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10.29.11

Attachmate/Novell/SUSE Do Not Complain About Microsoft Abuses

Posted in Novell at 11:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Palladium 2.0

Old boots

Summary: UEFI draws complaints but not from Microsoft Linux and its patrons

SUSE is sponsored by Microsoft to solidify a ‘Linux tax’ on servers running GNU/Linux. This causes all sorts of issues in the so-called ‘community’ which got labelled “OpenSUSE” and a SUSE employee discusses the issue (as Attachmate staff, not a community member). To quote:

On the openSUSE Factory mailing list a bikeshed was started talking about how ‘SUSE controls openSUSE’ (see my earlier blog about bikesheds).

The parent company is all about proprietary software (Attachmate has no free/open source products) and the products it inherits from Novell are the same [1, 2, 3].

We find it quite telling that amid the submission of two whitepapers about Microsoft’s UEFI abuses [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] Novell/Attachmate/SUSE are nowhere to be found. Canonical, which is much smaller, got involved and so did Red Hat, obviously. To quote a good report from SJVN:

The Linux Foundation and friends are working on using UEFI so that computers can be both more secure and give users freedom of operating system choice instead of using Microsoft’s secure boot plan to lock users into Windows 8.

Notice the UEFI complaint. Novell is not in it and Attachmate is also absent. Well, we put some links about this whole story yesterday, but we did not address the angle about Novell’s absence. Here are some more reports:

  • Linux Foundation, Canonical and Red Hat Weigh In On Secure Boot

    There’s been some hubbub lately about Secure Boot, a hardware-verified, malware-free operating system bootstrap process that aims to improve the overall security of computers. Part of the UEFI specification which is slated to replace the aging BIOS with which many of us are familiar, Secure Boot can forbid the loading and execution of unsigned operating systems. Microsoft is requiring that Secure Boot be activated and enforced for any OEM systems that want to use the ‘Designed for Windows 8′ logo. The nature of the technology, and Microsoft’s recommended implementation of it, could remove control of the overall system from the end user, and in this configuration Secure Boot may prevent Free Software operating systems from loading.

  • Making UEFI Secure Boot Work With Open Platforms
  • Canonical and Red Hat Join Forces to Stop Secure Boot

Novell/SUSE must be too busy in bed with Ballmer. This is again why we encourage people to ostracise them. It helps the “real” vendors of GNU/Linux. █

Apple’s Products Are Far From Perfect

Posted in Apple, Asia at 11:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

jewel

Summary: Quality-wise and freedom-wise Apple’s products tend to suck (a lot of battery power) if not explode in people’s faces

THE problems with Apple were discussed here yesterday and also explored here over the years. To replace Microsoft with Apple is to replace proprietary with proprietary. It’s like voting for one of the two dominant political parties in the UK or the US. Despite differentiation, none serves the users or the citizens; they serve power. Richard Stallman makes an additional careful remark about Steve Jobs the aggressor, stating that “Jobs saw how to make these computers stylish and smooth. That would normally be positive, but not in this case, since it has the paradoxical effect of making their controlling nature seem acceptable.

“To replace Microsoft with Apple is to replace proprietary with proprietary.”“Jobs’ death inspired a flood of articles lauding him for these very devices. That further increases their potential for harm, which is why now more than ever we must focus attention on it. We must not let secondary considerations about Apple or Jobs distract us from this threat until we have thwarted it.”

Stallman has also criticised Android for legitimate reasons. There is no hypocrisy there. Android is likely to continue gaining at Apple’s expense, especially because Apple lost its ability to make reliable products. First it was antennagate and now this:

Last week I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with my new iPhone 4S, as I relied upon it for email, web browsing, and Twitter. It was not a completely satisfactory experience. And it wasn’t because it sucked down the battery like its life depended on it (which, of course, it did). Over the course of an hour when the phone was supposedly idling its charge would drop 20 percent and the thing ran hot.

This one at least does not necessarily explode. Peter Köhlmann writes in USENET that “they’re just using it wrongly. Apple are synonymous with perfection and you have to align your usage with that in mind.”

“This is why Asia-based companies are winning market share share at Apple’s expense, as gradually they become more independent from that American branding company.”“I am certain that someone at apple will tell the world how to hold it correctly to use less power,” remarks another poster sarcastically (referring to the antenna blunder). We wrote about that at the time.

Apple does not make those batteries. Apple buys these and it clearly does not know how to use them (Microsoft has the same type of problem). This is why Asia-based companies are winning market share share at Apple’s expense, as gradually they become more independent from that American branding company. █

Links 29/10/2011: Google TV 2.0, Orion 0.3

Posted in News Roundup at 7:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • People see and want but then don’t.

    Then there is Linux. It makes no promises, it offers no excuses. It is what it is and you can take it or leave it. Linux has it’s beauty spots and it’s warts and they are both out there, side by side, for all to see. Linux has features that windows users see and they exclaim “I want this on my computer!” They claim this quite emphatically, sometimes even going so far as to actually installing Linux and using it for a while.

  • 20 years of Linux: Looking back, forging ahead

    In the larger scheme, however, Linux is arguably one of the most influential technologies of our time. It’s providing the backbone for tech applications that are changing the way the world works and plays. The most powerful computers in the world use it to crunch complicated algorythms. Linux has paved the way for companies’ move of information into “the cloud” and for the general spirit of collaboration that has fueled everything from social networking to Wikipedia.

    This year, Linux turns 20. The computing community is celebrating the anniversary of the date when Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds released Linux to the world, looking back at Torvalds’ vision for modern computing and looking ahead at some of the ways Linux might change business in the future.

  • Hanging on by their fingertips – the last bastion of the proprietary-ware industry

    Want to watch a Blu-ray on your PC? That’ll be £50 please. Simon, for one, is fed up of this game. Join him as he looks at one of the many wheezes the proprietary software and hardware industry are still trying to pull…

    I’ve just opened up my e-mail mailbox, to be greeted by press releases for another round of product announcements. The one that caught my eye, as it does every year, is the release for another piece of DVD playback software. In this case, it’s Corel WinDVD Pro 11, although it’s not the only offender. And if you’re looking for an example of the wheezes the proprietary hardware and software industries pull, then look no further.

  • Desktop

    • Desktops – the final Linux frontier

      Linux Inside Where will you find Linux … Inside your phone? In your car? In your living room? Open Source Software has long been at home in the data center, providing the engine to drive everything from web servers to high performance computing to Cloud. Its versatility, combined with low cost and massive community are pushing it out of the raised floor and into your pocket.Let’s take a look inside a typical consumer router as an example. Chances are, you’ll find Linux at the core.

    • Canonical and Dell Push Ubuntu PCs Into China

      Ubuntu has found some new horizons in China. In a post on Canonical’s blog, it was announced that Canonical and Dell will bring PCs loaded with Ubuntu to the Chinese market. According to the post: “The stores will feature Ubuntu on a range of Dell computers, and will carry branded marketing collateral in-store, trained staff positioning the benefits and advantages of Ubuntu to consumers and will be supported by a retail team of Ubuntu merchandisers, set up to support the stores. The work was carried out by the Canonical teams based in Beijing and Shanghai, working with Dell China.”

    • Ubuntu Gets Retail Shelf-Space In 220 Retail Stores In China

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Distributions

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Top 5 Android Launchers Worth Trying Out
        • Android smartwatch smackdown!

          Two startups are about to go “chrono y chrono” with competing Android smartwatch gizmos. The “I’m Watch” exclusively targets smartwatch applications, whereas the “WIMM Platform” is meant to create “a new market of connected wearable devices that deliver timely, relevant information at a glance” — of which smartwatches are but one example.

        • Google TV 2.0 gains Honeycomb, Android Market

          Google unveiled Google TV 2.0, which will roll out on Sony TVs and Logitech Revue boxes Oct. 30. Featuring Android 3.1 (“Honeycomb”), the upgrade includes a revamped interface featuring a new customizable home screen and app shortcuts, provides hundreds of Android Market apps, and offers improved search for TV and YouTube, says the company.

        • Droid Razr goes on sale as Mot unveils Fire XT smartphone

          Motorola Mobility and Verizon Wireless began selling the Droid Razr Android smartphone on pre-order for $300, with shipments promised by Nov. 10. Meanwhile, a 3.5-inch Motorola Fire XT Android smartphone was announced in Italy; Motorola Mobility announced strong third-quarter earnings of $3.3 billion; and more evidence piled up regarding an imminent release of two Motorola Xoom 2 tablets.

Free Software/Open Source

  • To the Surface: Great Open Source Projects That Don’t Make the Headlines

    Here at OStatic, we regularly do posts designed to surface unsung but very impressive open source projects. Occasionally, an early look at any one of these unsung projects leads to ongoing coverage. For example, this site broke the news about the Eucalyptus cloud computing project at U.C. Santa Barbara long before there ever was the commercial entity Eucalyptus Systems. If you’re looking to expand your open source arsenal with some tools you’ve never heard of, here are some good resources.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS

    • Demand for Ruby, Hadoop and HTML5 rockets, C devs still best paid

      Demand for Ruby, Hadoop and HTML5 developers jumped this year, with jobs requiring those skills increasing 70 per cent compared to the same period in 2010, according to a survey of the tech jobs in London by recruiters Adzuna. Adzuna collated every tech job advertised for London last month, a total of 100,000. HTML coders are still the most in demand, but also the most poorly paid – both at entry and top levels.

    • First OpenStack cloud now open for business

      Managed-hosting provider turned cloud provider Internap now has an OpenStack-based cloud ready for public consumption, beating even OpenStack founder Rackspace to the punch. It’s a big day for OpenStack, the open-source cloud computing platform designed to rival VMware and create competition for Amazon Web Services, but it’s likely only the first of many.

    • First commercial OpenStack-based cloud compute service announced

  • Databases

    • Neo Launches NoSQL Graph Database

      NoSQL type databases have become increasingly popular over the last several years as a way to deliver better scalability and performance. There are a number of different types of NoSQL databases, including a graph database structure, which is what open source startup Neo Technology is all about.

      Neo Technology is the lead commercial sponsor behind the open source Neo4j NoSQL database. This week the company is launching its Spring Data Neo4j 2.0 release, bringing the database to the popular Spring Java framework. The company has also just completed raising $10.6 million in Series A funding.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • New LibreOffice Extension Website Live

      Have you heard about those great LibreOffice extensions but have had a problem locating them? Well, those extensions (and templates) are going to be easier to find now thanks to The Document Foundation’s new online repository.

  • Business

    • Digium Cranks Open Source Asterisk to 10

      I make no apologies for being a huge fan of the Asterisk open source PBX project. I’ve been a user since the 1.0 release, which is coincidentally the first time I ever wrote about the project, all the way back in 2004.

    • Digium Confirms Asterisk 10 Release, Media Engine Gets Makeover

      Digium Thursday confirmed the release of Asterisk 10, the latest version of the 12-year-old Asterisk open-source telephony platform that’s slowly but surely gaining traction in the broader telephony market.

      Digium, which is Asterisk’s primary developer, announced the release in line with this week’s AstriCon conference in Denver. According to Digium, the freely available Asterisk platform has seen millions of downloads in the past few years, including 2 million in 2010 alone.

  • Project Releases

    • Announcing Orion 0.3

      The Orion project is pleased to announce the availability of its 0.3 release. If you’re using Orion Hub, then congratulations on successfully upgrading to the new release! If you don’t have an account, sign up for free here. If you’re the kind of person who still likes to download and install tools, you can find the latest server on our download page.

  • Public Services/Government

Leftovers

  • The KNOS Project demo review

    BSD-based operating systems are considered very secure. More so than Linux, in fact. Now, there are many reasons why this may or may not be so, including the market share, the speed and quality of software validation, the release cycle, the internal security mechanism, the skill and mentality of developers, administrators and users, the deployment setup, and many other factors, all of which are highly debatable.

  • Science

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • NYFD Removes Gas, Generators From Protest

      New York firefighters removed about a dozen gasoline cans and six generators from Zuccotti Park, where Occupy Wall Street protesters have camped for almost six weeks, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

      About 30 to 40 firefighters were sent to the park along with the police department’s community affairs unit, Bloomberg said today on his weekly WOR radio show.

      The equipment, which helped power computers and mobile phones and keep people warm as temperatures dipped near freezing, are safety hazards and illegal, Bloomberg said. Forecasts call for rain and snow in the metropolitan area tomorrow.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • At OWS, Cenk Uygur Announces Effort to Amend Constitution, Get Money Out of Politics

      The “Occupy” movement has been inspired in part by the increasingly outsized political power of the top 1%, which has made elected officials more responsive to deep-pocket donors than those they were elected to represent. In response to the other 99% being left politically and economically disempowered, former MSNBC host Cenk Uygur has announced plans to work toward amending the U.S. Constitution to get big money out of politics and restore representative democracy.

    • Right Wing Front Groups Flood Ohio With Anti-Union Spin

      With Ohio voters looking to overturn Governor John Kasich’s union-busting Senate Bill 5 through a statewide referendum, national Republican donors, strategists and corporations are pumping money into the state to defend the Governor and his bill.

  • ACTA

10.28.11

Links 27/10/2011: GNOME 3.4 Plans, Retail Stores in China Sell GNU/Linux PCs

Posted in News Roundup at 1:55 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Multi Boot vs Virtual Machine
  • White Paper: Secure Boot impact on Linux

    Canonical, together with Red Hat, today publishes a white paper highlighting the implications of these requirements for users and manufacturers. The paper also provides recommendations on how to implement “Secure Boot”, to ensure that users remain in control of their PCs.

  • Desktop

    • Dell offers machines with Ubuntu Linux in 220 Chinese stores

      Dell might have scaled back its Ubuntu Linux offerings in the west but in China – the market that really matters – the firm is rolling out a range of machines running Ubuntu in 220 stores. Unlike its solitary US web-store offering, Dell presents Chinese punters with a range of Ubuntu Linux systems and better still the firm said its staff will promote the benefits of Ubuntu Linux to consumers.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • Yocto 1.1 embedded Linux stack adds GUI builder
    • Comarch Becomes a Silver Member of The Linux Foundation
    • Linuxcon: 20 years of Linux at Intel

      DAY TWO of Linuxcon Europe included a keynote from Intel about the last 20 years of Linux since its creation.

      Dirk Hohndel, chief Linux technologist at Intel, gave the talk this morning and counts himself lucky to be one of the people to get involved at the very early stages of the project with Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux.

    • LinuxCon Europe Debuts to Standing Room Only Crowd

      With flashing cameras and a crowd that flowed into the lobby where attendees could watch the keynotes on large screens, LinuxCon Europe debuted with an appearance by Linux creator Linus Torvalds and hundreds of Linux community members…

      With flashing cameras and a crowd that flowed into the lobby where attendees could watch the keynotes on large screens, LinuxCon Europe debuted with an appearance by Linux creator Linus Torvalds and hundreds of Linux community members.

    • Linuxcon: BMW might use Linux in future cars

      GERMAN CAR MAKER BMW spoke about how it might use Linux for in-car entertainment at Linuxcon Europe in Prague today.

      In a panel on providing high performance we heard that we could see Linux being adopted for use in car entertainment systems in future BMW vehicles. The firm is looking into it and thinks that it’s a valid possibility.

    • The Kernel Panel at LinuxCon Europe

      Linus Torvalds and other kernel developers sat down for a question and answer session at the first LinuxCon Europe. Lennart Poettering, creator of PulseAudio and systemd, served as moderator for the panel, which consisted of Torvalds, Alan Cox, Thomas Gleixner, and Paul McKenney. The four took prepared questions from Poettering, as well as responding to impromptu audience member questions on every topic from version numbers to the future of the kernel project itself.

    • Linux 3.1 Enhances Sandy Bridge, Preps For Ivy Bridge

      The Linux 3.1 kernel was released earlier this week and it further enhances the Intel Sandy Bridge graphics support while also prepping the open-source kernel driver for Intel’s next-generation Ivy Bridge processors.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Killing DRM Graphics Cruft With Fire

        It seems to be a good time to clean-up the Linux graphics driver stack. After old hardware support was dropped in Mesa in August, more Mesa code was dropped, and most recently the classic ATI R300/R600 drivers are to be killed (this is set to happen this Friday). Now Intel’s Daniel Vetter is chopping up some DRM code.

      • The State Of OpenGL 3.0 Support In Mesa

        Last month during XDC2011 Chicago it was publicly talked about how Intel wants OpenGL 3.0 support in Mesa and ideally before year’s end. But how’s that goal coming?

        For those not tracking the Mesa mailing list, there’s been a continual stream of new patches arriving for Mesa that ultimately work towards this GL3 goal. Intel developers and others (namely the VMware developers and other independent contributors) adding support for new OpenGL extensions, work towards GLSL 1.30 compliance, or cleaning up parts of Mesa to facilitate future support. E.g. just earlier this week a patch series arrived for adding interpolation qualifier support for i965 as needed by GLSL 1.30 and lots of other work.

      • Intel SNB RC6 On Linux 3.1 Is Both Good & Bad

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • Alternatives to KDE and GNOME on Linux systems

      Before anything, this article is for those using KDE and GNOME and start feeling the need for more, or something else. This is not a trolling article (we hate that), nor is a rant against the two DEs. We respect the freedom of choice, and the Open Source world is all about freedom of choice. With this article we only want to show you what other options you have, the pluses and the minuses, with no bias whatsoever. We’ll go less than technical with this article, and we hope we’ll widen your perspective and help you use something that’s really fit for your needs. All you need is a working Linux machine and the minimal knowledge of knowing how to install software on it, plus the use of an editor of choice. Since your DE/WM is something you work with every day, it’s more important to your productivity than it could appear at first look. You may have to learn some new commands, but if you feel it’s right for you and it makes you more efficient, it will be worth it. Plus your system will run faster, since KDE and GNOME are full of features for everyone, but that comes with a cost. Before we start, let’s get some terms clear.

    • Q&A with Enlightenment Lead Developer “Rasterman”

      It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of the Enlightenment desktop. I recently got into contact with the project’s lead developer “Rasterman” and we did a little bit of a question and answer session. If you aren’t sure on what all the Enlightenment desktop and the EFLs are exactly please see my post here.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • digiKam 2.x – Amazingly Good Photo Management

        If you are interested on digital photo management, I would encourage you to take a look at digiKam, and specifically at the newer 2.x version. The 2.0 release announcement was made at the end of July, and they are now already up to version 2.2. Here is a short recap of the reasons I choose to use digiKam rather than the other obvious candidates:

      • Introducing Inqlude, the Qt library archive

        Today I would like to introduce you to Inqlude, the Qt library archive. The goal of this project is to provide a comprehensive listing of all existing libraries for developers of Qt applications. So if you are creating applications using the Qt toolkit, and are looking for libraries, components or modules to use, Inqlude is meant to be the place where you find all information and pointers to get started.

      • Kubuntu Network Configuration

        Because Kubuntu is gaining popularity I thought some users might be needing some additional help with network configuration and settings. Of course there are many ways to handle your network settings, but for new users, setup is extremely simple. Upon installation network settings are generally detected and configured automatically, but on occasion we all run into problems. Finding all of your network settings when using Kubuntu also is quite simple, and help is always available when needed. You can always check the official Kubuntu help documentation provided upon installation to get additional help with advanced topics.

    • GNOME Desktop

      • GNOME3 vs Unity on Ubuntu 11.10: my score is 6 – 9

        So, Ubuntu 11.10 is here and GNOME2 is gone…
        Even if you had an option to run GNOME2 in previous release of Ubuntu 11.04, there is no more this option in 11.10. It is only shipped with Unity interface.
        Does it mean GNOME is fully gone? No, it is still here… But that’s not GNOME2. That is GNOME3, updated version which follows (or creates?) new wave of user interfaces.

      • The First Development Release For GNOME 3.4

        The first development release for GNOME 3.4, which is marked as GNOME 3.3.1 in the 3.3 unstable series, is now available for testing.

        The release announcement with source download links to all of the packages can be found in this mailing list message. When scanning through the change-logs for the core and application components to GNOME 3.3.1, some of the items that stick out are listed below.

      • The Survey That GNOME Would Rather Ignore

        As you may have seen, the Phoronix site is hosting a private survey about GNOME. The survey still has several weeks to run, but, so far, neither the circumstances surrounding the survey or the replies show the GNOME project in a favorable perspective.

        The survey was begun by Felipe Contreras, who first raised the idea back in July on the GNOME desktop-devel mailing list. “Lately I’ve [been] feeling that there’s a lot of dissatisfaction with GNOME 3,” he wrote. “Why not find for good what people are thinking with an user-survey?”

  • Distributions

    • 6 Linux as a Service Distros you should know about..
    • Chakra GNU/Linux 2011.10.26 Has KDE SC 4.7.2

      Phil Miller proudly announced a few minutes ago, October 27th, the immediate availability for download of the stable Chakra GNU/Linux 2011.10.26 operating system.

      Chakra GNU/Linux 2011.10.26 is now powered by Linux kernel 3.0.7 and X.Org 7.6, as well as the latest KDE Software Compilation 4.7.2 environment, updated toolchain, and WebGL and HTML5 support for Qt/KDE web-browsers.

    • SalineOS 1.5

      It’s always interesting, and usually fun, to try out a new Linux distribution. I saw the announcement on DistroWatch this morning of a new release of SalineOS, and I have a bit of free time today, so this seemed like a good opportunity. It has turned out to be both – interesting and fun!

    • Gentoo Family

      • Sabayon Linux Definitely Has a Personality All to Its Own

        Well it’s my third day on Sabayon Linux and I must say it definitely has a personality of its own. From its snappy performance to its unusual bugs it has left a huge impression on me. It’s also had me going through wikis and forums more than any distribution I have ever encountered on the “easy” side of the Linux distribution fence.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Joins Facebook’s Open Compute Project To Drive Datacenter Efficiency

        Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that it has joined the Open Compute Project, a project established by Facebook with the goal of building one of the most efficient computing infrastructures at the lowest possible cost. With this, Red Hat will collaborate with the Open Compute Project and its members on technologies, design and development to redefine the next-generation datacenter.

      • Parallels Now Offering Licenses for CloudLinux OS
      • ADW Builds Cloud Solution with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization
      • Libguestfs 1.14 Rolls Out

        In a blog post today, Richard Jones, Senior Software Engineer at Red Hat, announced the release of libguestfs 1.14, an open source set of tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine (VM) disk images. “I’m really charged about how the new tools let you analyze and fix alignment problems in your guests,” Jones tells NetworkWorld.

      • Red Hat Stock Hits New 52-Week High (RHT)

        Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) hit a new 52-week high Thursday as it is currently trading at $49.08, above its previous 52-week high of $49 with 47,056 shares traded as of 9:36 a.m. ET. Average volume has been 3.1 million shares over the past 30 days.

    • Debian Family

      • I’m pushing Debian Squeeze and GNOME 2 as hard as I can

        I never really considered myself a GNOME user. Though I am. I’ve used Xfce, Fluxbox, Fvwm2, LXDE, even JWM (Joe’s Window Manager) in Puppy and FLTK in TinyCore. But most of the time I stick with the default desktop environment offered by a given distribution.

        And more often than not, that’s GNOME 2. And I’ve been using Debian Squeeze with GNOME 2 since November 2010 — almost a year now — and using it for more of my work than ever.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Why Ubuntu 11.10 fills me with rage

            Jason Perlow, ZDNet Sr. Technology Editor, searching for a way to tap into the hidden strengths that all Linux operating systems have. Then an accidental overdose of half-baked user interface interferes with his unique mental state. And now, when Jason Perlow grows angry or outraged, a startling metamorphosis occurs.

          • Dell, Canonical to sell Ubuntu PCs at retail locations in China

            Canonical and Dell are teaming up to sell computers with Ubuntu preinstalled at stores in China. The program, which could help improve the mainstream visibility of the Linux-based operating system, will span 220 retail locations.
            According to a statement that Canonical posted this morning on its official blog, the products will be set up with marketing materials that tout the virtues of the Ubuntu platform. Retail staff will also be trained to explain the products to consumers.

          • Retail Stores in China

            On Wednesday in Beijing, Canonical and Dell announced the start of an exciting retail program to sell machines pre-loaded with Ubuntu, initially rolling out to 220 retail stores in China.

            The stores will feature Ubuntu on a range of Dell computers, and will carry branded marketing collateral in-store, trained staff positioning the benefits and advantages of Ubuntu to consumers and will be supported by a retail team of Ubuntu merchandisers, set up to support the stores. The work was carried out by the Canonical teams based in Beijing and Shanghai, working with Dell China.

          • 5 Alternatives to Unity in Ubuntu Oneiric

            With the past few releases, Ubuntu has been focusing more and more on their homegrown desktop Unity. Some people love it, but a lot of us don’t. Fortunately, as with all things Linux, there are many alternative options. For those of us who just can’t find a way to unite with Unity, here are 5 great options that you might find you like better.

          • Ubuntu Development Update
          • Automated deployment of Ubuntu with Orchestra

            Orchestra is one of the most exciting new capabilities in 11.10. It provides automated installation of Ubuntu across sets of machines. Typically, it’s used by people bringing up a cluster or farm of servers, but the way it’s designed makes it very easy to bring up rich services, where there may be a variety of different kinds of nodes that all need to be installed together.

          • Orchestra Provides Automatic Deployment of Ubuntu
          • Ubuntu at ARM TechCon 2011
          • OMG! Ubuntu!: The Interview!

            When it comes to reporting what is happening in and around the Ubuntu community OMG! Ubuntu! reports the news as it happens, it seems like Joey and Benjamin along with other guest bloggers and writers never tire. The list of contributors to the OMG! Ubuntu! come from many areas of the community: Canonical, Debian, Zeitgeist, The Banshee Project, elementary OS, and more. As one who personally reads 100’s of feeds, mailing lists, IRC conversations and more this is no small endeavor and one OMG! Ubuntu! seems to have down to a science.

          • Ubuntu: the dreamy wildcat flexes its claws

            What’s new about Ubuntu GNU/Linux? That is always the question that arises when the six-monthly release takes place and this time, with 11.10, the answer is probably best encapsulated by the project itself.

            The Ubuntu project site proclaims “Hey, good looking!” and nothing could be more true – most of the work since the last release, which saw the introduction of the Unity desktop, has gone into refining and beautifying the desktop and all its appendages. Ubuntu 11.10, aka Oneiric Ocelot (dreamy wildcat) now looks very good, has nice fonts and is easy on the eye.

          • Annoying “unable to find a medium containing a live file system” in Ubuntu
          • Ubuntu Community Survey Next Steps: Enhancing Recognition and Credit

            While those who do get sponsorship are naturally happy and motivated to be going to UDS, those who don’t get sponsorship support sometimes feel quite de-motivated, and some feel insecure about how Canonical or leaders in Ubuntu view their contributions and “why wasn’t I chosen, particularly given all my contributions to Ubuntu?“.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • MontaVista Announces an Advanced Linux-Based Application Environment for High Speed Packet Processing
    • ‘Bare Metal’ Linux gains data plane chops

      MontaVista Software has updated the MontaVista Linux “Bare Metal Engine” distribution with dynamically configurable data plane features. Bare Metal Engine (BME) offers a single development environment that can scale from high embedded Linux services down to the “near zero overhead” bare metal environments used in network packet processing, the company says.

    • VeriFone intros hybrid contactless payment system

      The system utilized a 32-bit ARM11 400MHz processor and the Linux OS

    • Cortex-A9/FPGA combo SoC gains open source Linux platform

      Xilinx launched an open source Linux platform and developer community for its Zynq-7000 Extensible Processing Platform (EPP), which combines a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor and a 28nm FPGA. The Zynq-7000 EPP Linux Solution offers GNU toolchain, runtime libraries, and debuggers, plus options including a Virtual Platform hardware emulator based on Cadence VSP.

    • Linux-based payment device features NFC, color touchscreen

      VeriFone Systems announced an Linux-based Point of Sale (POS) payment device that integrates a near field communication (NFC) contactless reader. The H5000 runs Linux on an ARM11 processor, offers a 3.5-inch color touchscreen, and supports multiple payment types– including legacy magnetic stripe, EMV smartcards, and contactless cards — with a single hybrid card slot, says the company.

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Android, iOS Duke It Out for Smartphone Ad Supremacy – iPad’s in the Ring Alone

          Android served up more ad impressions overall in Q3 than rival iOS, at 56 percent, Millennial Media reported. For its part, ABI Media noted that in Q2, Android overtook iOS to become the market share leader in mobile application downloads. The market shares of Android and iOS were 44 percent and 31 percent, respectively, ABI said.

        • How Sweet Is Ice Cream Sandwich?

          The most important thing about Ice Cream Sandwich is that “there seems to be a change in the wind insofar as Android being a pure operating system is concerned,” said blogger Roberto Lim. “With Android 1.6 to 2.3, the ‘vanilla’ version was a pretty basic OS, which provided the minimum necessary smartphone functionality.” With ICS, “the vanilla Android install is not very much like ‘vanilla’ anymore, but more like a Banana Split.”

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • $179 Android tablet features full-sized USB port, microSD slot

        Leader International announced two Android tablets, both with full-sized USB ports and microSD slots. The $179 Impression 7 (I7) runs Android 2.2 on a 1GHz processor, and provides a seven-inch 800 x 480 resistive touchscreen, while the $349 Impression 10 (I10) runs Android 2.3 on a 1GHz Samsung Hummingbird, adding a 9.7-inch, 1024 x 768 capacitive IPS touchscreen, an HDMI port, and a two-megapixel camera.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Interview: Eagle Genomics, open source solution provider for genome content management

    F4S: Greetings Richard. Please, give us a brief introduction about your company Eagle Genomics.

    Richard: Eagle Genomics is an outsourced bioinformatics services and software company specialising in genome content management and the provision of open-source solutions. Eagle consistently delivers quality and value-for-money for customers across the biotech sector, combining cloud and NGS expertise with a track record in building scalable, efficient genomics analysis workflows.

  • Open Source, Open Science, Open Source Science

    The digital age has added significantly to the tools available to scientific work, but has also introduced new challenges. Glyn Moody describes the present situation, and suggests that we need true openness with respect to scientific software.

  • Google open sources JavaScript coverage analysis tool

    Google has announced the release of ScriptCover as an open source project. Available as an extension for the company’s Chrome web browser, ScriptCover is JavaScript coverage analysis tool that provides real-time, line-by-line code coverage statistics for web pages.

    ScriptCover displays results as the page continues to load and is automatically updated when the user interacts with the site. The reporting tool highlights each of the lines of code that have been executed for a more detailed analysis.

  • Is Open Source Innovative?

    There are numerous counterexamples to this; my analyst colleague from the 451 Group Rachel Chalmers cites Unix, others the underlying protocols of the internet and I myself would point to the more recent work that browser teams like Chrome and Mozilla are doing or the pre-Cambrian explosion currently occurring in the non-relational database market. But superficial questions like “can open source innovate” obscure real, fundamental changes in the way that software is being developed today. Changes that are important.

  • Events

    • Second day at OWF 2011
    • LinuxCon Europe: live video streaming

      For those not able to attend this year’s LinuxCon Europe conference, which is currently taking place in Prague, Czech Republic, the Linux Foundation is offering live video streaming of all the keynote sessions. Free access to the live video streams of the first ever European LinuxCon event is available on the LinuxCon Europe 2011 site (registration required).

    • LinuxCon Europe Debuts to Standing Room Only Crowd

      With flashing cameras and a crowd that flowed into the lobby where attendees could watch the keynotes on large screens, LinuxCon Europe debuted with an appearance by Linux creator Linus Torvalds and hundreds of Linux community members.

      Day one of the first-ever LinuxCon Europe was heavy on stellar content and great beer. The day started with a welcome from Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin, followed quickly by the exclusive Linux Kernel Panel featuring Linus Torvalds. The rest of the day included individual sessions from “Why the Free Desktop Matters” to “File and Storage Systems: Making Complex Systems Easy to Use” and “Using Dynamic Analysis to Hunt Down Problems in Kernel Modules.” The technical content featured at Linux Foundation events is the result of detailed review by Amanda McPherson of hundreds of submissions as well as her discussions with community members about the most important topics to address that will help advance the platform.

    • Seminar about original computer system LUV-in for Linux fans

      People are invited to a Mooroopna LUV-in this weekend ? but you can leave your kaftan and hippy beads at home.

      Linux Users Victoria are holding a free information session for people eager to learn more about the original computer operating system similar to Windows and Android, but with one major exception ? there is no cost.

    • Third Day at OWF 2011

  • Web Browsers

    • Will Microsoft Return to Unfair Practices with IE and Windows?

      In April of 2000, when the U.S. Department of Justice handed down its decision that Microsoft was an “abusive monopoly” and set about imposing restrictions on the company’s business practices, many people wondered two things: 1) why did the decision arrive after so many years?; and 2) what exactly would the DOJ place restrictions on?

      Among the various restrictions that were imposed, one of the most influential was that Microsoft could not continue to tie its Internet Explorer browser to Windows as inextricably as it had, thereby creating an unfair distribution model for the browser, since other browser makers didn’t have a ubiquitous OS such as Windows to tie their browsers to. Now, more than 10 years later, the DOJ’s consent decree has lapsed, and there is a possibility that Microsoft could once again tie Internet Explorer to Windows in a number of questionable ways.

    • Chrome

      • I’m pushing Debian Squeeze and GNOME 2 as hard as I can

        Google Chrome and Chromium open-source web browsers version 15.0.874.106 has been released. Latest stable release of Chromium web browser brings many improvements, performance enhancements and fixed several security bugs. The new tab page has been redesigned to easily access your mostly visited websites, web store applications and customizable website speed dial.

    • Mozilla

  • SaaS

  • Databases

    • Oracle Formally Embraces NoSQL, Implies It Invented NoSQL

      Whether the acronym “NoSQL” stands for “not only SQL,” as some database architects content, or literally “no SQL,” up until this month, it has been taken to imply “no Oracle.” One of the many hallmarks of Oracle’s SQL RDBMS technology, historically, has been consistency — the notion that every client perceives the same view of the data at any one time. Maintaining consistency, among other factors, incurs latency issues as database sizes scale with social media into the stratosphere.

  • CMS

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GCC 4.6.2 Compiler Released

      GCC 4.6.2 was officially released today as the second point release in the GCC 4.6 series to address bugs and other outstanding issues. GCC 4.6.1 was released in June and the original GCC 4.6.0 release happened this past March.

  • Licensing

  • Programming

    • Dennis Ritchie Day

      For myself, I can attest that there would be no O’Reilly Media without Ritchie’s work. It was Unix that created the fertile ground for our early publishing activities; it was Unix’s culture of collaborative development and architecture of participation that was the deepest tap root of what became the open source software movement, and not coincidentally, much of the architecture of the Internet as well

    • 10gen Partners With Zend Technologies at ZendCon 2011 for MongoDB and PHP Synergy

Leftovers

  • Finance

    • Study Refutes Congressman Paul Ryan’s Claims About Upward Mobility

      Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan has been trying to dismiss recent studies suggesting America’s tax system has disproportionately benefitted the super-wealthy. But his claims about upward mobility have themselves been refuted.

      The Congressional Budget Office just released a study showing that between 1979 and 2007, income grew by 275 percent for the top 1 percent of households, whereas it grew just 18 percent for the bottom 20 percent and just under 40 percent for the next 60 percent. The income gap grew under Republican presidents who promoted low taxes on the wealthy.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Franklin Center: Right-Wing Funds State News Source

      As newsrooms across the country shave off staff due in part to slipping ad revenue and corporate media conglomeration, the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, is rushing to fill the gap. The group has 43 state news websites, with writers in over 40 states. Its reporters have been given state house press credentials and its news articles are starting to appear in mainstream print newspapers in each state. Who funds Franklin and what is its agenda?

Mozilla Foundation Harder to Trust After Microsoft Endorsement

Posted in Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 11:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

John Lilly of Mozilla
Mozilla’s former CEO, who was focused on important issues, Photo by Joi Ito

Summary: Why the Firefox-Microsoft arrangement is bad news which can injure Mozilla as a whole

FIREFOX does not have much to do with this Web site. Posts are edited in Kate (KDE) and due to time constraints I write most posts while away from home on my Palm PDA (Palm OS with external keyboard) and the posts are later edited and published in Konqueror, which I use alongside Rekonq and more rarely — until yesterday — with a bit of Firefox for more stubborn Web sites.

“It’s not a credible bluff because going through with it would destroy Mozilla completely.”
      –iophkWhat happened yesterday (news here for the uninitiated) changes how we view Mozilla. The “Microsoft Firefox” parody is not so amusing anymore. The financial dependence on Microsoft makes it harder to trust the Mozilla Foundation, whose new management was also tactless enough to receive money in exchange for an endorsement of a company that actively attacks FOSS and GNU/Linux. It’s not a new concern.

The subject discussed in length in the IRC channels yesterday. It is even being discussed at the time of this post. Here are some quotes from a quarter of an hour ago.

“The more I think about it,” writes Ryan, “the more I’m certain Firefox With Bing is just a bluff… their contract with Google expires next month and they probably just want to be in a position to demand more money.”

“It’s not a credible bluff because going through with it would destroy Mozilla completely,” responds iophk. This deal also fuels Microsoft propaganda not just because Microsoft will claim to be a “friend” or “partner” of FOSS but also because Bing is doctoring results to suit Microsoft’s business objectives. What are other people’s thoughts? █

When Novell Staff Becomes Technology Writer

Posted in Novell at 11:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Zonker responds to FUD from Forrester but spreads his own Red Hat FUD after departing from Novell

WHEN a company collapses there is often the unintended effect of having employees move to other companies. These employees carry with them the burden/baggage of bias and connections to the former employer. Biases are everywhere because truth is relative and today we’ll cover a couple of new examples.

Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier is generally a very good writer. He writes coherently and makes it all very engaging. This is why Novell hired him. Forrester, on the other hand, is a bias up for sale. We already showed how Microsoft paid Forrester to smear GNU/Linux. That’s just the business model. “Analysts sell out – that’s their business model,” explains Microsoft [PDF].

A few days ago we tried to ignore new FUD from a Forrester analyst, who immaturely heckled some Linux fans.

“Some Analysts Still Don’t Get It,” wrote Zonker in his response, posted quite suitably in Linux.com. To quote:

In the early days of Linux, analysts were spouting all kinds of nonsense about Linux. It was pretty clear that folks from firms like Forrester and Gartner weren’t clued in entirely about what Linux is, how open source works, nor did they have any vision for the future.

But after 20 years, I figured that most analysts with a major firm like Forrester would know better than writing silly posts that say mobile has killed Linux’s hopes for world domination. Unfortunately not.

Mike Gualtieri writes, “the real end to Linux’s hope for world dominance came when mobile platforms iOS and Android cleaned clocks in the mobile market. Sure, Android is built on top of Linux, but Linux is only one of many piece parts of the Android mobile operating system. It is not Linux.”

Say what?

In as much as any operating system using the Linux kernel is “Linux,” then Android certainly is Linux. Sure, Android ships a lot of different pieces compared to Ubuntu or Fedora, but it’s still Linux.

Yes, that FUD is not dead yet. Forrester is still trying. We generally don’t bother rebutting outdated FUD that has been debunked to death.

“We generally don’t bother rebutting outdated FUD that has been debunked to death.”Zonker did well when he countered that FUD (there are other refutations, but they are not quite so well written). The problem we have with Zonker is that around the time of SUSE PR and promotion (because OpenSUSE 12.1 is imminent) he took this bit of news and then decided to spin it a little for drama. Now just to clarify, Zonker (Joe Brockmeier) is not a normal journalist. He is one who received wages from Novell while he was still working as a journalist, so if he takes a shot at Red Hat while promoting Novell/OpenStack (as a reminder, OpenNebula is Hyper-V/Novell/Microsoft-laden and OpenStack is not much better), he should not be missing a disclosure of his past work which only goes over a year back.

For Red Hat it makes perfect business sense to do what it is doing, so the slant from Zonker is quite unfair. Another Joe, the VAR Guy, who had a relationship with Novell over the years, writes about the same subject and notes that:

Red Hat, Canonical (Ubuntu) and SUSE already compete in the Linux market. Now, they’ll increasingly compete in the cloud computing world. Both SUSE (owned by Attachmate) and Ubuntu are getting cozy with OpenStack, the open source cloud standard initially promoted by Rackspace and NASA. On the flipside, Red Hat is marching forward with its own cloud standards, though Red Hat insists those standards will be open and community-developed.

Yes, and there are good reasons for that. Sean Michael Kerner writes about why Novell chose the side that it is choosing:

What’s even more interesting is how SUSE is delivering this OpenStack distribution. SUSE is using their SUSE Studio as the platform to distribute (and likely build)OpenStack. That means that enterprises can potentially custom build their own OpenStack distributions in SUSE Studio. That’s an incredibly powerful model and one that no other vendor currently offers.

OpenStack shares its bed with Microsoft since last year [1, 2]. It is the Microsoft “open” option (open… except the proprietary), one among several which owing to Novell now include some more lock-in and non-free components. This is basically the role that SUSE/Attachmate play at Microsoft’s behest and it is why we urge people to boycott them.

Inherently, Attachmate is a proprietary software company with proprietary Novell products and SUSE is now funded by Microsoft in an attempt to tax Red Hat customers by moving them over to SUSE, with what Microsoft calls “royalty payments” (patent royalties) according to sources (this is publicly marketed as “support”, but not internally). Euphemisms make better marketing. █

“I’ve heard from Novell sales representatives that Microsoft sales executives have started calling the Suse Linux Enterprise Server coupons “royalty payments”…”

–Matt Asay, April 21st, 2008

Black Duck: Microsoft Windows Only No More

Posted in FUD, GNU/Linux, Servers, Windows at 10:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Children and nephews of Microsoft Corporation

A nephew

Summary: The presence of Microsoft-friendly entities in the FLOSS (free/libre open source software) world stressed in the context of a new announcement

THERE are some particular companies and small firms that brush shoulders with those in the FLOSS world. Such firms often have roots in Microsoft and their goals align with Microsoft’s. This should not be surprising. Those who familiarise themselves with antitrust exhibits will soon realise that Microsoft strategises this way. It even uses words like “infiltrate”. Microsoft wants to tame and control its own opposition, e.g. by repelling and ousting elements in it (e.g. FSF) that are risky to Microsoft’s business goals.

Black Duck (see Wiki) is one of the companies that were created by a Microsoft marketing executive to now serve as a de facto authority on the subject of Free/open source software licences. The SFLC has publicly complained about bias in Black Duck and over the years we did a lot to explain what Black Duck is really doing (ignore all the PR which is very well laid out and repeated). Black Duck is a proprietary software company with proprietary software, software patents, Microsoft deals, and FOSS FUD. There is absolutely nothing there which is FOSS, except the data it is digesting to sell proprietary software for Microsoft Windows only. Black Duck is often marketed as “open” something, but it’s just a scam. It’s not open at all, these are just gymnastics in semantics. According to IDG, it wasn’t until now that Black Duck’s Code Sight software even ran on anything other than Microsoft’s own proprietary Windows platform. To quote:

Black Duck Code Sight 2.0, out now, is also the first version of the software to run on Linux servers, in addition to being able to run on Microsoft Windows servers.

Yes, so people can now run proprietary software on a GNU/Linux server for the purpose of scaring themselves because their proprietary software might be misusing Free software. Quite the FOSS advocacy tool, eh?

Black Duck is not alone in this business. One of their rivals, ‘Open’Logic (not open) is run by a guy from Microsoft. This whole monkey business has helped Microsoft validate its FUD against Free software code (while denying FLOSS firms their voice). Apparently it also makes some ‘former’ Microsoft executives rich, all at the same time. What a winning strategy. █

“You want to infiltrate those. Again, there’s two categories. There’s those that are controlled by vendors; like MSJ; we control that. And there’s those that are independent. [...] So that’s how you use journals that we control. The ones that third parties control, like the WinTech Journal, you want to infiltrate.”

–Microsoft's chief evangelist

Apple Lost Respect

Posted in Apple, Patents at 10:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Last journey

Summary: How and why people lost respect for the company which turned from an underdog into an attack dog

DISDAIN of Apple seems to have increased — not decreased — in recent years. It is not a matter of scale. Look at IBM for example. It is possible to be an incredibly large company with a huge number of employees (e.g. HP) yet not be envied or ridiculed much. Some companies choose to violate the law, some choose to brag and to attack their competitors, whereas some do a combination of all those things or none of those things.

“It is possible to be an incredibly large company with a huge number of employees (e.g. HP) yet not be envied or ridiculed much.”Apple reputation among non Apple followers (not the same as customers) took a hit when the company chose to create its own scandals, choosing litigation over innovation and underpaid labour in China over American workers for example. There are many reasons to dislike Apple, but this post will not make a comprehensive list (there is one for Microsoft in multiple languages). To us, Apple’s main ‘sin’ is that it is attacking Linux. We do not concentrate on labour law, environmental issues, or even the personal lives of people (or even the death of people, with exceptions where truth gets perturbed). Steve does not get much love in Diaspora, not even after his death. There are derogatory characterisations of him (reminiscent of Nazi propaganda posters) and junk patents like the infamous slide to unlock are not helping the popularisation of the company over there. One noteworthy article that we found published this week is this response to Steve Jobs’ lies:

Why Steve Jobs Was Wrong About Android Being a ‘Stolen’ Product

One of the many revelations in the biography of Steve Jobs from author Walter Isaacson is Jobs’ assertion that Android was a “stolen product.” According to Hayley Tsukayama’s report in The Washington Post, Jobs was furious about Android and vowed to spend all of Apple’s cash to destroy it. The problem is Jobs was wrong about Android. Or if he’s right, then the iPhone was also a stolen product.

The reason that Steve Jobs was wrong is fairly simple to see if you’ve watched technology product development over the years. Nearly every product grows on the work done before it and the iPhone (and iPod Touch) are no exception. Apple created a very nice design for the iPhone, a design that was innovative, included new ways of doing things and most of all was attractive. But the iPhone was a derivative of other products, and while it was an improvement over what came before it (as it should be), it still depended on the ideas developed in those earlier products.

You have to ask yourself what it was that Jobs thought made Android a stolen product. Was it the user interface of icons on a screen that launched applications when touched? Palm had that feature years before Apple ever had a phone. Was it the touch-screen? Palm had that, too, although it worked better if you used a stylus, but then, so does the iPhone. Was it the third-party applications? Several handheld devices had that long before the iPhone, including some Windows-driven phones as well as those from Palm. Was it the integration of email and the personal digital assistant? There were a lot of those out there, too, including the BlackBerry devices.

We wrote about Jobs' allegations last week. “Only Apple thinks they have the right to borrow ideas that then — somehow — become their exclusive property,” wrote Ron in USENET. He is right. Considering Steve’s lies to disown his own daughter, nobody should be too shocked. “Please leave us alone,” Jobs wrote to a college student. Why should we be exceedingly respectful to those who never respected their neighbours? Moreover, it would be sick to admire and glorify such people. Some readers insist that it is bad for us to criticise Apple and Jobs. But why should they be treated differently from Novell and Microsoft?

Notable Apple followers are currently cursing Richard Stallman (yes, still), characterising his reasonable remarks. Dr. Stallman found our what happens — at least from a PR angle — when criticising a company which acts more like a monastery led by someone deceased on a pedestal (North Korea comes to mind), only further reinforcing the belief that there is something sinister and irrational about Apple. We won’t ignore it. █

“FSF did some anti-Apple campaigns too. Personally I worry more about Apple because they have user loyalty; Microsoft doesn’t.”

–Bradley M. Kuhn (SFLC)

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