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Links 7/6/2011: Linux 3.0 RC2, No KDE5



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • Porting Linux: part 1 (of many)


  • Graphic Design for Linux Systems
    These days, Linux has managed to draw more attentions from those users who want to get faster result from their complicated task. It is an open space operating system, and it allows the users to accomplish their challenging task properly.

    Whether you want to use the Linux in your system or want to know the graphic design for Linux system, you need to move for the online media. Here, you can get numbers of important information through which you can know the importance of graphic design for Linux system. With the Linux you can monitor the system files, networks, and many important applications of a system easily and fast.

    At present, Linux is the vital opportunity for maintaining the system safe and secure. It is not requiring any types of anti-malware, anti-spyware, or anti-viruses for maintaining fast and secure system. With this system you can not face any kind of problems like severe system damages. It’s time to install it in your computer.


  • Desktop

    • Attention: This is not big news
      That desktop, however, is not the topic of this blog. Instead, I want to go on the record to say that the recent announcement of ASUS Pre-installing Ubuntu 11.04 on three of their EeePC machines (1001PXD, 1011PX, and 1015PX) is not big news.

      Although the Linux community will stand up against me to say that any time a company sells a piece of hardware with the Linux operating system pre-installed is a win; this “win” just doesn’t feel like a win. Why?

      We’re talking about netbooks. Again.




  • Audiocasts/Shows





  • Kernel Space



  • Applications





  • Desktop Environments



    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC), Qt

      • More Polka, please
        After blogging about Polka, my experiment with a radically new take on an address book, I got a lot of great feedback. I appreciate all the comments, questions, and encouragement. Two people made me particularly happy, as they not only sent feedback, but also contributed some welcome work. Sascha Manns built packages, and Saleel Velankar created a beautiful logo. Free software rocks.

        [...]

        My first attempt resulted in a port of Polka to MeeGo. MeeGo is a system targeted at touch interfaces, and being Qt based it seemed to be close enough for a getting Polka to work on it.


      • There is no KDE5
        In essence, this means there is no KDE 5, and there will never be. During the sprint here in Randa, we’ve spent a lot of thinking about the future of the KDE Frameworks, and we will be forthcoming with plans to further modularize these frameworks, which consist of what’s currently found in the kdelibs, kdesupport, kdepimlibs, kde-runtime and kdepim-runtime modules.






  • Distributions



    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mageia 1 – A new distro and a new DE experience for me.
        There has been much work put into Mageia but in today’s computing world your product has to be far more than merely functional With so many other distro’s competing for your attention, I think Mageia is not yet ready to become a player at the top of the league for Linux distro’s with the RC seeming more like a beta. My requirements of an OS are not satisfied with Mageia and should I remain with this distro, I would not be as productive. That is not acceptable and so for me its goodbye, with an appreciation that KDE is not for me either. I will certainly be looking at the Gnome flavour of Mageia on a secondary rig and I would expect a more favourable opinion since I do love Gnome.




    • Gentoo Family

      • How to do simple things the Sabayon way
        Do you think there is only one penguin Tux? You are wrong. There is whole family of them. They are all brothers, because they have same father: Linux kernel code by Linus Torvalds. But they are not identical. They have their own names: Debian, RedHat, Slackware, Arch. Eac




    • Red Hat Family

      • Oracle cranks Red Hat Linux clone to 6.1
        If you needed a demonstration that Oracle is not CentOS, then look no further than the fact that only two weeks after Red Hat announced its Enterprise Linux 6.1 update, software giant Oracle has kicked out its Linux 6.1 clone. This is despite Red Hat's attempts to slow down the RHEL cloners and others – such as Oracle and the former Novell – that offer technical support for RHEL distributions.


      • Upgrades & Downgrades: Green Ink For Red Hat?
        The Dow dropped 2.33% in four days for its fifth straight weekly loss, the longest such slide since since July 2004 -- back when Greece was the pride of Europe (at least in soccer). Seven years on a Moody’s cut of the country’s credit rating, allied to May’s paltry payroll increase of 54,000 here at home, sent exchanges into a tailspin. DuPont (DD), down 1.72% after Friday’s grim jobless data, was appropriately among the blue chips' worst performers; its most famous product gave Ronald Reagan the nickname of “Teflon President” after he won a reelection landslide despite 7.2% unemployment but with the rate now standing at 9.1%, President Obama has a hard act to follow. Bank of America (BAC), which fired John Thain after he amassed a $1.2 million bill on an office restoration, wrote a check for $2,534 in attorney’s fees rather than lose its office furniture.


      • Fedora

        • Trying on a Fedora that gives a new look
          As quite often happens with Fedora releases, I think version 15 is great in some respects and falls behind in others. Take, for instance, YUM -- it's probably faster than it has ever been and I was quite impressed with the command-line program, but the GUI front-ends still lag behind their counterparts in performance. This release handled my hardware really well and comes with some interesting technology previews -- whether you are a fan of GNOME 3 or not, I think we can agree it's nice to see a distribution offering it for people to try and, on cards/drivers which don't support 3-D effects, the display "falls back" nicely to the classic theme. I think it's good that the developers have managed to increase compression on the live disc without negatively impacting performance, but I wonder why they didn't use the opportunity to add more software as there is about an extra 100 MB of space available on the CD.








    • Debian Family



      • Derivatives



        • Canonical/Ubuntu



          • Ubuntu Certification Going Forward
            As you might have heard, we are planning to close down the “Ubuntu Ready” programme in time for Oneiric Final Release.

            The aim is to simplify the public Canonical endorsed certification programme to only one:“Ubuntu Certified“.

            To straighten out any confusion about what our certification offering will be here is a quick fact sheet about certification:


          • Ubuntu's Contributions to Linux
            These tidy bullet points list a few examples:

            * Raised the visibility of Linux overall. * Generated excitement and given desktop Linux much-needed accelerant. * Entered commercial arenas both server and desktop: Dell, independent Linux OEMs like System76, ZaReason, Emperor Linux; commercial training and support. * Inspired hosts of derivatives such as Vinux, Mint, Mepis, nUbuntu, Gnoppix, Ulteo, moonOS, SuperOS, and dozens more. * Created good name recognition for "Ubuntu" out in the real world. * Created a welcoming, supportive developer community that supports noobs. * Streamlined and popularized the LiveCD. * Maintains multiple official editions-- Ubuntu Server, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Mythbuntu, Ubuntu Studio, and Kubuntu-- that all share the same repositories, with 100% compatibility. * Pioneered an easy installer. * Created UCK, Ubuntu Customization Kit, for easily creating your own customized Ubuntu LiveCD. * Created netbook/tablet/touch versions before any other distro. * Continually pushing ahead on multiple fronts.


          • Give Unity A Chance
            With Ubuntu 11.04 the Ubuntu Linux brings a new look to the desktop called Unity. I have installed Ubuntu 11:04 on a desktop computer and very soon, I will install it on my laptop and net-book. There have been mixed reviews of Unity; I have found Unity to be different and will take a bit of time getting use to. That said I would encourage all of us to give Unity an extended test period.

            The gnome desktop has been my standard desktop for many years now, so it is only natural that a departure from the norm will feel a bit strange. So you may be asking why do it?


          • Better Community With Better Technology
            One of the primary goals in the Ubuntu community is to encourage and inspire people to get involved in different parts of the project. Getting people involved typically requires a few key steps:

            * Inspire – Get someone interested in joining the community. * Provide Opportunities – Find something for them to do. * Review – Review their work to help them be successful and have their work included.

            [...]

            There are a couple of things that are obvious and yet don’t work. For example, lots of upstreams think they should form a non-profit institution to house their work. The track record of those is poor: they get setup, and they fail as soon as they have to file their annual paperwork, leaving folks like the SFLC to clean up the mess. Not cool. At the end of the day, such new institutions add paperwork without adding funding or other sources of energy. They don’t broaden out the project the same way a company writing documentation and selling services usually does. On the other hand, non-profits like the FSF which have critical mass are very important, though, which is why on occasion we’ve been happy to contribute to them in various ways.


          • On balancing economic power in the FLOSS ecosystem
            When we debate our goals, principles and practices in the FLOSS community, we devote a great deal of energy to “how things should be”, and to the fact that “men are not angels”. I think the approach of James Madison is highly relevant to those discussions.


          • Flavours and Variants

            • Pinguy OS Mini 11.04.1 - A Stripped Down Pinguy OS [Uses Compiz 0.8.6]
              Pinguy OS is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu. The latest version - 11.04.1 is based on Ubuntu 11.04, but comes with the Classic GNOME 2.32.1 desktop instead of Unity.

              Pinguy has launched Pinguy OS Mini, a stripped down version of Pinguy OS which comes with all the tweaks and fixes that are available in the main Pinguy OS 11.04.1, but without most of the applications preinstalled in Pinguy OS.












  • Devices/Embedded



    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Tablet PC
        I finally purchased a tablet PC for testing usability of recent GNU/Linux desktop on touch devices. Though there are not so many choices that meet my requirements (PC compatible, reasonably fast and cheap, and available in my country), Acer ICONIA TAB W500 looked fine. Actually F-15 final installed on that device without any problem and GNOME-Shell works fine on it (the peformance is not that bad as I expected from its 1GHz CPU clock).








Free Software/Open Source



  • Re: Control is Highly Overrated and Overpriced
    This type of thinking also deeply effects the free and open source culture. Since one of the reasons for using FOSS is ultimate control (and responsibility).


  • Linux, Open Source & Ubuntu: Open-Source Software Winning Mainstream Status in Enterprises
    Industry observers have been predicting for years that open-source software will achieve mainstream adoption. Five years ago, open source was in its “nascent stages” and its future “was promising but still unknown,” said Michael Skok, general partner at North Bridge Venture Partners. He presented the fifth annual Future of Open Source Survey at Computerworld’s Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco. The latest survey results “clearly demonstrate” that open source “has gone mainstream,”


  • Nominations open for the O'Reilly Open Source Awards 2011


  • Events

    • Hop a ride on the Tux bus for Linux Learners Day


      The Linux Foundation will be teaming up with Oregon State University's Open Source Lab (OSL) for Linux Learners' Student Day, to be held in Vancouver on August 16 (the day before LinuxCon begins). The program includes sessions from OSL presenters on Linux basics, Python, embedded systems, and careers in open source.

      "The OSU Open Source Lab is very excited to be leading the sessions for Linux Learners Day," said Leslie Hawthorn, Open Source Outreach Manager. "We see educating future generations of Computer Scientists as one of the most important parts of our mission to serve the open source community."




  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla

      • Ready for Firefox 6? Here's What's on the Way
        Though the final version of Firefox 6 isn't due until August or so, this Aurora release can now be downloaded for Linux, Mac and Windows from the "Future of Firefox" page on the Mozilla Project's Web site.






  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Oracle and OpenOffice: The Final Insult
      Things are never dull here in the Linux blogosphere, but there's no doubt they would be a whole lot less entertaining without Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL).

      How else, after all, would we get the opportunity to ride on a thrilling emotional roller coaster such as the one Oracle's had us on since it acquired Sun?


    • The Open Source Office Software Sector Heats Up
      The world of LibreOffice and OpenOffice(.org) has been heating up recently with several exciting and, at times, bewildering developments. The Document Foundation remains very active as is LibreOffice development, but Oracle has given up on OpenOffice and slapped LibreOffice in the face by giving it to Apache. Perhaps the most important announcement was the release of LibreOffice 3.4.0.




  • CMS

    • Drupal contributor statistics
      I recently extracted some data from the Drupal project's CVS and Git logs to see how the number of code contributors and total contributions have changed over time. If there was any doubt of our continual growth, the resulting charts demolish it.






Leftovers

  • DuckDuckGo - Your next search engine
    DuckDuckGo is a silly name, possibly based on the duck, duck, goose game. Even the developers of the so knighted search engine admit as much. But under this seemingly simple and somewhat unprofessional moniker lurks a very powerful, refreshing and unique search engine. We checked.


  • Security



  • Defence/Police/Aggression



  • Cablegate



    • Supporters protest Manning’s detention
      A crowd of supporters were in Leavenworth Saturday to protest the holding of a prisoner on Fort Leavenworth suspected of leaking thousands of documents to the website Wikileaks.

      The Rally for Bradley Manning drew people from across the state and from areas like Chicago and Oakland, Calif. — close to 200 people in all, according to one of the event’s local organizers, Jim Davidson of Lawrence, Kan.

      The event started at Leavenworth’s Bob Dougherty Park, where Davidson said about 15 speakers from different organizations supporting Manning’s release, from Iraq Veterans Against the War to gay rights organizations, addressed the crowd before a march to the intersection of Seventh Street and Metropolitan Avenue, in front of Fort Leavenworth’s Grant Gate.


    • Coalition informant plays both sides of Afghan war
      The Afghan man with a grizzled beard puts his life at risk every time he chats with U.S. Lt. Col. William Chlebowski.

      As an informant for the U.S.-led coalition, the middle-aged man — whose name wasn't disclosed for security reasons — talks to insurgents one day and snitches on them the next. He's part of a network of Afghans across the country who tip coalition forces to the location of roadside bombs and weapons caches and share information about what militants are doing and planning.


    • Wikileaks a true account
      Is the founder of WikiLeaks the ministering angel of press freedom as his pale appearance might suggest? Or is he the demonic leader of the most dangerous hacker collective on the web? As one outspoken critic suggests, is he “worse than the Stasi,” or does he represent hope for those struggling against oppression? Either way, by the end of 2010 it became clear that a hitherto unknown organization had forever changed the global media landscape. Within a few months, some of the best-known newspapers - The New York Times, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, Le Monde - began to woo this small group of enthusiastic members of information transparency movement.


    • Dawn.com and Wikileaks present: Pakistan Illustrated
      Secret internal American government cables, accessed by Dawn through WikiLeaks, provide confirmation that the US military’s drone strikes programme within Pakistan had more than just tacit acceptance of the country’s top military brass, despite public posturing to the contrary. In fact, as long ago as January 2008, the country’s military was requesting the US for greater drone back-up for its own military operations.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • WikiLeaks: UK running out of oil and gas
      THE UK could be forced to rely on overseas countries for more than two thirds of its oil and gas supplies due to a "severe" decline in energy production in the North Sea, US diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks have revealed. Cables seen by The Scotsman reveal that Britain's gas and oil reserves are declining by 8 per cent a year, and that the country will import 60 to 80 per cent of its oil and gas supply within less than ten years.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Customer Service & PR 101: Vodaphone attempts to silence disgruntled customer?
      As if we need further proof of the commercial sector encroaching on the right to free speech, we have an interesting story from India. Perhaps a sad indictment of todays business where they view the net and its billions of users with greedy eyes, wanting the attention drawn to their products but not wanting you to put your opinion forward unless it favours them.

      Vodaphone is alleged by a customer (Dhaval Valia) to have sent a take down notice ordering removal of Facebook comments in regards to his unhappiness at the service Vodaphone provides. What Vodaphone did not count on (and maybe shows ignorance on their part) is that the story would hit the web and expose even more people to the incident (certainly more so than the Facebook users who saw the customer’s complaint)




  • Intellectual Monopolies







Clip of the Day



Charlie and the Apple Factory



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Credit: TinyOgg

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