I'd like to make time for switching my main system but it is not there yet. What I plan to do is however use Linux on my laptop and get used to it this way. While it will take longer than a radical switch, it is the best I can do right now. Eventually though, I'd like to run all but one system on Linux and not Windows.
The open-source Docker container application virtualization project turned two-years old on March 20, marking a robust period of market hype, interest and adoption. Docker was originally just the Docker-engine project started by Solomon Hykes at platform-as-a-service vendor dotCloud. The original dotCloud business has been sold, and Docker Inc. is its own business and has raised $66 million in multiple funding rounds. The project has grown to include Hykes as chief architect, Steve Francia as the chief operator and Michael Crosby as chief maintainer. In the last two years, many vendors—including Red Hat, IBM, Microsoft, VMware and Amazon—have embraced Docker technology. Other companies are creating technologies and products that extend, complement and support it. Docker needs a host OS on which to run, which has led to Red Hat's creating Project Atomic. CoreOS and RancherOS have also emerged as purpose-built optimized operating systems for container deployment. eWEEK examines the wide world of Docker container virtualization.
As I noted at the beginning of this year, open source has won, even if it's not finished. That's easy to show at the top end, since Linux currently runs 485 of the top 500 supercomputers in the world. But at the other end of the spectrum, data has been harder to come by. That makes a new post on Linux.com reporting on the embedded sector particularly welcome. Here's the key finding.
Usually Greg issues a preview a few days before release. Rarely is anything wrong. Sasha did not this time. I hope nothing goes wrong…
While there's been Broadwell support code within Coreboot for a number of months, pushed in the past few hours has been a lot more Broadwell code. This is likely indication that more Google Chromebooks based on this latest-generation Intel architecture should be surfacing soon.
Those with a bit of humor will love the demo NVIDIA recently used for showing off their Nouveau-based open-source graphics driver stack on the Tegra K1 SoC.
Last month at FOSDEM was a presentation on the Nouveau Tegra K1 driver stack by Alexandre Courbot of NVIDIA. In there NVIDIA talked about their great experience working on this open-source driver and engagement with the Nouveau community, which will continue for future Tegra SoCs. That aforelinked article covered all of the important details of that presentation.
The TITAN X is out of reach to most Phoronix readers given the $1000 USD price, but its performance is fantastic. The GeForce GTX TITAN X is home to 3072 CUDA cores and 24 streaming multi-processors and boasts a 1000MHz base clock speed and 1075MHz boost clock speed. There's 12GB of GDDR5 video memory running at 7.0 Gbps to allow for 336.5 GB/s of bandwidth. In comparison, the GeForce GTX 980 has just 16 streaming multi-processors and 2048 CUDA cores and a modest 4GB of GDDR5 memory.
After a successful Kickstarter campaign the new RPG game from Obsidian Entertainment entitled Pillars of Eternity, is now available to purchase via Steam and is available to play on PC, Mac and Linux systems.
The Shadow Warrior remake of the 1997 3D Realms' game of the same name is seeing its native Linux release next week! The remake of Shadow Warrior has been out since 2013 by Flying Wild Hog while next week will mark its debut for Linux and OS X.
Today’s announcement for Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) Final Beta also mentioned the immediate availability for download and testing of Kubuntu 15.04 Beta 2, an official Ubuntu flavor built around the modern and attractive KDE Plasma 5 desktop environment, as well as the KDE Applications project.
When I talk to people about our quest to make KDE Activities work, one of the things I hear most often is: “I never really understood what they are!”. There are several reasons for that, a very obvious one is: They are buggy (e.g. concerning non KDE apps).
While it's possible to install 'KDE' software and Plasma desktop on most Linux based distributions, I have picked the distros which offer Plasma as their default desktop environment. These 'KDE-based' distros offer a better Plasma experience compared to those where you can 'also' install KDE.
At some point in time I have used each of these distros as my primary OS except for Mageia and Open Mandriva, which I tried but never used due to uncertainty around their future.
It was a bit of a slow news day today without any big item overtaking the rest. Several folks celebrated the Ubuntu 15.04 Beta release and Danny Stieben discussed reasons for GNOME's resurgence. Martin Brinkmann asked "What is keeping you from switching to Linux?" Simon Phipps today discussed the challenges ahead for LibreOffice Online and Swapnil Bhartiya posted a slideshow of the top nine KDE distributions.
It didn’t take nearly as long to count the votes for our desktop poll as it did for last week’s distro poll, mainly due to the fact that not as many of you voted, but also because there aren’t nearly as many desktop environments and window managers as their are Linux distros. Also, unlike the distro poll, there was a clear cut winner instead of a virtual tie.
On March 26, we announced the release of the GNOME 3.16 desktop environment, and we unveiled its awesome features, including updated and new applications. However, we completely missed one app: GNOME Builder, a powerful IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for GNOME.
When the team behind GNOME came out with GNOME 3, which included the infamous GNOME Shell, the most popular desktop environment of the time saw a sharp decrease in users. And honestly, that trend is pretty easy to explain. When GNOME 3 initially came out, it was incomplete, buggy, and foreign. The concepts behind GNOME Shell were never before seen on a desktop system, and lots of users who were used to panels/taskbars and menus didn’t like the rather dramatic changes.
Suppose you’re a developer and want to experiment with Drupal 7.7 or WordPress. Maybe you're a K-12 teacher or university professor and want to teach your students Moodle administration or how to create some network-attached storage. You could download a tarball from Drupal.com or WordPress.org and configure on your own desktop or laptop, but then you would also need to configure Apache and MySQL too. All of these operations take effort and know-how that you may or may not have time for.
Zentyal Development Team is proud to announce Zentyal Server 4.1, a new release of the Zentyal Server with native Microsoft€® Exchange protocol implementation and Active Directory interoperability.
Preserving current 0.5 line, the new Q4OS version applies security patches and solves several minor issues. Desktop Profiler application has been slightly tweaked as well.
Debian 8.0 "Jessie" is still working towards its long-awaited release.
Good news Ubuntu lovers!! Yes, the second and final beta of Ubuntu 15.04, code named Vivid Vervet, is now ready for download. The final and stable version will be out on April 23, 2015. This beta release includes images from not only the Ubuntu Desktop, Server, Cloud, and Core products, but also the Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu Studio and Xubuntu flavours. Ubuntu 15.04 will be supported for 9 months for Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Core, Kubuntu, Ubuntu Kylin along with all other flavours.
NFV and OpenStack expertise are at the core of the deal that will see Ubuntu become the host operating system for Ericsson's cloud offering.
A two pair of technology giants has teamed up on Network Function Virtualization offerings. Oracle is using Intel’s Open Network Platform, and Canonical and Ericsson are teaming up to target the telecom cloud space. Both pairings are focusing their efforts atop OpenStack.
Canonical, through Adam Conrad, had the pleasure of announcing today, March 26, the immediate availability for download and testing of the Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) Final Beta operating system for personal computers and laptops. Users are urged to test the distribution and report major issues in order for the Ubuntu developers to fix them before the final version gets out in less than one month from now.
After announcing the Ubuntu 15.04 Final Beta and Kubuntu 15.04 Beta 2, it is now time to take a look at the second and last Beta release of the upcoming Ubuntu Kylin 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) operating system that has been designed especially for the Chinese Ubuntu Linux community.
The Ubuntu GNOME 15.04 Beta 2 has been released on March 26 along with the Ubuntu 15.04 Final Beta, Kubuntu 15.04 Beta 2, Ubuntu MATE 15.04 Beta 2, Xubuntu 15.04 Beta 2, Lubuntu 15.04 Beta 2, Ubuntu Kylin 15.04 Beta 2, and Ubuntu Studio 15.04 Beta 2 operating systems.
Martin Wimpress had the pleasure of announcing today, March 26, the immediate availability for download and testing of the Ubuntu MATE 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) Beta 2 operating system, a development release that includes assorted new features and bugfixes.
After announcing the release of the Ubuntu 15.04 Final Beta, Kubuntu 15.04 Beta 2, Ubuntu Kylin 15.04 Beta 2, and Ubuntu MATE 15.04 Beta 2, it is now time to take a quick look at the Xubuntu 15.04 Beta 2 operating system, which has been unleashed earlier today.
Kubuntu Vivid Beta 2 is out. This is the first major distro to ship with Plasma 5 so it’ll be the first time many people get to see our lovely new desktop. Scary.
Lubuntu 15.04 is the last in our screenshot tour articles related to the Final Beta a.k.a. Beta 2 of the Vivid Vervet development cycle. Lubuntu 15.04 Beta 2 offers one of the most lightweight desktop experiences and it is now powered by Ubuntu 15.04’s Linux 3.19.2 kernel.
OpenEmbed launched a 52 x 28mm “SOM9331ââ¬Â³ COM for IoT that runs OpenWRT Linux on a MIPS-based Atheros AR9331 SoC, and offers WiFi and extended temperatures.
The following is a video recorded at FOSDEM 2015, entitled Porting Tizen Common to open source hardware devices, presented by Philippe Coval and Leon Anavi, in which it Introduces you to the Tizen platform development and provides you the technical details with regards to the Tizen:Common porting efforts to Allwinner A10/A20, Rockchip RK3188/RK3288 ARM SoC and MinnowBoard MAX with Intel Atom CPU. The Tizen Project will be discussed and information provided about U-Boot, Yocto project, the Linux-Sunxi and Linux-Rockchip, Minnowboard communities.
Most of Facebook’s announcements at its F8 developer conference this week were iOS-centric, but today, the company also released three new open source tools for Android developers.
The first is a performance segmentation library called Year Class that is meant to help developers quickly figure out what kind of device a user is running.
Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge flagship phones are finally here. They are beautiful phones (unlike the uninspired Galaxy S5). The S6 Edge, with its unique curved screen, is especially eye-catching.
iOS and Android have been battling for mobile supremacy for years. But iOS still offers some features that Android doesn't have. If Google...er...borrowed those features, they might add real value for many Android users.
While the unit carries an MSRP of $700, Amazon's deal marks it down from its previous list price of $849.99. While it's still a tad expensive, the discount makes it a bit easier to get some Android Auto into your car.
Early this morning, the new HTC One M9 and Samsung Galaxy S6 became available for pre-order. As a mobile phone fanatic, it was very difficult for me to choose one over the other.
The Asus ZenWatch is a surprise. It is comfortable, looks great and works well. The heart rate monitor is well suited to infrequent checks, and the screen is bright and can be clearly read in sunlight.
Today, Android powers about 85% of all smartphones globally, while the iPhone accounts for only 11%. It’s making a push into wristwatches, cars, and TVs. It’s not hard to envision a time when Android will be in every single device from stove and thermostats to toothbrushes.
If there’s a poster child for the challenges facing open source security, it may be Werner Koch, the German developer who wrote and for the last 18 years has toiled to maintain Gnu Privacy Guard (GnuPG), a pillar of the open source software ecosystem.
Since its first production release in 1999, GnuPG has become one of the most widely used open source security tools in the world, protecting the email communication of everyone from government officials to Edward Snowden.
Compared to Q4 2013, last quarter’s US online sales rose 14.6 percent to a staggering $79.6 billion dollars. This accounted for 6.7 percent of the total US retail sales market. Major trends fueling this growth include the proliferation of mobile devices, faster online checkout flows and improved fulfillment practices.
Allegedly, Apple has recently acquired FoundationDB, a company specialized in fast and cost-effective database software.
Earlier this week, Ben Kepes reported here on Forbes that Apple acquired enterprise database startup FoundationDB. As often happens in these situations, FoundationDB stopped accepting new customers for its paid services. But the company’s code repository was also emptied or made private, leaving third party developers dependent upon open source code associated with this database with no official place to get it. Some have been quick to suggest this is a good reason not to build products or services that rely upon open source software. It would be a mistake to believe them.
Travis Jeffery is a software developer who’s been using a database system called FoundationDB for a project at his startup. Earlier this week, he noticed that the software had been pulled from the web. He soon received a terse email confirming that the software had been taken down intentionally, but little else. “We have made the decision to evolve our company mission,” it read. “And as of today, we will no longer offer downloads.”
Apple's acquisition of FoundationDB is a warning to all: contribute to the open-source projects you love, or risk losing them.
Bazel, the tool that Google uses to build the majority of its software has been partially open sourced. According to Google, Bazel is aimed to build “code quickly and reliably” and is “critical to Google’s ability to continue to scale its software development practices as the company grows.”
For the past three years, KDAB has had the honor and pleasure to bring you the European Qt Developer Days Conference in Berlin.
Linux is expanding its reach, promising to play a significant role in the Internet of Things. But the open source software needs more attention to interoperability, security and its kernel, according to experts at the Embedded Linux Conference here.
Anyways, to the point, I hate to open a can of worms but when I heard this news I thought back to this same time last year and remembered how gung ho OkCupid was over Mozilla’s appointment of Brendan Eich because of his personal beliefs and that they ultimately decided to block all Firefox users.
Yesterday, I reported on Red Hat delivering its fourth quarter and year-end financial results, which were strong. There were some interesting forces driving the numbers, though. In particular, Red Hat is now a couple of years into a strategic shift toward facilitating OpenStack cloud computing for enterprises, and CEO Jim Whitehurst pointed to that fork in the road as beginning to pay off. Here are some more detailed glimpses into Red Hat's increasingly significant cloud business.
We're now in the stretch run for the OpenStack Kilo platform release.
When it comes to security, what does it take to make Hadoop "enterprise ready?"
Icelandic cloud provider GreenQloud, which has been a major open source cloud supporter, has informed customers it is closing its public cloud service. The company will go on focusing on selling Apache CloudStack cloud called QStack to be managed by others. The public compute and and storage services are ending in October 2015.
Adding PostgreSQL coverage to the solution has enabled IT operators to manage the three most popular open source databases - MySQL, MongoDB and PostgreSQL - from one ClusterControl platform. The upgrade also boosts increased monitoring capabilities and encryption between MySQL and MariaDB to protect costumers from losing sensitive data.
The announcement of LibreOffice Online this week came as welcome news to many people concerned about the paucity of online options for those who want software freedom with their online document solutions. But can open source SaaS succeed?
The open source community needs a truly open alternative to current mainstream online document collaboration solutions, all of which are compromised by lock-in. LibreOffice Online will offer the full flexibility to deploy in-house or hosted cloud instances while using true open standards for its documents.
Ordinarily, I'm all for diversity in free software projects. However, I make an exception in the case of LibreOffice and OpenOffice. The sooner they become a single project, the better.
In other cases, I'm slow to accept arguments against duplication of projects. Combining projects does not automatically make for greater efficiency or quicker development; especially in the beginning, personalities can sabotage or even reverse any gains.
So the next time you’re trying to convince someone of the important of free and open software, and they chime in with the fact that don’t want to change it, try pointing out that by using proprietary code they’re limiting their options for getting it fixed when it inevitably breaks.
Version 7.10.1 of the Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC) is now available as a major release for this open-source project.
The Government of India is soon coming out with an “Open software policy” according to Union Minister for Telecommunications and IT, Ravi Shankar Prasad. Speaking at the 3rd Web Ratna Awards ceremony, the Minister mentioned that under the new policy, all proposals for e-governance projects will include a mandatory clause for considering open source software as a preferred option.
Software providers such as Microsoft and Oracle are aggressively targeting public sector customers with licence "audit reviews" in a bid to plug falling subscription revenue, according to research.
Over one-third of the 436 councils surveyed across the UK have been subject to at least one software licence review in the last 20 months, according to a report from software licensing costs advice company Cerno.
Just a few days ago it was anounced publicly that not only is the Pleio community is hard at work on improving the platform to raise the bar yet again, but that Kolab will be a part of that. A joint development project has been agreed to and is now underway as part of a new Pleio pilot project.
The European Commission will create a level playing field for open source software when procuring new software solutions, it announced on 27 March. Evaluation of open source and proprietary software will take into account their total cost of ownership and exit costs.
Equal treatment in procurement
Contribution to communities
Clarification of legal aspects
Open-source and interoperable Commission-developed software
Transparency and better communication
NHS ENGLAND HAS been talking about the latest strand of its move toward open digital solutions to provide interoperability between the myriad departmental systems that are proprietary, incompatible or just plain disparate.
The organisation is to adopt Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA) as a standard format to store everything from X-rays to scanned letters and patient notes, in order to avoid lock-in with proprietary systems and allow easy sharing of data across the NHS.
In the growing hubbub around student data privacy and security, it can be hard for edtech companies to identify concrete steps to demonstrate their commitment to protecting student information. But last week, Clever made a commitment to transparency by making their privacy policies open source, posting the policy on GitHub so anyone can track changes.
A new 3D-printed drone called the ELF VR Nano is available for pre-order on Indiegogo and for download on Thingiverse. That’s right: you can either buy the product and receive pre-printed parts or you can simply print it yourself. It’s one of the purest open source hardware plays I’ve seen in a long while and it just goes to show how cool it is to be able to print your own plastic parts at home.
A lot has changed since the first Arduino board arrived a decade ago. Today, the Arduino family has grown to include more than two dozen low-cost, open hardware boards and an active community of more than 250,000 tinkerers.
The Open Source Virtual Reality (OSVR) platform has partnered with more than 20 research institutions and universities for its OSVR Academia program. As part of the initiative, OSVR Academia provides hardware development kits and support to universities, so they are able to develop VR-based software.
Investigators didn't find a suicide note or claim of responsibility at the home of Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, but they did find a torn-up sick note from the day of the plane crash, German authorities said Friday.
The object will now be tested to see if it will illuminate why Lubitz locked the captain out of the cockpit and engaged and reset the autopilot to take the doomed plane from 38,000 feet to just 100ft.
Najla Bulous wants to change the face of Silicon Valley.
The daughter of immigrants from Mexico and Egypt, Bulous is a Harvey Mudd College-trained software engineer. After graduation in May, she's starting a new job at a Silicon Valley technology giant.
Bulous knows she isn't the stereotypical Silicon Valley geek. She didn't study computer science until college and never intended to major in it. But after just one introductory course, Bulous was hooked on the challenge of mastering problems with lines of code.
Now this 21-year-old is not just planning a career in technology. She wants a hand in re-engineering the culture of Silicon Valley to be more inclusive of women and people from underrepresented groups.
Social engineering and weaponised USB sticks help the "world's most famous hacker" to take control of target PCs
The popular GitHub website suffered a minor service outage on March 26 due to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. At the moment, the website appears to work properly on our end, but some users still report intermittent connectivity with Git operations.
Since the Arab Spring, many Middle Eastern countries have fallen into political chaos like dominoes. This week’s explosion of conflict in Yemen is just the most recent example. Though many of these conflicts are based on local grievances, they are being exacerbated by the involvement of the region’s larger states, and by the United States.
This attitude is documented and questioned in a piece by John Hanrahan, a former Washington Post reporter who later headed the Fund for Investigative Journalism, that appeared on the pro-whistleblower Expose Facts site (3/24/15) and was reposted as “Journalists Who Hate Whistleblowers” by Consortium News (3/25/15).
A group of technology companies, non-profits and privacy and human rights organizations have sent a letter to President Barack Obama, the director of national intelligence and a wide range of Congressional leaders, calling for an end to the bulk collection of phone metadata under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act.
The demise of RadioShack left techies with one less place to congregate and buy obscure batteries and soldering equipment. And if that wasn't bad enough, now the bankrupt company is trying to sell off the devotees' data.
The story of your life in metadata is an open book. It paints a picture of where you went, who you spoke with, how long you were there for. What were you doing talking on the phone to the sexually transmitted infections clinic? What were you doing on the street corner where the man was murdered last night?
Little-noticed change to judicial rules gives the FBI greater powers to conduct remote searches, and the 'zombie bill' CISA is on the fast track to a Senate vote
ââ¬â¹Ever since Edward Snowden leaked thousands of top secret documents to journalists laying bare its most guarded secrets, the NSA, a government agency that was once known as the No Such ââ¬â¹Agency for its love for secrecy, has been thrown in the media limelight.
Speaking before the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee on Wednesday, FBI Director James Comey urged Congress to pass legislation requiring tech companies to install backdoors in their encryption programs. These backdoors would allow government agencies to easily intercept the electronic communications of American citizens, the District Sentinel reports.
The goal of the Norwegian penal system is to get inmates out of it.
What punishment should Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl receive for allegedly deserting his post in Afghanistan? The answer comes by asking another question: What punishment has been handed out to American generals and politicians whose incompetence caused far more bloodshed and grief than anything Bergdahl did?
A key thing about justice is that it should be fair — people should be punished no matter their rank or title. The problem with the bloodlust for more action against Bergdahl — beyond his five years of horrific suffering as a Taliban prisoner — is that inept generals, rather than being court-martialed or demoted or reprimanded, have been rewarded and celebrated despite their dereliction in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Starting weeks before Islamic militants attacked the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, longtime Clinton family confidante Sidney Blumenthal supplied intelligence to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gathered by a secret network that included a former CIA clandestine service officer, according to hacked emails from Blumenthal's account.
When Hillary Clinton learned that a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives had subpoenaed her emails as secretary of state and she promptly destroyed half of them – about 33,000 – how did she know she could get away with it? Destruction of evidence, particularly government records, constitutes the crime of obstruction of justice.
As a candidate for president, Barack Obama promised that his would be the most “transparent” administration in American history. It hasn’t worked out that way. Instead, it may be the most secretive, threatening the very fabric of representative democracy, which depends upon the American people and their elected representatives in Congress knowing exactly what government is doingin our name and with our taxpayer dollars.
State Department spokesdrone Jen Psaki is now just straight out making things up to explain away the questions surrounding Clinton and her email, and the State Department’s complicity.
Her “misstatements” can now be debunked with a click of a mouse, which we will do in a moment.
The devil is in the details on these things, as no one expects to find a notarized document that reads “Yes, I did it all to hide embarrassing stuff from the Freedom of Information Act because dammit it is my turn to be president, signed, Hillary”).
So let’s drill down.
According to an independent report commissioned by the Colombian government and FARC rebels, United States soldiers and military contractors are responsible for sexually abusing at least 54 children between 2003 and 2007 — but they were not prosecuted because of immunity clauses in the American diplomatic treaties with the government.
For what it’s worth, Muslim communities increasingly agree that the FBI — and the federal government generally — should not be in the business of CVE. But that’s largely because the government approaches it with the same view Comey does: by thinking immediately of his analysts thinking dark thoughts at Quantico. So if some agency that had credibility — if some agency had credibility — at diverting youth (of all faiths) who might otherwise get caught in an FBI sting, I could support it moving someplace else, but I’m skeptical DHS or any other existing federal agency is that agency right now.
While the Review doesn’t say explicitly in this section what it wants the FBI to be doing instead of CVE, elsewhere it emphasizes that it wants the FBI to do more racial profiling (AKA “domain awareness”) and run more informants. Thus, I think it fair to argue that the Ed Meese-led panel thinks the FBI should spy on Muslims, not reach out to them. Occupation-style federal intelligence gathering, not community based.
At just 150 pounds, it was hardly fair to pit Ricardo Palikiko Garcia against an opponent well over twice his size. But Garcia had to fight him -- or else he'd allegedly face torture.
Running away was not an option for the inmate locked inside a San Francisco jail.
Like the gladiators of old, Garcia and others were forced into pugilistic matches, local authorities said. Four sheriff's deputies then placed bets on their bouts.