10.20.14

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Desktop

  • Samsung and Intel Stay Committed to Chromebooks

    Samsung has announced its new Chromebook 2, a good looking model that joins a slew of new Chromebooks arriving in the market. With the holiday season approaching, it’s looking like portable computers running Chrome OS and featuring very low price points will be very big sellers.

• Server

  • The Companies That Support Linux: DataCentred

    Companies are increasingly turning to cloud services to build and deliver their applications, but those that want to use an open source cloud may find it more difficult to set up and maintain. Service-providers such as UK-based DataCentred can more efficiently set up an enterprise cloud using open source software, at scale.

• Kernel Space

  • EXT4 In Linux 3.18 Has Clean-ups, Bug Fixes

    With Linux 3.18-rc1 having came one week early, the EXT4 file-system pull request didn’t end up landing until today. However, the EXT4 changes aren’t overly exciting for the 3.18 merge window.

  • Kernel prepatch 3.18-rc1

  • Linux Kernel Working Towards GNU11/C11 Compatibility

    For now it looks like the Linux kernel is going to explicitly declare itself as using the GNU89 dialect of the C89 standard but over time the code is being made to compile under C11.

  • Graphics Stack

    • NVIDIA’s NVPTX Support For GCC Is Close To Being Merged

      The NVPTX back-end code for GCC that’s going to allow OpenACC 2.0 offloading support for NVIDIA GPUs with GCC is close to materializing within the mainline code-base.

    • LIBINPUT INTEGRATION IN KWIN/WAYLAND

      Today I pushed my outstanding branch to get libinput support into kwin_wayland. Libinput is a very important part for the work to get a full Wayland session in Plasma which means we reached a very important milestone. As the name suggests it allows us to process input events directly. KWin needs to forward the input events to the currently active application(s) and also interpret them before any other application gets them. E.g. if there is a global shortcut KWin should intercept it and not send it to an application.

• Applications

  • minesweeper.sh: Ordinarily I wouldn’t bother

  • npush: More Sokoban than Boulder Dash

  • Astronomic Observatory Stellarium 0.13.1 Brings Automatic Location Detection

    Stellarium, an open source planetarium software that displays a realistic and accurate sky in 3D that is built for multiple platforms, including Linux, is now at version 0.13.1 and is available for download.

  • Kodi 14.0 Beta Is Getting Closer to Release

    Kodi 14.0 is the successor of the current XBMC project and it will be out in a few months, but until then, the developers have detailed some of the changes and improvements that will be made available with this new release.

  • TOR GUI `SELEKTOR` SEES NEW MAJOR RELEASE

    SelekTOR, an open source Java-based GUI front-end for Tor, was updated to version 3.12 (now 3.12e) recently and it includes new advanced options as well as a new Tor Monitor panel that shows the Tor client startup info and its current status.

  • Proprietary

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How To Fix Double Google Chrome Icon In Plank

    • How to Install Kchmviewer 7.1 in Ubuntu 14.04

  • Games

    • Dragonsphere, Darklands & More Classics Added To Steam For Linux

    • 3.14 Games Updates

      GNOME Hitori has actually been around for a while, but it wasn’t until this cycle that I discovered it. After chatting with Philip Withnall, we agreed that with a minor redesign, the result would be appropriate for GNOME 3. And here it is:

    • GOG Now Have Over 100 Linux Games, New Classics Include Baldur’s Gate

    • Paranautical Activity FPS Is Now Out Of Beta

      Paranautical Activity drew a bit of ire when they cancelled a bunch of features and decided they were calling it quits, but the game is now fully out and looks fun!

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • KDE’s KWin On Wayland Begins Using Libinput

      Martin Gräßlin has shared that as of today the libinput support has been integrated into KDE’s KWin Wayland code.

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • Linutop OS 14.4 is released

  • Screenshots

    • HandyLinux 1.7

  • Red Hat Family

    • Ex-Microsoft man takes up arms for Red Hat’s open-cloud crusade

      So where does Red Hat turn? Microsoft – that’s where.

      Red Hat in September hired Harry Mower as senior director, developer programs and evangelism.

      Mower has been an evangelist and outreach manager for Microsoft since 2006, on media, telecoms and entertainment. His job, to expand uptake and adoption of Microsoft technologies.

    • Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst on the impact of cloud and mobile

      So I asked Whitehurst if the cloud had already won the war for IT infrastructure, but he gave me a more nuanced response than I expected: “I think there’s a new architecture combining computing and storage in an easily managed centralized data center,” he said. “Scaling out that architecture… That’s clearly winning.”

      “What’s less clear,” he continued, “is whether the traditional enterprise-owned-and-managed data center on premise will serve that, or will it be the public cloud or something in between? That’s still far from resolved.”

    • Red Hat Collaborates With SAP to Deploy Mobile Data Management Cartridge for SAP® SQL Anywhere on OpenShift

    • Cloudera and Red Hat Forge Big Data Alliance

      Cloudera, the leader in enterprise analytic data management powered by Apache Hadoop, and Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced an alliance to deliver joint enterprise software solutions including data integration and application development tools, and data platforms. By integrating a broad range of products and technologies, Cloudera and Red Hat will help customers harness the fast changing big data life cycle with open, secure and agile solutions.

    • Fedora

      • Rejuvenate your Fedora desktop with Moka

        Moka started as a single Linux desktop icon theme, but over time it has gradually evolved into an entire project & brand identity that provides quality designs to people. Moka is about personalization and its goal is to provide an assortment of style options to allow you to customize your experience.

  • Debian Family

    • Users/Developers Threatening Fork Of Debian GNU/Linux

    • “Fork Debian” Project Aims to Put Pressure on Debian Community and Systemd Adoption

      The Debian project decided to adopt systemd a while ago and ditch the upstart counterpart. The decision was very controversial and it’s still contested by some users. Now, a new proposition has been made, to fork Debian into something that doesn’t have systemd.

    • Debian 7.7 Is Out with Security Fixes

      The Debian project project has announced that Debian 7.7 “Wheezy” is now out and available for download. This is the regular maintenance update, but it packs quite a few important fixes.

    • Debian 7.7 Released With Various Bug-Fixes

    • Updated Debian 7: 7.7 released

      The Debian project is pleased to announce the seventh update of its stable distribution Debian 7 (codename “wheezy”). This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories were already published separately and are referenced where available.

    • Derivatives

      • Elive Is an Interesting Debian-Based Distro with a Beautiful Enlightenment Desktop

        Elive, a Linux distribution based on Debian which uses the Enlightenment desktop environment to provide a unique user experience, has just reached version 2.3.9 Beta and it’s ready for testing.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • UNITY PRIVACY INDICATOR 0.4 RELEASED WITH NEW PRIVACY SETTINGS

          For those not familiar with Privacy Indicator, this is an Ubuntu AppIndicator especially created for Unity, which allows you to control various privacy aspects.

          Until this release, the indicator could be used to enable / disable Dash online search results and Zeitgeist logging (and also clear the Zeitgeist log), clear recently used files (which show up in the Nautilus or Nemo “Recent” sidebar item for instance) and to show or hide your real name on the Unity panel.

        • V is for Vivid

          Release week! Already! I wouldn’t call Trusty ‘vintage’ just yet, but Utopic is poised to leap into the torrent stream. We’ve all managed to land our final touches to *buntu and are excited to bring the next wave of newness to users around the world. Glad to see the unicorn theme went down well, judging from the various desktops I see on G+.

          And so it’s time to open the vatic floodgates and invite your thoughts and contributions to our soon-to-be-opened iteration next. Our ventrous quest to put GNU as you love it on phones is bearing fruit, with final touches to the first image in a new era of convergence in computing. From tiny devices to personal computers of all shapes and sizes to the ventose vistas of cloud computing, our goal is to make a platform that is useful, versal and widely used.

        • Ubuntu 15.04 Codename Announced: Vivid Vervet

          The development codename of an Ubuntu release takes the form “Adjective Animal”. Initially these weren’t in alphabetic order – until Dapper DRAKE (6.06).

        • Ubuntu 15.04 Is Codenamed After A Monkey: Vivid Vervet

        • Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet due in 2015

          Canonical plans to release Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn on Friday, October 25th. The following week work will begin on the next major update to the open source operating system.

        • Ubuntu 15.04 Is Called Vivid Vervet

        • Happy Birthday Ubuntu!

          Today is Ubuntu’s ten year anniversary. Scott did a wonderful job summarizing many of those early years and his own experience, and while I won’t be as articulate as him, I wanted to share a few thoughts on my experience too.

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Forthcoming Kubuntu Interviews

• Devices/Embedded

  • Linux-optimized IP core promises 4200 DMIPS

    Synopsis announced an “HS38″ version of its Linux-focused DesignWare ARC core IP with a new ARCv2 ISA and support for 2.2GHz, 4200 DMIPS speeds at 28nm.

    Synopsis acquired its Linux-optimized line of DesignWare ARC 32-bit RISC/DSP cores when it bought semiconductor IP vendor Virage Logic back in 2010 shortly after Virage acquired ARC International. Since then Synopsis has released several DesignWare ARC HS processor designs, most recently with the HS36.

  • Phones

    • Android

      • Xposed Framework won’t arrive on Android Lollipop for months, if at all

        The developer of the popular Xposed Framework hacking tool for Android phones and tablets has said that Xposed is unlikely to be launched for Android 5.0 for potentially months, and possibly not at all.

      • Six licks of Google’s Android Lollipop

        Google’s new Android 5.0, Lollipop is ready to come out of its wrapper for developers with the release of its SDK. While ordinary users shouldn’t try installing it on their Nexus 5 phones or Nexus 7 (2013) tablets, experts and programmers can download and install Lollipop now.

      • Android signage products tap Atom-based reference design

        RevelDigital’s Android signage software is shipping with the Atom E3815-based Intel EL-10 signage design and new Gigabyte and JWIPC systems based on it.

Free Software/Open Source

• FOSS and the Fear Factor

  “Clickbait” is also the term Google+ blogger Alessandro Ebersol chose to describe the Bloomberg account.

  “I could not see the point the author was trying to make, except sensationalism and views,” he told Linux Girl.

  “The author is wrong,” Ebersol charged. “He should educate himself on the topic. The flaws are results of lack of funding, and too many corporations taking advantage of free software and giving nothing back.”

  Moreover, “I still believe that a piece of code that can be studied and checked by many is far more secure than a piece made by a few,” Google+ blogger Gonzalo Velasco C. chimed in.

  “All the rumors that FLOSS is as weak as proprietary software are only FUD — period,” he said. “It is even more sad when it comes from private companies that drink in the FLOSS fountain.”

• Discourse

  Discourse is an open-source project, hosted at GitHub (see Resources), licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2. It is backed by Atwood’s company, which has the fantastic name of Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc., and it aims to profit through installing and supporting Discourse.

• Events

  • We’re Hosting an OpenDaylight HackFest in Japan

    The OpenDaylight Project has quickly grown to become a global community, with more than 250 contributors working to advance open SDN and NFV from all corners of the world. This includes 11 ambassadors worldwide and OpenDaylight User Groups in six cities across three countries. We are excited to host our first OpenDaylight HackFest in Japan in less than two weeks, and the good news is that it’s free to attend.

• SaaS/Big Data

  • Chief Architect of Cloudera on growth of Hadoop

    Doug Cutting is founder of numerous successful open source projects, including Lucene and Hadoop, and currently the chief architect at Cloudera and sits on the Board of the Apache Software Foundation.

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Is Oracle’s Cloud Strategy Really Open, Or Are Doors Locking?

    Oracle recently made its Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux distribution generally available, and has been loudly beating the war drums on the OpenStack front. As I recently noted, It seems inevitable that there will soon be an OpenStack market shakeout soon, and big players like Oracle and HP may remain standing as that happens, especially in light of their experience supporting enterprise customers.

  • Free and Open Source Electronic Signature in Costa Rica

    The LibreOffice component designed by the University of Costa Rica (UCR) is similar to similar software enhancements currently used for electronic signatures in other countries.

• Business

  • Semi-Open Source

    • The Inherent Dishonesty Inside Open Source

      Then there is so-called ‘openwashing’ i.e. providing trace elements of open source somewhere on a business model so that a company can attest to and demonstrate its philanthropic side. Purists argue that there is a big difference between opening your data and making it available; the open source list of besmirching malpractice is a long one.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Following GCC, Clang Looks To Default To C11

    Earlier this month I wrote about GCC 5 looking to default to GNU11/C11 over GNU89 for its GCC 5 release. That change ended up landing in SVN so the GNU Compiler Collection is finally providing C11 support by default. Last week the LLVM/Clang developers began discussing a similar move.

  • October 2014 GNU Toolchain Update

    The optimization works more effectively with link time optimization enabled. The optimization is similar to the ICF optimization performed by the GOLD linker, but it works at a different level and it may find equivalences that GOLD misses.

  • Emacs 24.4 Has Built-In Web Browser, Improved Multi-Monitor Support

    A new release of Emacs is out today and it’s quite a big update with new functionality for this popular and extensible text editor.

  • Emacs 24.4 released

    Version 24.4 of the Emacs text editor is now available.

• Programming

  • EU Code Week – more than just coding, more than just a week

    Last week was the second ever EU code week. With over 3000 events across the EU and beyond, this was by far the most successful such event ever. But more importantly: it meant hundreds of thousands of children and adults have tried this out for the first time – and realised it is creative, rewarding and fun. Hundreds of thousands have had their first taste of a new opportunity. Hundreds of thousands have learned it’s not just for guys, and not just for geeks. Hundreds of thousands have started on a new life skill – one that could empower and open doors for the rest of their lives.

  • LLVM Gets Bindings For Google’s Go

    Another feature for the upcoming LLVM 3.6 release are bindings for Google’s Go programming language.

  • PHP 5.6.2 and 5.4.34 Update for Critical Security Flaws

    PHP is widely deployed across the Internet and is the language used to power much of the world’s leading Content Management Systems (CMS) and blogs (including this one).

• Standards/Consortia

  • Khronos Releases OpenVX 1.0 Specification

    The Khronos Group has finalized and released their first formal specification for the cross-platform, royalty-free OpenVX standard.

  • Khronos Finalizes and Releases OpenVX 1.0 Specification for Computer Vision Acceleration

Leftovers

• Health/Nutrition

  • US Army withheld promise from Germany that Ebola virus wouldn’t be weaponized

    The United States has withheld assurances from Germany that the Ebola virus – among other related diseases – would not be weaponized in the event of Germany exporting it to the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases.

    German MFA Deputy Head of Division for Export Control Markus Klinger provided a paper to the US consulate’s Economics Office (Econoff), “seeking additional assurances related to a proposed export of extremely dangerous pathogens.”

    Germany subsequently made two follow-up requests and clarifications to the Army, according to the unclassified Wikileaks cable.

  • FLASHBACK: When Conservative Media Didn’t Care Bush’s Bird Flu Czar Had No Medical Experience

    Fox News continues to lead the conservative attack on Ron Klain, whom President Obama appointed as the administration’s Ebola coordinator, termed by some a “czar,” to help direct the government’s response to the rare virus and its arrival in Dallas, Texas.

• Security

  • Security advisories for Monday

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Post and ABC pay to conduct these polls, and then waste resources paying someone to write about them?

    Why do the Post and ABC pay to conduct these polls, and then waste resources paying someone to write about them? Who knows. Balz does think they have some value: He writes that the fact that Romney is ahead says “much more about the others in the unsettled field.”

• Privacy

  • Virginia Police Have Been Secretively Stockpiling Private Phone Records

    While revelations from Edward Snowden about the National Security Agency’s massive database of phone records have sparked a national debate about its constitutionality, another secretive database has gone largely unnoticed and without scrutiny.

  • Uncle Sam’s Right to Know

    I suspected that the information industry was not concerned about privacy but instead profits. I still do.

  • Anonabox Tor hardware router wants to protect your privacy online

    The anonabox is looking for funds on kickstarter: The anonabox is an open source embedded networking device designed specifically to run Tor.

• Civil Rights

  • Idaho officer’s pay cut after he shot pet dog

    A northern Idaho police officer who shot a pet dog has had his pay reduced by $3.15 to $31.02 per hour.

  • Official Sources May Be the Only Sources

    New York Times investigative reporter James Risen is taking a stand. Despite being hounded by both the Bush and Obama administrations to reveal his sources, he has vowed to go to jail rather than abandon his pledge of confidentiality.

  • FedEx Ground Says Its Drivers Aren’t Employees. The Courts Will Decide

    Five days a week for 10 years, Agostino Scalercio left his house before 6 a.m., drove to a depot to pick up a truck, and worked a 10-hour shift delivering packages in San Diego. He first worked for Roadway Package System, a national delivery company whose founders included former United Parcel Service (UPS) managers, and continued driving trucks when FedEx (FDX) bought RPS in 1998. FedEx Ground assigned Scalercio a service area. The company, he says, had strict standards about delivery times, the drivers’ grooming, truck maintenance, and deadlines for handing in paperwork, and deducted money from his pay to cover the cost of his uniform, truck washings, and the scanner used to log shipments.

  • President Of Israel Says Israel Is A ‘Sick Society’

    But one voice echoing popular global sentiment is surprising – the President of Israel. Israel President Reuven Rivlin says Israel has become a “sick society” that lacks human decency and is unable to engage in dialogue with Arabs due to racial animosity and prejudice – a rather stunning indictment by a head of state of his own country.

• Internet/Net Neutrality

  • What is net neutrality all about?

    Waiting in line can feel like a sacred responsibility, with each line member poised to prevent cutting and ensure fairness. Other times, cutting is just part of the game, like when you’re at the airport and have to wait for every platinum, gold, and silver club member to board before taking your seat.

    “Net neutrality” is about what kind of lines we should have on the Internet. Supporters of net neutrality think all online information should be treated equally — no cutting. Opponents argue that fast lanes and priority access would actually make the Internet better.

  • The Future of the Internet – 20 Years Ago

    Netscape Navigator was released 20 years ago today. Thank you to everyone who supported us at Netscape & built the Web with us then and now!

    That was posted by a certain Marc Andreessen. You probably know him as a successful venture capitalist, but before that, he was one of the people who helped popularise the Web. He did that by creating the Mosaic browser back in 1993 – first for Unix, and later for the Apple Macintosh and Windows (version 3.1). Mosaic was written at the University of Illinois, and was freely available for non-commercial use. But once the appeal of a graphical Web browser became evident, it was natural for people to start to think about turning it into a business.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Kim Dotcom Must Reveal Everything He Owns to Hollywood

      Kim Dotcom has failed in a bid to keep his personal finances a secret from Hollywood. They will now be revealed to the studios, but the public will remain in the dark. In a separate High Court ruling, Dotcom was refused a judicial review after being denied access to documents to assist with his extradition battle.

    • Illegal Copying Has Always Created Jobs, Growth, And Prosperity

      Throughout history, those who have copied the most have also always been the most prosperous, and for that reason. Bans on copying, like the copyright and patent monopolies, are just plain industrial protectionism.