12.14.12

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Linux is Free and it Shows

  On Android you don’t bother which bootloader to load – grub or lilo, which DE to choose from – KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Blackbox (there’re a dozen others), how to set system initiation – systemd, sysvinit, innserv… how the sound and audio subsystems talk to the rest of the system, bla..bla..bla… Here these ugly system software work under the hood, users are unaware of it for a lot of good reasons. This is how the big G establishes order in an otherwise chaotic open source model of software development.

• Deadline looms for Linux Light project

  LAMP-powered Light project needs $700,000 kickstart.

• Web inventor to keynote at Linux conference

  The inventor of the web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, will be the fourth keynote speaker at the 14th annual Australian national Linux conference, the organisers announced today.

• Kernel Space

  • Good-Bye 386: Linux to drop support for i386 chips with next major release

  • Sorry Intel 386-DX/SX Owners, No New Linux for You!

  • Tux Themed Boots at Auchan in Poland

    They look pretty nice, costing around $20 for a pair. Unfortunately, there is no way to order them online. Anyone from Poland can hunt for them at a Auchan hypermarket though.

  • The Linux 3.8 Kernel Can Save A Lot Of RAM

  • Thunderbolt Support Still Has Problems On Linux

    While there were some initial problems with Thunderbolt support on Linux, most of the early problems with the new technology have been worked out with recent kernel updates. Unfortunately, some problems remain with this high-speed I/O interface.

  • Linux Begins To Support Windows 8 Multi-Touch

  • Linux Audio Driver Improvements On The Horizon

    The audio/sound pull for the Linux 3.8 kernel has been sent in and it features audio driver improvements, new capabilities, clean-ups, and more.

  • Graphics Stack

    • Radeon R600 Back-End Merged Into LLVM

      After being in development for the past year, AMD’s Radeon R600 LLVM back-end has been merged into the upstream LLVM code-base.

    • X.Org Server 1.13.1 Pulls In The Fixes

    • AMD R600g HyperZ Support Is Now In Better Shape

      It was just days ago that the R300 Gallium3D driver got HyperZ support fixed-up and was finally enabled by default for bettering the OpenGL gaming performance with the open-source Linux graphics driver. Now it looks like the newer R600g driver is getting into shape for properly handling ATI/AMD HyperZ.

• Applications

  • Nitro: A Beautiful Task Management App For Linux

  • A Slew Of Performance Improvements To Hit Compiz

    While publishing this morning was a large Ubuntu 13.04 OpenGL desktop performance comparison using six desktop environments and five different GPU/driver configurations, to result in 30 different data points for multiple Linux games, also announced today were forthcoming Compiz performance improvements. To land soon will be a number of performance enhancements for the Compiz compositing window manager.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Creating a book cover with Inkscape

    • corps: bespoke text codecs

    • Bash Script – Protect your server from DDos (Distributed Denial of Service) Attack

    • UI tags make Struts look good

  • Games

    • RuneSoft Releases Another Linux Game on Desura

      RuneSoft, a company that specializes in porting games to Linux platform, has released Cultures: Northland real time strategy game on Desura.

    • Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition: one step closer to Tux

    • Steam Linux to Launch Open Beta Next Week

    • Humble Indie Bundle 7 Will Be Worst Humble Bundle Ever For Linux

      Clarification — It seems that the Humble Botanical Bundle was originally referred to as “Humble Indie Bundle 7“. The games mentioned in this article are not accurate, rather the result of a drunken Google session and a “Jump To Conclusions” mat. Our apologies.

    • ‘Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition’ Coming to Linux

      Much awaited role playing game Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition will be coming to Linux platform.

    • Steam to become an Open Beta next week!

      Considering that it also has Steam Workshop support it will be easy to keep your games alive by easily accessing new mods, maps, game modes etc. I have already personally tested the “Aliens” mod for Killing Floor (based on the James Cameron film Aliens) and it’s pretty awesome give it a look here.

• Desktop Environments

  • Cinnamon 1.6 Improves Workspace Efficiency

    The Cinnamon Desktop is becoming more impressive with every passing update. This release is the product of over 600 changes. Linux Mint 14 is the first distribution to ship with 1.6. Cinnamon 1.6 gives users a more convenient workspace management interface.

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • SpaceFM Development Notes

      SpaceFM depends directly on bash, rather than just a general shell, so that custom commands and plugins are running in a well-defined, consistent environment. You can always use other kinds of script in SpaceFM, but the initial data integration is done with true bash.

      SpaceFM Dialog, a built-in feature of SpaceFM which allows custom commands to integrate dialogs into it (along the lines of zenity or yad), is also designed to have a predictable usage. Same for the socket commands which allow you to tap into and alter the GUI as its running.

      So overall, while SpaceFM may grow, or even its GUI toolkit or other key components may someday change, the goal is to provide a continuity to the user experience, and to honor the customizations the user has added. One big reason for this is that I am one of those users, and I don’t like having my stuff broken!

    • Testing GNOME 3 on family members

• Distributions

  • Archbang 2012.12 Review: Simple, light and fantastic

    My interest on Arch Linux is increasing with every passing Arch based distro review. Last week I used Bridge Linux and was fascinated by it. This week I spent considerable time in learning as well as using Archbang, another Arch Linux based operating system with Openbox window manager. It gave me performance comparable to Puppy Linux and I replaced my Lubuntu 12.10 installation with Archbang on my HP Pentium 4, 2.4 Ghz, 1.5 GB DDR RAM desktop. To say the least I am more than fascinated by its speed, versatility and ease of use.

  • New Releases

    • KDE Plasma And Applications 4.10 Beta 2 Out

    • Univention 3.1

    • Slax 7.0 released

  • Red Hat Family

    • RPM Fusion Now Available For ARM Based Devices

      RPM fusion is a unofficial RPM repository which hosts some of the restricted software that Fedora developers dont want to ship. Also, it contains some non-free software like Flash which are not available in Fedora official repos. Fedora is available for ARM devices, but unfortunately, there was no RPM fusion repo for ARM, so users couldnt listen to MP3 and other restricted formats. But from now on, you can add the repo to get non free codecs.

    • RHEV 3.1 – an overview about the new features

    • For Red Hat, Whitehurst changed his ways

      Having worked as operations chief for Delta Airlines (NYSE: DAL), Jim Whitehurst came to his role as CEO of Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) with the belief that he’d give directions and they’d be followed. That’s the take Whitehurst himself shared in a recent forum.

      But when he got to the open source company, he found that some of his orders were followed while others were not. “He joked that he told his wife that he thought he might have to fire many senior leaders due to insubordination,” writes Forbes blogger Peter High.

    • Red Hat and Citrix Named In Top 50 Companies to Work for in 2013

    • Fedora

      • New Fedora Magazine for Users and Developers

        Máirín Duffy blog today of a new Fedora magazine in the works for Fedora users and developers. The idea sprang from marketing brainstorming and a desire to revive Fedora Weekly News, or revamp it as a new online publication to promote Fedora. Two guesses what it run on…

        Actually, Duffy said that the new magazine has been set up on WordPress blogging software on top of an OpenShift server. OpenShift is a platform as a service by Red Hat. She then explained briefly the mechanics of that for those interested. The skeleton is currently located at http://wp-fedoramag.rhcloud.com, but one could safely bet they’ll secure a better addy than that soon enough.

  • Debian Family

    • Star Wars Christmas Light Show Powered by Raspberry Pi and Debian

      There’s no doubt that the Raspberry Pi is an amazing little PC, but its users continue to make up new ways to show the device’s might.

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu Advocacy Development Kit Packaged

        • BeagleBoard XM Powered File Server Using Ubuntu

          Single Board computers like Raspberry pi and BeagleBoard have found wide range of applications among DIYers. This post tells you how to install Ubuntu headless server on a BeagleBoard single board computer and then configure it as a File Server using Samba (almost like a NAS). BeagleBoard XM is an OMAP3 board and works very well an ultra low power file server for my LAN and serves all types of media to my HTPCs running XBMC and my Raspberry Pi powered digital picture frame. So here is how to do it.

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon Review Part 4

          • What To Expect From Linux Mint 15 (Cinnamon, Nemo Changes)

            Nemo (the target version for Linux Mint 15 is Nemo 1.8), the default Cinnamon file manager should get some new features as well, like an Actions API, disk management (with Mintdisk integration), a file preview feature and UI improvements (which include sidebar selection, independent path bar, better looking breadcrumbs and more).

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • Android

      • New Tricks for New (and Old) Android Phones

        There’s a new crop of Android phones out there — and a new set of hidden shortcuts to make using your phone even easier. And even if you have an older model, I’ll share my favorite tools to get you the same functionality you would get with a brand-new device.

  • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

    • An in-depth Nexus 10 review

      Google recently introduced its first 10-inch Nexus branded tablet, the Nexus 10, which boasts a stunning 2560×1600 (300ppi) IPS display and a slim/light/comfortable design. This in-depth review examines the Nexus 10′s hardware and user interface, and compares the Nexus 10 both to its smaller sibling, the Nexus 7, and to its 10-inch Android tablet competition.

    • Taiwanese manufacturers expect over 1 million Nexus 7 tablets to be sold in December

Free Software/Open Source

• Singapore needs Silicon Valley’s open source culture, says Meng Weng Wong of JFDI

• Video: a good year for open source in 2012

  Goldman Sachs reported late last week that Windows has gone from dominating 97% of the computing market to 20%.

• Limerick migrates to Zentyal’s open source email solution

  The city of Limerick, located in mid-west Ireland and, which at a population of about 110,000, is that country’s third largest city, has chosen Zentyal to migrate to an open source email solution.

  Zentyal is an open source solutions provider based in Zaragoza, Spain. Zentyal is the company’s main software offering, a server platform based on Ubuntu.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla Organizes Competition For Open Source Online Games

      Mozilla corporation has organized the Game on competition for web based games. The goal of this competition is to demonstrate the web as a platform for game development.

    • Mozilla announces animated themes are going away in Firefox 18 for the sake of performance

      Mozilla on Tuesday revealed that it is killing support for animated themes starting with Firefox 18. The company is blaming performance issues as the reason for the decision.

    • Firefox OS simulator hits v1.0 as launch looms

      Mozilla’s in-browser Firefox OS simulator has hit version 1.0, an important milestone in the race to launch day. The foundation and its partners are expected to start offering low-cost smartphones in select markets in the coming months.

    • First Firefox builds with H.264 support appear (really)

      Back in November I ran a story that Mozilla added support for H.264 video to Firefox Nightly versions. Turned out that this was not the case after all, but a case of the NoScript plugin blocking the detection on YouTube’s HTML5 player site.

• SaaS

  • EMC Joins OpenStack Foundation, Eyes Open Source Cloud Deployments

  • Open source Q&A: OpenStack Foundation board member, Tristan Goode

    OpenStack is a collection of open source software for building public and private Clouds. It can be used either by providers that want to deliver infrastructure as a service to customers or enterprises that want a private Cloud for on-demand, self-service provisioning of compute services for departments. The roots of the project, which launched mid-2010, lie in collaboration between NASA and Rackspace. Tristan Goode is the CEO of Aptira and the only Australian on the board of the OpenStack Foundation.

  • EMC joins OpenStack, likens it to Linux development

• Databases

  • MySQL 5.6 to ship in early 2013

    Oracle’s enhanced open source database will be ready for general availability in early 2013 and the company is working on a future version with a pluggable UI, more NoSQL options and revamped architecture for web and cloud computing,

• CMS

  • What’s New in WordPress 3.5

• Funding

  • BountyOSS: A Crowd Funding Site For Free Software Projects

    We have heard about crowd funding sites for software, games and sometimes hardware ventures too. Kickstarter, Indiegogo, etc are leading croud funding sites in the world today. However, the world missed a site just for Free Software. This is where BountyOSS fills the gap.

• BSD

  • Linux Jails in PC-BSD

  • FreeBSD news wrap up (10 December)

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Interview with Kovid Goyal of calibre

    In this installment, I interviewed Kovid Goyal, the creator and lead developer of calibre, via email.

  • GNU Press debuts GNU beanies!

    Keep cozy this winter in our navy blue beanies with GNU embroidered in white on the side. They are 100% cotton, and the embroidered GNU logo is 2.16″H x 2.6″W. Pair the beanie with our hoodies in either the Free Software Free Society or GPLv3 designs, and you’ll stay warm this winter while representing free software!

• Project Releases

  • VLC 2.0.5 for Linux Arrives with Many Changes

• Public Services/Government

  • Open Source, Limerick City Council

• Licensing

  • What open source licensing could learn from Creative Commons

    I have been a critic as well as an admirer of Creative Commons. Last year, here on opensource.com, I noted that the CC license suite, though inspired by open source licensing, was at odds with norms of libre culture licensing by embracing, under a single legal brand, form licenses that prohibit commercal use and creation of derivative works. The result, I complained, was “a general confusing dilution of the meaning of ‘openness’ in the context of cultural works” and confusion on the part of both authors and users of CC-licensed material. Creative Commons has recognized at least some aspects of this problem in the course of its work on the 4.0 license series. (For example, there has been an interesting recent proposal to relabel the controversial NC licenses with “Commercal Rights Reserved.”)

• Openness/Sharing

  • Open Data

    • Make your street an open street

      The Open Streets Project should be your first stop if you’re interested in entering the open streets game. This collaborative project aims to help document Open Streets projects (so add yours to the map!), connect activists working on these projects, and provide them with the tools, resources, and facts to make projects a success. Check out their guide, click through examples of projects in communities everywhere, and reach out to learn about best practices and get help with challenges.

Leftovers

• Science

  • Team Solves Mystery Associated With DNA Repair

    ust copy its DNA. Specialized proteins unzip the intertwined DNA strands while others follow and build new strands, using the originals as templates. Whenever these proteins encounter a break — and there are many — they stop and retreat, allowing a new cast of molecular players to enter the scene.

• Defence/Police/Aggression

  • MI6 and CIA under scrutiny after ‘rendition’ court cases

    Libyan dissident Sami al-Saadi (above) and his family have been paid a settlement of more than £2m by the British government after they were abducted and flown back to Tripoli – allegedly with the help of MI6 – where he was imprisoned and tortured by the regime of Colonel Gaddafi.

  • CIA ‘black jail’ interrogations were torture, European court rules

    He was “beaten severely” by masked men, stripped, “sodomised with an object” and placed in a “nappy”…

  • Op-Ed: German victim of CIA rendition wins case in European court

  • Report finds harsh CIA interrogations ineffective

    After a contentious closed-door vote, the Senate intelligence committee approved a long-awaited report Thursday concluding that harsh interrogation measures used by the CIA did not produce significant intelligence breakthroughs, officials said.

    The 6,000-page document, which was not released to the public, was adopted by Democrats over the objections of most of the committee’s Republicans. The outcome reflects the level of partisan friction that continues to surround the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other severe interrogation techniques four years after they were banned.

  • Drone Strikes Draw Congress’ Ire Over Lack Of White House Transparency

  • Congress outraged by the secrecy behind Obama’s drone war

  • Thirteen anti-drone protesters found guilty of trespassing

    Thirteen anti-drone protesters were convicted of trespassing Thursday night, and five were sentenced to two weeks in jail.

  • Drone protesters appear in DeWitt Town Court

  • The American Debate: Liberals quiet on drone war

    I’m amazed that so few Americans – most notably, so few liberals – have protested his secretive remote-control assassination program. Drones have killed roughly 3,000 people in Yemen and Pakistan, including collateral-damage civilians, but the actual numbers are secret. So is the process. We don’t know anything about the rules of engagement, how people wind up on Obama’s hit list, who reviews the evidence, and what criteria are applied to that evidence.

  • Drone strikes stir hatred of the U.S.

  • SLO drone manufacturer purchased by Lockheed Martin

• Cablegate

  • Media Oddly Silent on WikiLeaks Proceedings

    Some thoughts about Army Pfc. Bradley Manning’s pretrial hearing, which concluded this week.

    Manning, of course, is charged with leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the website WikiLeaks and, at his trial in March, will be pleading guilty to certain charges while rejecting the military’s contention that he “aided the enemy” in doing so.

  • Tomana to prosecute WikiLeaks suspects

    The leaked cables released minutes of meetings held by political leaders with US government officials where they divulged sensitive information about the country and their respective parties.

    Turning to another issue, Tomana vowed to continue prosecuting people arrested for allegedly insulting Mugabe saying the President was different from any ordinary citizen.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • At ALEC Meeting, Indiana Regulator Advises Coal Companies on Delaying EPA Climate Rules

    This is the case with the recent American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) meeting in Washington, DC. Leaked documents obtained by Greenpeace reveal that ALEC’s anti-environmental jamboree was inundated with coal money and featured an Indiana regulator advising coal utilities on delaying US Environmental Protection Agency rules to control greenhouse gas emissions and hazardous air pollution.

• Censorship

  • US and UK refuse to sign UN’s communications treaty

    The countries had objected to calls for all states to have equal rights to the governance of the internet.

    But the breaking point was the addition of text relating to “human rights”.

    It marks a setback for the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) which had said it was sure it could deliver consensus.

    “It’s with a heavy heart and a sense of missed opportunities that the US must communicate that it’s not able to sign the agreement in the current form,” said Terry Kramer the US ambassador to the World Conference on International Telecommunications (Wcit).

    “The internet has given the world unimaginable economic and social benefit during these past 24 years.”

• Civil Rights

  • Feinstein amendment doubles down on NDAA’s assault on constitutional rights

    (NDAA), which would have allowed for the indefinite detention of Americans without charge or trial…

  • “Nothing Can Justify Torture”: An Interview With Noam Chomsky on Obama’s Human Rights Record

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Belgian Newspapers Agree To Drop Lawsuit Over Google News After Google Promises To Show Them How To Make Money Online

      As we’ve been reporting, there’s been a movement underway in many countries to argue that something like Google News — which displays headlines, brief snippets and links to full news stories on newspapers’ own websites — somehow violates newspaper copyrights. This makes no sense logically, especially given just how much those same sites likely spend on “search engine optimization” to try to get better ranked in search engines. The only explanation for it that makes sense is the most obvious one: the newspapers are struggling to find ways to make money these days, and they see that Google is making a lot. Hence: come up with a plan to force Google to fork over some of that revenue. Of course, the very first to do this — years before Germany and France and others got into the game — was a group of Belgian newspapers who sued Google for sending them traffic. Amazingly, a local court agreed with the newspapers and told Google to pay up. Following this, Google removed those newspapers from its index, leading the newspapers to freak out and demand to be put back in.