01.27.11

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers
• Clip of the Day

GNU/Linux

• Desktop

  • Switching to Desktop Linux? 6 Ways to Ease the Migration

    One of the most common mistakes new desktop Linux users make is to give up too easily, often citing the frequently heard myth that “It’s too hard.” The truth, however, is that it’s just different. It may be difficult to remember at this point, but Windows took some getting used to, too.

    How can you make the desktop Linux migration process as easy as possible in your business? Here are a few suggestions.

• Kernel Space

  • Kernel Log: Coming in 2.6.38 (Part 1) – Graphics

    Kernel version 2.6.38 supports AMD’s new Fusion CPUs and offers 2D and 3D acceleration with many current GeForce and Radeon graphics cards. Power economy for the graphics cores in Intel processors and chip-sets has been improved; new page flipping features aim to eradicate image flickering, tearing and incomplete rendering issues.

• Applications

  • BlueGriffon: A New WYSIWYG Editor Which Supports CSS3 And HTML5

    BlueGriffon is a new WYSIWYG editor which uses Gecko, the Firefox 4 rendering engine for displaying the web pages. It’s cross-platform and runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX.

  • Y PPA Manager 0.0.5, Released

  • Introducing AppStream, Multi-Distro App Framework

    Recently in Germany there was a cross-distribution meeting among the major vendors (Red Hat, Canonical, Novell, Debian, Mandriva, etc) to discuss a common application installer for Linux and one unified application store / market-place. The goal would be to have a common user-interface for application installation, how/what meta-data to use, determine a defined protocol for non-static meta-data, and decide what meta-data to share across distributions. Fortunately, this was a very successful meeting.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How to force uninstall Ubuntu without difficulty?

• Desktop Environments

  • Five Best Alternative Window Managers for Linux

    GNOME and KDE are the most popular desktop environments for Linux by a mile, but they’re not the only games in town. If you’re ready to shake things up on the desktop, we’ve got five of the best alternatives for you to choose from.

    I’m using the term “window manager” a bit loosely in the headline because, well, it’s a headline. For the purposes of this round-up, I’m looking at the best desktop environment/window managers for Linux. What’s the difference between a desktop environment and a window manager? I’m glad you asked. Window managers do just that — manage placement and handling of “windows” in X. GNOME and KDE, for example, have default window managers (Metacity and KWin, respectively) but also provide a lot of features and applications that you won’t find with something like, say, FVWM or twm.

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

    • Nuno Pinheiro

      Nuno Marco Fernandes Pinheiro. Among other things he describes himself as an icon and UI designer, Oxygen coordinator, KDE member, freedom fighter, husband and dreamer.

    • KDE 4.6 released; ready to install in Ubuntu 10.10

    • Install KDE SC 4.6 In Ubuntu 10.10 (With Redesigned Activities System, Faster KWin)

  • GNOME Desktop

    • Selection in The Board

      Since I started dogfooding The Board on a daily basis, it became clear to me that not having a simple way to arrange multiple elements in the page is quite annoying. If you wanted to arrange multiple elements in a specific area of the page, you’d end up having to move each element separately, one by one. Argh! This is why I decided to focus on an initial set of features targeting this specific issue for the upcoming release.

    • GNOME Zeitgeist is NOT a file manager

      What’s wrong? Zeitgeist is not a file manager. The GNOME Activity Journal can be used to replace a file manager and do file manager-like things, but Zeitgeist is more than that. Check the official Zeitgeist website for details.

    • Zeitgeist For Gnome Shell Goes Public [Video]

      The code is now available for anyone who wants to try it out – for now there’s no GIT branch or such and instead, you must download an archive and replace the ~/gnome-shell/source/gnome-shell/js folder with the js folder from this archive.

    • First public GNOME Shell Zeitgeist efforts

      With the help of “magcius”‘s async work and other on the shell channel now I am ready to have people try out my work. Sadly I am shitty with Git, so for now I will upload my whole js directory for GNOME Shell and hope someone can help me clean it up. Tomorrow I will bug the ppl on #gnome-shell to help me create a patch out of it. This is how it looks like now…

    • Apologies to GNOME

      While I might not be the best developer around I do try to bring something new to the table and I do hope that GNOME can see it at some point. What started off as a GNOME project is now being endorsed by Unity, KDE and lots of small community projects. We worked on being a cross-desktop project with our roots in GNOME. I am not going to debate what needs to be changed in Zeitgeist to be more GNOME friendly (moving to git etc…) since its not fair for other deployments and not fair for us as developers who are used to our work environment. And while I might be the face of Zeitgeist the project has outgrown me and we have lots hackers and contributors around, so please feel free to get to know them.

• Distributions

  • Debian Family

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • The Natty Wallpaper contest – an important update!

        Two weeks into our wallpaper contest we’re seeing lots of really interesting entries for the photographic part. As those of you who read the previous post about the contest will know we’re also reserving at least three places this release for non photographic wallpapers. The plan _was_ to use another site to manage these entries. Unfortunately the dedicated community team working on this site have hit some issues with keeping it running and so we’ve decided to move all entries to Flickr. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank them for their hard work and we’ll explore this solution again next cycle.

      • Ubuntu 10.10 Software Center to add ratings and reviews in February

        Ubuntu 10.10 users will be able to rate and review applications within the Ubuntu Software Center come February, according the official wiki page timeline for the project.

      • User Days: Unity Q+A and other sessions

      • Creating an Ayatana for streamling development?

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Bodhi Linux Review – Incredibly Good, Lightweight, Very Minimal Ubuntu Derivative

          Bodhi Linux is NOT yet another Ubuntu based Linux distro. Bodhi Linux is among a very few number of Ubuntu based distros that run Enlightenment(E17) window manager instead of the popular alternatives like GNOME or KDE. I had never used anything other than GNOME, KDE and XFCE desktops before and I have to tell you, my experience with Enlightenment desktop has been a completely refreshing one.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • Nokia/MeeGo/Maemo

      • NewsFlow: Google Reader app for Nokia N8 / C7 / E7 / N900 and MeeGo

      • astSMSEvo – use FastSMS as virtual keyboard

    • Android

      • Google “not happy” with Android Market paid-app performance

        Google is “not happy” with the number of paid app purchases from the Android Market, with Android platform manager Eric Chu telling developers that the company had several strategies for driving app buyers in 2011. Speaking at the Inside Social Apps conference in San Francisco this week, Forbes reports, Chu confirmed that carrier billing would be extended beyond just AT&T, so as to remove the payment obstacle for more users, while in-app payments would also come sometime this quarter.

      • Android 3.0 Platform Preview and Updated SDK Tools

        Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) is a new version of the Android platform that is designed from the ground up for devices with larger screen sizes, particularly tablets. It introduces a new “holographic” UI theme and an interaction model that builds on the things people love about Android — multitasking, notifications, widgets, and others — and adds many new features as well.

        Besides the user-facing features it offers, Android 3.0 is also specifically designed to give developers the tools and capabilities they need to create great applications for tablets and similar devices, together with the flexibility to adapt existing apps to the new UI while maintaining compatibility with earlier platform versions and other form-factors.

      • Google Announces Android 3.0 “Honeycomb” Platform Highlights

        Google just announced the Android 3.0 Honeycomb platform highlights which include tons of new features such as a new “holographic” UI theme, an interaction model that builds on multitasking, notifications, widgets, and many others.

Free Software/Open Source

• What does Google’s management change say about the open source way?

  A few questions for you:

  * Will Larry Page use open source principles to lead Google from a bureaucratic culture back toward a more entrepreneurial culture?
  * Does the disagreement over the China decision show that Page and Brin have a commitment to openness that Schmidt does not have?
  * Do you think Google is better off staying committed to openness, or would the company become even more innovative if they moved closer to the direction of Apple?

• Events

  • [lca-announce] lca2011 – BoF Details

• Web Browsers

  • Chrome

    • Living on the web with the Chrome Web Store (and the Cr-48!)

  • Mozilla

    • Firefox 4.0 Beta 10

      RPM of the tenth Beta of next major version of Mozilla Foundation browser is available in remi repository for Fedora >= 10. Available for 76 locales.

    • Towards Browse-Based Browsing with Home Dash

      If you’re already running the latest Firefox 4 Beta, you can immediately try out Home Dash without restarting Firefox. You can leave feedback in this Google Groups thread and check out the source on GitHub.

    • The new Socorro

    • WikiLeaks barrister Geoffrey Robertson receives NY Bar Association award, warns US

      While accepting an award for distinction in international law and affairs from the NY Bar Association, Geoffrey Robertson, who will defend Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at his extradition hearings in London in February, warned that the United States “risked irrevocable damage to its reputation if it pursued Assange” by “aiming the blunderbuss of its 1917 Espionage Act, death penalty and all, at a publisher who is a citizen of a friendly nation,” according to the The Age: US told to drop Assange pursuit.

    • Robertson accepts US law award with warning to back off Assange

      GEOFFREY ROBERTSON, QC, has been given an award by the New York Bar Association – but used his thank you speech to deliver a broadside to the US, warning it risks its reputation as a ”bastion of free speech” if it continues to pursue Julian Assange.

      Accepting the award for distinction in international law and affairs, Mr Robertson joked about Sarah Palin ”shooting from the lip” but seriously cautioned the US legal fraternity against ”aiming the blunderbuss of its 1917 Espionage Act, death penalty and all, at a pub- lisher who is a citizen of a friendly nation”.

• Oracle

  • Oracle fails to keep Hudson creator’s trust

    The dispute between Oracle and the Hudson community over control of the open source continuous integration (CI) software has become more divisive as Oracle says it does not plan to give up its ownership of the trademark. Oracle’s Ted Farrell, chief architect for tools and middleware, said in a blog posting that Oracle was intent on retaining control of the trademark “to ensure stability and consistency to Hudson users”. He also proposed that anyone who took the hudson-ci.war, the core library of Hudson, unmodified, could call the result Hudson even if it was shipped with “as many extensions and plugins as you like”. But, if the core library of Hudson was a modified version of Oracle’s definition, then a developer would have to change the name to something else.

  • First release of LibreOffice arrives with improvements over OOo

    The Document Foundation (TDF) has announced the availability of LibreOffice 3.3, the first official stable release of the open source office suite. It introduces a number of noteworthy new features and there are improvements throughout the included applications. More significantly, the release reflects the growing strength of the nascent LibreOffice project.

• CMS

  • Basque Parliament using Drupal

    The Basque Parliament has recently replaced a portion of its older site with a new Drupal site that can be seen at http://www.parlamentovasco.euskolegebiltzarra.org.

    This continues the trend of various government bodies around the world using Open Source software — and especially Drupal to power their official websites.

  • The Open Source Advocate Who Became Minister

    Slim Amamou is one of the main figures of the Tunisian Open Source community, first arrested for his activism against the Tunisian regime during the last revolution, later appointed as Minister of Youth after the Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali’s fall. Issa Mahasneh asks in this blog post: “Should the Arab World need revolutions to have Open-Source-friendly ministers?”.

• Government

  • IT’S MANDATORY: Govt forces open source option

    In a statement published on AGIMO’s blog, Gary Gray — the Special Minister for State who oversees the agency — said the Government’s previous policy on open source, established in 2005, was one of “informed neutrality” — meaning agencies did not favour open source or proprietary solutions by default, but picked the technology which represented the best value for money and fit for purpose

  • Government Moves to Actively Consider the Greater Use of Open Source Software

    The Government’s previous policy, established in 2005, was one of ‘informed neutrality.’ This meant that agencies took an unbiased position that did not favour open source or proprietary software and procured the solution that was the best ’value for money’ and ‘fit for purpose’ for their specific requirement. Since then, there has been an increase in the maturity of the open source software products and the use of open source software by governments around the world. In recent years, many governments have revised their policies to increase the adoption of open source software.

    This revised Australian Government policy on open source software will ensure that we maintain international best practice and that our purchases of software will continue to reflect best value for money for the Government.

• Openness/Sharing

  • State of the Union: Is collaboration boring?

    Many pundits were disappointed last night because collaboration doesn’t make good TV. Conflict is much more interesting to watch, if the success of Jersey Shore is any indication. Collaboration means working together towards a common goal. While collaborators may not agree on everything, they generally do agree that the goal is worth compromises on all sides. That’s how democratic government ideally should work.

  • Transparency In The SOTU

    President Obama’s mentioned several of Sunlight’s core issues in his State of the Union Address issues last night. A closer look at what he said, and what he said last year, helps to sort out the rhetoric from the reality.

  • Open Data

    • Data markets aren’t coming. They’re already here

Leftovers

• Royal Household faces the fax

  The mainstream press is all a flutter that the wedding invites to Prince William and Kate Middleton’s nuptials were sent out by fax.

  However what the great unwashed might not understand is that the Royal Household treats technology with some suspicion.

  In the early 90s, I worked briefly for her Majesty in Windsor Castle, and I was present when the first fax machine arrived in the office. Since I was the computer bod I had it sat next to my desk and was the only one who ever used it.

• Awesome Foundation offers cash for crazy ideas

  Melanie Redman, Rich Cooper, Matt Thompson (holding paper bag), Linda Read, (in green) Eric Boyd, (redhead) and Karl Lee, (foreground) are trustees of the Awesome Foundation’s Toronto chapter. They are six of the 10 people who will donate $100 each to the paper bag grant each month, which is bestowed on the creator of an “awesome” idea, with no strings attached.

• Intel wins EU approval for McAfee deal

  Intel’s acquisition of data security firm McAfee Inc cleared its last major hurdle after EU regulators approved the $7.68 billion deal on condition Intel grant rival firms access to its technology.

• Bush Officials Illegally Used Taxpayer Dollars to Engage in Electioneering

  Most of the abuses occurred in 2005 and 2006, as “Bush’s advisers were anxious about the looming midterm electoral losses that would hand control of the House of Representatives to the Democrats,” according to the Post. Conveniently, around that time, officials all of a sudden needed to take a lot of official business trips to key battleground states such as Ohio and Connecticut. What a coincidence.

• Vision: How We Can Beat Conservatives With Progressive Culture

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this. In the dark days following George W. Bush’s re-election, frustrated progressives set out to build an enduring movement that would effectively advance and communicate their ideas, policies, and values. Funders and strategists created new institutions and scaled up existing ones, including think tanks, civic-engagement organizations, and media-watchdog groups. These institutions played a key role in the 2006 Democratic takeover of Congress, the 2008 election of President Barack Obama, and the passage of parts of the Obama platform in 2009 and 2010.

• Science

  • Ancient puzzle gets new lease of ‘geomagical’ life

    An ancient mathematical puzzle that has fascinated mathematicians for centuries has found a new lease of life.

    The magic square is the basis for Sudoku, pops up in Chinese legend and provides a playful way to introduce children to arithmetic. But all this time it has been concealing a more complex geometrical form, says recreational mathematician Lee Sallows.

• Health/Nutrition

  • Does the DH have faulty genes when it comes to running big IT schemes?

    Before David Nicholson was formally appointed Chief Executive of the NHS in 2006 he was warned that the NPfIT would be an important part of his brief.

    He accepted the challenge and was later appointed the NPfIT’s Senior Responsible Owner,

    To his credit he tried almost immediately to move the NPfIT away from a centralised programme. In 2006 he set up the NPfIT “Local Ownership Programme”. But the NPfIT continued to be dominated by its centralised contracts – which were signed long before Nicholson’s appointment.

• Security

  • Security advisories for Wednesday

  • The wrong kind of sharing: Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page hacked

    Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page has been hacked by an unknown person who posted a status update suggesting that the site should let people invest in it rather than going to the banks.

    The page belonging to the 26-year-old Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder who was named Time’s Man of the Year in 2010, was hacked some time on Tuesday.

• Defence/Police/Aggression

  • RCMP tried to ‘smear’ kicked man: advocate

    The B.C. Civil Liberties Association wants Kelowna RCMP to explain their actions in the wake of an excessive force scandal involving one of their officers.

    Unsubstantiated allegations were made in the media against Buddy Tavares after video became public showing the Kelowna man being kicked in the face by an arresting RCMP officer on Jan. 7, said association executive director David Eby.

• Cablegate

  • Bradley Manning situation exposes wanton homophobia of those on the right

    But that is the point. Everything is pure speculation to this point. No one knows what exactly Manning did or why he did it. The only thing that we knew was that he was a possible suspect.

    To spin a theory that simply because Manning was gay he leaked secrets in order to attack the military’s DADT policy is an irresponsible stretch. And to demonize the lgbts, who have served and continue to serve bravely, for Manning’s alleged actions – without even waiting to confirm his guilt – is beyond irresponsible. It’s disgusting.

    But it’s business as usual with these folks. And that’s even sadder. Those who bear the standard of decent journalism (Loesch) or the standard of “true Christian values” (Family Research Council, Kincaid, Fischer) should aspire to higher ground rather than to the level of pigs in the mud.

  • GlobaLeaks Wants To Be The Bittorrent To WikiLeaks’ Napster

    WikiLeak-alikes are popping up around the globe, from regional sites focused on the Czech Republic to Indonesia. Even mainstream media like Al Jazeera and potentially the New York Times are getting in on the secret-spilling action. But few of these copycats and spinoffs can claim quite as much wild, conceptual ambition as an early-stage project called GlobaLeaks, which bills itself as “a worldwide distributed leak amplification network.”

  • Inside The Bahnhof Bunker, Home Of Wikileaks’ Servers

    If you’re going to reveal a quarter of a million diplomatic cables that one of the most powerful governments in the world doesn’t want you to reveal, you’re gonna need secure servers. Bahnhof AB, a firm that offers hosting on its servers, is housed in a former bomb bunker drilled into the White Mountains of Sweden.

  • “KGB Tactics Being Used on Pfc Bradley Manning are Obscenely Un-American they are also wholly Unconstitutional and Unlawful”

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Dubai’s artificial islands “sinking”

    Dubai’s “The World,” a collection of artificial islands designed to resemble a map of planet Earth, is reportedly sinking back into the water.

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • News Corp. Admits Fox “News” Is Biased

    Buried deep in a 216 page report News Corp. submitted to the U.K. government earlier this month is an unusual acknowledgment from the company: News Corp.-owned Fox News is “opinionated news.”

    The description flies in the face of what Fox News executives have been telling U.S. audiences and advertisers about the channel for years: that while certain Fox News shows like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity have an editorial slant, a significant chunk of programming — 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. — is objective news.

  • Even Rich People Losing Faith in Business, Gov’t and Media

    Again, there’s nothing surprising about these findings. An inherent distrust of government is part of the American creed, we lionize business in a way that the citizens of other advanced countries do not, and especially since the 1980s, the corporate right has relentlessly emphasized that “free enterprise” is good and government is the problem.

• Censorship

  • how to log in to blocked twitter in egypt

• Privacy

  • House Subcommittee Revives Mandatory Data Retention Debate…With a Surprise Attack on EFF

    This morning, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security held a hearing on mandatory Internet data retention, once again reviving the debate over whether Congress should pass legislation to force ISPs and telecom providers to log information about how users communicate and use the Internet. The hearing, awash with rhetoric about targeting Internet crime and including an unexpected condemnation of EFF’s privacy advocacy, was purportedly an information- and fact-finding hearing to explore the issue of data retention and consider what Congress’ role should be. However, it’s already clear where the new House Judiciary Chairman, Representative Lamar Smith, stands on the issue: he introduced data retention legislation just last year and likely will do so again this year.

• Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Netflix: ISPs who charge by the gigabyte are ridiculous

    Some ISPs want to start charging customers by the gigabyte, or they want to set low data caps and charge overage fees. Netflix has a word for this idea: ripoff.

  • Canada wages YouTube war against metered Internet billing

    Canadians can’t stand going without coffee. Even worse? Not having a team in the FIFA World Cup event for 2014. Absolutely unthinkable, say eight of ten Canadians.

    But you know what they really hate? Metered Internet pricing, or Usage Based Billing (UBB) as they call it—letting the dominant Internet Service Providers charge broadband subscribers and smaller competitive ISPs by the quantity of data use.

  • Bell Canada is Terribad Part Two

    You guys made a billion dollars in Q3 last year, yet you employ DEEP PACKET INSPECTION to ARTIFICIALLY LIMIT THE SPEED OF MY INTERNET. That’s how Hell Canada made so much money, and then they bribe and lobby politicians so that YOU CAN MAKE EVEN MORE!

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Red State’s Kevin Smith marches on with his loyal legion of fans behind him

      It was a surprise. He’d previously promised that a live auction for Red State’s distribution rights would happen right there in theatre, and the audience anticipated a spectacle. But following a short bit of theatre led by the film’s producer Jon Gordon, the pair sold the rights to themselves for $20.

    • Musical Chairs At The Major Record Labels

      The one thing that the major record labels could really use at this point is an injection of new blood from folks who actually understand technology and where the market is headed. There are a few such folks out there, but they seem few and far between. Instead, it appears that the major labels are simply playing musical chairs at the top.

    • Movie Studio Tells BitTorrent Users: Turn Yourselves In!

      A movie studio that filed suit against file-hoster HotFile and 1000 of their users recently has revealed their latest plan to extract money from file-sharers. Unlike untold numbers of their competitors who sue people first and then demand cash payments, Liberty Media want file-sharers to be proactive. That’s right BitTorrent users, it’s time to repent. Hand yourselves over to this movie company and make sure you have $1,000 with you.