• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Linux Features Prominently at This Year’s CES

How Linux defines success and innovation

Based on that incredibly important criteria, I hereby declare that Linux has reached the pinnacle of true success. Send the marketing folks home, ladies and gentlemen, we’re done here, because everyone and their brother is now officially trying to the “the Linux of” whatever the sector within which they are seeking to succeed.

The latest company to hang this label on their product line is VMware, which has declared via CTO Steve Herrod that their new Cloud Foundry platform-as-a-service (PaaS) will be the “Linux of the cloud.”

More FUD About Security of GNU/Linux

The truth is you are thousands of times more secure with GNU/Linux than that other OS. The count of malwares proves that. The incidence of malware infections proves that. The prevalence of GNU/Linux servers on the web proves that. The fact that M$’s servers are becoming more like GNU/Linux machines with time is another. Heck, M$’s 2008 server can even run GUIless and uses scripting. Where have we heard of that? Oh, GNU/Linux back about 1995.

It is a standard military manoeuvre to seek out an enemy’s weakness and exploit it. If you are trying to run IT are you charging the enemy’s centre with it’s heavy artillery, enfilade fire and mines or are you going to flank him and cut his supply lines? We must do the same in IT. M$ has proven thousands of times that its software is insecure. We should run GNU/Linux. It’s the smart thing to do.

Softpedia Linux Weekly, Issue 195

Don’t forget the newbies!

Linux and Open-source news overview for week 15-2012

Server

• Ubuntu-Friendly HP Cloud Enters Public Beta

  According to survey results released earlier this year, Ubuntu still has a lot of room to grow in the cloud space. But it seems to be doing just that, the latest indicator being HP’s release of cloud products based partially on Ubuntu. Here’s the scoop, and why it matters for the Ubuntu world in particular.

  Last week, HP announced the public availability beginning May 10 of its HP Cloud platform, which began life as a private beta about six months ago. Most of the HP Cloud features are not very unique — it’s the same basic deal as other popular hosted cloud infrastructures, like Amazon EC2 — but one of the characteristics HP seems to be pushing is the open-source technologies on which its solutions are built, freeing users from vendor lock-in.

Kernel Space

• Latest Release Of Linux Contains Code Developed Via Google Plus

  Say what you will about the mainstream viability of Google Plus, but anyone who has spent even a few days on Google’s rapidly developing social network can tell you that the userbase seems unusually knowledgeable and tech-savvy. There have been numerous posts and articles attempting to explain this phenomena, but the most common theory seems likely enough: the early invitations were given out to primarily technical users (developers, tech journalists, etc), and they predictably shared their invites with like-minded individuals.

• Intel Preview: Z77 Motherboards Run Well With Linux

• Linux 3.4-rc3

• Reading Between the Linux Contributor List’s Lines

  Ubuntu and Canonical have done quite a bit in expanding the ecosystem and market for Linux, which used to be practically unusable on the desktop. By aspiring to a better, easier and more polished UI, Ubuntu has lifted other Linux distributions and their UIs along with it. This does not absolve Canonical of the responsibility to engage in upstream kernel work and contribution, though, and the company stands more to gain than lose by putting resources toward Linux.

• Graphics Stack

  • An Open-Source Graphics Driver For Snapdragon

    There is another new open-source Linux graphics driver entering development and it has already showed signs of success with basic 2D acceleration working. This new open-source driver is for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon / Adreno and who is leading the development of this driver is also quite interesting.

  • Nouveau Gallium3D Kepler Is Already Here

  • Nouveau Kepler Works, But May Fill Your Hard Drive

    The Nouveau Kepler Gallium3D code that was published yesterday does indeed work for allowing OpenGL acceleration on the GeForce 600 series using this reverse-engineered open-source code. In an odd story to end out the weekend, the Nouveau Kepler graphics driver consumed nearly 120GB of hard drive space while running this open-source driver on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680.

  • AMD Fusion On Gallium3D Leaves A Lot To Be Desired

  • X.Org 7.7 Release Candidate 1 Finally Emerges

  • Open source 3D drivers for new AMD and NVIDIA GPUs

Applications

• Zerobin, Open Source Pastebin Alternative With Client-Side Encryption

• 9 Essential Free Linux Transcoders

  Transcoding is the process of the conversion of digital data (typically video and audio files) from one format to another. It involves extracting tracks from a digital media file, decoding the tracks, filtering, encoding, and then multiplexing the new tracks into a new container. Transcoding will reduce the quality of the tracks unless lossless formats are used.

• RSSOwl 2.1.2: The Best News Feed Reader for Ubuntu/Linux

  RSSOwl is a free and powerful news feed reader. RSSOwl lets you organize, update, gather,save informations and search news in a convenient. RSSOwl easy to use interface with endless flexibility.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • VirtualBox 4.1.12 released and ubuntu 12.04 installation instructions included

  • GIMP 2.7 for Photoshop Expatriates

  • How to Set up SVN with Apache

  • Install Beautiful FS Icons Set in Ubuntu

  • Monitor your bandwidth from the Linux shell

  • How to easily create your own Google Chrome theme

  • IPV6 over OpenVPN tunnel

  • Programming effective reminders in GNU/Linux

• Wine

  • Wine 1.5.2 released

• Games

  • Shadowrun Returns Will Have Linux Support

  • A new Linux Game – The Great Jitters Pudding Panic

    In the Indie game “The Great Jitters Pudding Panic“, done by the German developers kunst-stoff, you are a Green pudding and your goal is to exit from an haunted house without fainting from fear, while at the same time trying to scare the monsters in the maze.

  • The Great Jitters: Pudding Panic – Review| Friday Game

  • [Pre-Alpha] Terasology, A Free and Open Source Minecraft Inspired Game Engine

  • Interview with Aviv Sharon of Wildfire Games

    0 A.D. is a free and open source ancient warfare real time strategy game, that has drawn a lot of attention around it for a good reason. This game started as a very ambitious project which is always good, but also very difficult. This Monday we meet Aviv Sharon, in an effort to learn more about the details behind this fantastic game, that many people already “love” although it is still in alpha state.

  • The Oddest Non-FPS Title Powered By ioquake3

    When it comes to ioquake3, the open-source id Tech 3 game engine, it’s almost always being used for powering a first-person shooter. However, released on Friday was a major update to an open-source multi-platform game running on ioquake3 but is not yet-another-FPS title. However, it’s also arguably the oddest game to be powered by this engine that was originally designed for Quake III.

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Calligra Project open source office suite released

    /li>

  • Managing Users with KDE

    KDE Plasma Workspaces provide a graphical interface and lots of eye candy for the desktop Linux experience. Many would argue that it is equal to or even better at this than Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. KDE, however, is not only a graphical frontend for Linux. It comes with a set of applications and also with a set of system administration tools that can help power users take control of their desktops or laptops without dropping to the command line.

Distributions

• Slackware Needs Your Help

  For Slackware, it’s been no exception. Some of you faithful Slackers may have noticed lately that the Slackware home page has been offline. I posted about this at Jeremy’s Linux Questions forums. Alien Bob (Eric Hameleers) replied stating that it was an old hardware/lack of funds issue. This is sad.

• New Releases

  • Trisquel 5.5 STS Brigantia release announcement

  • OS4 Workstation 12.1 released

  • Chakra 2012.04

  • Slackel current KDE 4.8.2 installation and Live images are released!

    A new sets of Slackel KDE 4.8.2 edition. A collection of four KDE iso images are immediately available to our users, including 32-bit and 64-bit installation images as well as 32-bit and 64-bit live images that can be burned to a DVD or used with a USB drive.

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • An OS in the Public Interest – a Mandriva Linux Foundation?

    Last week, I received, in CC:, an email from a Mandriva Linux developer. This email was entitled “A foundation for Mandriva Linux *NOW* or Mandriva Linux to *DIE*?”

    That suggested to me that maybe Mandriva was not going very well. This, of course, hurted me. At the same time it leads to the interesting question of a Foundation for a project like Mandriva Linux.

  • Mandriva’s future to be decided at the end of April

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat’s reaction to Microsoft’s open-source spinoff: Welcome! (mostly)

    There were a number of points in Cormier’s blog post, however, that could be interpreted as being less complimentary toward the Redmond giant. A reference to Red Hat having attained its current status “not without opposition” may well be a veiled dig at Microsoft, as could a line asserting that “some of the new entrants [to the open source world] are surprising.”

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux celebrates 10 years of Enterprise Linux

    While Red Hat might be one of the largest open source providers in the world, Jim Totton, vice president for the company’s platform business unit, is surprisingly coy about mistakes the company has made and learnt from in the decade since it launched.

    Coming up to its 10-year anniversary in May, Totton is in Australia from the US to celebrate. However, discussing mistakes Red Hat has made over the years doesn’t appear to be on the agenda.

• Debian Family

  • Debian Project News – April 16th, 2012

    * Debian project leader elected
    * Registration open for DebConf12
    * Personal BSP initiatives
    * The state of Debian s390x
    * Interviews
    * Other news
    * Upcoming events
    * New Debian Contributors
    * Release-Critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release
    * Important Debian Security Advisories
    * New and noteworthy packages
    * Work-needing packages
    * Want to continue reading DPN?

  • Siduction 11.1

    Siduction 11.1 is a fork of the Aptosid distro. Siduction comes in KDE, Xfce or LXDe spins. You can get 32-bit or 64-bit versions of each spin. Siduction is based on Debian Sid and includes Linux Kernel 3.1-6 and X.Org server 1.11.2.902.

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Speed up your computer with Ubuntu

        Windows is great, but after a while, it can get cluttered up with too many programs and become intolerably sluggish. Backing up your files and reinstalling it can help, but an alternative is to try the free Ubuntu operating system. Ubuntu isn’t too demanding and can make even a lowly netbook seem sprightly compared with running Windows on it.

      • Job Posting Reveals Canonical’s Plans for Ubuntu Phone OS

      • Ubuntu wants to be your cloud and data-center Linux

      • Ubuntu/Canonical Goes Global

        Ubuntu GNU/Linux has been global on the web but Canonical/Mark Shuttleworth has a larger project in mind. So far they have created business relationships with most of the large OEMs and provided cloud services and content-distribution portals.

      • Ubuntu Phone OS Takes A Step Closer?

      • Canonical is not interested in the Linux kernel

        Two weeks ago a Linux Foundation report showed that since version 2.6.32, Microsoft had committed more code to the Linux kernel than Canonical. Since then, Canonical has faced claims from rivals that it does not contribute to Linux as much as it should given its popularity.

      • Adopt An ISO

        We need to ensure we get total coverage of our different ISO images; the different images that you can download and install from. Each of these images has a small set of mandatory tests that we need to run through to ensure everything is working. We want to ensure all of these mandatory tests are run so that we can find any problems before the release and get them fixed.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Installing Linux Mint 12

          Y’all should know by now that I’m a Linux user. I write in Linux, I game in Linux, heck, my house has been Microsoft-free for about three years and I’ve never looked back. (The only exception being my day-job laptop. I’m stuck with Windows there.) The only thing that really bugs me about Linux is the uncertainty of upgrades.

          I’ve been using Linux Mint for a while now. Since version 8, I believe, when I changed over from Ubuntu. I find Linux Mint more user friendly than just straight Ubuntu and this is important. I’m a very plug-and-play kind of person. I don’t want to sit around installing drivers and slogging away at software installs. I want to plug it in, turn it on, and have it work. When I installed Linux Mint 8 for the first time, it did just that.

Devices/Embedded

• Raspberry Pi $35 mini system starts shipping

  Raspberry Pi, the $35 Linux system about the size of a credit card, is fully baked and ready to eat… er, ship.

  The system was designed by a British nonprofit with the idea of encouraging people everywhere, particularly young people in developing countries, to become more interested in programming.

• First Wave of Raspberry Pi Units Arriving in Users’ Hands

• Delivery begins for first units of Raspberry Pi’s $35 Linux computer

• Raspberry Pi fetches over the odds on Ebay

• Conquered: Raspberry Pi Starts Shipping

  Free Software is resilient, Raspberry Pi has proven it again. After a month full of challenges and hurdles whether it be wrongly soldered LAN port or requirement of getting a CE mark the tiny devices are now shipping. For those who missed to order, the Raspberry Pi boards from RS and Allied are priced at £21.60 plus a shipping charge of £4.95 to any destination worldwide, plus VAT and import duty as applicable.

• Raspberry Pi Gets New Arch Linux ARM Build

• Phones

  • Android

    • HTC Golf Images Leaked To Press

    • Rooted Kindle Fire screenshot tour

      This screenshot tour was created to accompany DeviceGuru’s forthcoming post describing how we rooted and tweaked an Amazon Kindle Fire. The tour comprises more than 100 screenshots, which showcase the Kindle Fire’s standard homescreens and settings, the utilities and process we used for rooting and tweaking it, and the overall end result.

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Cisco Cius Android Tablets & AppHQ: At Cisco Partner Summit?

    When Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers and other executives take the stage at this week’s Cisco Partner Summit, The VAR Guy wonders: Will Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) executives be armed with Cius tablets? The answer to that question could reveal how Cisco is feeling about its purpose-built tablets, which run Google Android and leverage the Cisco AppHQ app store.

    Cisco Cius tablets don’t seek to compete in the consumer tablet market. Rather, the devices are designed for corporate executives who leverage unified communications and video applications. Cisco Partner Summit 2012 (April 16-19, San Diego), could provide a prime stage to update partners on the Cius.

Open Networking Foundation Set to Advance OpenFlow

One of the most exciting up and coming trends in the world of networking in the last few years has been emergence of Software Defined Networking (SDN). At the core of the SDN revolution is the open source OpenFlow protocol which has helped to define the entire SDN space.

Netflix to Open Source Army of Cloud Monkeys

Netflix Pledges to Open Source Its “Monkey” Cloud Utilities

Netflix open sources cloud tools in hopes to attract people

How will open source react to Microsoft?

The hits just keep on coming for the Android mobile operating system–albeit this time from European telecom vendors that are insisting the Linux-based operating system would help prop up the flagging Lumia smartphone sales… if only the Lumias ran Android instead of Windows Phone 7.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Mozilla Open Badges ships Beta release

Databases

• MySQL founder’s latest MariaDB release takes “enterprise” features open-source

  MontyProgram AB, the company formed by MySQL creator Michael “Monty” Widenius in the wake of his break with Sun Microsystems, has released the latest version of MariaDB, a “drop-in replacement” for MySQL built on the MySQL 5.5 codebase. MariaDB 5.5.23, which according to developer Colin Charles has “1.5 million additional lines of code compared to MySQL,” pushes forward the development of an open-source database with features that aim to match those of Oracle’s commercial-only MySQL releases.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice/OpenOffice//Calligra

• Open Source Office Apps: Calligra Suite vs LibreOffice

  For home and enterprise users alike, software like LibreOffice has made desktop Linux a whole lot easier. A reliable office suite is a key part of using a modern computer for most people. Given that important, it’s worth noting that a new Koffice fork has been developed. It’s called Calligra Suite.

  Unlike LibreOffice, which doesn’t reflect the styles of one desktop environment over another, Calligra Suite is based on Qt and was definitely designed with the KDE user in mind.

• Calligra 2.4 : Alternativa Open Source a Microsoft Office, LibreOffice ed OpenOffice

• Inserting Qur’an text in LibreOffice Writer

• OpenIndiana Is Still Around, New Update Coming

• oi_151a_prestable2 Release Notes

  It’s here at last! oi_151a_prestable2 AKA oi_151a3 is the third update since OpenIndiana 151a was released in September and the first since then to be available as freshly pressed ISOs.

BSD

• A look at FreeNAS 8.0.4

  A few weeks ago I asked if readers would be interested in seeing reviews of network-attached storage (NAS) projects. The feedback was really positive and so I present the first of what I hope to be a series of reviews covering NAS solutions. This week we will be looking at FreeNAS, a FreeBSD-based project sponsored by iXsystems.

  Before we get started I think it’s only fair that we address the question of why we might want to run a dedicated NAS operating system rather than a generic server system. For instance, this week we’re looking at FreeNAS, what motivation do we have for using it instead of FreeBSD or a popular Linux server distribution? The answer is largely one of specialization. People looking at network-attached storage are looking for a place to store files (usually a lot of files) and aren’t interested in other features a server operating system might provide. A NAS box will be focused on storing and transferring files, it’s probably not going to serve up e-mails or websites or provide DNS services. With that in mind, a NAS should come with all the tools we might need to easily add new disks, take snapshots, perform backups and, being focused on these tasks exclusively, it can cut out any extras, providing a lightweight solution.

Standards/Consortia

• Lib-Ray Video Standard: Using Google/On2′s VP8 Video Codec

Security

• Hacking IT systems to become a criminal offence

  Cyber attacks on IT systems would become a criminal offence punishable by at least two years in prison throughout the EU under a draft law backed by the Civil Liberties Committee on Tuesday. Possessing or distributing hacking software and tools would also be an offence, and companies would be liable for cyber attacks committed for their benefit.

Civil Rights

• Expert: New CISPA Bill Isn’t SOPA, But Still Attacks Constitutional Rights

  Congress’ latest attempt at a bill that affects the way people use the Internet has many scared, with some calling the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is “worse than SOPA,” the bill that caused widespread Internet outrage and blackouts before ultimately being shelved. Experts say the danger level associated with CISPA depends on the answer to one question: Which Constitution amendment do you care about more, the First or the Fourth?

Internet/Net Neutrality

• Web freedom faces greatest threat ever, warns Google’s Sergey Brin

  The principles of openness and universal access that underpinned the creation of the internet three decades ago are under greater threat than ever, according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

  In an interview with the Guardian, Brin warned there were “very powerful forces that have lined up against the open internet on all sides and around the world”. “I am more worried than I have been in the past,” he said. “It’s scary.”

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Demand for Linux Skills Sets a New Record This Month

ViewSonic, Userful partner on low cost, Linux Zero Client solution for schools

ViewSonic and Userful, which makes cloud managed Linux desktop virtualization, has announced a partnership to deliver a low cost zero client solution that enables schools and businesses to deploy three to four times as many computer users for the same cost. The MultiClient solution turns one Linux computer into 20+ high performance independent computer stations (with monitors, mice and keyboards) using the ViewSonic VMA line of zero clients and Userful’s MultiSeat software. It provides all the benefits of traditional thin client computing, but with higher performance, and lower costs.

Linaro’s DMZ for the ARMies

Linaro is leading ARM Linux unification efforts, according to its CEO, and the organisation is looking to lead the ARMies of chip makers in other areas of Linux development as well by acting as a safe “demilitarised zone” for the many ARM vendors that make up its membership.

ViewSonic, Userful partner on low cost, Linux Zero Client solution for schools

ViewSonic® and Userful Partner to Bring High Performance Ethernet and USB Connected Linux® Zero Client Solutions to Market

Cisco Updates Linux Powered Networking Gear

Cisco is now refreshing its Linux powered portfolio of network devices with new switches and wireless access points (APs). On the switch side is the new 500 series switching platform that will serve customers that don’t need an IOS powered Catalyst switch.

Desktop

• 20-million new Ubuntu Linux PCs in 2012?

  In less than two weeks, the latest version of Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux distribution, Ubuntu 12.04, Precise Pangolin, will be released. This new Ubuntu is looking good. How good? In a recent interview with Julie Bort, Canonical and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth said, “We expect to ship close to 20 million PCs in the next year.”

• Sandy Bridge based Chromebook demoed at IDF Beijing

  While the Chromebook hasn’t taken off in quite the way Google expected it to, OEMs are still working on them. Samsung demoed a Chromebook at this year’s IDF in Beijing that would have an “instant on” boot thanks to new Coreboot code, a Linux-based BIOS replacement that talks to the computers hardware. Why does Coreboot sound so familiar? Just last week there was news that Google added code to Coreboot for Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge processor support. Is that what was on display at IDF?

Server

• Five HPC Pitfalls (Part 2)

  Another misconception that extends far beyond HPC clusters is the notion that openly available software is free and therefore adds no cost to a cluster. Although the initial acquisition cost of open software might be nonexistent, software support and integration most certainly have associated costs. This time and effort has to come from either the user or a vendor and does not vanish because the software was freely available. In the case of HPC clusters, these costs can be quite substantial and are often the responsibility of the customer. If the customer takes the “learn as you go” approach to managing an open software stack, additional time and cost should definitely be expected.

Kernel Space

• Lighthorse Networks Announces Forensic Filesystem(tm) for Linux

• Linux Foundation: 75% of kernel development done by paid developers

• Miss our Collaboration or Legal Summits? Here are some resources

• Linux Kernel 3.x Support for Perle TruePort COM Port Re-director Utility

• Graphics Stack

  • A Massive Nouveau Code Push Happened Today

  • AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series Gallium3D Merged

    Even if you’re not a NVIDIA graphics customer and not interested in the state of the Nouveau driver and its big advancements today, there still is some Mesa Gallium3D news of importance to share. AMD has merged their Radeon HD 7000 “Southern Islands” Gallium3D driver to mainline.

Applications

• Proprietary

  • Endpoint Protector 4 Adds Linux Support

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Using iSCSI On Debian Squeeze (Initiator And Target)

  • Web Filtering On Squid Proxy

  • How To Simulate Network Devices Using SNMP Simulator

  • Nvidia 295.40 is available! Install in Ubuntu11.10/12.04, LinuxMint via PPA

  • Easy Keyboard Shortcuts for Web Pages

• Games

  • Unigine Engine Looks To Wasteland 2

    The Kickstarter-backed Wasteland 2 game that’s already had plans for a Linux client may be powered by the Unigine Engine.

    Last month word came out that Wasteland 2 would have a Linux client as the sequel to Brian Fargo’s original Wasteland game from two decades ago. Via the crowd-sourced funding on Kickstarter, Wasteland 2 has raised over 2.4 million US dollars to fund its development by Fargo’s inXile Entertainment company.

  • Out of the Park Baseball 13 ships

  • Shadowrun Returns: $1 million in pledges guarantee Linux port

  • Shadowrun Returns Will See Linux Support For $1m

  • New York Times Includes Open Source Mini-Game

    The New York Times has included a mini-game in one of its articles, published yesterday. The article, enititled ‘Just One More Game… Angry Birds, Farmville and Other Hyper Addictive ‘Stupid Games’, includes a mini-game just under the heading.

    The article concerns the ‘darker’ nature of video games. The pointless addictive nature of what the writer calls “stupid games”, which began with Nintendo, the Game Boy and Tetris, and currently, Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja.

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Try Calligra 2.4 for a New Microsoft Office Alternative

    Microsoft Office may be the dominant productivity suite in much of the computing world, but it’s not for a lack of alternatives.

  • KDE Commit-Digest for 8th April 2012

Distributions

• Dream Linux 5 – New and Different

  How about something different for a Friday? Dream Linux is a distribution which I was watching some time ago, but it seemed to stall at release 4 Beta 6. I was pleased to find recently that it is not dead or abandoned, as I had feared, but the developers had decided to go back and make a fresh start for Dream Linux 5. There is a Message to All on their web page which explains what they have done, and why. The Dream linux home page (note the .info domain) gives a lot more information, of course, and explains the two installation options, either a “Full Install” to a disk drive or partition, or a “Persistent Install” to an external flash storage device.

• New Releases

  • LPS 1.3.3

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • Mandriva’s Alive!

    Jean-Manuel Croset, Mandriva COO, said today that they’d like to get “the opinion and ideas of the community, as well as to feel how strong you are.” He says that the desktop distribution has been their foundational product and that its community is a necessary element of that.

• Red Hat Family

  • Oracle Linux and Virtualization: The Man Behind the Strategy

    Coekaerts’ 17-year track record at Oracle suggests the technology giant is very serious about the Linux and virtualization markets. But how serious? With a little luck, The VAR Guy will track down Coekaerts during a trip to California next week.

  • 10gen CTO Eliot Horowitz on the Rise of MongoDB, Partnering with Red Hat, and Hiring in a Talent Crunch

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Shuttleworth: Cloud Jobs Need Migration Help

        Enterprises are increasingly buying into the Cloud, but they need help in transferring their cloudy workloads between different providers and internal clouds.

        Canonical – which manages the Ubuntu Linux distribution – has run into this issue itself, as Ubuntu is a giant on public clouds. After solving the issues for its own internal use, it is now releasing for beta testing a cloud proxy product, dubbed AWSOME (“Any Web Service Over Me”) that will make cloud workloads more portable, by providing APIs for OpenStack, that are also common to Amazon’s EC2 and Amazon Web Services (AWS) public clouds.

      • Exclusive: Zipwhip to open source ‘Textspresso’ machine and release cloud texting for Ubuntu

        It’s a pretty nice dream. On your morning commute, you send a text message to the office espresso machine with your order for a double Americano and the warm mug is waiting when you get in.

        For Seattle-based cloud texting company Zipwhip, the dream is reality. Its engineers custom-built an espresso machine that takes orders via SMS using their own cloud messaging application. (Watch the video, it’s pretty sweet.)

      • Canonical Prepares Send to Ubuntu One Feature

      • Ubuntu Indicators To Be Refined For Ubuntu 12.10

      • Canonical Narrows Linux Focus By Dropping Kubuntu

        As Linux users look forward to the release later in April 2012 of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Canonical’s decision to cease sponsoring Kubuntu as an official Ubuntu variant has passed largely under the radar — a sign, perhaps, that Kubuntu’s user base is small. But as the first member of the Ubuntu family to lose official endorsement, where is Kubuntu headed? And more importantly, what does its departure mean for the Ubuntu brand as a whole? Read on for some analysis.

        Full disclosure: I’m writing this post from a Kubuntu system. Well, actually, it’s not pure Kubuntu, but it’s close enough — It’s an Ubuntu computer with the kubuntu-desktop package installed. I use the KDE desktop environment almost exclusively these days, because it just works in a universe where so many other Linux interfaces — namely Unity and GNOME Shell — still have a bit of maturing to do, to put it simply.

      • Ubuntu 12.04 will provide APIs to bridge Openstack and Amazon Web Services

        LINUX VENDOR Canonical will release an application programmable interface (API) to bridge the gap between Openstack based clouds and those that run on Amazon Web Services.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Hooray! Linux Mint Debian Edition Update Pack 4!

          Easter Weekend brought good news for Linux users. The much anticipated (by me, at least) release of Linux Mint Debian Edition Update Pack 4 arrived on Friday. After just a few days of testing and working with it, and installing it on just a couple of my netbooks, I would say that it is every bit as good as I had hoped it would be. The Update Pack Announcement gives a lot of good information about installation, so be sure to read it. In a nutshell the options are:

Devices/Embedded

• Raspberry Pi Passes Quality Control Tests

• Managing Network Content With a DIY Linux Router

• Raspberry Pi computers ready for delivery

• Phones

  • Nokia 306 manual hints at keyboard-free Asha handset

    The images show that the device can support multiple home screens, an Android-style notifications bar and pinch-to-zoom, but this could either be evidence of the S40 re-skin (codenamed “Sonic”) or, fancifully, the first appearance of Espoo’s Linux-based Meltemi OS for low-end phones.

  • Nokia Asha 306 user manual leaks, shows S40 copying some Symbian and MeeGo ideas

  • Android

    • Amazing Robots controlled by Android

    • New CyanogenMOD mascot Cid represents the maturation of an open-source brand

    • Custom Ice Cream Sandwich navigation buttons coming in AOKP

    • AOKP ICS Build 30 ready to download now [UPDATE: Build 31 already!]

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Google CEO Has His Eyes
    on Low-End Android Tablets

    Following Google’s strong earnings report this week, CEO Larry Page has provided one of the clearest glimpses yet of what his company’s Android tablet strategy will look like. Previously, TIME reported that Google may be focused on a co-branded 7-inch tablet in the $200 to $250 range, possibly based on the Asus MeMo 370T, for the July time frame. The Register has also noted that an Asus-based 7-inch tablet in that price range is likely from Google.

Machine Learning with WEKA: An Interview with Mark Hall

Syllable chalks up new release

Syllable, an attempt to write a desktop-focused operating system from scratch using best practices, has notched up a new milestone, with its developers releasing 0.6.7 today.

Friday Favorite: Audacity 2.0

Audacity, the venerable and much loved open source audio editor, has a 2.0 release today in versions for OS X, Windows and GNU/Linux.

Eaton touts open-source SDK as a boon to power management

UPS supplier Eaton has released a new open-source software development kit aimed at providing better accessibility and flexibility to users of its power management products.

RELATED: Cisco, EMC, VMware unite behind big data, cloud training initiative

Hervé Tardy, the company’s vice president and general manager of distributed power quality, says the ability to substantially modify the management software based on the specific needs of each client is a powerful upside to the firm’s technology.

Eaton Offers Customized Open-Source Software to Address IT Manager Power Challenges

Open Source Analytics News Service Debuts

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Flash and Java to be click-to-play in future Firefox

    After more than two years on the back burner, Firefox has finally introduced click-to-play (or “opt-in activation” in Mozilla terms) for all plug-ins, including Flash, Java, and Silverlight. Plug-ins are the single biggest cause of browser slow-downs and security vulnerabilities — and Chrome has had a similar feature for more than a year — so really, it’s about time Mozilla added this to Firefox.

  • Firefox To Require Permission For Plug-Ins

    Mozilla engineers are in the process of improving the security and speed of Firefox by implementing a permission switch for browser plug-ins.

  • Firefox gets click-to-play option for plugins

SaaS

• HP’s Converged Cloud Services: A Very Big Bet on OpenStack

• Why Open Source Is the Key to Cloud Innovation

  In the 25 years since Richard Stallman wrote the GNU General Public License, free and open source software (FOSS) have become pervasive in computing: Linux, Apache HTTP Server, MySQL and more can be found in large numbers of enterprises across the globe. And open source is now increasingly undergirding cloud computing as well.

  “Open source is certainly at the foundation in terms of building out cloud technologies,” says Byran Che, senior director of product management at Red Hat and responsible for its cloud operations offerings, management software and Red Hat Enterprise MRG, (Red Hat’s Messaging, Real-time and Grid platform). “If you take a look at market share in the server space, as you look at traditional data centers, about 70 percent are running on the Windows platform and about 30 percent are running Linux. As you take a look at what operating systems people are choosing to build applications on in the cloud, the ratio flips completely.”

• Red Hat and IBM sign on to OpenStack Foundation

• IT Consultants Build OpenStack Cloud Business Practices

• OpenStack Wins the Open Source Cloud

  Over the last two weeks there has been a whole lot of news about ‘open’ clouds. From my perspective though there is now one clear winner – OpenStack.

  As opposed to say Eucalyptus or CloudStack, OpenStack has one key item that those other two ‘open’ cloud efforts do not – THE SUPPORT OF EVERY MAJOR LINUX DISTRIBUTION.

• Open Source ownCloud Debuts Enterprise File Sync and Sharing

Databases

• MySQL Now Has Two User Conferences

  Oracle announced Thursday that it has launched MySQL Connect, a user-focused event to be held Sept. 29 and 30 in San Francisco, the weekend before Oracle OpenWorld.

  Oracle’s proclamation comes just before the Percona Live MySQL Conference kicks off next Tuesday in Santa Clara, California. It’s run by MySQL software vendor Percona.

• Twitter open sources its MySQL work

• Twitter open sources MySQL enhancements

• Twitter Makes Its MySQL Work Open Source

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• New Sun servers ‘best for Oracle applications’

CMS

• 13 Tips for Better Joomla CMS Security

  With the surging popularity of Joomla, it’s no surprise hackers are drawn to it as well. Don’t panic, however. There are a number of things you can do to strengthen your security and turn your Joomla website into a fortress. Read along as we show you how to guard against the most common exploits and hacks that this open source CMS faces.

Healthcare

• If the Other Shoe Drops, I Want Medicare

  More than five weeks ago, when some of my cancer markers were elevated, I began the process of bartering with the insurance company, doing the tests they said would be covered, and then coming all the way back to the start to finally getting the tests my doctors originally ordered. My full diagnosis and treatment considerations have been pending ever since, and that has given me time to think and to remember. Waiting, worrying, and wondering.

  It’s not that I believe every cancer is a death sentence. I certainly know that isn’t the case. I am a uterine cancer survivor. My mom is a two time breast cancer survivor. But I am 57 years old now — old enough to be an expensive liability in our society, especially if I get sick and need care, but too young to be covered by Medicare. If I face a serious illness like cancer again that costs me an awful lot in out-of-pocket expenses not covered by insurance and lost time from making the money we need for survival, I will doom my husband to struggles he doesn’t need and that are not his fault. Bad enough that one of us should be sick, there is certainly no need for me to take him down with the ship.

Business

• Semi-Open Source

  • ​Solid growth for Alfresco sees an expanding partner ecosystem

Finance

• Kitware Receives DoE Funding to Develop Application Suite

• OpenGamma launches first release of its open source risk management platform

Public Services/Government

• European public services must follow Iceland’s open-source lead

  The global economic crisis has triggered a series of unprecedented social and political upheavals that have left many governments on the brink of bankruptcy. The high volume of debts have engulfed even the most well-managed economies, triggering a chain reaction in which cuts to public sector spending have become inevitable.

  A high profile casualty of these consequences was Iceland, where a collapse in the banking system led to long-running financial and diplomatic crisis. Significantly, it has recently been announced that Iceland is set to swap its high-cost public sector proprietary software solutions in favour of open source alternatives. Strategists behind the move cited cost savings as a prime reason for the shift in solution and, to their credit, this is a perfectly logical reason for engaging with open source alternatives.

• Digital Native Government Agency Embraces The Power Of Open Source

• U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Gets Open Source, Publishes on GitHub

• Open Government is Go for Launch at NASA

  The new Open Government Plan, “Flagship Initiative,” is the creation of an “accessible, participatory and transparent web environment,” a goal reflected in the new site. Users are welcomed to a colorful, easy-to-read and easy-to-browse database of NASA projects and information — and they’re encouraged to comment on everything.

• NASA’s Open-Source Open Government Future

  NASA chose its website as flagship for a revamp of its open government plan rolled out yesterday, and — as if to show the agency meant business — did so with a brand-new, brightly colored buzzword-catcher of a website.

Openness/Sharing

• Agencies lay out plans for Open Gov 2.0

• Big Pharmas back open source drug discovery with money and molecules

  Call it crowdsourcing for cures. Fed up with outdated models for finding new treatments that have missed the mark, drugmakers and other public health stakeholders have ignited open source efforts that involve networks of companies and scientists joining forces to discover drugs. And one of the pioneering efforts of this ilk in India is moving ahead with a mid-stage trial for a drug against tuberculosis.

  India’s Open Source Drug Discovery unit, which uses an online infrastructure to connect more than 5,500 scientists and others, revealed late last month with the Global Alliance on TB that the anti-tuberculosis molecule will be investigated in a Phase IIb trial in India, Forbes reported. And the open source group has two more TB molecules in advanced preclinical testing that could eventually enter trials and combat the infectious disease, which kills about 400,000 people annually in India.

• Linux for Your Electric Car: Techies Create Open Source EVs

  Zero is the Apple of electric motorcycles. The Santa Cruz, Calif.,-based company’s bikes coast out of the factory in gleaming perfection with control software that has been optimized for safety and performance. And, as with iPhones, the source code remains a company secret. Gearheads who like to know every detail of how their machines work or want to modify them either have to jailbreak their devices or start from scratch. They can turn to outside sources but, again, the only option is to buy a motor controller kit from a company that has made all of the configuration decisions in advance.

• The Tumanako project looks to make electric vehicles open source

• Better EVs Through Open Source Collaboration

  “People who are into electric vehicles like to be able to tweak them to make them faster and to be able to fix them themselves,” says Philip Court, the director of Greenstage, an electric racecar developer in New Zealand.

• Boom in Nordic crowdsourcing takes in film, lawmaking

• How Open Source Drug Discovery Is Helping India Develop New Drugs

  Crowdsourcing can boast of many success stories today, but in 2008, when the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) launched such an effort for drug discovery, there weren’t many. Four years on, its Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) network is emerging as a cyber platform to garner resources for developing drugs that pharmaceutical companies don’t find attractive enough.

• The H Half Hour: Open source and evil genius

  A typical evil genius will attempt to conquer the world and keep his or her plans secret. As any reader of The H knows, that’s no way to build a culture of innovation within the evil genius community. The H was pleased, therefore, to talk to Simon Monk who has been using open source technology, like the Arduino, as the basis for a series of Evil Genius books for aspirant evil geniuses and other people who want to get building open source based gadgetry.

• Open Data

  • Wikipedia Loses Google Maps For Open Street Maps

• Open Hardware

  • Meet Raven II, the first open-source surgical robot

Programming

• Legit introduces alternate Git workflow

• Reasons Behind Popularity of Open Source Language for PHP Web Application Development

  PHP as an open source language has gained more popularity from PHP developers and PHP programmers because of its more interactive approach than HTML. Not only it is very fast, secure, economical, and efficiently manages the data but PHP codes can also be incorporated very easily. Moreover, another reason behind its popularity is that a web developer can download it free of cost and customize it according to the project requirements. Several business owners and big corporate are attracted towards PHP custom web application development due to its easy availability and flexible terms and conditions.

Standards/Consortia

• Open data center alliance, feds work on standardizing cloud, open government

Is Lobbying Closer To Bribery… Or Extortion?

We’ve certainly talked quite a bit about the institutional-level corruption of the way Congress and lobbying works, but a recent This American Life episode, done in partnership with the Planet Money team takes a much deeper dive into how lobbying works. You absolutely should listen to it. It’s really fascinating, even for folks who follow a lot of this stuff. There is also a full transcript, but hearing the whole thing is quite fascinating. Among the elements that are most interesting are the details of just how much time and effort goes into politicians raising money, and how the various fundraisers work.

Whatever happened to Unix?

Open Source Initiative cofounder Bruce Perens said that, thanks to Apple, Unix is more popular than ever. “We now have more Unix systems than we’ve ever had before. They are in our phones and our access points. I think if you actually set out to count, you could make a graph and show that Unix—if you define Unix as something that serves a POSIX I/O—that Unix is at its peak today,” he said.

“What’s the difference? We don’t care about the stuff the user doesn’t see. The user doesn’t see Unix. This is something I often have a hard time explaining to companies.”

And while one of the world’s largest companies—Apple—is based entirely on Unix kernels, that doesn’t mean Unix is on the cusp of a massive comeback. In fact, it would seem that the formal Unix market has essentially stood still in recent years.

Security

• Security vulnerability in NVIDIA’s proprietary Linux drivers fixed

• 0-day in Backtrack Linux found, patched

• Critical Flaw Found In WICD Component in Some Versions of Linux

  A critical security flaw has been identified in a component of the latest version of Backtrack, a popular version of Linux that is used by security professionals for penetration testing. The flaw is in WICD, an open source utility that can be used to manage networks in Linux operating systems.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Global Oil Production Update: EIA Revises Two Decades of Oil Data

  With the most recent release of international oil production data, EIA Washington has revised figures back to 1985. This is one of the most comprehensive revisions I have seen in several years. Generally, the totals were revised slightly lower, and this was especially true for the past decade. Data for the full year of 2011 has now completed. | see: Global Average Annual Crude Oil Production mbpd 2001 – 2011.

Finance

• Reno takes on Goldman Sachs

  Reno is suing Goldman Sachs, alleging fraud against one of Wall Street’s largest investment firms.

Censorship

• Tell Facebook: Withdraw Your Support For CISPA

Intellectual Monopolies

• Trademarks

  • Shut your kale-hole

    CHICK-FIL-A sells an average of nine sandwiches per second at its roughly 1,600 restaurants. Bo Muller-Moore paints T-shirts in the garage next to his house in Montpelier, Vermont. In 2011 Chick-fil-A’s sales were more than $4 billion; Mr Muller-Moore (pictured) estimates that his were $40,000.

    [...]

    They warned Mr Muller-Moore that they had successfully pressured other miscreants into dropping some 30 slogans, from “Eat More Dog” to “Eat More Music”. Their letter also alleged that Mr Muller-Moore’s “misappropriation of Chick-fil-A’s EAT MOR CHIKIN intellectual property…is likely to cause confusion.”