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Links 20/8/2012: Wine 1.5.11, Frugalware 1.7



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • OS4 1.0 "OpenDesktop" has been released
    oberto Dohnert has announced the release of OS4 1.0 "OpenDesktop" edition, a Xubuntu-based distribution targeting legacy 32-bit hardware, ultrabooks and netbooks: "Today we are proud to announce the general availability of OS4 OpenDesktop 1.0. OS4 OpenDesktop is a 32-bit offering that runs on all legacy 32-bit hardware as well as the newer ultrabooks and netbooks.


  • Softpedia Linux Weekly, Issue 213
    €· Announced Distro: AV Linux 6.0

    €· Announced Distro: SolusOS 1.2


  • Audiocasts/Shows





  • Kernel Space

    • LanyardFS: A New Linux File-System
      A new Linux kernel file-system has been presented, LanyFS, a.k.a. the Lanyard File-System.

      From the patch announcement by Dan Luedtke, "This patch introduces the Lanyard Filesystem (LanyFS), a filesystem for highly mobile and removable storage devices." The kernel patch then goes on to describe Lanyard FS as "The lanyard file system (LanyFS) is designed for removable storage devices, particularly those small gadgets one would carry around using a lanyard."


    • KMSCON Is Getting Ready To Kick The Kernel Console
      KMSCON is turning out to be a successful and interesting project with high ambitions of being the leading terminal emulator for Linux while running from user-space.

      Back in March was when I first talked about KMSCON as a DRM-based terminal emulator when the developer, David Herrmann, was inspired by Jesse Barnes' guide to hacking with EGL and KMS.

      KMSCON is built upon the Linux kernel APIs for kernel mode-setting provided by the Direct Rendering Manager drivers for frame-buffer access to all displays as well as hot-plugging support with the DRM drivers through udev.


    • Adaptive Tickless Kernel Still Being Adapted
      While in development for nearly two years without merging, the adaptive tickless Linux kernel support is still being developed.

      The adaptive tickless kernel support ended up being a big endeavour as well as getting other kernel developers to review the patches.


    • Link-Time Optimization To Speed Up The Linux Kernel
      An extensive set of patches have been published that allow the Linux kernel to be built with GCC's LTO (Link-Time Optimization) support for generating a faster Linux kernel binary but at the cost of much greater compile times.


    • Retina display MacBook Pro does not play nicely with Linux


    • Graphics Stack





  • Applications

    • Play the Guitar with Rhythmbox!
      Are you sick of wasting too much time on trying to find the “correct” tablature for your favorite song? Do you want to learn how to play your favorite songs on the guitar but you have no idea of what notes stand for? Rhythmbox is the answer for you!

      Recently I discovered a fantastic 3rd party plugin for Rhythmbox that will search, download and display under a second the guitar, bass and drums tablature of the song you are listening to right now! How cool is that?


    • Instructionals/Technical



    • Wine



    • Games

      • Humble Bundle 3 Now Available For Ubuntu Precise
        Humble Bundle is a donation based game project where users set their own price for a series of games and can decide the proportion of money to be given to charity and developers. The project is quite successful and the third series of games are now available in Ubuntu.


      • Evilot, New Puzzle/Defense Game for Linux
        Evilot is a new Puzzle/Defense game for Linux, where you play as Count Dolfus, a retired evil overlord, that just wants to spend his last days in peace.

        The problem is that the small retirement fund you've managed to amass, over decades of evildoing, is too tempting a prize for the heroes and adventurers running through the Kingdom of Evilot, so you'll have prepare your defenses to withstand their fierce attack.


      • Steam to debut Big Picture beta soon, make couch potatoes of PC gamers
        Early last year, Valve mentioned it was working on something called Big Picture mode for Steam, an alternative user interface with controller support designed specifically for use on televisions. According to Gabe Newell, the distribution services' couch-ready UI is almost upon us. "We should have both Linux and 10-foot betas out there fairly quickly," he told Geoff Keighley in the latest episode of GTTV, noting that the interface would be available on both the current iteration of Steam and the upcoming Linux version. Newell said that Valve has been showing the interface to hardware manufacturers, but ultimately feels that the community will decide its fate. "I think customers will say 'this is really great,' or they'll say it's another interesting but not a valuable contribution, fairly quickly." Check out the interview for yourself (and the full episode) after the break.


      • Let's Play: Darwinia


      • Steam for Linux Beta is imminent


      • Planetary Annihilation To Have Linux Support
        Uber Entertainment have added the promise of Linux support to their Kickstarter for Planetary Annihilation, and not as a stretch goal. The funding is now at $453,000 of their $900,000 goal with 26 days to go. Platforms now confirmed are Windows, OSX and Linux. The rate of funding seems to have flattened out a bit over the past few days, so it will be interesting to see if this announcement affects it in the coming days.


      • Valve Releases New CS: Global Offensive Trailer
        The official release of Valve's much-anticipated Counter-Strike: Global Offensive title is set to happen on the 21st of August. In anticipation of the launch, Valve has released a new CS:GO trailer.

        Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is the latest game in Valve's wildly-successful Counter-Strike franchise built atop their impressive Source Engine. CS:GO has been in beta for a number of months already while next week will mark its official release. This first person shooter is initially being released for Windows, OS X, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360, but a native Linux version will very likely come once Valve begins shipping their Steam client and Source-based games for Linux.






  • Desktop Environments

    • Some Enlightenment EFL Components Hit v1.7 Beta
      Last week there was the release of some 1.7 alpha packages for the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL), but today there's some beta packages.

      Eina, Eet, Evas, Ecore, Embryo, Edje, Efreet, E_dbus, Eeze, Expedite, Evas Generic Loaders, Eio, Emotion, Ethumb, and Elementary experienced the new release cycle beta releases of 1.7.0 on Friday. The announcement was made at Enlightenment.org.


    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KDE News (dot.kde.org) undergoes major upgrade
        Today, we finished upgrading one of the most visited KDE websites: KDE.News. The Dot now not only runs on drupal’s latest release (7.15), but also has a fresh new look featuring the Neverland theme.




    • GNOME Desktop





  • Distributions

    • BlankOn 8 preview
      BlankOn is a desktop distribution based on Debian, and comes to use courtesy of some enterprising folks from Indonesia. It uses a highly-modified GNOME 3 desktop environment built with an HTML 5 and CSS 3 custom desktop shell called Manokwari.

      Because I am not particularly fond of the GNOME 3 desktop in its default state, I am always on the lookout for a distribution that takes it and makes it a lot more user-friendly. Linux Deepin is one that I like very much, but choice is good, and so I decided to download BlankOn 8, the latest edition of BlankOn, to see what it has to offer.


    • Endangered Banyumas Dialect Gets Its Own Linux OS
      The @blankonbanyumas project in Indonesia has launched its open source, Linux-based OS that’s fully localized in the Banyumas local language. It launched on Friday, aptly arriving on Indonesia’s 67th Independence Day. Wikipedia describes the tongue as “considered to be a dialect of Javanese.”


    • New Releases



    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Get to know Mageia better!
        Hmm, it is hard to address the target group of Mageia. A quick answer would be that targets to a lot of people. Yes, Mageia is one of the most popular distros around and is relatively a new one.

        Mageia isn’t for enthusiasts, isn’t about the latest packages, isn’t a LTS and it doesn’t ship any commercial support, but is user friendly. The best words I can find to describe it, would be a Community Edition of Canonical’s Ubuntu.




    • Debian Family



      • Derivatives



        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Applications Are Always Crashing, Biggest Problem Right Now According To Ubuntu QA Survey
            The Ubuntu Quality Assurance team had earlier created a survey to gather feedback from users regarding differen issues in Ubuntu operating system. The results are out, published in Ubuntu Orange Notebook blog and here are some interesting findings.


          • Here Comes The Amazing Wikipedia Lens With Previews
            Canonical has recently announced a new feature called Unity Previews and this program has got tremendous potential as shown below.

            Unity has already got tight integration with different online services, such as Google, Flickr, Wikipedia, Ask Ubuntu etc. What users do is to type in their queries in the dash and the lenses display the results from which users have to click on an item and open it on their web browser. With Previews, one can get more information of an item such as description, ratings, or maybe, even a full web page.


          • Flavours and Variants

            • Peppermint LINUX 3 - The mint with no holes
              There have been a number of reviews of Peppermint 3 already so I am somewhat behind the pace with this review.

              I wrote a review about Peppermint 2 back in February but it didn't really contain all that much information except to say that Peppermint utilises the idea of cloud computing and wraps it up to make it look like you are running a local application.

              As we have moved on a version I thought I'd have another look especially as the reviews have been mainly positive.


            • Installing Lighttpd With PHP5 (PHP-FPM) And MySQL Support On CentOS 6.3












  • Devices/Embedded





Free Software/Open Source



  • GGA Software launches new version 1.1 open-source chemistry toolkit, Indigo
    GGA Software Services LLC, a leading provider of outsourced scientific informatics services to the life sciences industry, has released new version 1.1 of its popular open-source organic chemistry toolkit known as Indigo. Scientists at companies and institutions around the world have used this Indigo toolkit widely to secure broad capabilities in cheminformatics.


  • Google’s Real Time Big Data Tool Cloned By Apache Drill
    Google, as you might expect, has massive amounts of data and it’s built many tools to handle it. Stuff like MapReduce and GoogleFS, which spawned the open source Apache Hadoop, and BigTable, which spawned Apache HBase.


  • SaaS

    • Cloud Computing: Moving To Open Source
      With more and more organizations moving towards the clouds for its customization, flexibility, and agility, sad to say, large cloud computing providers are not that keen to tap the open environment because doing so will be have negative effects to their financial interests. Since Linux started some 20 years ago, there is a growing demand for openness in the IT arena. Today, there is a growing demand for cloud computing to deliver open source cloud computing applications. OpenStack, a community for the development of open-sourced public and private clouds, is on the forefront with more than 180 organizations around the world as supporters.




  • Databases

    • PostgreSQL patches XML flaws
      A flaw in the built-in XML functionality of PostgreSQL (CVE-2012-3488) and another in its optional XSLT handling (CVE-2012-3489) have been patched, and the developers have released updated versions of the open source database with relevant fixes. The holes being patched are related to insecure use of the widely used libxml2 and libxslt open source libraries and the PostgreSQL developers advise anyone using those libraries to check their systems for similar problems.


    • Oracle Makes More Moves To Kill Open Source MySQL
      Oracle is holding back test cases in the latest release of MySQL. It’s a move that has all the markings of the company’s continued efforts to further close up the open source software and alienate the MySQL developer community.

      The issue stems back to a recent discovery that the latest MySQL release has bug fixes but without a single one having any test cases associated with it. That creates all sorts of problems for developers who have no assurance that the problem is actually fixed.




  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • SolusOS 1.2 Features LibreOffice 3.6.0
      Ikey Doherty proudly announced yesterday, August 17th, the immediate availability for download of the SolusOS 1.2 Linux distribution.

      SolusOS 1.2 is the second maintenance release of the 1.x branch of the SolusOS distribution, bringing better GPU, bluetooth and printer support, as well as many system-wide optimisations and fixes.




  • Healthcare

    • The Eclipse Way vs. The Android Way
      The Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent (OSEHRA), an independent, nonprofit, open source organization formed by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), has taken an active role in upgrading and standardizing the agency's VistA electronic health record (EHR). Meanwhile, the role of open source developers in building the joint Department of Defense/VA EHR system is still in flux.

      Up to now, it has been difficult for the VA to introduce enterprise-wide changes in its VistA software, said Seong K. Mun, president and CEO of OSEHRA, in an interview with InformationWeek Healthcare. The main problem is that many of the 152 VA medical centers have tweaked VistA to meet their own needs over the years.




  • Project Releases



  • Public Services/Government

    • The UK Public Sector Finally Gets Open Source
      The use of open source technology in the UK’s public sector has historically lagged behind other European countries, most notably France and Germany, both of which have successfully embraced open source to deliver enhanced value to the taxpayer through efficiency and collaboration.




  • Standards/Consortia

    • Dart: Build HTML5 Apps Fast
      Dart is a language, library, toolset, and virtual machine from Google that greatly facilitates writing fast, interactive HTML5 apps without requiring you to be a JavaScript expert.

      Dart helps developers build fast HTML5 apps for the Web. Currently in Technology Preview (with a Beta release planned for this year), this open source project is building a "batteries included" developer platform that integrates a new language, libraries, an editor, a virtual machine, and a compiler (with JavaScript output).


    • How Microsoft was forced to open Office
      In Office 2013, Microsoft was compelled to support the true ODF format as well as the PDF format. Here's how open source won






Leftovers

  • Patton Boggs to Lobby for Facebook
    Facebook Inc. has signed on with a former U.S. Federal Communications Commission chairman and other Patton Boggs lobbyists.

    Patton Boggs disclosed to Congress on Tuesday that firm partner Kevin Martin, the FCC chairman from 2005 to 2009, as well as partner Jeffrey Turner and senior public policy adviser Emanuel Rossman, are lobbying for the social network. They are focusing on matters concerning "technology and internet policy, including personal privacy, protecting children, advancing online security, and tax policy issues," according to a lobbying registration report the law firm filed with the U.S. House of Representatives.


  • Want to Get 70 Billion Copies of Your Book In Print? Print It In DNA
    I have been meaning to read a book coming out soon called Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves. It’s written by Harvard biologist George Church and science writer Ed Regis. Church is doing stunning work on a number of fronts, from creating synthetic microbes to sequencing human genomes, so I definitely am interested in what he has to say. I don’t know how many other people will be, so I have no idea how well the book will do. But in a tour de force of biochemical publishing, he has created 70 billion copies. Instead of paper and ink, or pdf’s and pixels, he’s used DNA.


  • Why the Man Who Invented the Web Isn't Rich
    I hadn't realized that the World Wide Web turned 21 this week until I saw the nice birthday card that Megan Garber sent it yesterday. And it's a good thing I did--because otherwise I would have missed a fabulous recycling opportunity!




  • Finance

    • Attorney For Goldman Sachs CEO Is Eric Holder's 'Best Friend'
      Last week, the Justice Department announced that it will not prosecute Goldman Sachs or any of its employees in a financial probe.

      Could that be because the attorney for Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein was none other than Attorney General Eric Holder’s “best friend” and former personal attorney, Reid Weingarten?

      Or because in 2008, Goldman Sachs employees donated $1,013,091 to Barack Obama?


    • Goldman, Still Playing in Bayou's Mud
      Goldman had executed and cleared trades for Bayou, and there were questions about how well Goldman supervised the account. On July 30, Goldman paid $20.7 million to roughly 200 Bayou investors in the United States. Those investors, unsecured creditors in a separate Bayou bankruptcy case, were awarded that amount by a securities arbitration panel in June 2010.

      It was one of the few bright spots of the Bayou story, but it didn’t last. The same day Goldman paid the investors, the firm filed its own creditor’s claim for the same amount — $20.7 million — in the Bayou bankruptcy. Goldman contended that paying the award had made it, too, a Bayou creditor. If the court agrees, the investors who won their arbitration case — also unsecured creditors of Bayou — will be out of luck.

      Ross B. Intelisano, a partner at Rich, Intelisano & Katz in New York who represented the Bayou investors, said they would fight Goldman’s latest filing.

      I asked Goldman last week about the bankruptcy court filing. Michael DuVally, a spokesman, said Goldman never controlled the money at issue in the arbitration.

      “Our claim is consistent with bankruptcy law,” he said in a statement. “The arbitration panel, which was not ruling on wrongdoing, determined that money the Bayou funds deposited with us while insolvent needed to be returned to the estate to distribute to creditors. With the ruling, we became a creditor entitled to compensation along with the other victims of the fraud.”


    • Oracle settles SEC charges over secret India payments
      Oracle Corp agreed to pay a $2 million fine to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charges that an India subsidiary secretly set aside money used to make unauthorized payments to phony vendors in that country.




  • Privacy



  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • UN body opens debate on Internet future to public after critics slam secrecy of talks
      The U.N. telecoms agency has invited the world’s more than 2 billion Internet users to join a debate about the future of the Internet.

      The Geneva-based International Telecommunications Union’s announcement Wednesday follows criticism from civil society groups who say preparations for an upcoming global conference have been shrouded in secrecy.






Recent Techrights' Posts

Preparations for Our 19th Anniversary Have Already Begun
When we get back we'll probably sort out some balloons and venue for the next party
Pleased After 2 Years With team.blue
Moving from a Content Management System (CMS, dynamic) to a Static Site Generator (SSG) was a wise decision that made life so much easier
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is Being Attacked by Organisations Jealous of Its Principled Stance and Longevity
Nobody is perfect, but imperfection does not instantaneously imply sinister intent
Many Microsoft "Assets" Are Fabricated Baloney (to Game the Numbers)
At times it seems like what we deal with are many weak patents (on algorithms), valuations or speculations based on hype ("hey hi"), and stocks held by Microsoft and its own staff
"Internal Changes at Red Hat / IBM"
It seems like quite a few people are leaving
Confirmed in French Media: Mass Layoffs (10% Culled) in Microsoft France
Now some reports in French
 
Gemini Links 03/09/2025: calendar.txt, Alhena 5.3.1, and ROOPHLOCH
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The Theory That the Man From McKinsey, Whom Red Hat Took From Microsoft a Month Ago as Executive, Wants 'Efficiency' (Lower Salaries)
So far... no "official" word
When Your Site's Articles Are Being 'Cheapened' by Slop as Feature Images
Dr. Farnell should become an advisor to The Register MS
Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Drops to Only Half a Dozen Capsules and 0.2% of the Whole in Geminispace, Self-Signed is the Way to Go
It used to have hundreds, according to Lupa
Doing to Red Hat What They Already Did (and Still Do) to IBM
there seems to be a drive to hire cheaper staff, and it may be led by somebody Red Hat hired from Microsoft
Links 03/09/2025: Salesforce's Latest Mass Layoffs, 93% in Large Poll at The Register MS Say UK Government Should Dump Microsoft
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If You Reject the Google Verdict in the US, Then You Should Also Reject the "Modern" Web (Do Something About It)
Gemini Protocol is still open; it cannot be hijacked or subverted because it's frozen by design and by intention
Open Source Initiative IRS Filing: Almost All the Money is Corporate, Stefano Maffuli (Executive Director) Takes About a Quarter of That Money for Openwashing of "AI" Ponzi Scheme
OSI is currently little but a PR/marketing agency of Microsoft
Many People Are "Leaving" Red Hat, Even High-Level Managers
Something is definitely going on at Red Hat
Techrights Has Been Subjected to Calls of Violence (and Death Threats), It Never Condoned Violence
I have no sympathy for people who call violence "free speech" and then get in trouble
Condoning Violent Behaviour and "Free Speech"
perhaps Microsoft Lunduke lost touch with what constitutes violence
Takeaway From the Google Verdict: GAFAM Has Too Much Control (Even Over the US Government and Courts With Government Appointees)
Many people feel disappointed but hardly surprised by the verdict
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 in One Month
As noted a few days ago, several times in fact, many people now recognise the importance of the FSF's mission, even if most people don't know what the FSF is
"Voluntary" Layoffs at Microsoft (to Game the Numbers, Sugar-Coating a Crisis)
"Employees interested have until the end of October to volunteer."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
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IRC logs for Tuesday, September 02, 2025
Links 02/09/2025: Oligarch Tech and Text Encoding Concerns in Ada
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"People on LinkedIn Saying That They've Left Red Hat."
We already saw signs of it a month ago and named some of the people
Gone With the BRICs (or BRICS): "Linux 8" in Cuba
GAFAM must be worried
Telecompaper Reports Microsoft to Reduce the Workforce by Another 10% (in France)
Imagine what this will do to staff's morale
Microsoft in Freefall in Finland
Can Finland eradicate Windows from all its infrastructure, including core operations that are sensitive to sabotage by cracking?
Google's Chrome Passes 70% and Web Standards Are Dying
The Web is quickly becoming devoid of any standards
India is Back to Windows 8 (Market Share Down to 8%) as Android Soars to a New Record High
For Microsoft, India is a runaway market
Slopwatch: Plagiarism and Ponzi Scheme, Bubble About to Burst Entirely, Admits Goldman Sachs
the hype that Google News and The Register MS actively participate and profit from
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The Register MS Says "AI Web Crawlers Are Destroying Websites", So Why Does The Register MS Help 'AI' Companies? (Spoiler: Money)
People need to call out The Register MS on its hypocrisy
Slopfarms Already Peaked, They Will Die When Slop Companies Run Out of Money to Borrow
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Why We Publish Information About the SLAPPs (But Not About the Legal Process), an Abuse of Process by Americans Trying to Silence Critics of Their Employer, Microsoft
It doesn't take thousands of pages to explain something simple
Internet Relay Chat Didn't Fall Off a Cliff
IRC will turn 40 in less than 3 years from now
The UEFI 9/11 - Part V - This is Not a Drill (Disable "SecureBoot" Now)
A "9/11" Coming
There's No Obligation to Speak to Anybody
The very fact that "bkuhn" is till spending time in social control media says a lot about his poor judgment
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 01, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 01, 2025
Microsoft Trying to Force People to Resign (Amid Mass Layoffs) a Strategy That Takes Its Toll
Microsoft seems to be circling down the drain and the "final flush" will be the moment the "hey hi" (AI) bubble implodes completely
Google Simply Cannot Be Trusted
Only fools would trust GAFAM
Admission That a Third Party (or Parties) Funds the SLAPPs Against Techrights
This can end up costing them over a million dollars
Modifying and Writing One's Own Computer Programs is Not a Crime (or: Google Proves That Stallman Was Right)
We're generally gratified to see so many positive mentions of him
Why We Stopped Publishing Videos (for Now)
We'll probably get back to videos one day, but it's hard to say when or to what extent
What Animal Rights Activism Teaches Us About Sympathy and Focus
It's possible to believe that the planet is warming, that we must do something about it, and still eat eggs and butter
When You Turn Web Sites About Tech Into Political Sites
A lot of people fall into the trap of catering only for particular groups
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Gemini Links 01/09/2025: News Corp. WSJ and A Month With NixOS
Links for the day
“Sideloading” Never Killed Anybody
There are many online discussions this week about the misnomer "sideloading"
Slopwatch: Google News as FUD Vector Against Linux and Plagiarism Enhancer, Serial Slopper (SS) Uses LLMs to Googlebomb "Linux"
Slop destroys the Web not just by screwing with search engines and helping plagiarists. It's also responsible for de facto DDoS attacks...
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Writing and Coding Isn't Always Enough
Last year we had to assume a role we didn't have before: litigants
Links 01/09/2025: Catching Up (Mostly via Deutsche Welle), "Windows TCO" Effect in UK
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Gemini Links 01/09/2025: Linguistic Barriers and "Web 1.0 Hosting"
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Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 31, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, August 31, 2025
Autumn Has Come
Autumn should be exciting in all sorts of ways; it'll also mark our anniversary
The UEFI 9/11 - Part IV - External Interference
They all seem to be playing a role in crushing Software Freedom and self-determination for users