12.01.13
Posted in GNU/Linux, Google at 3:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Why Android is not enough and why CyanogenMod is not the solution, Replicant is
GOOGLE’S Android is Free/libre software, but the way it is set up (or bundled) by device makers, the system as a whole is far from free, both at the hardware level and the software level. Google’s “Play” — the anonymity-crushing ‘app’ store — is dominated by proprietary software and there is a lot more to be said about lack of freedom on top of Android and around it. Android — like Ubuntu — is a good step towards freedom for those who previously used Apple/Microsoft, but there are further steps necessary.
CyanogenMod is the best known Android alternative and back in September it was said to be an Android unifier, not a forker [1]. A while later (when it was becoming a well-funded company, CyanogenMod Inc.) it made everything easier to set up [2] and later it got banned from Google’s so-called ‘app’ store [3,4] (which can involve censorship, just like Apple’s).
CyanogenMod, however, was never really about freedom, not in the same sense that Replicant is. Privately, in my 2.5-hour meeting with Stallman last Friday, he suggested that I embrace Replicant, but sadly enough very few devices are formally supported by Replicant (most of them are tracking devices that can also make phonecalls). Stallman is eager to see Replicant support extending and expanding to more gadgets and in order to make Replicant stronger we need to download and use it. █
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Far from helping to fragment Android, the new CyanogenMod company will help unify it for both users and developers.
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CyanogenMod Inc.’s new installer makes trying out Android ROMs easier than ever.
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Posted in GNU/Linux at 2:15 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
First the stack, later the games…
Summary: As GNU/Linux matures, attracting developers and improving freedom-respecting drivers, the threat to proprietary gaming platforms increases
The other day we pointed out that platforms for games are increasingly GNU/Linux-based. Valve might be taking GNU/Linux to the top of the gaming scene, some say [1,2], so it’s not about about indie [3], ports [4], and various cross-platform games [5,6]. It is about creating hardware stacks which are GNU/Linux-based and run very well with GNU/Linux desktops/applications. Benchmarks from Phoronix help show that Windows has lost its advantage [7], power consumption in Linux is improving [8], and Free/libre graphics drivers are rapidly maturing [9], so this needn’t require binary blobs at all, except perhaps for the games. All in all, it is exciting to see how GNU/Linux turns from underdogs in gaming to a potential leader and perhaps de facto platform. Developers of games should target GNU/Linux, not jails to their users. █
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At the request of many Phoronix readers, here are some new battery power usage benchmarks on every recent Linux kernel release from Linux 3.7.0 to Linux 3.13 Git. Has an Intel “Ivy Bridge” Ultrabook’s power consumption changed much due to the continuous kernel churn? Here’s the answer.
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If you are hoping to snag some deals on computer hardware this holiday shopping season, for helping guide you in any graphics card purchases are a fresh round of benchmarks of 21 different graphics processors from the Intel HD Graphics, AMD Radeon, and NVIDIA GeForce families tested on their respective open-source Linux graphics drivers.
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11.28.13
Posted in GNU/Linux, Kernel at 7:17 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Programmable devices running GNU/Linux are selling well and spreading to many areas of computing
Linux has been a star in embedded systems for quite a few years, but rarely were devices with Linux (and sometimes GNU utilities/toolchain on them) hacker-friendly; they were inflexible and locked-down to the point is being single-purpose machines.
Raspberry Pi et al. represent an exciting trend [1]. They are tied to Free languages [2], they are definitely programmable, they enjoy diversity and competition [3], and they do a variety of interesting things, from simple [4] to complex [5] (whole desktop operating systems), impacting every aspect of computing from servers [6] to robotics [7]. Raspberry Pi, which is a British product, is selling very well [8-11] and attracts funding [12], so this trend of affordable hackable computing will hopefully not fade away. The more freedom-respecting devices are out there, the more ethics-aware software will be run in our society, benefiting all. When devices are running secret code that cannot be changed we are simply left with back doors and security holes. █
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Whereas Raspberry Pi was the pioneer of very small Linux systems, the Arduino is the 800-pound gorilla in the micro-controller arena.
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We’re pleased to announce PyPy 2.2, which targets version 2.7.3 of the Python language. This release main highlight is the introduction of the incremental garbage collector, sponsored by the `Raspberry Pi Foundation`_.
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The Gertduino expansion board for the Raspberry Pi computer is now available. Created by Gert van Loo, the Gertduino is a Raspberry Pi add-on and it includes the same functionality as an Arduino-Uno but with some extra features like dual Atmel Atmega MCUs, -328 and -48.
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Pets are great company to have, but they need looking after when you are away. That’s what the Raspberry Pi-powered open-source PetBot aims to do, never leaving your precious pooch alone.
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As a result of the prior musings about crowdfunding and the rather shaky VAT status of the whole sector I have been thinking quite a bit about crowdfunding and where it might be useful and how we could get involved in some way. For our normal consultancy business we have no need of capital investments and we don’t produce anything that lends itself to the crowdfunding model, however I did come up with a project I have been wanting to do for quite a long time. Allow me to introduce it by way of a little video . . .
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A startup called the Citizen Web Project has raised over $23,000 in crowdsourcing funds for an alpha-stage fork of Arch Linux intended for hosting easily-administered web services on low-end hardware. Initially available for the Raspberry Pi, ArkOS is designed for securely self-hosting websites, email, social networking accounts, and cloud services via an open source “Genesis” server gateway application.
In the same spirit of self-reliance behind ArkOS itself, chief developer and Citizen Web Project founder Jacob Cook is hosting his own crowdsourcing campaign. So far, the project has raised over $23,000 on the way to a goal of $45,000, with 21 days left.
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RobotBits.co.uk has begun selling an open source mobile robotics kit from Frindo.org available with an Arduino Duo, or as an under-$100 model that lets you add your own Arduino and/or Raspberry Pi. The Frindo robotics platform, which appears to be about 100mm in diameter, is billed as being more robust than most low-cost educational robots, and is optionally available with a motor controller board and sensor bundle.
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It took us almost exactly a year to sell the first million Raspberry Pis. Going on that basis, we calculated that we might, if we were lucky, reach the second million around January 2014, or slightly afterwards – we were confident we’d get there by the end of February 2014. So it was a bit of a shock at the end of last week when we got the latest sales figures and discovered that the 2,000,000th Raspberry Pi was sold in the last week of October. We don’t know who owns it – if you bought one between October 24 and October 31st, it might be yours. (It could even be the one we gave to Prince Andrew when he visited on Halloween.)
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When the Raspberry Pi was developed, founder Eben Upton envisioned that the low-cost computer would do its finest work in the classroom, teaching kids about computing. But as more units sold, Raspberry Pi developed a strong, distinctive niche among adult makers, a fruitful group that nonetheless doesn’t really have much in common with a younger age bracket that can be hard to reach.
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Posted in GNU/Linux at 6:59 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Jolla’s Sailfish OS makes its hardware debut and it looks as good as many of us hoped
IT IS too easy to dismissed phone projects that are small (like OpenMoko or Ubuntu Edge) as non-starters; Phonebloks would know the feeling [1] and Mozilla once experienced it. Well, Mozilla now has some phones out there (running Linux) and so does Jolla [2], the company which came out of the ruins of Nokia (Microsoft destroyed Linux inside Nokia). The official launch was yesterday [3] and it seems relatively freedom-respecting, based on assessments around the Web (many people in Diaspora had legitimate doubts before this debut). Bloomberg, which put a lot of money behind Ubuntu Edge, says that Jolla is a “Challenge to Android” and we sure hope it can kick-start a freer Linux-oriented platform on which to work through tablets, smartphones, etc. Here in our household (Android- and GNU/Linux-dominated) we’ve looked at Sailfish OS and it surprised us for the better. █
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Phonebloks founder Dave Hakkens has batted away suggestions that his “modular smartphone” project won’t see the light of day.
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Jolla Oy, a Finnish smartphone maker founded by former Nokia Oyj (NOK1V) engineers, is stepping up its challenge to Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Google Inc. after the first batches of its handset were snapped up by consumers looking for change.
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Posted in FSF, GNU/Linux at 6:20 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Thanksgiving reminder for those who want to receive freedom-respecting presents or wish to give freedom-respecting presents
EARLIER TODAY we wrote GNU/Linux devices or computers that can be purchased on Black Friday. Well, the FSF has a new “Giving Guide”, which basically highlights the need to avoid DRM-laden products and other such malicious ‘gifts’ [1] that can merely imprison their receiver. One must remember that GNU/FSF advocates abundance, which in itself is a gift [2]. There is no need to buy and sell stuff when something can be shared for free [3]. When Richard Stallman created Emacs he wanted to share his work, not necessarily profit from it; that’s where the GPL licence comes from. Emacs continues to develop to this date (a WYSIWYG GUI might be coming [4]) along with essential low-level GNU libraries [5] which make up the basis for a lot of those “Linux” gadgets that are on sale this Black Friday. We oughtn’t forget that if it wasn’t for the foundations laid out by GNU, Linux would still be proprietary and probably never take off. █
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The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced its 2013 Giving Guide, a resource for conscientious shoppers looking for geeky gifts that respect users’ freedom. Many holiday shoppers will be turning to gadgets and online services as gifts for friends and family, but these gifts are often rife with proprietary software, anti-features, or Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), all of which restrict how the gift can be used.
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It is 30 years since Richard Stallman announced that he was going to write a complete UNIX-compatible software system called GNU, pioneering the idea of free and open source software, but the struggle continues
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Marco Fioretti answers a TechRepublic member’s questions about charging fees for software that’s made available under the GNU GPL License version 2 or 3.
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GNU daddy Richard Stallman seems to have found an old To-Do list behind the sofa, because he’s posted a message on the GNU forums reviving an old ambition for the venerable EMacs text editor.
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Posted in GNU/Linux, GPL, Law, Microsoft, Patents at 4:44 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: How the General Public License can help fight the likes of Microsoft, whose only answer to GNU/Linux domination is now taxation of GNU/Linux (through patent extortion)
THE TABLET on which I’ll record Richard Stallman tomorrow dons a GPLv3 sticker. We wrote about the GPLv3 quite a lot back in 2007 when it was new. We needed the GPLv3 because of patent deals such as Novell’s. Microsoft was rapidly signing (or looking to sign) more extortion deals against Linux and in the middle of 2007 it announced a large-scale campaign to shake down all GNU/Linux vendors.
Towards the end of 2013 we have this moderate view from Dr. Glyn Moody. He explains today: “A theme that has re-appeared on this blog many times over the years is that of software patents. As I’ve noted before, they are perhaps the biggest single threat to free software, especially since the decline of Microsoft. Indeed, it’s not hard to see software patent lawsuits being filed by Microsoft in the last, desperate stage of that decline in order to inflict the maximum damage on open source.
“That’s already manifest in its Android licensing strategy. Note, in particular, that it refuses to discuss what exactly Android allegedly infringes upon. This means that it can sign secret deals with companies willing to go along with this ploy, giving the impression that there is a problem, without offering the slightest proof to that effect…”
“Indeed, it’s not hard to see software patent lawsuits being filed by Microsoft in the last, desperate stage of that decline in order to inflict the maximum damage on open source.”
–Glyn MoodyMoody’s analysis then proceeds to explaining how the GPLv3 relates to all this. Now that Microsoft’s super-trolls and other trolls such as Erich Spangenberg [1, 2, 3, 4] are going after legitimate companies we must recognise that fighting patents with patents (like OIN does) is not a solution. Trolls cannot be confronted by a reactionary lawsuit and here we have a story of a patent troll winning again. To quote TechDirt, where Moody is a writer: “There’s a reason why patent trolls love east Texas — and big part of that is that the juries there have a long history of favoring patent holders, no matter how ridiculous or how trollish. That was on display last night, when the jury in Marshall, Texas sided with patent troll Erich Spangenberg and his TQP shell company over Newegg. As we’ve been describing, Newegg brought out the big guns to prove pretty damn thoroughly that this guy Mike Jones and his encryption patent were both not new at the time the patent was granted and, more importantly, totally unrelated to the encryption that Newegg and other ecommerce providers rely on. Having Whit Diffie (who invented public key cryptography) and Ron Rivest (who basically made it practical in real life) present on your behalf, showing that they did everything prior to Jones’ patent, while further showing that what Newegg was doing relied on their work, not Jones’, should have ended the case.”
Recently, when big trolls like Microsoft were risking a loss to their patent leverage, lobbying/AstroTurfing from Microsoft paid off. So we are left in a situation where Microsoft’s extortion — not just patent trolls — is a real issue. The GPLv3 is a partial solution to that, if only more projects (like Linux) adopted it… █
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Posted in GNU/Linux at 3:32 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Another new milestone for GNU/Linux, which is climbing up the ranks of platforms for gamers
THERE’S some reporting about a product and company called iBuyPower [1,2,3]. What it does is not unprecedented, but it does put together a product which can compete with proprietary giants like Sony. This isn’t about some game coming to more platforms (a new example of which is [4-7]); it’s about a whole new platform being created and it is based on GNU/Linux.
Several years ago it seemed like the dream of GNU/Linux as a gaming platform was elusive, especially after Sony had stabbed GNU/Linux users (on PS3) in their backs. Seeing a sort of comeback — where major games are ported to GNU/Linux faster than we can keep track of and consoles are launched which are based on GNU/Linux — is a truly refreshing change that will definitely accompany the ascent of the Free desktop. No more will “gaming” be an excuse for avoiding GNU/Linux as a desktop platform. █
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When Valve laid out a range of performance tiers for the 300 Steam Machine prototypes it would be sending to beta testers, the company was clear that other hardware makers would be revealing their own designs for SteamOS-powered gaming rigs in the future. Custom PC maker iBuyPower has now become the first company to unveil a prototype for one of those designs, laying out a $499 white box with a GPU that’s comparable or slightly better than those found in the recently launched PS4 and Xbox One.
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Posted in GNU/Linux at 10:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Giving thanks to GNU and Linux this Thanksgiving
Summary: People who wish to buy devices and computers with GNU and/or Linux preinstalled this Thanksgiving may find it very easy
The good folks from Phoronix [1] and OpenSource.com [2] remind us that we can buy Linux- and Open Source-based (respectively) gifts this Friday. SJVN over at ZDNet/CBS (with more impact on IDG) highlights Linux Black Friday deals [3,4] (observed in the United States, Canada and Mexico, according to Wikipedia).
The matter of fact is, many gadgets and computers now run Linux. The GNU and/or Linux is not even being advertised on the products, it’s just to be taken for granted.
Back in October a good point was made by a writer who argued that “[t]he main barrier to GNU/Linux adoption is lack of OEM support” [5]. Now that XP era officially ends [6,7] (no support) there are huge opportunities for GNU/Linux on desktops/laptops and GNU/Linux preinstalls are becoming common [8-12] (except the brands “GNU” and “Linux”). There were no “Missed Opportunities” as some pundits put it [13], there were just Microsoft bribes that got used to slow down this trend (notably below-zero-cost XP for sub-notebooks). “Microsoft [is] in a real panic over Chromebooks,” said iophk in IRC this morning, noting that based on this article, “Redmond has hired the stars of a reality television show called Pawn Stars to help with its anti-Google Scroogled campaign.”
Microsoft currently spreads anti-Google lies in British radio, showing its hypocrisy over privacy (Microsoft should be reported to the ASA over this), hiding from the public its own special relationship with the NSA. This whole anti-Chromebook FUD helps confirm that Microsoft is truly desperate and worried about the growth of GNU/Linux as a preinstalled platform. █
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We’ve searched the Internet and consulted with the open source geeks in our lives to identify some of 2013′s coolest open source-related gifts for the holidays. We’ve found something for everyone’s budget from big (a LulzBot TAZ 2 3D printer!) to small (who doesn’t need a free download of Cards Against Humanity?), and everything in between.
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Let’s look at some of the best Linux-based gadgets available this Black Friday.
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Ken Starks of Reglue recently published a thought-provoking entry on his blog, The Blog of Helios, suggesting that the barrier to Free Software adoption is bad documentation. He asserts that the lack of quality documentation is due to a philosophical approach to documentation writing, within the community, that he calls “good enough.” By this, he appears to mean that document authors are writing to an audience similar to themselves, ie. people who are very experienced and grok most of what is being written.
While the problem he describes is common practice and it is a problem for the adoption of free software by newbies, it is not the main barrier to the propagation of GNU/Linux. Although good documentation is important, the main reason GNU isn’t more popular is lack of OEM support.
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Last month, I wrote about the massive 72,000-PC migration from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux being undertaken by the Gendarmerie Nationale, the French police force.
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In the final installment of the series, Dave Lane writes on coping with diversity in a FOSS environment.
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C720P is powered by Intel Celeron 2955U (Haswell), has 2GB DDR3 RAM and comes with 32GB SSD. The most notable feature of the device is its 11.6-inch ComfyView HD ‘touch-screen’ display that has a 1366×768 resolution.
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LinuxCertified Inc introduced the L1 Touch 14.1″ High Resolution, Full HD Touch Display – Exclusive High Performance Linux Ultrabook pre-installed with Ubuntu or Fedora Linux. The L1 Touch is one of the ultralight, ultrathin, yet powerful Linux Ultrabook designed for legendary performance on the go, whether to another meeting or another country, you sacrifice nothing in return.
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There are many benefits of installing Linux on your PC or laptop. When selecting a new laptop that can support Linux, there are not many that can perform efficiently with a Linux OS. This poses a bit of a problem for people who like to use open-source software as Windows 8 prevents dual-booting, which means you cannot have two OSes running at the same time.
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Will the low, low, low watershed price of Acer’s new Chromebook spark a price war or will the unit remain an outlier? And, will the HP Chromebook 11′s charger problems hurt the budding market for Web-centric, Chrome-OS based laptops? With the holiday buying season nearly here, it will be interesting to see how other Chromebook suppliers ASUS, Lenovo and Toshiba respond to Acer’s move and HP’s troubles.
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I’ve always said that the two biggest benefits of running a Linux distribution over a proprietary operating system are: freedom of choice and the Linux community. Despite these advantages, Linux on the desktop needs work in one key area: seizing great opportunities.
Two huge opportunities for the Linux desktop right now are the end of Windows XP support and the less than amazing reception of Windows 8 by casual users. In this article, I’ll explore why I believe Windows XP and Windows 8 are fantastic opportunities for an increase in Linux adoption.
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