly five years after the Senate Intelligence Committee began an investigation into the CIA’s detention and interrogation methods following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the panel voted, 11-3, to release a report detailing its findings.
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U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden blasted former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden on Monday for his “outrageous” suggestion that Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein lacked objectivity on the CIA’s “torture and coercive interrogations” of foreign terrorism suspects.
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Responding to former CIA Director Michael Hayden’s loaded remarks calling a Senate committee chairwoman too “emotional,” top Democrats unleashed a broad counterattack this week panning the “condescending” comments.
Militarism
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Soldiers do not go to fight the unknown enemies on their own. They are indoctrinated and pushed to war paradigm by the political monsters who use them as digits and numbers – to compile official statistic, and to support the economy of dehumanization. Consequently, the fighting soldiers – men of conscience lose unity of the human consciousness – unity of material and spiritual factors of life and balanced characteristic– fair and foul. It is a tragic conjuncture of inner revolt of human consciousness for a crime that is not part of the human nature and character and not visible to scientifically expert minds – the doctors who simply identify mental health issues of those suspected of syndrome to commit suicide. These are the net causalities of man’s insanity against man. The real reasons are hardly mentioned in expert reports.
CIA
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Dick Cheney, Patient Zero in this particular outbreak, and a towering public combination of inhumanity and cowardice, is out in public bragging about how deeply infected he is. (His daughter, Liz, went on TV over the weekend and suggested that we should ignore the decade of torture inspired by her father and concentrate instead on the true crime of the past 20 years…Benghazi.) Over the weekend, the inexcusable Fred Hiatt loaned the space over which he presides at The Washington Post to Jose Rodriguez, a truly monstrous figure in the events in question, so that Rodriguez could spread the infection even further through the subject population.
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High-Level U.S. Officials Debunk CIA Claims About Bin Laden
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The partial declassification of a report critical of interrogation and detention policies used by the CIA after 9/11 is a crucial part of confronting the abuses of our past.
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New details emerged last week outlining the CIA’s use of torture during the Bush Administration, after the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to declassify a comprehensive report. But don’t ask the government officials behind the program to actually call it torture. As Jon Stewart explained on last night’s The Daily Show, it was more along the lines of “super-aggressive, terrorist suspect spa treatments.”
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Every once in a while, the CIA’s “Because I said so” club lets loose with a bit of preposterous condescension that reminds us why, along with extraordinary rendition and drone strikes, we’re also a nation of transparency and checks and balances. In this case, the crowing comes from Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., former head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service and the administrator of that agency’s post-9/11 enhanced interrogation (i.e., torture) program. We shouldn’t believe the “shocking” results of Senator Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation, Rodriguez says, especially those that lay bare the lies and exaggerations promulgated by the CIA and the ineffectiveness of the program itself.
Why not? Because Rodriguez was there, and you weren’t. Never mind that Rodriguez hasn’t actually read the report, or the fact that CIA-sponsored torture isn’t a yoga class, so “being present” doesn’t really count as the endeavor’s ultimate objective. And never mind the findings of the “Internal Panetta Review,” conducted by the CIA, that, according to Senator Feinstein, “documented at least some of the very same troubling matters already uncovered by the committee staff—which is not surprising, in that they were looking at the same information.”
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Virtualisation at 11:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Breaking the competition rather than competing
Summary: Microsoft’s Hyper-V is reportedly being used to cripple and marginalise — artificially — guests that are running GNU/Linux
MICROSOFT apparently has not gotten enough advantage with UEFI exclusion of GNU/Linux from new PCs. We recently learned that a lot of new computers (without Windows XP) will simply refuse to have GNU/Linux installed and/or running. Even some technical people in JoinDiaspora say that they are unable to install GNU/Linux on such computers (not OS-agnostic machines anymore, as per Microsoft’s manipulative legal requirements).
Adding insult to injury, Microsoft now uses Hyper-V, the proprietary hypervisor which is strictly attached to an NSA honeypot (Microsoft Windows), for something that resembles AARD. iophk called it “AARD again” and it should be treated as a serious antitrust violation.
Citing the original report [1], Susan Linton writes: “The Register is running an article explaining how Microsoft is trying to sabotage Linux.”
The article begins by stating that “Hyper-V was found to treat Linux guests as second-class citizens” and it should not be too shocking given that Hyper-V drivers for Linux were originally a GPL violation (Microsoft was forced to comply). This is one of the things that Microsoft paid Novell to help with (others being .NET, Moonlight/Silverlight, OOXML, patent FUD, and more).
With the death of Windows XP it is possible that the common carrier for desktops/laptops will soon be no more. FUD games like these ones are only to be expected from the thuggish, criminal company. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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If Microsoft’s Hyper-V was found to treat Linux guests as second-class citizens, the resulting storm of controversy would probably generate enough heat and light to make a dent in some climate change models.
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Windows at 10:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Windows aging
Summary: The corporate press mentions the end of Windows XP (no more support) but rarely does it mention GNU/Linux; a migration to Free/libre software is simpler than commonly believed
THE apparent distraction efforts aside, today is the last day for Windows XP as a live operating system. In light of that serious event (relevant to many because Windows XP is still widely used), some articles don’t even mention GNU/Linux at all (see the comments, readers are not easily misled) and some provide only scarce coverage for remedies like Robolinux [1], despite an expensive press release [2,3] which was disseminated in various sites. We found only one article about Robolinux (there may be more, but they are not going ‘on the radar’).
This is rather disappointing. There are orders of magnitude (in terms of numbers) more articles about the Heartbleed® stunt (from Microsoft’s ‘former’ security chief) than about GNU/Linux as the logical route for computers that still run Windows XP. Users of these computers can use Wine or even the improved (but proprietary) versions of software that incorporates Wine. Inside a company they can rely on remotely-accessed application servers running Windows for troublesome applications, with rdesktop/vnc for remote access from GNU/Linux desktop (that’s what one can do at the worst scenarios) and Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (SJVN) shows how trivially it’s done (very visual).
What we are hoping to find is that more people follow advice which recommends at least mentions migration to GNU/Linux now that Windows XP is unsupported [4-9] (there ought to be be more coverage like this). Putting the derogatory phrase aside, right now there is a big opportunity for GNU/Linux on the desktop [10], and not just because of Chrome OS (which is a GNU/Linux distribution but not a freedom-respecting one). People can now swap a PC running Windows XP with a shiny new Chromebook for just $99 and there are many options when it comes to Chromebooks [11]. Whatever people choose, they need to escape the trap of PRISM (mass surveillance) and proprietary software. BSD too is an option. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Robolinux, a fast and easy to used Linux distribution based on Debian, has just received another major update, raising the version number to 7.4.2.
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Robolinux, founded in 2011, invented and has released “Revolutionary Stealth VM” so you can run Windows XP or 7 inside all Linux Mint OS Editions or all Ubuntu Versions and Derivatives Virus Free for as long as you want to without the need for Microsoft security updates or anti virus anti malware software.
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This week, Microsoft ends free support for Windows XP, cutting off the supply of security updates and bug fixes to anyone unwilling to pay the $200 per desktop fee MS is asking for extended support.
XP machines aren’t just going to explode at midnight on 8th April but with hackers and malware authors already comfortable with the antiquated OS, it won’t be long before some new exploit is discovered that will never be fixed. In short, if you value security then it makes sense to stop using XP.
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It’s doubtful there are many people out there at this point that don’t already know that support for Windows XP will come to an end tomorrow, April 8th. Despite that, a number of individuals and businesses will continue to run the operating system.
This doesn’t likely apply to those maintaining an HTPC, as this tends to be a more geek-savvy set, but no doubt a few are out there. For those users, XBMC has passed its judgment, and the verdict is Linux.
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Other than Windows, users and companies could look at Linux versions that run many Internet servers and those in companies. GNU/Linux is also at the foundation of Google Inc’s Android mobile OS.
Linux distributions include Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Elementary, Zorin and Lububtu. Ubuntu 12.04, for instance, comes pre-installed with the LibreOffice suite—a Microsoft Office equivalent. However, migrating applications from Windows XP to a non-Windows (read Linux) platform is easier said than done. But then, Linux distributions are free.
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Microsoft’s decision to stop providing technical support for Windows XP after Tuesday has caused a great deal of confusion and consternation among the millions who still use the trusty old operating system. I’ve opined that there’s no reason to ditch Windows XP, which will continue to work as it always has, and that you can safeguard its security by installing a good antivirus/antimalware program.
However, there is another solution that is faster and more secure than Windows XP – or any other version of Windows. It’s Linux, the long-suffering stepchild of the PC industry.
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Today, as Microsoft discontinues support for Windows XP, a 12 year old operating system, users all over the world find themselves with only a few options to choose from as they move on. It’s not surprising that Microsoft encourages users to migrate to Windows 8.1, but of course, there are other alternatives. The best one by far is Linux. With over 100 distributions, Linux not only offers flexibility, but also reliability and support.
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Microsoft’s Windows XP dies on April 8, and I will not be among those who mourn its loss. The sad part about the death of XP is that those who still run it might not even realize that their operating system is now dead.
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It used to be a rallying cry, then it turned into speculation and finally it became a joke: That the next year, or the one after that, or very soon at least, would be “the year of the Linux desktop”. Even the meaning of the term has changed a bit, depending on the time and the publication. Maybe it means the year when Linux will be a majority operating system on desktop computers. Maybe it means that Linux accounts for a significantly increased share of the market.
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But as I have been using Linux in the past several years, it has increasingly occurred to me: We’re at a point where we have a large number of incredibly polished distributions available. You can run a Linux system for a standard user without barely ever touching the terminal. There’s a wealth of software, both applications and games available, most hardware works without any worry, and the days of manually editing xorg.conf, our old best friend, are pretty much gone.
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Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Security at 10:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Microsoft software has back doors by design
Summary: A sense of perspective in the debate over security, especially now that Windows XP is left open to crackers (other than the NSA) and Microsoft is known to be ratting on so-called ‘customers’
LAST year it was confirmed that Microsoft had been telling the NSA how to crack its software before this software could even be patched. In other words, Microsoft gave back doors to the NSA. Microsoft gave a bunch of government-sanctioned crackers monopoly or preferential access to the data and computers of Microsoft’s so-called ‘customers’. Microsoft went further than this by providing the NSA with direct access to data of so-called ‘customers’ who put their data on Microsoft servers or used Microsoft networks such as Skype or Hotmail for communication.
“Microsoft gave a bunch of government-sanctioned crackers monopoly or preferential access to the data and computers of Microsoft’s so-called ‘customers’.”Microsoft hardly behaves like a software company. Microsoft is an informant. As one article put it some days ago: “The Snowden documents also revealed that Microsoft allegedly helped the NSA intercept web chats on its new Outlook.com portal.”
That’s just the tip of the iceberg, but it’s stuff such as this which CIOs and CTOs must remember when moving away from Windows and from Microsoft (altogether).
Now that we know there’s 'former' Microsoft staff behind the new Heartbleed® publicity blitz (maybe the latest of or an extension of the security smears against GNU/Linux, which basically accompany that end of Windows XP patches) we should remember what the alternative to GNU/Linux (and BSD) is. The main alternative is PRISM club — a club which conspires with the NSA against computer users.
Trending in Twitter right now is the hashtag “openssl” and the reason for this is Heartbleed®, which was released strategically on this date by a company managed by Microsoft’s ‘former’ security chief. It is a sure way to distract from GNU/Linux as the solution for security woes (associated with Windows XP). Instead of talking about how and why GNU/Linux is great for people to move to after Windows XP (for security reasons) people now talk about security vulnerabilities in GNU/Linux.
Another company which was founded by a ‘former’ Microsoft manager (Black Duck) is now promoting Fog Computing (surveillance-friendly computing in ‘clouds’) under the guise of “Future of Open Source”. How typical.
What needs to be done right now is activity. We must not be passive in the face of what seems like a smear campaign and publicity stunt, well timed and well managed by allies of Microsoft. We need to remind people that Microsoft is by far the worst thing that can happen to security because Microsoft not only has security holes but it also has security lapses by design. These security lapses were designed to facilitate illegal mass surveillance by entities that pay Microsoft in bribes and favours (as emerged in the press last year). This is not exclusive to the US. We saw stories about this even in Russia. “The discussion is getting really mainstream,” iophk writes about this. █
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Posted in FUD, GNU/Linux, Security at 9:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Dagger in the heart of OpenSSL
Summary: A serious conflict of interests that nobody in the media is talking about; Codenomicon is headed by Microsoft’s Howard A. Schmidt
SOMETHING fishy was in the news today (since early this morning), including articles from GNU/Linux-oriented journalists [1] and blogs [2], some of which pointed out that a vulnerability discovered and published irresponsibly by the firm headed by Microsoft’s former Chief Security Officer (we wrote about his actions before) are already “patched by all Linux distros”.
Now, looking at the site set up by his firm, you might not know this. It lists the names of many GNU/Linux distributions along with a nasty picture (the one above). This coordinated release (disclosure) of a vulnerability on the last day of Windows XP security patches (they are through unless one pays Microsoft a lot of money) is rather suspicious to us. It came with a trademark-like name, a dot-com Web site (yes .com), and soon we are guaranteed to see lots of FUD saying that GNU/Linux is not secure. We already know that the vulnerabilities industry is well inside Microsoft’s board and at highest level (look at John Thompson from Symantec; he is now Microsoft’s new chairman).
We don’t need to wait for the Microsoft press or a whisper campaign to use Heartbleed® to tell people (again) that Free software, Linux and GNU are very “bad” and are a danger for the Web (some suspect that this bug is the result of NSA intervention in code development — a subject we’ll tackle another day for sure).
“This is a man whose high-paying job required that he beats GNU/Linux at security.”Jacon Appelbaum (of Tor) says that this release was coordinated (with a date and everything) but not responsible at all because even the OpenSSL site, the FBI’s official site (whom Howard Schmidt worked with) and many more remain vulnerable. It should be noted that the flaw has existed for two years, so the timing of this disclosure is interesting. Not too long ago we showed what seemed like Microsoft's role in a campaign to paint GNU/Linux insecure and dangerous becuase of Windows XP's EOL. It was a baseless campaign of FUD, media manipulation, and distortion of facts, ignoring, as always, the elephant in the room (Windows).
For those who treat it like some innocent development at a random time in the news, remember that Howard A. Schmidt, the Chairman of the Board of Codenomicon, was the Chief Security Officer for Microsoft. He joined Codenomicon a year and a half ago. This is irresponsible disclosure and journalists who ignore the conflict of interests (namely Schmidt being the head after serving Microsoft) are equally irresponsible (for irresponsible journalism). They may unwittingly be playing a role in a “Scroogled”-like campaign.
Just go to Codenomicon’s Web site and find it described in large fonts as “A Member of the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) Pro Network” (in many pages). There are lots of pages like this one about involvement in Microsoft SDL.
So to summarise, what does Microsoft have to do with Heartbleed? We probably need to ask Howard Schmidt. This is a man whose high-paying job required that he beats GNU/Linux at security. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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A new vulnerability was announced in OpenSSL 1.0.1 that allows an attacker to reveal up to 64kB of memory to a connected client or server (CVE-2014-0160) which may consist of our X.509 certificates, user names and passwords, instant messages, emails and business critical documents and communication. According to OpenSSL Security Advisory report Neel Mehta from Google Security has discovered this bug.
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Posted in News Roundup at 4:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Linux
Linux 3.15
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For those not keeping up to date on all of the Phoronix articles covering the Linux 3.15 kernel changes that landed in the past week, here’s a recap of the changes that were merged so far half-way through the Linux 3.15 merge window.
Graphics Stack
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The very large DRM pull request for the Linux 3.15 kernel was submitted just moments ago with significant updates to the open-source Linux graphics drivers.
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Wayland’s reference compositor Weston now has support for using the new XWayland DDX support that was merged into the X.Org Server.
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Users of the Samsung Exynos DRM driver will see several updates appear with the Linux 3.15 kernel.
Users of the Samsung Exynos DRM for display support with Samsung’s recent ARM SoCs can find the addition of a MIPI-DSI driver, S6E8AA0 MIPI-DSI-based panel drivers with accompanying DeviceTree bindings, a LD9040 parallel-panel driver, super device support, and other fixes.
NVIDIA
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In my testing of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS with the Linux 3.13 kernel and Mesa 10.1 for the open-source graphics driver stack provided by Nouveau for NVIDIA GeForce graphics hardware, only the Fermi and Kepler GPUs are running reliably. While these newer NVIDIA GPUs are running stable with Ubuntu 14.04, the performance is still a wreck due to lack of reclocking.
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The xf86-video-nouveau driver as of today supports server-managed file descriptors. As explained in the earlier Phoronix article, Last month we wrote about Red Hat working on a suid root wrapper for the X.org Server and other improvements being led by Red Hat’s Hans de Goede to run Xorg in more configurations without needing root support. As part of this, sever managed file descriptors (FDs) has been one of the changes needed by the X.Org graphics drivers for supporting this change of running the xorg-server without root rights. Besides needing changes to the DDX drivers and the X.Org Server (those changes are landing with X.Org Server 1.16 this summer), systemd-logind is also needed.
Benchmarks
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Posted in News Roundup at 4:37 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Awards
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Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that it has won the prestigious Channel Middle East award for ‘Software Vendor of the Year’ 2014. The award recognizes Red Hat’s effective channel strategy and focus to empower its partners and introduce effective programs to drive growth within the channel. The Channel Middle East Awards serve as a platform for honouring companies that are top of their class when it comes to channel development and market expansion in the region.
People
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Linux and open source software have demonstrated that collaborative development is a successful model for rapid innovation in the tech sector. Now that model is being applied in other industries from health care, to city government, to education.
Linus Torvalds vs. Kay Sievers (Red Hat)
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Kay Sievers, a well-known open-source software engineer, is a key developer of systemd, a system management framework for Linux-based operating systems. Sievers was banned by kernel maintainer Linus Torvalds for failing to fix an issue that caused systemd to interact with the Linux kernel in negative ways. Specifically, the command line entry “debug” ran both the base kernel’s debugging routine and that of systemd, potentially flooding some systems.
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Never one to mince words, Linux kernel chief Linus Torvalds has once again handed a verbal smackdown to a Linux developer, this time for failing to address a serious bug that could prevent systems from booting.
Google
Cisco
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Red Hat is joining in with Cisco and working with its OpFlex protocol in Netzilla’s ACI take on nearly but not quite open software-defined networking. Red Hat sees ACI involvement as a way of spreading its KVM technology and outflanking VMware.
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Cisco has unveiled an openly defined protocol for controlling network hardware, but it lacks an essential ingredient: participation from other network hardware makers.
The new OpFlex protocol was announced by Cisco on Wednesday. It is designed to let admins transfer policy commands to any network hardware that supports OpFlex. A draft of the protocol has already been submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) with the hopes of becoming a recognized standard.
Expansion
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“More than half of our associates are located outside of the U.S., so you can assume that about half of these roles we’re hiring will be out of the U.S.,” she says.
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In other news, Red Hat jobs are in the news today.
Fedora
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My apologies — it’s been a busy week and I’m swamped with Cloud SIG effort, other work stuff, and a kid with a stomach bug. Plus, these things turn out to take a long time to write. (Who knew?!) The Fedora.next 2014 Update series will back next week with governance structure, current status (with many updates!), and some big-picture ideas.
Fedora 21
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“KDE Frameworks 5 don’t provide any UI or applications on their own, but are meant as extensions and addons for the Qt toolkit. In future there will be various desktop shells like Plasma 2 and applications built on top of KDE Frameworks 5 providing the full-featured KDE desktop,” said Red Hat’s Jaroslav Reznik.
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Besides approving Mesa 10.1 for Fedora 20, the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee approved today several features/changes to be found in Fedora 21.
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Posted in News Roundup at 4:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Package Managers
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Synaptic is a graphical package management program for apt. It provides the same features as the apt-get command-line utility with a GUI front-end based on GTK+. Most importantly, users can install, remove, upgrade and downgrade single and multiple packages.
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16 years old and still ever changing: Not even the name remains stable. What used to be called “deity” was announced as “Apt”, first released as “APT” [1], shipped as “apt-get” and “apt-cache”, interpreted as “A Package Tool” and “Advanced Package Tool” and is now also available as “apt” … But the initial wisdom holds: “it’s still a good word in its own right”. And this word has surely influenced the way we manage our software on phones, servers and space stations.
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“We need ensure that we cater to our users, and there’s millions of them. From those running the latest software in unstable, to people who simply want a rock solid core release. The size of Debian is increasing, and will reach a point where we’re unable to guarantee basic compatibility with other packages, or the length of time it takes to do so becomes exponentially longer, unless something changes,” said Neil McGovern.
Software
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Mutter can replace Openbox in LXDE, and bring a modern, elegant look to your desktop. To experiment with it, install the software package and start it…
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Comparison
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Threehosts.com compares Mint, Ubuntu and Debian to show which is the best Linux Distribution.
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All benchmarking for this article was done from the same Intel Core i7 4770K “Haswell” system with HD Graphics 4600, 16GB of RAM, and 120GB Samsung SSD 840. No hardware or settings changed between the clean installs of the different Linux distributions. The operating systems tested from this Intel Core i7 desktop were:
- Debian 7.4 “Wheezy” stable with the Linux 3.2 kernel, GNOME Shell 3.4.2.1, Mesa 8.0.5, and GCC 4.7.
- Debian 8.0 “Jessie” testing with the Linux 3.12 kernel, GNOME Shell 3.8.4, Mesa 9.2.2, and GCC 4.8.2.
- Debian “Sid” unstable with the Linux 3.13 kernel on top of the Jessie changes.
- Ubuntu 14.04 with the Linux 3.13 kernel, Unity 7.1.2 desktop, and Mesa 10.1-rc3.
Init Systems
Branches Debate
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So there you have it. There is a simple summary for all of this:
Debian Stable if your first priority is a rock-solid system, and you don’t necessarily need to support the very latest hardware. This is often the case if you are setting up a server of some sort, but it may also be true if you are going to use a bit older .system as a desktop workstation,
Debian Testing if you want or need to have the latest hardware support, kernel dvelopments and advanced filesystems
Derivative distributions if you want a lot of additional packages included in the base distribution, thus saving you the time and effort of installing and configuring them.
Installer
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The Debian Installer team has just announced that the first Alpha build of the Debian 8 “Jessie” version is now available for download and testing.
Wheezy
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The Debian project has just released the Live CD version of the recently launched Debian 7.4 in several separate images with various flavors.
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“At the moment it seems likely that an extended security support timespan for squeeze is possible. The plan is to go ahead, sort out the details as as it happens, and see how this works out and whether it is going to be continued with wheezy. The rough draft is that updates will be delivered via a separate suite (e.g. squeeze-lts), where everyone in the Debian keyring can upload in order to minimise bottlenecks and allow contributions by all interested parties,” said Moritz Muehlenhoff in the official mailing list.
Derivatives
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Parsix GNU/Linux, a live and installation DVD based on Debian, aiming to provide a ready-to-use, easy-to-install desktop and laptop-optimized operating system, is now at version 6.0 Test 3 and is ready for testing.
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Tails, The Amnesic Incognito Live System, version 0.23, is out.
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Clonezilla Live is a Linux distribution that is designed to do bare metal backup and recovery on a wide variety of file systems and operating systems. It’s very similar to other older cloning software, such as True Image or Norton Ghost.
The distribution is based on Debian and, as usual, the developers have upgraded the underlying GNU/Linux operating system and the release is now based on the Debian Sid repository, as of March 31, 2014.
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Grml is not a regular Linux distribution for regular users. It’s packed with a sysadmin’s favorite tools and allows admins with packages for installation, deployment and system rescue. This latest version has been dubbed Ponywagon and it comes with a couple of interesting features.
LMDE
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Only the Cinnamon and MATE editions of Linux Mint Debian Edition 201403 were released. If there’s going to be a KDE edition, it probably will be released in about a month. Prominent features of this release are support (in the installer) for computers with UEFI firmware and for GPT partitions. But the installer, as you will read in the next section, is the weakest part of this distribution, a problem it shares with most distributions that are based on Debian. And the cause of that weakness is that it does not use the Debian Installer. Rather, the installer is a custom application that does not belong on a modern desktop operating system.
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When I wrote about the Linux Mint Debian Edition Release Candidate last week, I promised to look at it in more detail when the final release was made.
Knoppix
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Version 7.3.0 of Knoppix is based on the usual picks from Debian stable (wheezy) and newer Desktop packages from Debian/testing and Debian/unstable (jessie). It uses kernel 3.13.0 and xorg 7.7 (core 1.15.0) for supporting current computer hardware.
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