03.28.12

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Desktop

  • If desktop Linux is dead, someone had better tell all those users

    First and foremost, what does it even mean to say desktop Linux is “dead” if it’s being embraced and used by growing numbers of individuals and corporations around the world?

  • Mystery Solved

    So, the mystery is solved. From this data we can clearly understand how NetApplications gives such a huge share to that other OS and very little to GNU/Linux (0.62%) compared to Wikipedia (1.54%), for instance. We don’t know what the numbers would be without the bias but Wikipedia has no motivation for bias except to English language. We can assume the global usage is much higher because GNU/Linux is much more popular in non-English countries like BRIC (India is English speaking but also has many other languages) where governments promote GNU/Linux.

• Kernel Space

  • Graphics Stack

    • Intel Looks To Be Working On Open-Source GPGPU

      A mailing list message this morning raises the possibility that Intel’s open-source graphics developers could soon be working on GPGPU/OpenCL support.

    • XWayland Updated Against X.Org Server 1.12

      Kristian Høgsberg has pushed updated patches this morning for XWayland in the X.Org Server that re-base this work to the X.Org Server 1.12 series. He’s also updated the XWayland support for the xf86-video-intel graphics driver. XWayland is the effort for allowing an X.Org Server to run as a Wayland client.

    • AMD R600 LLVM Back-End Called For Inclusion

      Tom Stellard of AMD has called upon the LLVM developers to include the R600 GPU back-end into the LLVM project, which is the code for generating compute and graphics shaders inside the LLVM compiler infrastructure for targeting Radeon HD 2000 through HD 6000 series graphics processors.

    • KDrive, Xnest, Xvfb Called For Removal From X.Org

• Applications

  • Roaming Media

    The central piece to this project is a server-based music player. I am using the Music Player Dæmon (MPD), a wonderful server-based system released under the GNU General Public License and available from the repositories of most Linux distributions. Install the software with your favorite package management system. In addition to this player, you need to set up a streaming system. Icecast fulfills this requirement and also is widely available. Install it as well.

  • 3 Must-Have Apps for Any Linux OS, And My Preferences

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Make it so! How to master the Linux command line

    • Virtualization With KVM On An OpenSUSE 12.1 Server

    • Compile the mainline Linux kernel for Ubuntu

    • XBMC Media Center 11.0 Released, Install It In Ubuntu

    • How to install oracle java 7 in ubuntu 12.04

    • 16 ultimate SSH hacks

  • Games

    • The Latest Humble Bundle Grows In Size

    • Overgrowth For Linux Is Almost Ready

      Overgrowth is the game developed by Wolfire that was announced nearly four years ago as a third-person action game that is still considered to be in an alpha/preview state. Overgrowth was announced for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X platforms. The Linux port of this game began last year by a Wolfire contractor (Edward Rudd), but finally there’s some good news to report on the Linux progress.

      According to a Phoronix reader, Seon-Wook Park, those that have pre-ordered Overgrowth were informed through their private forums yesterday that the Overgrowth Linux port is nearly ready. Besides the native port, Overgrowth is now working under Wine too, per this WineHQ.org AppDB entry. Pre-ordering comes at a cost of $29.95 USD but includes DRM-free alpha access to the game.

• Desktop Environments

  • GNOME Desktop

    • What Users Say About Gnome 3 Shell

      We were astonished by the response we received on our Google + page. The overwhelming response in favour of Gnome 3 Shell was incredible. You can read it yourself, here are some comments that we liked.

    • Why Gnome 3 Shell Is A Smashing Success!

      Tweet

      We are running a poll on Muktware to see which desktop environments are popular among Muktware readers. To everyone’s surprise KDE is leading the poll with a huge margin, whereas Unity and Gnome Shell are neck-to-neck with each other.

    • GTK+ 3.4.0 released

• Distributions

  • Snapshot: Which Linux is hot

    After delving into where in the world people seem most keen on Linux, I couldn’t resist taking the research into Google Insights a bit further and seeing what trends were visible on the questions of which Linux distribution seemed to be most popular over time.

  • New Releases

    • Webconverger 12.0

    • Legacy OS 4 Mini Screenshots

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat to Sponsor Open Cloud Conference and Host Developer Workshop on April 30

    • Red Hat: $1B Is Nearly Official, But Will Storage Shine?

    • Red Hat (RHT) April volatility bid up into Q4 results and demand trends

    • Fedora

      • ARM as a primary architecture

  • Debian Family

    • Knoppix 7.0 Linux OS on the way

      These days there are hundreds of Linux-based operating systems that you can boot from a CD, DVD, or USB flash drive without installing anything to your hard drive. This lets you try out an operating system without replacing your current one — and it may also help you repair a broken operating system by booting from removable storage to run a disk scan, repartition a drive, or make other changes.

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Running Ubuntu 12.04 With The Liquorix Kernel

          After performing a fresh Linux installation, most users are concerned with customizing their desktop or application set for their needs, but an increasing number of enthusiasts tend to be looking at their kernel. The Zen kernel was once very popular, but of increasing popularity amongst die-hard Linux enthusiasts is the Zen-related Liquorix kernel. While it claims to offer superior performance for common workloads, is this really the case? Here are some benchmarks of the stock Ubuntu 12.04 kernel versus the 3.2 kernel offered by Liquorix.

        • Ubuntu: “We’re not Linux”

          Lest you wonder whether this was an intentional naming decision, it does seem to be that Canonical is deliberately avoiding using the L word. The release notes were imported by Canonical’s Kate Stewart (release manager) with the “Ubuntu kernel” language. From skimming the rest of the release notes brings up only one mention of “Linux.” This is to mention that on PowerPC if Ubuntu is installed “along side linux, the system does not automatically boot into the newly installed system.” So Canonical clearly seems to be trying to distance itself from Linux, here.

        • Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Beta Frustrations

        • Ubuntu Builder Updated with Improved Interface, Wizard Feature and QEMU Support

        • New Kernel Vulnerabilities Affect Ubuntu 11.10

          Canonical announced a few minutes ago (March 27th), in a security notice, that a new kernel upgrade for its Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) operating system is available.

        • Mark Shuttleworth Explains Smarter Notifications for Ubuntu

        • XBMC 11.0 released, includes new Ubuntu-based live CD

          The development team behind the hugely popular open source media player and entertainment hub, XBMC, has announced immediate availability of the newest XBMC 11.0 “Eden” release as well as XBMCbuntu, a new Ubuntu-based live CD.

          There have been a number of changes since the previous version was announced over a year ago. The default skin, Confluence, has been vastly improved and received some performance increases thanks to features like Dirty-region rendering and a new JPEG decoder, among others.

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Pear Linux Comice OS 4 review

• Devices/Embedded

  • Mentor Embedded Continues to Simplify Linux and Open Source Development with Support of the Yocto Project

  • Enea AB: Enea adds Enea Linux to its leading operating system solutions

  • Raspberry Pi consumer purchases start tomorrow morning in EU

    Raspberry Pi will be on sale to consumers from Wednesday morning according to Premier Farnell and element14, who also released an update to the pricing

  • Phones

    • Android

      • Google “Play” Is Becoming One-Stop Shop for Android Apps and Much More

  • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

    • Amazon now rumored to be prepping three tablets for 2012

Free Software/Open Source

• Skype Open-Source Back In Action, Breaks v5.5

  After a several month hiatus, the individual(s) working to reverse-engineer Skype’s binary client have successfully “deobfuscated” the Skype 5.5 release.

  “We got deobfuscated skype v5.5!!! I can’t belive in this. But its fucking true. Great thanks and congratulations going to Vilko,” begins a new post on the skype-open-source blog.

• Roll Your Own Wiki With Open Source MoinMoin

• WalmartLabs is building big data tools — and will then open source them

• The benefits of open source

  Free and open source software has touched all our lives whether we know it or not. Often misunderstood and treated with suspicion, many businesses take advantage of the benefits of it without acknowledging the community that powers it.

• Sirius CTO: UK businesses must start tapping SME talent

  The time has come for small and medium businesses to get the recognition they deserve, according to Andrew Savory, newly-appointed Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at open source systems integrator Sirius, with a new generation of smart British technology companies proving that they can deliver services just as well, sometimes cheaper, and sometimes better than their large entrenched counterparts.

  Savory, an active member of The Apache Software Foundation, joins Sirius from the LiMo Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium dedicated to creating the first Linux-based mobile operating system for smartphone devices. Coming from an open source, small business background himself, Savory is excited to see a step-change in the way that SMEs are being viewed, thanks to initiatives like the government’s G-Cloud.

• The Peek Email Device Goes Open Source

  f at first you don’t succeed, open source the sucker. Peek has released an open source version of their Peek Mobile operating system, allowing hackers to use the all-but-obsolete little email device as a hacker platform. The Linux release is available the PeekLinux wiki and hackers are already adding new apps and functionality to the tiny device.

• Building a GSM network with open source

  Over the last few years open source technology has enabled mobile phone networks to be set up on a shoestring budget at hacker conferences, on a tiny Pacific island and at a festival in the Nevada desert. Andrew Back takes a look at how this has been made possible and at what’s involved in building a GSM network using OpenBTS and OpenBSC.

• Events

  • Sydneysider to give keynote at Wikimania

    Gardiner is a long-time member of the Sydney Linux User Group, an office-bearer of Linux Australia, and a regular member of the technical panel that chooses talks for the annual Australian national Linux conference.

    Last year Gardiner, along with Linux kernel developer Valerie Aurora, set up The Ada Initiative, a project to help increase the participation of women in technology. The project was born after several incidents of sexist behaviour towards women at FOSS events.

  • High-tech titans coming to Columbia

    Next week’s Palmetto Open Source Software Conference — or POSSCON — is starting to bring some serious high-tech street cred to Columbia.

    The conference – which grew substantially in each of its past four years — focuses on the communal development of software like Open Office and Firefox that developers share with the world, often for free.

• Web Browsers

  • Chrome

    • Chromium OS adds automatic Google Docs sync

    • Guidance for Getting Going with the Chromium Browser

    • Chrome OS May Be Heading to ARM After All

      Google’s upcoming “Daisy” Chromebook will reportedly use Samsung’s ARM-based Exynos 5250 SoC.

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla at Work on Mobile Do Not Track

      You can opt out of being tracked online by using a Web browser with support for Do Not Track, a privacy feature that lets you tell supporting websites that you don’t want to be tracked by third parties (advertisers, marketing firms, and the like). It’s like putting yourself on an online version of the Do Not Call list.

      Now Mozilla is developing an open-source operating system for smartphones and tablets that supports Do Not Track from the ground up. Code-named Boot to Gecko (B2G), this Linux-based mobile OS is designed to bring the (comparatively) rigorous privacy standards of the World Wide Web to smartphones and tablets.

    • Mozilla launches multiplayer browser adventure to showcase HTML5 gaming

      Mozilla has teamed up with Web design studio Little Workshop to develop a Web-based multiplayer adventure game called BrowserQuest. The game is built with standards-based Web technologies and is designed to be played within a Web browser.

      With the technical capabilities offered by the latest standards, Web developers no longer have to rely on plugins to create interactive multimedia experiences and application-like user interfaces. As we reported earlier this month, modern standards are making the Web an increasingly viable platform for game development.

    • Asa Dotzler Recommends Opera For Firefox 3.6 Users Who Don’t Want To Upgrade

      If you are a Firefox 3.6 user you know by now that support for that branch of the web browser will end on April 24, 2012. As it stands now, Firefox 3.6.28, released on March 14, is likely the last version of Firefox 3.6. Mozilla will not update the version of the browser again unless a major security or stability issue forces them to.

      With Firefox 3.6 out of the picture, Firefox users still using the branch are asked by Mozilla to either update to the current stable version of the browser, which is Firefox 11 at the time of writing, or the Firefox Extended Support Release. The latter has been specifically designed for organizations as a way to lessen the impact of Mozilla’s new rapid release process on the company’s IT department.

    • Firefox 3.6.x approaches end of life

    • Mozilla BrowserQuest The Future of Open Source HTML5 Gaming?

    • Jeff Klein, I hate you

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • LibreOffice developers demo collaborative editing prototype

    A group of LibreOffice developers have added experimental collaborative editing capabilities to the open source office suite. The feature allows multiple users to work on the same document simultaneously over the Internet. The collaborative editing functionality was implemented by grafting Telepathy to LibreOffice.

• CMS

  • Privacy agency taps open source CMS for new website

  • Acquia Launches New Cloud API for Drupal Content Management

• Business

  • Opscode gets more venture dough for its Chef

    Opscode, the maker of the open source Chef tool that the company says can help system administrators “rule the cloud”, has lured more big backers as momentum builds for that tool’s open source, hosted, and licensed versions.

  • Digium Asterisk & VMware: Simplifying IP PBX Virtualization

• Funding

  • Kickstarter to fund development of Arduino-based, browser-controlled open source hardware automated gardening dome

  • Google Summer of Code: Contribute to Open Source, Make Money

    If you’re a post-secondary student, 18 years or older, you have a golden opportunity this Summer. Contribute to an open source project that you care about, and get paid to do it. Once again, it’s Google Summer of Code (GSoC) time, and open source organizations are beating the bushes to find the best ideas and applicants.

    The GSoC has been an annual tradition since 2005. Google partners with mentoring organizations and offers students stipends for successful completion of open source projects. Students get a stipend of $5,000 USD and the mentoring organization receives $500. Students get a $500 stipend after coding begins on May 1st, a $2,250 payment after a successful mid-term evaluation, and $2,250 after the final program evaluation. Oh, and don’t forget the t-shirt.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • GNU Telephony begins public meetings

  • The GNU C Library Steering Committee disbands

    Roland McGrath has announced that the GNU C Library (glibc) Steering Committee is dissolving. The direction of the project will now be governed more informally by a team led by the current maintainers.

• Project Releases

  • Cairo 1.12 Released With Major New Features

• Public Services/Government

  • Iceland’s public administrations moving towards open source

  • Iceland government to switch to open source platforms

  • Iceland makes open source push

• Openness/Sharing

  • How open is too open?

    Last month, we posted a survey asking, “If you could open one of the following data sets tomorrow, which one would you open and why?” We got a great response–279 people voted and there were several comments.

• Programming

  • Eclipse readies browser-based IDE

    The Eclipse Foundation for open source development tools is eyeing July as the release date for the 1.0 version of its Orion browser-based IDE for building Web applications, which will be discussed at this week’s EclipseCon 2012 conference in Reston, Va.

  • ‘Hello, world’: Programming languages quiz

• Standards/Consortia

  • Tizen pops up as HTML5 winner

    No one has seen the Tizen mobile platform in action yet, but whatever browser the in-development platform is using has blown away the competition for HTML5 performance.

    Listed only as “Tizen 1″ on The HTML5 Test (THT) site, the development version of the Tizen browser scored 387 points out of a possible total of 475 points within the mobile phone browser category.

  • 1&1 Internet AG receives German Document Freedom Award

    1&1, GMX and WEB.DE receive the German Document Freedom Award for the use of Open Standards. The prize is awarded by the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) and the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure e.V. (FFII). 1&1 is awarded for automatically adding XMPP for all customers of their mail services. The Document Freedom Award is awarded annually on the occasion of Document Freedom Day – the international day for Open Standards. Last years winners include tagesschau.de, Deutschland Radio, and the German Foreign Office.

Leftovers

• Security

  • Executable Code Injection in Linux

• Finance

  • Anger at Goldman Still Simmers

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Shocker! FOX asks Tough Questions and Paul Ryan Flubs

    In an uncharacteristic move for a Fox News anchor, Wallace asks some tough questions of the Chair of the House Budget Committee. Since the Ryan plan would lose 10 trillion dollars of revenue over ten years, Wallace asked exactly which tax loopholes would be closed to raise the revenue that would be lost from reducing the tax rate. But Ryan could not name specific loopholes that he would close as part of his plan because “that’s not the job of the budget committee.”

  • The Corporations Bankrolling ALEC, which Has Promoted “Stand Your Ground” as a “Model” Bill

    The gun lobby has come under the spotlight for its role in the so-called “Stand Your Ground” or “Shoot First” law that may protect the man who shot and killed seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida –- but many other special interests, including household names like Kraft Foods and Wal-Mart, also helped facilitate the spread of these and other laws by funding the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

• ACTA

  • Spinning ACTA “prolongation” strategies – noise in the cable

    LQDN demonstrates that their voting expectations do not depend upon the ECJ rerferral but their procedural input is quite a bit confusing. I had some strange artefacts in my DSL connection and then found out the ethernet cable between the router and the splitter was broken. You could argue that LQDN add some fog of war and inserted confusion in the process. I just wonder if MEPs would switch to a different cable. If you dismiss the current proposed procedures of the rapporteur David Martin as “delay” tactics what’s the actual alternative for Parliament?

  • EU Parliament Will Vote on ACTA Without Delay!

    The EU Parliament has refused to freeze the ACTA debate, and will not refer the agreement to the EU Court of Justice. In a 21 to 5 vote, the Parliament decided to stick to its calendar and will vote on ACTA in June, as originally planned. The Commission’s technocratic manoeuvres have not stopped the Parliament, and the door remains open to a swift rejection of ACTA.