“The President of the FFII wishes to organise protests soon.”Over in the UK, a big discussion erupted following what Halliburton had done [1, 2]. Patent lawyers absolutely love it. To quote one from Marks & Clerk: “the High Court has made it crystal clear that an invention relating to a process for designing drill bits is neither just a computer program nor a mere mathematical method. It provides something technical – a drill bit design process – outside both of these exclusions.”
The lawyers community has a lot more to say about it (paywall warning) and we are not sure what to do against this decision other than point out its danger to software developers in Europe. The President of the FFII wishes to organise protests soon. █
Financial security to Microsoft, environmental disaster for the rest
Summary: The lesser-realised problem with machines that are made to include TiVoization for Microsoft compliance; more “security” FUD from Microsoft
IT has been a while since we last wrote about the UEFI scandal [1, 2]. Nothing has actually been resolved, despite the comforting sense that the authorities have been informed and Microsoft issued a statement (which was no reassurance).
Several years ago we wrote some articles about the impact of Windows Vista on the environment, but it wasn’t until someone from Asia pointed this out that we realised TiVoization seriously impedes reuse:
Consumers Don’t Own Computers “Designed for Windows 8″, and They Go to Landfills Earlier (Side Effects of “Trusted Computing”)
Microsoft Windows 8 alpha is released and downloadable. But no, I am not recommending it. Nor am I denouncing it in favor of GNU/Linux (well, not in this article anyway). What you should be aware of and concerned about as a consumer is those machines labeled as “Designed for Windows 8″. Much more so if you care about the environmental and humanitarian problems caused by e-wastes, for these machines will end up much faster as e-wastes than the ordinary machines manufactured now.
Machines labeled as “Designed for Windows 8″ have to support UEFI. UEFI is said to have many nice features, which I am not knowledgeable about and will not discuss. But I can assure you that one of those features is a downright hoax, scam, and lie. The “secure boot” feature in UEFI is claimed to make your computer more secure by disallowing intrusions from untrusted sources. This and certain other features in UEFI are important elements of Trusted Computing, a mechanism advocated by Microsoft and other big IT companies. The claim is that booting a computer from an untrusted source (such as a tux usb key which has applications in tourism, education, environment preservation, LOHAS, and ethics) is a security threat and should be avoided.
There is just one tiny problem: it’s not you, the consumer, who gets to decide who is to trust. The propaganda claims that the consumers are too dumb (well, ok, actually phrased in a much more polite way) to make their own decisions about whom to trust. (“Microsoft or Chao-Kuei?”) Software booting from an untrusted source may contain rootkit, for example, which would gain absolute control of your computer. The real, unsaid intention, however, is to prevent consumers from using alternative players and readers on alternative operating systems to circumvent the human-right infringing and infamous Digital Rights Management. If the big IT companies let you decide whom to trust, then they cannot trust you as a DRM-abiding consumer. With the secure booting mechanism in UEFI, the IT companies finally can trust that you will not be able to ask your computer to do what is best in your interest, for example exercising your fair use right and other rights requested in the digital consumer bill of right.
This abusive behaviour from Microsoft (and Apple) should not be tolerated silently because it is yet another example of using “security” to pass new and self-serving rules that harm everyone’s freedom. In a similar vein, Microsoft is smearing the free Web browsers/competition, very much as usual (although the competition does not quite do that itself). This latest attack too uses “security” and to quote The Register:
Microsoft has unveiled a website aimed at raising awareness of browser security by comparing the ability of Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome to withstand attacks from malware, phishing, and other types of threats.
Your Browser Matters gives the latest versions of Firefox and Chrome a paltry 2 and 2.5 points respectively out of a possible score of 4. Visit the site using the IE 9, however, and the browser gets a perfect score. IE 7 gets only 1 point, and IE 6 receives no points at all. The site refused to rate Apple’s Safari browser in tests run by The Register.
Summary: Giving the Microsoft-taxed distribution some free help and “community” angle, the SUSE way; fallacies and wrongs
PEOPLE might not like to hear about it, but OpenSUSE is a case of helping the wrong project, unless the project gets forked and made completely independent from SUSE, which is led by Microsoft.
With the collapse of Novell we saw coming into existence several different strands. One is Xamarin, which .NET proponents are championing, but another is SUSE, which is not the same SUSE that Novell bought. The ‘new SUSE’ is sponsored by Microsoft to help Microsoft get its noose around enterprise users of GNU/Linux (those who use Red Hat or Debian for example). Many such users would not be foolish enough to wrap this noose around their neck, so this whole Microsoft patents toll booth (SUSE) gets painted a “community project” with help from employees such as Jos Poortvliet, who asks for free testing of the project (they even call it “OpenAQ” to openwash the thing). Jos writes:
Testing complex software is a crucial part of development. However, in- depth, frequent testing is difficult, time-consuming and boring.
Yes, and SUSE wants volunteers to help the company out by doing this “difficult, time-consuming and boring” task. All that sponsorship from Microsoft is not enough apparently. Here is an article about it which says: “The openSUSE Project has announced the 1.0 release of the unique cross-distribution-capable, fully automated testing framework openQA.”
We realise that there are OpenSUSE fans who even SUSE-ise their cars, write technical articles and edit the Weekly News, but why shave development costs off SUSE? Are $100,000,000 not enough to build a patent trap and joint extortion racket as well as pay some testers? They are not only stabbing GNU/Linux in the back with their patent deal; they also look for suckers in the community who will give away their time helping this. The way they’ll advertise it is something along the lines of “get Linux support from SUSE (Microsoft) with patent peace of mind (Microsoft patent tax) and a (fake) development community.” They can shove those ads alongside search results for Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, etc. That is their well-funded strategy anyway.
Attachmate never cared about Free/open source software. It never even practised it. So why give away any efforts to it? Over in YouTube, there are some new videos about Novell products and also some speeches. The Attachmate-organised BrainShare videos of the keynoteandbeyond help show the company’s apathy towards volunteers (other videos are still being uploaded [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]). Why help this company? The CEO said nothing about the community in his keynote. █
Hello friends, “Security through obscurity” may be a catchy phrase, but it’s not the only thing that’s catching among Windows users.The expression is intended to suggest that proprietary software is more secure by virtue of its closed nature. If hackers can’t see the code, then it’s harder for them to create exploits for it–or so the thinking goes.Unfortunately for Windows users, that’s just not true–as evidenced by the never-ending parade of patches coming out of Redmond. In fact, one of Linux’s many advantages over Windows is that it is more secure–much more. For small businesses and other organizations without a dedicated staff of security experts, that benefit can be particularly critical.
Automated E911 solutions provider RedSky Technologies rolled out a new version of its E911 Manager, that has been engineered using Java and Linux to deliver improved scalability, resiliency and capability.
The enterprise-class E911 Manager Version 6 software helps enterprise, government and education customers deploying virtual computing environments, SIP and Unified Communications networks capture, manage and deliver the detailed location information necessary to provide effective 9-1-1 emergency response.
LinuxCon Europe is being held later this month in Prague as you may already know. In celebration of this fact, the Linux Foundation has this week welcomed seven new European members under its non-profit organisational umbrella, all of whom are apparently keen to “collaborate on advancing Linux” across industries and throughout Europe and the rest of the world.
According to the organisation’s publicity function, “Europe has been the birthplace for many open source software projects, including Linux. The development community in Europe remains strong with many of the top individual Linux kernel contributors based in the region and you can read details here in The Linux Foundation’s Who Writes Linux report, 2010.”
Here at OStatic, we’ve watched steadily as The Linux Foundation has added significant new members over the years. The organization has, in only a few short years, become an important player in stewarding the Linux ecosystem toward an organized, united future. Now, with LinuxCon Europe coming up in Prague at the end of this month, The Linux Foundation has named seven European companies who are joining its ranks: Codethink, KeyPoint Technologies, Lanedo, Meinberg Funkuhren, Picochip, Puzzle ITC and RPA RusBITech. The announcement also contains an interesting bit of news about Linux implementation in Russia.
Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center (OSTC) team responsible for the open-source Linux graphics driver stack is drafting new plans for how they release their driver code. The release model and release criteria for the Intel Linux driver will be quite different from the status quo of putting out new releases on a timed quarterly basis.
The Linux Foundation announced today the first ever Automotive Linux Summit. Taking place in Japan on November 28, 2011, it will be an opportunity to address the growing need for carmakers and Linux developers to collaborate on the future of cars as devices. Nissan and Toyota will both be there, along with Intel, NEC, and a host of other mobile solutions developers.
Linux can have the most beautiful interface in the world, because it is simply what you make of it. You can change every little detail with relative ease because that’s what Linux is all about: Freedom and OpenSource.
I posted pictures of my desktop on the corkboard a few weeks back, encouraging others to show me theirs. I got a few compliments from people, as well as requests for how to get such nice looking themes in Linux.
Well, the folks who make “The Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle” have collected over a million dollars so far and served up almost a quarter million copies to consumers.
The developers behind the Superb Mini Server (SMS) server operating system proudly announced last evening, October 10th, the immediate availability for download of the Superb Mini Server 1.6.2 release.
A virtual protyping environment is available for the device, something which Balogh called a ‘shrink wrap’ developed with Synopys. “Software is the largest part of the design effort,” he said. “Software developers won’t need to know about virtual prototyping, they can just ‘open the box’ and boot Linux in less than a minute.”
So while the word Meltemi wasn’t exactly there, we do have three key phrase: “newly established team”, “Linux software and kernel architecture management”, and “Nokia Emerging Devices”. We do wonder though what the “Nokia Emerging Devices unit” is all about since we thought Nokia bet the farm on Windows Phone and will likely go with Windows 8 at some point in the future for tablets.
It should be noted that BlueStacks App Player is only in an alpha version at this point. It comes with a pre-installed set of Android apps and you can add many others, but not every Android app.
So how does BlueStacks pull this off? The apps run in a virtualized instance of Android. CNet has a very interesting story up about BlueStacks, including a video.
AT&T announced five new Android phones, led by the 4.3-inch, dual-core Motorola Atrix 2 and four-inch Samsung Captivate Glide QWERTY slider phone, both running Android 2.3 on dual-core processors. The other new AT&T Android phones include the 3.2-inch, QWERTY-enabled Samsung DoubleTime, the four-inch Pantech Pocket, and the ZTE-built AT&T Avail, which is available under the carrier’s GoPhone prepaid brand.
3LM, a unit of Motorola Mobility, is ready to release a set of enterprise-grade security and management tools to a number of Android phone manufacturers.
The tools allow corporate IT departments to integrate Android devices into their systems. It also makes it easier for individuals to take their personal Android phones and tablets and use them for work.
Cralina is organising an Android workshop called ‘Android QuickStart’ for professionals in Pune (India) on 15-16 October. Previous editions of this workshop have received good ratings from professionals in companies like Symantec, TCS, Siemens to name a few, says the organisers.
While the world continues to wait for the Samsung Nexus Prime handset, details of another flagship handset have reportedly been leaked into the public domain.
Phandroid has published a screenshot (pictured) from an anonymous tipster who claims to have unearthed the specs of the Samsung Galaxy S3 phone, the sequel to the blockbusting S2 device.
The CyanogenMod project developers have announced the release of version 7.1 of their modified Android firmware. According to Android programmer and project founder Steve Kondik (AKA “Cyanogen”), the major update follows a long delay due to a number of issues, including problems with the automated build system. However, Kondik says that he hopes to “speed up our release process in the future”.
Google and the Chinese government seemed to be at odds once again today, as online services related to the search giant’s Android.com market in that country were apparently inaccessible. But what appeared to be an intentional government blocking was merely a glitch related to a software update, Google told CNET.
Fortunately, the Motorola Admiral — the device that we presume will become the fearless leader of the Direct Connect fleet — is one nautical mile closer to the sea of finished products,
It used to be easy for Web server administrators. If you ran a Windows shop, you used Internet Information Server (IIS), if you didn’t, you used Apache. Now, though, you have more Web server choices and one of the leading alternatives, the open-source NGINX Web server, is gaining fast.
According to Netcraft, the leading Web server analytics company, NGINX, with its over 40-million Web domains and 8.5% of all Web domains, is catching up with the big two. Indeed Netcraft analysts believe that “If current trends continue NGINX will soon overtake Microsoft to have the second largest number of active sites.”
Hypervisors based on open source code will get new consideration from users in the next 12 months, according to the results of SearchServerVirtualization.com’s 2011 Virtualization Decisions survey.
I’ve written about open source hardware (OSHW) a few times before. Like this and this. I’ve understood open source software for quite some time and over the last few years have been starting to get what open source hardware is all about. It is different than open source software.
With software, your tangible product is essentially intangible. Your acquisition and distribution of an open source project can be virtually free. Not so with hardware. Someone has to physically build something, which costs time and money in parts and labor. Really though, all that means is the proliferation of an open source hardware product just takes a little longer. If you look at it as the design being open source more than the actual product, then it gets to be more and more similar to software.
While open source has seen tremendous uptake in companies large and small, there are still plenty of problems you can encounter when building on top of an open stack of software. Here are the top five.
Open source software is computer software that has been produced and is licensed in such a way that the software is allowed to be downloaded and accessed by anybody, free of charge.
Open source in many cases is built by people that care about software as something they love to produce and something that they want to build. The developers care about how things are done, and the quality of the end result rather than the money that they can get from selling the software itself.
Late last week Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) released the Chrome Remote Desktop into beta, remote access software that works through the Chrome browser. Supported end-point devices are any computer that has a Chrome browser installed. This means that the top platforms such as Windows, Linux, Mac–as well as Google’s Chromebooks–are inherently capable of supporting Chrome Remote Desktop.
The Mozilla boss said in the company’s latest State of Mozilla report that the growth of proprietary mobile platforms was posing a new threat to the open-source software environment.
ownCloud team has announced the release of version 2 of ownCloud, the free and open source cloud computing. The latest version comes after a huge gap of one and a half year. But, this release is promising.
ownCloud 2 has just been released. ownCloud is a web-based storage application similar to Google Docs, Dropbox or Ubuntu One with a big difference—your data is under your control. With version 2, the ownCloud team has improved the basic service and added valuable features:
* Access your files on the web or integrate ownCloud with desktop file managers.
* Share files securely.
* Access music and personal information directly or connect through applications.
* Synchronize with other web applications that use the remoteStorage protocol.
* More user support, demos and community interaction.
Currently, the company is in alpha and testing with a limited number of clients. Linux has been deploying FDS cluster computer solutions for clients such as ARUP since a decade. As per the new strategy, Linux will provide an FDS SaaS solution that would provide efficiencies and cost savings for future clients, from industries such as Engineering, Educational institutions, Gas, Chemical and Government agencies like FEMA.
The OpenStack collaborative industry effort to build an open source cloud platform is to be applauded for the remarkable gains it has achieved in a short amount of time. Founded by Rackspace Hosting and NASA in July last year, the organization is now backed by 120 companies, including the likes of HP, Dell, Intel and Cisco, and has already issued four major code releases, the last of which, Diablo, just came out last month and has already been downloaded 50,000 times.
But as kernel developer Dave Jones notes, “The number of bug reports we get from people with VirtualBox loaded are truly astonishing. It’s GPL, but sadly that doesn’t mean it’s good. Nearly all of these bugs look like random corruption. (corrupt linked lists, corrupt page tables, and just plain ‘weird’ crashes).”
Hence Jones has added a patch to list the driver as tainted. Doing so, means that “automatic bug filing tools can opt out of automatically filing kernel bugs, and inform the user to file bugs somewhere more appropriate.”
There are many third-party drivers which are present on GNU/Linux systems. They are maintained by outsiders and if the code meets the high standards of the kernel then they often get merged with the mainline kernel. Oracle is the owner of VirtualBox and given that it is a widely used platform should, by rights, be maintaining the driver.
Almost lost within the fanfare of last week’s Oracle OpenWorld were several sneak peeks at where the company is heading with its Solaris and Oracle Linux operating systems (OS) in the near future. For the upcoming release of Solaris 11, the company announced features to make it more user friendly, more virtualized and more scalable. On the Linux side, Oracle revealed it is releasing a second version of its Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel for Linux. The big news here is that it can be patched without any downtime.
In 2009, mathematician Timothy Gowers posed this question to the blogosphere: “Is massively collaborative mathematics possible?” He described an unsolved math problem and asked for help figuring it out. Over the next few hours and days, commenters began to pick at the problem together. They brought up incomplete ideas, which were expanded and incorporated into other peoples’ ideas, until Gowers posted 37 days later that the problem had (probably) been solved.
Spree Commerce, the open source, Ruby on Rails-based eCommerce solution, announced today that it has raised $1.5 million in seed funding led by True Ventures. Also participating in the round were Aol Ventures, and angels like Sean Glass. Spree has also brought on some notable advisors, including Dries Buytaert (Creator of Drupal), Luke Kanies (Creator of Puppet), Tom Preston-Werner (Co-founder of Github), and James Lindenbaum (Co-founder of Heroku).
Popular open source ecommerce solution, Spree, announced yesterday it has officially become incorporated as Spree Commerce Inc. This announcement comes after Spree’s raising of $1.5 million in a seed-funding round led by True Ventures. Other participants in the round include AOL Ventures and Sean Glass.
Bristol City Council has announced that there are “no security or accreditation issues that should hold us back from pushing ahead with our open source agenda”. The announcement was said by the council to be the result of working with the Cabinet Office after concerns were raised, by the council itself, about security accreditation for open source software. The council leader Barbara Janke said: “We have now been given the green light by the Cabinet Office to push ahead with this open source agenda and they have promised to work closely with us on this issue over the next few months”.
The government’s cyber security arm has given Bristol council the go-ahead to use open source software
Bristol City Council has been given the green light to push ahead with its open source strategy following a meeting with CESG, the cyber security arm of the UK intelligence services.
The council first announced its intention to adopt open source alongside existing Microsoft software in September 2010. As part of an ongoing review of its desktop systems, the council was looking to replace its current email system with an open source alternative.
Bristol City Council is set to begin work on a major open source project, following a meeting called by the Cabinet Office.
The meeting, held on Thursday last week, was attended by LinuxIT, an open source specialist located in the city. GCHQ, the government’s communications tracking headquarters, and vendors BeLIB and Nameless, also attended.
On the Internet, information is everywhere. From blogs to Tweets and everywhere in between, the data stream seems endless. For your average Web surfer, the majority of this information is irrelevant and may be disregarded. But what if casual information, like the kind found on blogs and Webcams, could be made useful?
The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), a US government research agency, believes that this is possible, and that information from such sources may be able to predict the future.
The project that I discovered was developed by UK Aerospace Engineer, Arthur Amarra, who normally works on the structural analysis of composite aircraft wings, but who professes to have been an avid linux geek for as long as he can remember.
Amarra initially purchased the robotic arm as a gadget to play with and admits that the machine is not particularly useful in itself since it is only capable of lifting objects that weigh in at about 100 grams.
In a keynote presentation at the 2011 GoTo Conference in Denmark, Google revealed details of Dart, a new structured Web programming language designed to make programming for the Web easier. Although Google had announced the new programming language in September, the company withheld details until today.
Microsoft has made it clear that it considers Windows 8′s Metro interface and applications to be the future. When I look at Metro, however, I see gaudy colors, boxy designs, applications that can either run as a small tile or as full screen with no way to resize or move windows. Where have I seen this before? Wait, I know! Windows 1.0.
Twenty-five years of user-interface development and this is what we get? Scary.
ISPs are discussing what they call “Active Choice”: that is, to insist that adults are given a yes / no choice before installing or using parental controls when they set up a new broadband connection.
Now, there is a world of difference between offering sensible child safety, and trying to persuade adults to live with layers of censorship.
Thus the devil is therefore in the detail, and how “options” are presented. Will adults be asked if they need parental controls, or if they want to “adult content” switched on?
The Federal Trade Commission has decided that certain default software settings can violate the law against “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.” The agency recently went after the peer-to-peer filesharing program FrostWire for sharing too many user files by default, something that could easily lead to identity theft, copyright infringement, and the loss of “intimate photographs.” That’s right: the federal government now goes to court to protect the privacy of your nude smartphone pics.
Think about this, and think hard. I’m going to list a bunch of media:
* Video Laserdiscs
* Betamax Videotapes
* VHS Videotapes
* Long Play Vinyl Records
* Reel to Reel Audio Tapes
* Eight Track Audio Tapes
* Cassette Audio Tapes
* Audio Compact Discs
* Paper Books
All of these media have a common purpose, to deliver a form of entertainment. They are a delivery system. Of course the delivery system has to be delivered, and it has to be displayed on shelf space.
The current switch to electronic delivery of electronic files removes the need for a delivery system and for shelf space. This is why Borders went bankrupt in the United States, and it is why Chapters-Indigo in Canada has a smaller and smaller amount of shelf space devoted to books.
Like many computer geeks, I have more unused computers than I know what to do with. Old hardware is often considered to be obsolete when often the MSWindows went pear shaped.. I know that Linux can breath new life into almost any hardware, so I have a hard time letting older machines go. Unfortunately, they often don’t have the needed components to be fully usable — what good is a computer these days without networking?
TinyCore Linux is an ultra-small Linux desktop; the 4.0 release is just under 12MB. TinyCore is stripped down, so don’t expect the bells and whistles of a more active desktop, such as KDE or OSX or Windows has. Instead, its claim is that it runs in RAM and it runs fast, which is great for older hardware.
Over the course of the day, I have to hop between various desktops. That experience set me wondering what a desktop would look like if it were assembled from all the favourite features that I encounter daily. Of course, it’s pure fantasy. But just in case, somewhere on the planet, a team of developers is trying to create the ideal desktop, here’s a roadmap that they might like to follow.
In this episode: Canonical launches an app developer portal and there’s a new mobile Linux initiative. We create a whole new section of the podcast, discover lots of things and discuss whether secure booting will hinder Linux adoption.
Kernel version 3.1 will probably be released in the next few days. After a break of more than four weeks, Greg Kroah-Hartman has released new stable kernels. The X.org developers are thinking about merging the most important graphics drivers into the X Server.
Late last Tuesday night, Linus Torvalds issued the ninth release candidate of Linux 3.1. Since then, some further corrections have been integrated into the main development branch; however, in the past few days there have not been any new hints on when Linux 3.1 might get released – but it is likely to be released some time this week, or next week at the latest, as indicated by Torvalds when releasing RC7.
As is the case every month, Jon Masters looks at the latest developments in the Linux kernel community, including work on new architecture and ABI support, not to mention Kernel.org disruptions…
After years of having an audio-only computer, I finally succumbed and bought a USB webcam, so that I can do video calling through Skype.
First, because I’m frugal, I looked on-line to see what low-cost cameras were available at my local retail chains. The Logitech C210 seemed to be the least expensive and most available.
Photoshop is without doubt the most well known piece of photo editing software. It is used by serious hobby photographers and professionals alike. However, although you can run Photoshop on a Linux machine by using a virtual box containing a Windows operating system, there are some good alternatives available on Linux. Unlike with the Windows or Apple operating systems, most Linux software is open source and so free to install and use. There is also a good reason why you should be wary of paying for some types of software on Linux. Here is our round-up of the best on offer.
Apart from being a great 3D modeller and one of the best animation programs, Blender is also a great compositing program (since the release of Blender 2.37a and later, till the release of 2.58). This article covers compositing in Blender.
Compositing is the art of combining several images into a final image. In a 3D program, the artist often wants to combine a 3D element into several 2D elements, including the background and other scene elements. This is specially so when it comes to 3D movie making. You might have created a character, and naturally would like the character to move in a suitable location and a conducive atmosphere. It is not always possible to create detailed 3D environments if one’s system lacks the resources (RAM) to handle such heavy scenes. In such cases, it is always advisable to use 2D backgrounds to give the illusion of a setting for your 3D character. With a great compositor like Blender, this becomes easy.
New Wine development releases normally come every other Friday, but last week there wasn’t any Wine 1.3.30 release. Fear not, however, as the Wine developers have went forward with the Wine 1.3.30 release this Monday. Wine 1.3.30 does offer up a few interesting features.
What a busy week it has been with testing, finding bugs, confirming and submitting. Generally I test Gnome and KDE isos, but this time went off the wall as my frustrations grow with both Gnome and KDE and decided to test XFCE 64 bit edition. Last time I looked at XFCE was like version 4.0, so to my surprise 4.8 will knock your socks off compared to that.
So I have decided that with my Sabayon Forensic spins, I will go with xfce instead. I’ve been up to my ears in the skel files learning the xfce ways, adding and removing packages and been testing local isos via the wonderful tool molecule. My computer is feeling the pains tho, molecule will really give those cpus a work out. So drop the KDE and Gnome editions and just go with XFCE to make this simpler and more universal for working with various computers. Gnome-shell is kinda of a nightmare right now on various hardware. KDE has it’s issues too, but works better than gnome-shell.
I remember when the 4.0 release of KDE hit the public, which I believe should never have happened that early. I didn’t like what the KDE 4 series brought to the table, and in some ways I still don’t, but I gave the project the time it needed to mature, which the KDE team wasn’t giving it by releasing too early in my opinion. Anyway, I found the 4.6, and 4.7 releases something I could work with, and give it a fair try. To be perfectly honest too, there was aspects of the KDE 3 series that I wasn’t fond of, and had found some problems with it many times, even with the last release of it. Nothing’s perfect, and it’s foolish to think all things must fit that way. But to the point, I waited it out, let it mature, and have been pleasantly surprised. Would I switch back to KDE after all this time since I left the 3 series? I don’t know. I won’t say that it wouldn’t happen, but I can’t say it will. I grew to like the GNOME 2 series, even with its lack of configuration options, and simplistic UIs, compared to KDE. But I could easily switch if need be, or more importantly, if GNOME 3 matures quickly, or even Unity, I could switch to those. They’re tomorrow.
Here is the About screen for Plasma Active One, as seen in our instance running on top of MeeGo, recently abandoned by Intel and Nokia Linux-based operating system for mobile devices.
Today ended the poll on forums.kde.org about the future of X Screen saver support in the KDE Plasma Workspaces. I want to thank everybody who participated in the poll. The poll and the thread clearly help us to see what the users need and want and what we need to provide.
KDE took part in its 7th year as a mentoring organization for the Google Summer of Code. Thanks to Google’s generous funding and KDE’s mentors we were able to work with 51 students over the summer, once again making KDE the largest organization taking part in Google Summer of Code. Choosing the right students was hard but the selection turned out well. The students coded in nearly all areas of KDE from Calligra and Rekonq to Amarok and KStars. Their projects turned out very well, and we’ve once again been impressed with the talent and dedication of the students. All 51 students passed their mid-term evaluation and 47 successfully passed their final evaluation. Valorie Zimmerman, KDE Administrator for Google Summer of Code, says: “KDE got forty-seven completed projects, which is tremendous. Our focus though is not on the code itself, but on the students and their involvement with KDE. However, their projects enrich KDE immensely, and you’ll be seeing their code integrated into our codebase over the next few months. “
We think that looking at different devices as isolated worlds, needing completely different “Apps” and UX stacks for each kind of device it’s pretty limiting, and it’s not the way who uses it (aka “humans”;) thinks.
What we believe in, is that computing devices (doesn’t matter if it’s the laptop, a tablet, or something running in a washing machine) should exist in function of helping the people accomplishing the task they want to do, no more, no less, devices shouldn’t be something complex, hard and therefore “harming”, but should just be extensions of the user harm, of the user mind, just tools, and in every situation, the best tool for the best job.
Plasma Active brings a flexible, elegant, activity-driven user experience to a spectrum of devices. This article is part of a series of articles about different perspectives on Plasma Active. In the first installment, we look at a number of applications that come with Plasma Active. Kontact Touch, Calligra Active, Bangarang and a collection of Active Apps provide a stable and powerful set of functionality, making Plasma Active suitable for personal and professional use cases.
Mobile devices have been influencing desktop software design for several years now. Mostly, I’ve not been impressed. Either the results are awkward, like GNOME 3, or over-simplified, like Ubuntu’s Unity.
I had just about reached the conclusion that the mobile influence represented a step backwards in desktop design — then I tried KDE’s Plasma Active, a desktop designed for touch screen tablets, and all my assumptions were trampled underfoot.
As you may know, years ago some fresh young face on the Gnome team decided, for no sensible reason, to re-implement the xscreensaver daemon from scratch and call it “gnome-screensaver”. This re-write was still able to run the 95% of xscreensaver that comprised the actual, you know, screen savers. It ran them badly, but it ran them.
Elementary Viper Luna Gnome Shell theme is inspired by DanRabit’s work on Elementary Luna desktop. The theme is created by justviper who in past gave us couple of nice Gnome Shell themes.
Gnome 3.2 was released a few days back. With an improved shell and various other integrations, this shell will please many users. We had been looking closely at the developments from the Gnome stable with our posts on Installing Gnome shell, Gnome Shell extensions and Gnome Shell themes. Check out this article to find out more about the new features in Gnome 3.2
All in all, it’s a mixed bag of a release. The improvements that have come with it are definitely welcome. The Gtk+ theme updates have certainly improved my day to day experience with the desktop, and I’m hopeful that the new applications and online accounts integration will turn in to really excellent features in the near future.
Unfortunately, many of the bugs and annoyances from the 3.0 release persist – largely because the Gnome team doesn’t consider these bugs but features – and some new ones have been introduced.
Weighing things up, I’d say that my overall experience with the desktop is little improved from 3.0. That said, it’s not an altogether bad thing since I did quite like the 3.0 release and still find this series of Gnome releases to be the best free desktop for my needs.
I’ve been reading things people report in Bugzilla for years. How I feel about this now is that there are really several, entirely different things that we presently lump under “bug”. For example, I think it’s pretty clear that someone’s random ideas for a change to the design are totally different from say identified code regressions, which are in turn different from proposed patches.
Most people who have dabbled in Linux for a while “know” that Slackware is difficult to install, configure, make work and keep up to date. It is an OS only for geeks. Not so. These days the developments in the wider universe have trickled down to Slackware as well, and having something like KDE 4 as default desktop already means plenty of things taken care of, with all the utilities and options this desktop environment is providing.
Since the begining of the Mageia adventure, 243 people gave money to Mageia.Org, helping us to buy hardware, domain names, goodies, …
It makes an average donation of € 62 ($ 83) per donor! Thank you to all the money donors or ressources partners (ielo, gandi, online) but also to all other people offering in the way they want: time (packagers, triage, qa, artwork, marketing, bug report, dev…) or just by spreading Mageia arround them by buying TS or talking on forums, events…
Sabayon Linux, the easy-to-use distribution derived from Gentoo, reached version 7.0 yesterday. Among other improvements, Sabayon 7 features an “ultra-optimized” Linux 3.0 kernel as well as the project’s experimental Fusion Kernel.
Some of the key software packages to Sabayon Linux 7 include the Linux 3.0 kernel, GNOME 3.2, KDE SC 4.7, Xfce 4.8, and LibreOffice 3.4. In total there’s been more than 4,000 package updatss since Sabayon 6.0, which arrived back in June. There’s also XBMC 10.0 support, an updated Entropy Framework, support for new languages and fonts, and semi-automated package updates.
Shares of Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) have bullishly opened above the pivot of $42.75 today and have reached the first resistance level of $43.64. Analysts will be watching for a cross of the next upside pivot targets of $44.40 and $46.05.
Red Hat, Inc. (RHT) is a provider of open source, Linux-based software for corporate IT customers. The company has been a rumored acquisition target for years, with potential suitors including Oracle (ORCL), IBM (IBM), and most recently Hewlett-Packard (HPQ).
Cloud computing has been compared to an electricity grid, mainly because end users can access power and services without having to set up and run the infrastructure.
With the cloud, software and applications are stored on remote servers and delivered over the Internet rather than individual computers.
Last week Mark Shuttleworth announced Ubuntu 12.04 LTS would be codenamed Precise Pangolin while this evening Red Hat’s Jared Smith has announced the codename for Fedora 17, which will be released around the same time next spring.
I made the upgrade of my operating system to Fedora 16 (a.k.a. Verne). The first thing I did was update my applications. Then I did the procedures mentioned in this link.
The download size was about 1.2 GB so I waited for it to end. I did not have to do any other commands in particular. When it was over, I restarted my computer to see if it had worked properly.
The first thing I noticed was the advance of a grub2 grub. After changing to black at the bottom of plymouth. Then I realized I had changed from the login screen. Now I like Fedora more.
It’s now been almost six months since the release of Ubuntu 11.04, or “Natty Narwhal,” and that means it’s about time for the next version of Canonical’s popular Linux distribution to make its official debut.
For our Ubuntu fans as well as those who just want to learn about the upcoming release, I found this on youtube. I was hoping for HTML5 playback option, but this seems to be Flash only. The review was done from a recent release candidate that I believe will be the final release due out this Thursday. I still prefer KDE myself.
One of the new features in GNOME 3.2 is quick file preview. Pressing space while a file is selected in the file browser will open a window with a preview of the file contents. Previews of images, videos, music, PDF documents, and more are supported.
Millions of home users give their computers a new lease of life with Ubuntu each year. The upcoming version, Ubuntu 11.10, has substantial benefits for those looking for the latest personal cloud and web technologies, as well as those running on older hardware.
Ubuntu Linux will be the primary operating system powering HP’s upcoming cloud service, Ubuntu maker Canonical said last week. HP recently opened a private beta program for an infrastructure-as-a-service cloud that will offer both compute and storage capacity, using the OpenStack open source cloud platform.
Canonical is claiming to have released the first general-purpose server platform to run on ARM architecture chips with Ubuntu 11.10, which also introduces a service orchestration framework and updated support for the OpenStack cloud platform.
Linux vendor Canonical is to make the latest iteration of its operating systems for client and server, Ubuntu 11.10, available for download this Thursday.
Canonical’s popular Ubuntu Linux distribution will get its second update of 2011 this month for both desktop and server editions. However it is the server edition that Canonical has made the biggest changes to by supporting ARM processors.
With a lack of any license fees and a focus on cloud features from its primary sponsor, Canonical, Ubuntu has flourished in the cloud, becoming a popular guest operating system on Amazon EC2 and other infrastructure-as-a-service options.
Currently the most up-to-date Ubuntu distro is Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, this arrived back in April and initially we weren’t seeing a lot of love for the new Unity user interface which this OS version introduced, but now people have had a chance to use it you can understand why it was favored to the dated Gnome layout.
Canonical has announced that Hewlett Packard has chosen Linux-based Ubuntu platform as the lead and guest OS in its upcoming cloud computing offering.
In a blog post, Canonical, which handles the software distribution, revealed that CEO Jane Silber made the announcement during the OpenStack cloud computing conference in Boston.
The Supreme Court of the world’s largest democracy has ordered all courts across India to switch to GNU/Linux based operating system Ubuntu. Prior to this move the courts across India were using the Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which is mainly targeted at servers. More than 17,000 courts around India will now be switching over to Ubuntu from RHEL.
In this article I am introducing some of the most amazing derivatives of Ubuntu. Ubuntu based distros are basically Ubuntu with specialized applications in a particular domain. For instance, it could be in education like Edubuntu or multimedia or Mythubunu. Read on to find out more.
The Linux Foundation has announced a new event and a new emphasis for Linux: the inaugural Automotive Linux Summit.
The Auto Summit, which will happen on November 28 in Yokohama, Japan, is geared to “address the growing need for carmakers and Linux developers to collaborate on the future of computing on wheels.”
And, I would suspect, a chance to really try to showcase the in-vehicle capabilities of MeeGo and Tizen, two mobile platform projects stewarded by the Linux Foundation.
You don’t hear much about these platforms’ in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) features, except in press releases about the platforms themselves, where we all die a little bit inside when we read the word “infotainment.” But it’s as good a term as any to describe the class of devices that have come as an option in cars in recent years, like seat warmers. OnStar, GM’s big revenue generator, and Ford Sync, an equivalent IVI platform powered by Microsoft’s Embedded Automotive operating system, are two examples of this kind of system.
Samsung might have postponed this week’s Nexus Prime announcement, but Verizon Wireless announced it will start selling another Samsung smartphone with 4G LTE support on Oct. 13 for $150. The enterprise-focused Samsung Stratosphere runs Android 2.3 on a 1GHz Samsung Hummingbird, and is equipped with a four-inch Super AMOLED display, a QWERTY sliding keyboard, and dual cameras, says the carrier.
Is the Motorola Xoom – a Google Android-powered tablet – ready for business users and channel partners? David Courbanou, my peer here at The VAR Guy, wasn’t all that impressed with early Xoom 2 chatter. But I’ve spent recent days using the original Xoom. iPad lovers cover your ears: I believe the Xoom tablet has something to offer the business world.
First things first. While attending the recent Box.net customer conference, I received a Xoom tablet for free. Generally speaking, The VAR Guy’s editorial team doesn’t accept free technology unless it’s part of a broad conference giveaway — as in this case. Also, we always disclose how we received the hardware and software we test.
Motorola Solutions announced a ruggedized, seven-inch Android 2.3.4 tablet for enterprise users. The ET1 tablet offers a dual-core, 1GHz Texas Instruments OMAP4 processor, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of flash memory, a 1024 x 600 pixel display with extra thick Gorilla Glass, and an eight-megapixel camera with barcode reading capabilities, the company says.
And even though I can only cover a fraction of the open source/closed source applications available today, I ‘ll touch on the most common software titles.
I attended the Floss Unconference fest yesterday at Manchester Conference centre (a location I had planned to use for BarCampManchester2 due to their ability to do overnights and excellent warren like structure).
The event was reasonable but not well attended, which was a shame. It needed about another 30 people to feel more busy and active. Not quite sure why people never came out for it…? But to be honest I only spotted it by hearing a tweet from Teknoteacher. Anyhow, at the end of the day there were lightening talks and I jumped at the chance to talk about software which really needs to be developed on Linux. I’ve adopted this post to apply to most Floss type things…
From time to time, I look back fondly on the years when I ran Windows. It doesn’t last; my wife’s computer has XP on it, and XP needs some periodic adjusting, and then it all seems like just a bad dream.
[...]
But the other day I opened up LibreOffice Writer in my Mageia installation on the laptop. It opened up in about ⅔ of a window, as it always does (it must be a KDE thing, because it does the same thing in my Kubuntu) (or it was transient; weeks later, sometimes it opens up in a full window), and I maximized it, and I realized that I’m really never going to love LibreOffice Writer.
Upon further review . . . [Ed: I do not agree with Stallman's critics, just informing about opinions]
– A glaring omission: While re-reading my blog post, it mistakenly reads like it’s just Richard Stallman’s statement on Steve Jobs that is the sole reason for my leaving the FSF. It’s not. The statement about Jobs is just a tipping point in a list of several incidents where I, and others, have run into resistance, censorship and pariah-hood by merely questioning the FSF gospel over the years that I have been a FSF member. As an aside, an e-mail exchange with FSF executive director John Sullivan — some long and detailed, some not — allowed me to air my grievances, and I am grateful to him for lending a proverbial ear to hear these concerns. Sullivan’s e-mail exchanges, as well as discussions with others, show there is room for change in the organization.
I met Stallman for lunch many years ago at a San Francisco Burmese restaurant. Stallman can be an infuriating man, but he can also be a very charming lunch companion.
Waldemar Pawlak, Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy, saluted Free and Open Source Software (FLOSS) as the “greatest success of the 20th century” in a conference talk on 27 September 2011. He added that FLOSS is based on very sound principles and can provide solutions to some of the problems of civilization which we will face in the 21st century.
[Ray] wrote in to share a great project he just recently wrapped up, an open-source sprinkler valve controller. Built in collaboration with Wired Magazine’s editor-in-chief [Chris Anderson], the sprinkler controller is designed to replace the limited commercial sprinkler timers that typically come with a new home sprinkler setup.
OpenIndiana comprises the Illumos core, taken from OpenSolaris, with a set of GNU user-land tools. OpenIndiana can even be called an analogue to GNU/Linux, but instead of a monolithic Linux kernel, it uses the OS/Net-based derivative kernel known as Illumos, which is 100 per cent ABI compatible with the Solaris kernel. In short, we can assume that OpenIndiana is actually the OpenSolaris operating system.
Once upon a time, there was Sun Microsystems. Not just an IT industry flagship, but also a legendary firm. Famous for SPARC processors, the Java language, and for the decades it spent developing its own UNIX OS, Solaris. Solaris’ successor is the OpenIndiana project.
I like to shoot and edit video (on Debian GNU/Linux, of course on KDE, using the wonderful KDEnlive Video Editor), but in video editing, there is always a bottleneck. My wife and I recently purchased a Nikon D5100 camera which shoots fantastic video in hi-def! I was worried that my video editing computer hardware wouldn’t be able to keep up with these large HD video files.*
The lobbyists for U.S. health insurers surely have to be feeling a little uneasy knowing that thousands of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators who have been marching and protesting in Washington as well as New York and other cities might target them in the days ahead. After all, the headquarters of the insurers’ biggest lobbying and PR group, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), at 601 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., is just blocks away from Freedom Plaza, where the demonstrators have set up camp — and problems with health insurers appear to be near the top of the list of protesters’ concerns.
Health Care for America Now, an umbrella advocacy group that played a key role in the health care reform debate, last week analyzed the 546 comments that had been posted by then on the “We are the 99 percent” Tumblr site. It found that 262 of the comments mention such problems as getting denials for doctor-ordered care from their insurance companies and having to forego treatment because of hefty out-of-pocket costs.
At 1:30 this morning police in full riot gear attacked the participants of Occupy Boston, which had peacefully gathered on the Rose Kennedy Greenway. Without any regard for the protester’s constitutional rights, the Boston Police Department made no distinction between protesters, medics, or legal observers, arresting legal observer Ursula Levelt, who serves on the steering committee for the National Lawyers Guild, as well as four medics attempting to care for the injured.
In response to Blankfein’s invite, Columbia students had organized “School the Squid” week—referring to writer Matt Taibbi calling Goldman Sachs “a great vampire squid”—including a series of discussions and film screenings focused on corporate greed and abuse of power.
British Conservative Party defense secretary Liam Fox is in the midst of scandal that has grown deeper as ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are revealed. Pressure has been growing on Fox in recent weeks after having been caught in a lie about unethical dealings with his friend and former flatmate, and more ethical problems arising from the operation of a recently-dissolved, ALEC-connected “charity” Fox founded.
A German hacker organization claims to have cracked spying software allegedly used by German authorities. The Trojan horse has functions which go way beyond those allowed by German law. The news has sparked a wave of outrage among politicians and media commentators.
Paris, October 11th, 2011 – As the European Union engages in important discussions on the future of the radio spectrum policy – i.e the future of open wireless communications -, it’s becoming clear that national governments are aligned on the position of dominant telecom operators. To protect open wireless communications operated and controlled by citizens, the EU Parliament must resist the pressure and defend its position.
One of the biggest factors leading to music being pirated is the security software which is used to stop it being… er… pirated.
Economists from Rice and Duke Universities have been using game theory to work out that DRM technologies, which restrict music file copying and moving, encourage illegal file sharing instead.
Dinahy Vernik, assistant professor of marketing at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business told Ars Technica that DRM restrictions prevent legal users from doing something as normal as making backup copies of their music. Because DRM makes things inconvenient, punters choose to pirate.
La Quadrature du Net has written to two key committees of the European Parliament regarding the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). As the EU Parliament engages in preparatory works in view of its upcoming consent vote on ACTA, La Quadrature stresses that the Parliament must fully assess the dangers of this agreement for innovation, competition and competitiveness of EU businesses, but also for human rights.
Summary: More details about the Bristol débâcle are revealed by the press in Bristol, which also gives more capacity for Open Source and open standards hope
OVER the past week or so we have quietly posted some links about the Bristol situation, primarily in our daily links, e.g. this, this, and other accumulations (look under the “government” section).
It seems as though the city of Bristol, which has come under pressure from investigative journalists and other factors, decided to reconsider Free/open source software after flip-flopping for a while. It seems as though the Microsoft Movement, with all of its ‘extended family’ across the world, has been working in unison to eliminate competition. We saw that in ballot stuffing for OOXML (or against ODF) and following the Bristol-based Microsoft-esque ‘security’ FUD that we recently wrote about we discover who was at least partly responsible for the weird decision to withdraw from Free/open source software [1, 2], This new article from the Bristol press tells the story like this:
Bristol City Council has been cleared to build an IT infrastructure using open source software after a visit from CESG, the cyber security arm of the UK intelligence services.
Complaints about CESG’s obstruction of open source software were branded “folk-law” at a meeting the security body held in Bristol last week, with council leader Barbara Jenke, Bristol IT chiefs Paul Arrigoni and Gavin Beckett, and executives from the Cabinet Office.
The meeting came after it emerged Microsoft reseller Computacenter, which Bristol contracted to assess the policy, had advised the council it could not use open source systems without falling foul of security rules. The advice put paid to the council’s wish to use open source software.
A CESG spokeswoman told ComputerWeekly.com: “CESG does not impose rules on the use of software on any public authority, local government or other.”
She admitted it “bound” councils by security measures but insisted: “These do not prescribe which software authorities must use.”
Bristol City Council Leader Barbara Janke said the decision was “very good news” for the city’s IT industry.
At first, someone from Australia told us that “Computacenter is fully owned by Microsoft from memory.” But upon more research he said we should “check owner ship of Computacenter [UK]” as “[t]he one in Australia was fully Microsoft [...] Before the renamed to Donatech [...] I have a long memory of MS names.
“Of course the Computacenter might not be Microsoft but since it a old name they used there are good odds it is Microsoft. [...] Just took me a while for my memory to assemble [..] found the confusion. Computacenter UK is independent ish long term volume license provider for Microsoft. Computacenter was setup in Australia by Microsoft and was forced to change the name due to trademark alignment.
“Yes, Computacenter being a MS gold partner you we bet large percent[age] of their staff have been through the MS brainwashing to learn how not to think.”
Orwellian misuse of terms by the EPO, which keeps using the term "social democracy" whilst actually pushing further and further towards a totalitarian regime led by 'King' Battistelli
The paradigm of totalitarian control, inability to admit mistakes and tendency to lie all the time is backfiring on the EPO rather than making it stronger
An outline of recent stories about patents, where patent quality is key, reflecting upon the population's interests rather than the interests of few very powerful corporations
The role played by Heiko Maas in the UPC, which would harm businesses and people all across Europe, is becoming clearer and hence his motivation/desire to keep Team Battistelli in tact, in spite of endless abuses on German soil
The latest facts and figures about software patents, compared to the spinmeisters' creed which they profit from (because they are in the litigation business)
The US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is planning to weigh in on a case which will quite likely drive patent trolls out of the Eastern District of Texas, where all the courts that are notoriously friendly towards them reside
The scope of patents in the United States is rapidly tightening (meaning, fewer patents are deemed acceptable by the courts) and Fitbit’s patent case is the latest case to bite the dust
Pretending there is a violent, physical threat that is imminent, Paranoid in Chief Benoît Battistelli is alleged to have pursued weapons on EPO premises
A look at actions taken at a political level against the EPO in spite of the EPO's truly awkward exemption from lawfulness or even minimal accountability
Selective emphasis on very few cases and neglect of various other dimensions help create a parallel reality (or so-called 'fake news') where software patents are on the rebound
Example of abysmal service at the EPO, where high staff turnover and unreasonable pressure from above may be leading to communication issues that harm stakeholders the most
Battistelli's circle (or "Team Battistelli") is starting to disintegrate, perhaps in anticipation of a tough year full of new leaks ("WillyLeaks" as some put it)
In light of Trump's awkward history with judges (e.g. attacking them) one can hope that upcoming patent cases at the highest court won't be affected by his pro-big corporations agenda
Free/Open Source software (FOSS), which encourages sharing, is increasingly becoming infested or subjected to software patents barbwire, courtesy of those who want to monopolise rather than share
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), led by David Ruschke, continues to function as another 'layer' that ensures patent quality by weeding out bad patents and here are some of the latest cases
Nokia's saber-rattling (and now lawsuits) against Apple are a worrying sign of what's to come, impacting Android OEMs as well as Apple, which is why the post-Microsoft Nokia is dangerous
Now is the time for Australian software developers to explain to their government that they don't want any software patents, otherwise their voices will be hijacked by a bunch of law firms that totally misrepresent them
When the brain drain deepens and the HR department is unable to replace talented people with other talented people an institution is basically doomed and the EPO under Bergot as HR head is going nowhere fast
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