• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Server

• Oracle Debuts New Database Appliance for the Midmarket

  Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is continuing its move toward engineered systems that integrate hardware and software with a new Oracle Database appliance.

• Ever wondered how the Wikimedia servers are configured?

Kernel Space

• Facebook’s Flashcache For The Linux Kernel

  Facebook has made many open-source contributions over the years from their high-performance PHP-To-C++ compiler, to parts of their infrastructure, to some of their development tools. One of their open-source projects they made public last year for increasing their database performance was Flashcache. Flashcache is a kernel module that provides a block cache for Linux with various caching modes.

• Graphics Stack

  • Intel Has Buggy HiZ Support Published

Applications

• 18 of Linux software’s unsung stars

  We might not pay these Linux gems much attention but we’d soon notice life without them.

  Here, we salute some of the things that make using Linux so enjoyable.

• PacketFence v3.0 Released

• Best Twitter Clients for Linux

• Rock Your World with Firefly

  I find the best way to listen to music on XBMC is via daap. It makes configuring playlists and adding media simple. It’s also cross-platform, so those folks using actual iTunes can listen to their tunes as well.

• Proprietary

  • VMware Pro vs. Con

    Although I have very strong philosophical beliefs about software, and I am sympathetic to your argument, Goodbye, Microsoft is intended as a practical site to help users rid themselves of Microsoft products as much as possible. What’s “possible” varies widely from user to user. If that means keeping Windows but dropping Office, we help with that. If it means a complete switch to FOSS, so much the better. And if it means a middle ground such as switching to Linux but running a few applications in a virtual Windows machine, we help with that, too. And to the extent that VMWare Workstation enables that solution for some users, it’s a step in the right direction, and I’ll inform readers of that option.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Quickly Lock A Laptop Touchpad In Ubuntu With Touchpad Indicator

  • PHP-FPM/Nginx Security In Shared Hosting Environments (Debian/Ubuntu)

  • Edit the Contents of ISO Disk Image in Ubuntu with ISO Master

  • Pipes – what are they and Example of Use

  • Custom Weekly Backup with tar

  • 9 Cool SSH Tricks You May Not Know

Desktop Environments

• REVIEW: Sabayon 6 (Xfce) and a look at my migration away from Gnome.

  It’s no secret that Gnome 3 (and Gnome-shell) are not being well received by everyone. Canonical is going with its Unity and for many other Gnome users, the future is Gnome-shell.

  KDE is/was never an option for me, I simply don’t like it. Over the last few years I’ve tried to get on with KDE, but found myself time and again going back to Gnome after only a very short period of time. Maybe that’s because when I migrated fully to a Linux desktop, I mostly used Gnome and have now become indoctrinated in working with it. Series 2 offered everything I wanted, it was simple, clean and familiar, however with its move to 3 series I find that it no longer has a place in my heart. Without repeating views which I’ve stated many times in the past, I will merely say that Gnome-Shell to me feels as if it should be on a smart phone, not a desktop form factor. My personal comfort zone in desktop computing is not having a “cushion” between myself and the OS (Gnome-shell). People may disagree, people may like Gnome-Shell. I do not.

• GNOME Desktop

  • GNOME’s Sandler: Is there a killer in the code?

    Is there a killer in the software code running millions of medical devices? GNOME Executive Director Karen Sandler, formerly of the Software Freedom Law Center, has been fighting to get this software opened up for inspection and review since she received her own implanted defibrillator in 2008. The FDA and Supreme Court have been no help. She recently shared her journey at OSCON 2011.

  • The Gnome 3 Meteor: Ready for impact

    It’s been a long time since a desktop environment has caused so much controversy in the FOSS universe. How long? It is really hard to say, since the last time I can recall any kind of user backlash and retreat was over half a decade ago when the KDE project announced KDE 4.0. Alot of people relate the release of KDE 4 to the release of Gnome 3, drawing all sorts of wild parallels; but I say that these 2 releases could not be any more different. Now this article is not about KDE, but at the same time, a clear line in the sand must be drawn in order to explain what Gnome 3 really is.

Distributions

• Who cares about users and distributions anyway?

  As distribution developer, some of our most important tasks are

  * making packages work together nicely
  * and selecting “stable” package version sets for a broader audience

• New Releases

  • IPCop 2.0.0

  • IPCop’s VPN and firewall Linux updated

    The newly released IPCop 2.0 Linux firewall distribution updates the kernel to version 2.6.32, adds hardware support for Cobalt, Sparc and PPC systems and includes a new installer that assists users with such tasks as setting up a network. The developers have also revised the user interface: for example, the system menu has a new scheduler for time-based actions, the web proxy menu includes more advanced settings, and the DHCP server menu has been simplified.

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • Millennial: Android Mobile Ad Impressions Up 48 Percent, iOS Remains Flat

    Mobile ad network Millennial Media, is releasing its monthly report which gives a view into how each OS, device and manufacturer is performing on one of the largest remaining independent ad networks in the world. In August, Millennial actually combined connected devices and smartphones when breaking out the OS impression share. That’s significant because iOS and Android share can include tablets into factoring presence on the network. And last month, Android was in the top spot with a 54% share, while iOS was in second with a 28% share. Rim followed with 13% share.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat Grows Earnings by Upselling

    Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) is continuing to grow its revenues even in the midst of the current macroeconomic climate. Red Hat is growing for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that they’re growing the number of deals worth more than $1 million.

  • Go RedHat!

    Those who say you cannot make money from FLOSS are ignoring RedHat which exceeded expectations handsomely. Investors are loving them.

  • ClearOS Enterprise 6.1.0 Beta 1 Released

    The ClearOS Enterprise 6.1.0 beta 1 release is here! This release will kickstart the process of creating a stable base system: installer, RPM packages, users, groups, system tools, LDAP, network, firewall, framework, and Marketplace. At the same time, we will start rolling out more apps like Web Proxy and Web Access Control found in this beta 1 release.

  • Red Hat Virtualization Alliance grows to 200 members

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Windows 8 vs. Ubuntu 11.10

      • Ubuntu 11.04 vs Windows 8 Developer Preview – the War Begins Again (Ed: not comparing like with like)

      • First Look at Ubuntu 11.10 Beta 2

        Ubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot” Beta 2 has been released. I installed it in VirtualBox (with 3D support) to see what’s new since 11.04.

      • Ask Engadget: most compatible motherboard / components for Ubuntu desktop?

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Samsung to open source Bada next year. Will they use Meego to do it?

    Companies that do have their own successful proprietary platforms are no it usually too eager to start giving them away in hopes that outside developers will make it better in exchange. Companies who’s platforms do fail to take off or get into trouble, on the other hand, sometime do try to turn to the open source community for help. Sometimes these efforts work and result in a successful product (e.g. Netscape Navigator turned Firefox), sometimes they end in disaster – e.g. Nokia’s Symbian experiment. However, even in Netscape case – it wasn’t the actual open sourced code, but the community created in the process that built Firefox browser from scratch, without much help from Netscape. And it took years of stale browser competition for Firefox to emerge, while Netscape’s corporate owner reaped very few benefits from open sourcing.

  • Android

    • High-end Korean phones feature Android 2.3, cool cameras

      Two high-end Android 2.3 smartphones were unveiled in Korea by HTC and LG this week. The HTC Raider 4G features a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, a 4.5-inch IPS (in-plane switching) display, 4G LTE, and an eight-megapixel camera with a 28mm lens attachment, while the LG Optimus Q2 sports a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, a slide-out keyboard, and a four-inch IPS display with 700-nit brightness.

    • Android, at a glance

      Java SDK is, perhaps, one of the most important advantages of Android which provides various powerful functions of Java programming language. However, many developers complain about Android’s fast development pace that they have difficulties to catch up. But if we think more positively, this fast-paced transformation seems to have materialized Android to consolidate itself as the most popular mobile platform. On top of that this popularity has led to many patent suits with Microsoft, thus pressuring many carrier providers to inevitably pay patent fees who initially used the technology thinking it was free. Also Oracle’s patent suit against Google citing that Java cannot be used on mobile devices just because Android uses Java. For above reasons and more, the future path of Android might not seem as smooth as before, but we can’t say it will be gloomy either. I hope all these issues will be settled down, and Android will continue to prosper.

    • Calls for the ABC to shed Apple fixation

      Android smartphones now outsell Apple products in Australia, according to research firm Kantar WorldPanel. It says Android had 42.9per cent of the market last month compared with Apple’s 37.2per cent.

      Open Source Industry Australia, a body that promotes free and public-domain software, urged the ABC yesterday to get over its Apple fixation.

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Asus Eee PC X101 MeeGo netbook: First impressions of a $200 laptop

    The Asus Eee PC X101 is the thinnest, lightest, and cheapest member of the Eee PC netbook family. The mini-laptop weighs just two pounds, measures less than 0.7 inches thick, and sells for about $200.

  • ASUS Eee Pad Slider Lands in USA and Canada

    ase this amazing piece of hardware, then you can get it from NewEgg, Amazon and B&H. NewEgg is offering the tablet in both the 16GB and 32GB version but with only one color choice: brown. The ASUS main site shows that the Eee Pad also comes in white, but for some reason, it’s not available on NewEgg. You can also check out the deals from Amazon and B&H. For all you Canadian residents, Amazon.ca is offering the tablet in both 16GB and 32GB flavors, but like NewEgg, the tablet is only available in brown.

Catalyst IT wins South China Morning Post contract

Wellington open source software firm Catalyst IT has won a seven-figure contract to develop the news website and supporting systems for the South China Morning Post.

Sonatype Introduces Open-Source Governance Solution

Sonatype delivers Sonatype Insight, a new solution for governing the use of open-source software in enterprise systems development.

Events

• Software Freedom Day Organized at SMVDU by OSUM CLUB

  Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University (SMVDU) today celebrated the event of ‘Software Freedom Day’ (SFD) in their university campus. The event was organized by OSUM (Open Source University Meet-Up) club of SMVDU. The event was sponsored by AGMATEL INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED and AMTRAK TECHNOLOGIES. Software Freedom Day is a worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).

• 2011 Open Source Awards launched

SaaS

• Puppet Enterprise 2.0 automates cloud, on-premise deployment

  Puppet Labs is moving forward new provisioning, orchestration and automation capabilities designed to advance the platform’s stellar reputation in the management arena.

  Puppet Enterprise 2.0, which debuted this week and ships October 21, is the first major upgrade of a company’s commercially supported version of Puppet that counts Google, Twitter, Apple, NYSE, Match.com, Red Hat and Citrix among its 250 enterprise customers.

• A Wise User Judges Each Internet Usage Scenario Carefully

  If the term “Cloud Computing” has any meaning, it can only be a certain attitude towards computing: an attitude of not thinking carefully about what a proposed scenario entails or what risks it implies.

• Open source cloud-builder respawn: Eucalyptus 3.0 looms

  Marten Mickos and Eucalyptus have pumped new life into their build-your-own–cloud platform, revamping its approach to open source while adding new code designed to protect users from catastrophic failures.

Databases

• Open Core MySQL

  By truncating software freedom before distribution, the supplier ensures you can’t use the software without restriction or benefit from the freedom of others to do so. In other words, while there may be some open source software in its origins, it’s not open source software you are receiving.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Oracle v. Google – Lindholm Email, Mitchell Patent Report, and Cockburn Damages Report

  Google is going full out in its efforts on three different fronts: suppressing the Lindholm emails, challenging the Mitchell Patent Report, and now seeking to again suppress portions of the revised Cockburn report on damages.

• Oracle v. Google – And Oracle responds on the Cockburn Damages Report and the Lindholm email

  Yesterday we discussed the Google requests to suppress portions of the revised Cockburn Damages Report submitted by Oracle and to preserve the Attorney’s Eyes Only status of the Lindholm emails. Now Oracle has responded to each of those requests.

• Google, Oracle patent talk makes slow progress

Business

• Britain’s got Talend for open source

  Open source software vendor Talend has cited the growth of its partner network as proof that the channel’s appetite for non-proprietary products is growing.

  The vendor, which specialises in open source data integration products, claims to have doubled the size of its UK channel over the past 12 months and now has more than 50 partners signed up.

Project Releases

• Smooth lighting

  The code can be optimized, but should give you a clear understanding on how to make smooth OpenGL lighting. And you can admire the stunning results with a mere basic material and one lamp!

Public Services/Government

• Will the public sector ever be an open house?

  The minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, vowed in March that he would “create a level playing field for open source software” as part of his strategy to slash the government’s £20bn annual bill for IT equipment.

  A recent BBC Freedom of Information request hinted at just how far the government has to go before open-source technologies are widely adopted by various government departments. Although some are using open source for server management and workspace IT, proprietary vendors such as IBM and Microsoft still rule the roost.

• Sleman to Use Open Source Computer System

  The Sleman government will use a free open source operation system in its office computers

Openness/Sharing

• Open Data

  • E.U. Sets 2013 Deadline for Open Source Public Data Mining Portal

    Sticking with her original deadline announced last year, European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes told a European interoperability standards forum yesterday that a public portal for access to government and public data from across the continent is on track to go online in Spring 2012. Following that, the next stage in Comm. Kroes’ agenda includes an ambitious project to launch a community-built, crowd-sourced public data platform for all of Europe.

• Open Access/Content

  • Student group pushes open source textbooks at UC Irvine

    Mr. $200 Textbook — the rival of cash-strapped college students — and Textbook Rebel –a Spongebob Squarepants lookalike – helped gather students to sign a petition that urges professors, publishers and college decision makers to consider inexpensive textbooks or free e-books over conventional, high-priced textbooks.

• Open Hardware

  • ARM-ed to the Teeth, Arduino Hardware Grows Up

    Makers and motherboard-modders rejoice! One of the most popular open-source computing hardware companies recently debuted new hardware offerings for gadget geeks, including a beefier project board that will allow makers and hobbyists to create more complicated embedded computing projects.

    Arduino announced three new products at Maker Faire NYC this weekend: The Arduino Due, which features a souped up ARM-based microcontroller, the Arduino Leonardo and the self-explanatory Arduino Wi-Fi.

Health/Nutrition

• Walgreens’ “Million Hearts” HealthWashing Ploy

  The chain’s press release about the Initiative says heart disease and stroke are the first and third leading causes of death, respectively. What Walgreens doesn’t say is that while it searches for ways to prevent heart disease, the chain also continues to sell one of the nation’s leading causes of heart disease and stroke: cigarettes. Not only that, but when the city of San Francisco passed an ordinance in 2008 banning pharmacies from selling cigarettes (based on the logic that as health-promoting businesses, pharmacies should not promote smoking) Walgreens fought the measure.

Security

• Making the EU cyber-safe

  The Internet is already essential infrastructure – where we make financial transactions, share personal data and get access to important information. It is part of our economic and social framework – and becoming all the more so. That’s a good thing. But it also means that the risks and impacts of cyber-attacks grow ever more. So what do we do when the system is under threat?

Finance

• Occupy Wall Street Protesters Kettled and Pepper-Sprayed by NYPD [Video]

  This sort of First Amendment violation should be a cause for concern for every American, whatever the political persuasion. This is a country where gamblers can now pillage the wealth from the lower classes and dodge prison sentences, while those who see a wrong and try to stop it are corralled, pepper-sprayed and hauled off to jail for attempting to petition their government—their government—for a redress of grievances.

  Why don’t some of these blue-collar policemen do something for their own people and haul some Wall Street bankers and hedge fund managers off to jail for a change?

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Health Care Front Group Provides New Clothes for GOP Medicare Privatization Plan

  Last week, the insurance industry and its allies began what I predict will be a massive campaign to sell the public and policymakers on the idea of moving forward with the Ryan plan — albeit with a few tweaks and new a new sales pitch to make it seem more consumer-friendly.

  An outfit called the Healthcare Leadership Council (HLC) announced in a press release a scheme that could be called Ryan-lite, but don’t be fooled: the plan would — to use a favorite industry term — take us down the “slippery slope” toward a complete corporate takeover of the Medicare program. (Insurers and their allies for years have warned Americans that enacting sweeping health care reforms they don’t like would lead us down the slippery slope toward socialism.)

Civil Rights

• RespectMyNet: Name and Shame Operators’ Attempts to Control the Net

  Civil society groups launched today an online platform to help citizens track Internet access restrictions imposed by telecom companies. This platform, RespectMyNet.eu, will present EU lawmakers with the evidence they keep denying: there is an urgent need to legislate against Net Neutrality violations, which harm fundamental freedoms as well as innovation and competition.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

The Linux Setup – Elizabeth Krumbach, Ubuntu Women Project

Elizabeth Krumbach is the kind of Linux person I find fascinating. She’s very strong on the technical side, with lots of Debian contributions to her name, but she’s also very active socially, in all kinds of Linux-related outreach. But even more impressively, Elizabeth seems to be using her ideal Linux desktop setup, which is always a cool thing to read.

Server

• Oracle Database Appliance: Linux System vs. SQL Server

Audiocasts/Shows

• Linux Outlaws 230 – Wait, There’s the Ice Cream Van

  Fab loses his hair, the Pirate Party scores big time in Germany, Google+ gets an API, identi.ca gets upgraded and Microsoft goes completely insane with Windows 8.

Kernel Space

• A kernel.org status update

  As you know, we’ve been working very hard on building a new kernel.org infrastructure from the ground up. This new infrastructure will no longer have shell access to the git repositories; instead we will be running git using the gitolite web glue.

• Graphics Stack

  • X.Org Server 1.11.1 Brings Two Brown-Bag Fixes

    Jeremy Huddleston released xorg-server 1.11.1 a few hours ago. This release was done since two “brown-bag” issues were found in X.Org Server 1.11.0, which was released just one month ago.

  • Is VIA Back To Playing With Linux, Gallium3D?

    Back in January I heard from VIA that their open-source Linux strategy / support was basically dead. They don’t have the resources or justification to do the work any longer, and their Linux TODO list was basically shot. In the years since they announced they were trying to become open-source friendly (and follow the steps of ATI/AMD), they only managed to push out some partially open-source code and some chipset documentation. But could they be playing around with open-source graphics drivers again?

Applications

• Recoll Finds Text Virtually Anywhere on a Linux Computer

• OpenShot Video Editor Reaches Version 1.4, Gets New Effects, Transitions And More

  OpenShot, one of the most popular video editors for Linux has reached version 1.4, getting a many improvements and bug fixes:

  * New video and audio effects
  * New 3D animations
  * New transitions
  * Timeline improvements

• Jitsi: Multi-protocol VoIP chat using ZRTP and SRTP

• OpenShot Video Editor 1.4 brings timeline improvements

  After more than seven months of development, the OpenShot project has announced the arrival of version 1.4 of its open source video editor for Linux. According to the developers, the latest release of the non-linear, timeline-based video editor “represents a huge investment by our small and dedicated team”. In addition to “tons of bug fixes and speed improvements”, a number of new features have been added.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Live Wallpaper in Ubuntu Linux Using Wallpaper Clock

  • Installing Software On Kubuntu Systems

  • How do I get Xwindows to work when I am using an encrypted Drive?

  • How do I get Xwindows to work when I am using an encrypted Drive?

  • MAC versus DAC in SELinux

  • How to make a website with Drupal

  • [How To] Quickly Convert Ogv to Avi in Ubuntu

  • Quickly setup a Gentoo system

  • Installing Alfresco 3.4.d On Fedora 15 (+ Tomcat + PostgreSQL)

  • Easily Turn Off LCDs With a Shortcut Key in Ubuntu

  • Virtualization solutions on Linux systems – KVM and VirtualBox

  • How to fetch NYSE prices with a simple bash script

  • How to Delete a Directory in Linux

  • Emulating The Terminal Emulators For Fun (with emacs color-theme)

  • How To Recover ChromeBook After System Failure

• Wine

  • Wine 1.3.29 Plays Better With VB Script, X Render

    It’s time for another bi-weekly development release of Wine… This new release, Wine 1.3.29, has noteworthy changes when it comes to Visual Basic Script (VBScript) and X Render support.

• Games

  • New Blocks That Matter Linux Demo with Exclusive Levels and Content

    After releasing couple of tech demos and final version for Linux, indie game studio Swing Swing Submarine has released a new demo of their game Blocks That Matter for users to get their hands on.

  • Your Move, Valve

    Remember a year back when those Linux Steam builds leaked, everyone went crazy, and then nothing happened? Yeah. Well, it’s happening again, except this time with Desura, and the Linux client actually exists…

  • Introduction To Gaming In Linux : Part Three – Desura

Desktop Environments

• GNOME Desktop

  • Tweaking Gnome

    I gave Gnome themes a whirl, but ultimately decided that I like the default Gnome 3 desktop. Except for one thing: all windows are grey. The active window is grey with black text as the title, and inactive windows are a slightly different shade of grey with dark grey text as the title.

Distributions

• Linux Portable Security 1.2.5 has been released! | LinuxOS from department of Defence

  A new maintenance release of Linux Portable Security LPS has been released, this release added more support for RealTek wireless drivers; added additional broadband cellular drivers; added additional SmartCard drivers; revised About Box to show licensing info; removed GMail S/MIME add-on, which no longer works with GMail; updated Flash to 10.3.183.7; updated Firefox to 3.6.22; updated DOD Configuration add-on to 1.3.3; updated Java to 6u27; updated OpenSSH to 5.9p1; updated DOD Root CAs. Find more info in the chagelog

• New Releases

  • Softpedia Linux Weekly, Issue 166

    Summary:
    · Announced Distro: GeeXboX 2.0
    · Announced Distro: Pardus Linux 2011.2
    · Announced Distro: Kororaa Linux 15
    · Announced Distro: Ubuntu 11.10 Beta 2

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • They make Mageia: Oliver Burger

    I am an active member of the German Mandriva community MandrivaUser.de, I was a Mandriva translator since about 2007 and I was one of the packagers creating the mud third party packages.

• Debian Family

  • Dodging Bullets With Debian GNU/Linux

  • Derivatives

    • Tails, The Amnesic Incognito Live System, 0.8 released

      Tails, version 0.8 has been released 2 days ago, with some updates on his main packages.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • ‘Ubuntu Friendly’ Hardware Certification Program Maturing

        If Canonical had its way, OEMs would make sure Ubuntu ran well on their hardware before shipping it. But most OEMs don’t, so Ubuntu developers have resorted to the next best thing: crowd-sourcing hardware validation to users via the Ubuntu Friendly program, which is almost ready for prime time. Here’s the scoop.

      • Ubuntu 11.10 Beta 2 Released, Synaptic Removed

      • Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot Beta 2 Ready For Download [Video]

      • Ubuntu 11.10 Beta 2 Released, Changes and Screenshots Tour

      • Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot Beta 2 arrives for testing

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Bodhi Linux 1.2.0 Review

          This fantastic distribution is not merely another Ubuntu derivative. Bodhi delivers a smooth installation process, and an utterly perfected desktop environment that surely left developers locked in dark basements for weeks on end. Enlightenment may be exactly what all the other distributions are missing. The Enlightenment desktop is lightweight and highly customizable making this distribution a top choice for new or old systems. Bodhi comes with a minimal list of pre-installed applications as well, perfect if you are picky about what you like. So if you are ready to try something new Bodhi will leave you breathless.

        • Revisiting Ubuntu and Xubuntu (11.10 beta 2)

          The new Ubuntu release (Oneiric Ocelot) comes out in about three weeks. Since the Linux news feeds I peruse have been filled with all the great improvements being made to the Unity interface in Ubuntu, I thought I’d download the new Ubuntu 11.10 beta 2 and check it out. It comes with new Linux Kernel version 3.0.4 and Gnome 3.1.92 along with an upgraded Unity.

        • Slim it down!

          An almost-overlooked addition to the upcoming Kubuntu 11.10 is the new Kubuntu Low-Fat Settings package. With this set of new default settings for various KDE bits, it is quite possible to reduce memory usage by as much as 32% and reduce KDE’s start up time by 33%, according to our intrepid apachelogger. This is a boon to those of us with older and slower hardware.

        • Free Your Computer with Trisquel 5.0

          In the vast world of GNU/Linux distributions it can be difficult to choose one that suites all of your needs and still remains true to the core values of the Free Software Foundation. Although there are several distributions that have been branded 100% Libre, many of them seem to have lost steam and support.

          I am pleased to report that Trisquel 5.0 was released this month. Trisquel is based on Ubuntu so users who are familiar with that distribution will feel right at home. Originally released in 2005 with the support of Richard Stallman and FSF, this installment of the 100% Libre distribution is well polished and a pleasure to use.

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Android

    • Turn your Android Phone into a Wireless Camera using IP Webcam for Free

    • 5 applications to customize your Android lock screen

    • Android, A Major Step Towards Free Smartphones: Richard M Stallman

      Stallman summarised by saying that Android devices are a major step towards free smartphones that are fully controlled by their users, but that there is a long way to go yet: “Even though the Android phones of today are considerably less bad than Apple or Windows smartphones, they cannot be said to respect your freedom.”

It Takes Open Source to Raise a Village

In late August, Marcin Jakubowski, Open Source Ecology founder and director, posted the GVCS Rollout Plan for 2011-2012 on the project wiki. In his post, Jakubowski explained that the project’s 2010 budget was US $1,500 per month, and the current budget is $10,000 per month. He projects the project budget will be up to $100,000 per month within six months, with financing coming from True Fans (financial supporters) and production earnings.

Web Browsers

• Chrome

  • Chrome 14 ups Google’s browser game

    Google’s rapid development pace shows no signs of slowing as it rolls out a new stable version of Chrome, this time version 14.

    Unlike Firefox, which also has an accelerated release process, Chrome appears to be benefiting from the high turnover, while Firefox seems to be suffering because of it.

• Mozilla

  • More Ideas for Thunderbird

  • Mozilla Proposes Half-Hearted Extended Release Cycle for Enterprises

    The accelerated Firefox release cycle may be great for many users, but enterprise IT folks were not thrilled. To their credit, the folks at Mozilla eventually took the complaints seriously and founded a working group to address enterprise desktop needs. However, it seems clear that the Extended Support Releases (ESRs) will be second-class citizens.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Oracle vs. Google Android, Java lawsuit settlement talks will go no-where

  The judge can order Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Google’s Larry Page to talk in closed court all he wants, they’re not going to settle Oracle’s lawsuit over Android and its alleged infringement on Java.

BSD

• Taking PC-BSD 9.0 BETA for a spin

Public Services/Government

• NO: Ministry uses open source version control system

  The Norwegian Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development used ‘Subversion’, an open source version control system, to publish online the first part of the source code for the government’s eVoting system.

Programming

• Introducing Plack::Test::Agent

Standards/Consortia

• Neelie Kroes Vice President European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda Opening up Europe: from Common Standards to Open Data OpenForum Europe Summit 2011, Brussels 22nd September 2011

  Third, benefits for science. Because research in genomics, pharmacology or the fight against cancer increasingly depends on the availability and sophisticated analysis of large data sets. Sharing such data means researchers can collaborate, compare, and creatively explore whole new realms. We cannot afford for access to scientific knowledge to become a luxury, and the results of publicly funded research in particular should be spread as widely as possible.

No Brass Ring on HP’s CEO Carousel

Analysis: Whitman’s Tenure At HP Must Include Open-Source Investment

Of all the priorities Meg Whitman now must face as Hewlett-Packard’s CEO — and HP has many priorities — deep and long commitment to open-source technology must be near the top of the list.

HP’s software business is simply not a strength for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company — whether it’s on the desktop, the server, the data center or in the cloud. Perhaps the best piece of software that comes from HP is its Universal Print Driver, which is actually a powerful piece of software but not exactly positioned in the IT industry’s growth areas.

Finance

• Goldman Sachs Could Be Headed Toward First Loss Since Financial Crisis

  Growing concerns about the weakness of economic growth around the world are increasingly dimming prospects for American financial institutions, amplifying risks of spiraling troubles.

  Even Goldman Sachs, the well-known investment bank, now could be headed toward recording its second quarterly loss in a dozen years — its first quarterly loss since the financial crisis — according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The bank’s lower earnings prospects have been taken by experts as a sign that Goldman is pulling back from taking risks. In the immediate term, a cutback in financial activity by Goldman and other banks is likely to drag on the struggling American economy, as more businesses and consumers find it harder to secure credit needed to make purchases.

• The men who crashed the world

  Lack of government regulation; easy lending in the US housing market meant anyone could qualify for a home loan with no government regulations in place.

  Also, London was competing with New York as the banking capital of the world. Gordon Brown, the British finance minister at the time, introduced ‘light touch regulation’ – giving bankers a free hand in the marketplace.

• The Social Contract

  Meanwhile, over the same period, the income of the very rich, the top 100th of 1 percent of the income distribution, rose by 480 percent. No, that isn’t a misprint. In 2005 dollars, the average annual income of that group rose from $4.2 million to $24.3 million.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • Copyright Wars – First Three Volumes Now Published

  • NYC/NBCUniversal Pro-Copyright Propaganda Contest For School Kids: Facts Not Allowed And Your Rights Don’t Count

    There has been plenty of concern recently about companies sneaking their own marketing material or one-sided corporate propaganda into schools. And while some may differ on how big a problem this is, I think most people would agree that a local government shouldn’t be aiding the process — especially without revealing the corporate sponsor. And yet, that appears to be exactly what New York City is doing. And, to make it even more ridiculous, they’re doing so by putting forth a corporate-sponsored contest about the importance of copyright… and hiding in the fine print that by entering the contest, you may be giving up your own copyrights.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Linux the harlequin.

Meet Linux, Linux the harlequin. Linux wears a coat of many colours, is depicted as a bumbling fool and people love to laugh at it. This harlequin is called a clown, a fool, an idiot and looked upon with derision by people of “class”. This harlequin is ignored and just treated and thought of as simply background entertainment. In other words Linux the harlequin is not thought of as important at all and is generally underestimated.

Microsoft of old on Linux desktop, mobile and users

I wrote recently about how Microsoft is now among the broadest supporters of enterprise Linux server, but when it comes to desktop PCs and laptops, mobile and converged devices and end users, Microsoft’s Linux support is a time warp back to 1998 when computers and their software were fused by proprietary sodder.

Though probably not intended as one of the new Windows 8 features to be highlighted, recent reports indicate a boot requirement in Microsoft’s latest Windows 8 OS prevents booting of Linux.

As a Linux user who has installed several different distributions on several different failed Windows machines, I’m concerned for a few reasons. One, it can be difficult to impossible to avoid the so-called ‘Microsoft tax,’ whereby Windows machines are purchased with the intention of installing Linux. Two, this is a serious limitation to the growing segment of users that like a dual-boot option with Linux. Three, what will happen to all of those PCs, laptops, netbooks and other devices after the Microsoft software becomes buggy, broken or outdated?

Supporting UEFI secure boot on Linux: the details

An obvious question is why Linux doesn’t support UEFI secure booting. Let’s ignore the issues of key distribution and the GPL and all of those things, and instead just focus on what would be required. There’s two components – the signed binary and the authenticated variables.

UEFI secure booting (part 2)

Microsoft have responded to suggestions that Windows 8 may make it difficult to boot alternative operating systems. What’s interesting is that at no point do they contradict anything I’ve said. As things stand, Windows 8 certified systems will make it either more difficult or impossible to install alternative operating systems. But let’s have some more background.

Delusions of M$

The same will happen with tablets. A small, number about 60million will be shipped in 2011 but in 2012, the number could increase dramatically, about 300%. That means when “8″ is released, the installed base of GNU/Linux or Android/Linux or iPad tablets could be about 200 million. OEMs are not going to shift to the “tight margin” model that M$ imposes on PCs in the smart thingies. The newcomers will be making more than M$’s partners on small cheap computers than on “PCs”. By the end of 2012, consumers and businesses will know and love the small cheap computer and will turn up their noses at M$ offering small expensive computers.

Desktop

• My minimalist setup

  My laptop is just a plain old Thinkpad W510 with a 15” screen running 1920×1080. I don’t have another monitor, I don’t have a desktop or a second laptop, this is it.

Audiocasts/Shows

• FLOSS Weekly 183: Cassandra

• The Linux Link Tech Show Episode 421

Kernel Space

• Kernel Log: Coming in 3.1 (Part 4) – Drivers

• Is Tux Still the Right Mascot for Linux?

  Apple has its self-explanatory fruity logo, Microsoft has its stained-glass banner, and Linux has its floppy, friendly, ever-cheerful penguin Tux as its team mascot. But after 20 years of existence, does Linux benefit from the Tux logo? Some say Tux is a perfectly fine way to represent Linux as a whole; others call it “cartoon-y” and prevents people from taking Linux seriously.

• Linux 3.1-rc7

  I was supposed to do this on Monday, but it didn’t seem to be hugely pressing.

• Linus releases dive tracking application

  If you have ever wondered what the creator of Linux does in-between working through the thousands of changes, corrections and new features for the next Linux release, the answer is simple: he writes software. Linus Torvalds has just released subsurface, a dive-tracking program designed after he found that “none of the dive log software worked for me”. The subsurface application runs on Linux and uses gtk2 for the GUI. It can process xml dive files or work directly with any dive computer supported by libdivecomputer.

• Graphics Stack

  • XDC: How to bring in more contributors

    In my talk (or rather: structured discussion) “Methods of Attraction: How to bring in new contributors” on this year’s X.org Developer’s Conference I brought up reasons why open source projects often fail to attract new contributors, and some changes to help this.

  • A Major Rework To The X.Org Video Driver ABI

    One of the mailing list threads I’ve been trying to catch up on this week while at Oktoberfest is the heated discussion about merging video/input drivers back into the X.Org Servers. This discussion was started at the XDC2011 conference, but there’s many e-mails being exchanged from more parties not in favor of merging the drivers into the xorg-server tree or wishing to see other developmental process changes.

  • Last Call For The X.Org/Linux Graphics Survey

    Originally this annual survey was set to end on 20 September, but due to being busy with Oktoberfest, that deadline was forgotten about. As a result, there’s still time to participate.

Applications

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Python for systems administrators – The basics

  • On Veetle, Linux Mint, and ICEauthority

  • How (and why) to do math with awk

  • Upgrading CentOS 5.6 to CentOS 5.7

  • How to Create Sheet Music (Linux Mint)

  • How to fetch NYSE prices with a simple bash script

  • Firewalling SSH brute force attacks.

  • Converting a table in text form into table form

  • PHP Explode

  • How to use Linux containers (lxc) under Debian Squeeze

  • Cron and crontab – How to schedule things on Linux

  • How to Use Touch to Create Empty Files and Modify Timestamps

  • Running commands on Windows from Linux, through ssh

  • View File Contents Using The Head Command

  • Stupid Geek Tricks: Use Your SSH Config File to Create Aliases for Hosts

  • Namebench – DNS server benchmark

  • Let Grub2 remember and auto-select last entry you booted

  • Playterm, Platform of the Gurus

    Did you learn all your Linux console skills from books or from forums? Or, did you peek over someone’s shoulder to see the real action? Once in a while, we stumble upon new projects that deserve some attention, like Playterm. What’s the reason for this command-line “peep show”? To spread GNU Linux command-line knowledge.

• Games

  • An Interview With Desura’s GNU/Linux Games Lead

    Josh (Cheese) Bush from Twolofbees.com let me know that has made an interview with rotektor (Tim Jung) who has recently been appointed GNU/Linux Games Lead for Desura , it comes with 3 parts – so here is the first part (the others will be published on his website in the next few weeks).

  • Gaming In Linux : The Dark Messiah Of Might And Magic Installation

  • Marball Odyssey $1+ (not quite pay what you want)

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • Beta Testing Phase Beginning for Plasma Active OS

    The Plasma Active OS has been on Desktop and Netbook interfaces for quite awhile now. The exploration into a much wider range of devices that can utilize the Plasma interface is the goal of the current beta testing. By displaying the possibilities of Plasma OS to other devices through a beta run, the developers at KDE are targeting the largest pool of users possible.

  • Qt 5, KDE 5 To Be Written In C++11 (C++0x)?

    C++11, the new C++ ISO standard that was approved last month and formerly was known as C++0x, has been called to be employed by Qt and KDE as quickly as possible.

  • Developer and User Interaction

    A free software project such as the many projects under the KDE umbrella do not need users, they only need more developers. A user which is not able to develop is useless. Because of that it is totally acceptable that you demand that user’s should start learning programming to fix the bugs they report.

  • plasma active workshop: day 0

    The last couple of weeks have been ridiculously busy. Or, if you prefer (and I do): ridicubusy. On the personal side of life, I managed to squeeze in a two day paddle-and-camping trip the other weekend, played dinner host to Lawrence Krauss (made some of my favourite dishes, and one new one (for me, anyways): egg yolk ravioli), co-hosted a “Ready, Steady, Cook!” evening at the house along with S. All of that was enjoyable, and great breaks between the long hours of working on Plasma and general KDE “stuff”.

  • plasma active workshop wrapup

• GNOME Desktop

  • GNOME 3.2 Release Candidate Is Here, ‘Final’ Landing in One Week

    GNOME 3.2 is almost here, the team has made available the release candidate version for testing and the final build is expected to land in a week.

    If you can’t wait for that long or want to help some of the remaining bugs, if any, you can grab the sources and see what the second update to the third major iteration of the GNOME desktop environment looks like.

  • No, GNOME doesn’t want user feedback; how I argued in favor of voting in bugzilla, and got banned as a result

    I have long been an advocate for listening to the users (see this old thread in in GNOME’s ml), and through the years I have discussed over and over with GNOME developers why it’s important to listen to your users, and why they are barely doing it.

  • GNOME Foundation head Sandler to keynote at LCA 2012

    The chief executive of the GNOME Foundation, Karen Sandler, will be the first keynote speaker at the 13th Australian national Linux conference scheduled to be held in Ballarat from January 16 to 20 next year.

Distributions

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat signs giants to anti-VMware open-source project

  • Red Hat Puts On Its Growth Hat

    That was the takeaway from my exclusive phone interview with Red Hat (NYSE: RHT ) CEO Jim Whitehurst after the company reported second-quarter earnings last night.

    Revenue for the quarter tallied up to $281.3 million, up 28% year over year, while non-GAAP net income was $56.5 million, or $0.29 per diluted share, rising 53% from last year. Non-GAAP operating income jumped 41% to $76.4 million, resulting in an 18.7% operating margin. The company’s total deferred revenue balance, an important precursor to sales, rose 25% to $813.2 million and billings grew 30%.

    [...]

    Even Samsung is considering taking its mobile OS, Bada, open source next year.

  • Red Hat Shares — 3 Pros, 3 Cons

    In yesterday’s ugly market, only a few stocks were able to eke out gains. One of the standouts: Red Hat (NYSE:RHT). Its price was up 3% to $41.49.

    [...]

    So might the tough macroeconomic environment hurt Red Hat? Perhaps so. Yet the company has the advantage that its software is free. Consider that some of the hardest-hit sectors — such as financial services and the government — have shown continued demand for Red Hat’s services.

  • Fedora

    • Fedora 16 Verne Beta Wallpapers

      Next, I’d like to remind you that in Fedora 16 we again have supplemental wallpapers and what’s more: since Fedora 16 all the supplemental wallpapers appear not only in GNOME’s and KDE’s wallpaper choosers but also in XFCE’s.

    • Taking the plunge!

      This post is exactly what it prommised. I have decided to take the plunge and install Fedora 16 Beta RC1 on my Desktop. (Before anyone starts on me I have the experience to run a beta on a production machine and have a backup O/S RHEL 6)

    • Fedora 16 Delayed by Two Weeks Too

      In his blog post referencing Wednesday’s Go/NoGo meeting, Williamson detailed some of the bugs causing another slip in the Fedora 16 release schedule.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu 11.10 Beta 2 Released, Reviewed

        The second beta release of Ubuntu 11.10 has been made available for download.

      • Unity Lenses and Books

      • Flavours and Variants

        • A new Ubuntu-based OS is currently under development!

          We (Raja Genupula and I) have been making an OS that will integrate the Web seamlessly with the OS.

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Android

    • Android and Users’ Freedom

      To what extent does Android respect the freedom of its users? For a computer user that values freedom, that is the most important question to ask about any software system.

      In the free/libre software movement, we develop software that respects users’ freedom, so we and you can escape from software that doesn’t. By contrast, the idea of “open source” focuses on how to develop code; it is a different current of thought whose principal value is code quality rather than freedom. Thus, the concern here is not whether Android is “open”, but whether it allows users to be free.

      Android is an operating system primarily for mobile phones, which consists of Linux (Torvalds’ kernel), some libraries, a Java platform and some applications. Linux aside, the software of Android versions 1 and 2 was mostly developed by Google; Google released it under the Apache 2.0 license, which is a lax free software license without copyleft.

The Open Source Angles To Adobe’s Flash And Flex

The recently launched Adobe’s Flash Builder 4.5 and Flex 4.5 have become an attraction for the developers. Although this version of the development tool is recently launched with an updater for multiscreen mobile support, the rave reviews of the product bear testimony to the fact that developers are willing to make the most of it. With Adobe Flash Builder, developers now have a single platform for developing highly expressive mobile applications that can be distributed via Android Market, Apple App Store and BlackBerry App World. Flash Builder 4.5 enables the creation of applications that work seamlessly across leading mobile devices platforms. These products provide developers with an opportunity to reach more than 80 million Android devices, BlackBerry Playbooks, iPads and iPhones.

Events

• Open Source Software Lecture Series Kicks Off Sept. 22 in Fairmont

  Open source software advocate Jon “Maddog” Hall will kick off a series of discussions about the potential open source software holds for economic development at a Sept. 22 lecture in Fairmont.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Mozilla Proposes 42-Week Release Cycle For Firefox in Businesses

    Mozilla has published a proposal for an extended support release (ESR) version for Firefox versions that are deployed in business environments. The extended release cycle is designed to alleviate the burden of the 6-week rapid releases and respective support cycles by replacing them with 42-week versions.

  • The biggest version number?

    There’s a lot of talk about Firefox’s ever-increasing version number, and it made me wonder: what piece of software has the biggest version number of all? A brief scan of my Xubuntu 11.04 box suggests than XTerm, at version 268, has the lead, although I’m sure there’s something bigger out there. And in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t really matter – how good the software is, and for how long it is supported, is a bigger issue.

SaaS

• A wise user judges each Internet usage scenario carefully

  Businesses now offer computing users tempting opportunities to let others keep their data and do their computing. In other words, to toss caution and responsibility to the winds.

  These businesses, and their boosters, like to call these computing practices “cloud computing”. They apply the same term to other quite different scenarios as well, such as renting a remote server, making the term so broad and nebulous that nothing meaningful can be said with it. If it has any meaning, it can only be a certain attitude towards computing: an attitude of not thinking carefully about what a proposed scenario entails or what risks it implies. Perhaps the cloud they speak of is intended to form inside the customer’s mind.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• LibreOffice Visio import filter on libregraphicsworld.org

  For those that could be interested in my shameless self-promotion, there is some news about the LibreOffice Visio import filter at libregraphicsworld.org web site, accompanied by a fine interview with two fine hackers.

BSD

• New FreeBSD Foundation funded projects: DIFFUSE, Porting of libc++

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Bad-mouthing the Free Software Foundation

  What disturbs me is not the fact of the criticism, but how it is made. For one thing, it seems unrealistic. It’s all very well for Proffitt to say, as he did on Google+, that “I would hope that they would advocate the benefits of free software (of which there are many) without feeling the need to tear down everything else. Again.”

  But how, in practice, is the FSF supposed to approach subjects like Android in a positive light? While Stallman concedes that “the Android phones of today are considerably less bad than Apple or Windows smartphones,” Android obviously isn’t free software, although many people I talk to have the vague belief that it is.

  Obviously, a debunking is in order, but by definition a debunking is negative. In fact, how is the FSF supposed to discuss the matter at all, especially when any free software alternative to Android is so small and so unknown that any attempt to advocate it would automatically discredit itself?

• Free Software’s Smelly Underpants

  In his “Off The Beat” blog at LinuxPro Magazine, Bruce Byfield wrote about what he called a “disturbing trend”, namely to criticize and otherwise bad-mouth everything that comes out of the Free Software Foundation. He mentioned other pundits and journalists like Brian Proffitt and Joe Brockmeier.

  For the record, I know and like everyone of these guys (Bruce, Brian, and Joe) and I really hate to see them fighting.

  Where was I? Oh yeah, the Free Software Foundation. The FSF has, as its founder and figurehead, the legendary Richard M. Stallman. Richard is a very smart guy with some strong feelings about what constitutes Free Software. He’s also the guy behind the GPL, the license under which the Linux kernel was released. That document, the GPL, deserves to be called ‘visionary’, helping to shape the world of FOSS as we know it.

Project Releases

• Lightspark 0.5.1 released

  After over two months of work since 0.5.0 by a handful of developers, there’s finally a new release of Lightspark, the (other) open source Flash player. Unlike Gnash, Lightspark supports the AVM2 virtual machine and the newest versions of SWF files, while falling back to Gnash when it encounters SWF8 or earlier content.

Open Hardware

• Ford Gets Geeky With Apps For Open Source Platform

  To realize this, the car company announced a partnership with Bug Labs to develop a new in-car research platform named OpenXC, earlier this week. [1] Ford also plans to introduce a socially-networked in-car fuel economy monitor connected to the Internet via Bug Labs’ cloud-based service, BUGswarm.

User influence on gigantic corporations

It has come up many times, that the users of software products have the most influence over how these greedy and gigantic companies operate. Why? Because if users do not use and/or buy products, these companies could not and would not exist.

Microsoft is probably one of the worst abusers of its consumers. Complex licensing programs are designed purposely to make customers overpay for licenses. Little to no discounts have been offered for upgrades, even for users that had already purchased Windows Vista for example, despite Microsoft’s declaration that Vista was a “mistake”. Secretly undermining the competition, using legal devices like software patents, so that users must go to Microsoft and pay royalties to Microsoft if they use non-Microsoft software. Vendor lock-in, where current customers are unable to use non-Microsoft software because their Microsoft products are incompatible and too expensive to migrate away from. Closely monitoring the software that its customers use, in order to keep them from installing the software on too many computers without paying more. And the list goes on.

Security

• EFF’s Open Source Security Audit Uncovers Security Vulnerabilities in Messaging Software

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • ACTA

    • With ACTA, manipulation returns to the European Parliament

      A few years ago, an amendment making sure that parallel importation was not criminalised in the EU disappeared after it was adopted in the European Parliament. This summer, the Chairman of the International Trade committee (INTA), Mr Vital Moreira, rewrote a question the INTA committee asked the Parliament’s Legal Services regarding ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement). The INTA Chairman among others things left out a reference regarding parallel importation. Up until now, no member of the INTA committee questioned the behavior of the INTA Chairman. (See update below.)

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Desktop

• TigerDirect.com Starts Selling Chromebooks

Server

• Looking For i In All The Wrong Places

  Beyond that I’ll find discussions on virtualization, the cloud, and Linux, as well as how to noodle lifecycle costs by factoring in the cost of operation and incremental changes on top of the cost of acquisition. I can categorize some of that as “must know” and some of it as “hope I can skip through that.”

• IBM pitches overclocked Xeons to Wall Street

  Big Blue has joined the ranks of server makers that are pitching servers using over-clocked processors to latency-sensitive financial services companies.

Kernel Space

• Linux Birthday Celebration Not Just for Nerds

• linux-next on github

• The State of Linux on ARM

  ARM is often toted as one of Linux’s largest successes. Thanks to Google’s Android platform it is true that a penguin powers at least half of the world’s mobile devices today.

• Linux 3.1 release delayed for kernel.org and Linus’ vacation

  Linus Torvalds wants to do the Linux 3.2 merge on kernel.org.

Applications

• Wunderlist is now on Linux- Great tool to organize your to do things

• Winners of the 2011 Summer Tux Paint Contest

• Instructionals/Technical

  • How To Install Google Music Frame In Fedora

  • “If it ain’t broke, break it”: Inferno environment ported to Android

  • Mounting Remote Directories With SSHFS On Debian Squeeze

• Games

  • Desura Game Platform Goes Into Beta On Linux

    The Desura Game Client, which is a similar service to Valve’s Steam game distribution platform for e-delivery, is now in beta on Linux.

Distributions

• Pardus 2011.2: new version or service pack?

  Even having these oddities, this distribution gains popularity. As per recent voting, Pardus got just below 5% of votes for best KDE-based distribution. More than monstrous Mandriva or newborn Mageia.

• TLWIR 18: Ubuntu Rapid Release, Acer, and The Philippines’ Bold Move

  Intel saved $200 million by switching from proprietary Unix software to free software running on GNU/Linux.

• New Releases

  • Incognito 0.8

  • Clonezilla 1.2.10-14

  • CAINE 2.5 – SUPERNOVA is out!

  • Pardus Linux 2011.2 released

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • Happy Belated Birthday, Mageia

    A year ago, when I wrote about a group of Mandriva former employees and contributors who’d decided to create a fork called Mageia, I had no idea whatsoever whether the project would survive to actually release a product. Well, a year has come and gone and Mageia not only released Mageia 1 in June, it’s now a distro with a year’s worth of organization under it’s belt. That may not sound like a lot, but to my mind it’s quite an accomplishment.

• Red Hat Family

  • CloudLinux Now Running on More Than 5,000 Servers

  • Red Hat Profit Jumps 69%

    Red Hat Inc. (RHT: News ), the world’s largest seller of Linux software, said Wednesday after the markets closed that its second quarter profit rose 69% from last year, as revenue surged 28% amid strong demand for its products and services. The company’s quarterly earnings per share, excluding items, also came in above analysts’ expectations as did its quarterly revenue.

  • RHT: Microsoft’s Ship Has Sailed In ‘Cloud Computing’

    Following a better-than-expected fiscal Q2 report this afternoon by Linux operating system and tools vendor Red Hat (RHT), CEO Jim Whitehurst was kind enough to take a few moments to talk with me about the results but also about how his company is progressing in “cloud” computing.

  • Red Hat Beats its Own Forecasts

    Red Hat has reported financial results for its fiscal second quarter, which ended August 31, and the company continues to prove that a business model of supporting robust open source software can lead to remarkable success. In fact, as we predicted it would be, the company is emerging as the first ever billion dollar a year open source company. Red Hat’s total revenue for the quarter was $281.3 million, an increase of 28% from the year ago quarter. Subscription revenue for the quarter was $238.3 million, up 28% year-over-year.

Devices/Embedded

• RoweBots Helps the Blind See

• Iomega’s NAS excels with flexible connections, cloud storage, says review

  Iomega’s StorCenter PX px4-300d NAS (network attached storage) device is a solid contender for the SMB market, says this eWEEK Labs review. The four-bay, Linux-based device runs on a dual-core 1.8GHz Intel Atom D525, offers up to 12TB storage, and supports hot-swappable solid-state disks as well as Iomega’s Personal Cloud.

• Phones

  • Report: Bada to be open sourced

    The open sourcing of Bada is designed, it is reported, to attract more developers to the platform. Another reported reason is that the move is a reaction to the takeover by Google of Motorola Mobility, producers of Android phones and other devices; it is believed that Samsung would aim to counterbalance the threat of Google preferring to work with Motorola.

  • Android compatibility layer launches first on MeeGo

    OpenMobile has demonstrated OEM-focused technology that permits any Android app to run on MeeGo, with versions planned for Linux, Bada, WebOS, and Windows, Symbian, and QNX. OpenMobile’s Application Compatibility Layer (ACL) was shown in a video running Android apps and quickly switching between MeeGo and Android environments on a MeeGo tablet.

  • Android

    • Is banned Android Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 better than the Apple iPad 2?

      DaniWeb recently reported how Apple had won a ban on the sale of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in Europe and even published the rather generic-looking design drawings at the heart of the case. Now a Düsseldorf regional court judge, Johanna Brueckner-Hoffmann, has heard the Samsung appeal against the ban and concluded that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 gives a “clear impression of similarity” to the iPad: the result being that the ban has been upheld, but only in Germany rather than being across the EU. If reports are to be believed, Samsung could fight back with an attempt to delay or block the sale of the new iPhone 5 in Europe (on the grounds that it infringes some basic technology patents held by Samsung) before it has even arrived.

    • Google Plus Hangout Comes To Android

      Google today rolled an update of Google + app for Android devices. The update brings the most demanded feature to the Android device — Hangout. Now Android users can join Hangouts from the mobile app. Another notable new feature is changing Huddle to Messenger. You can now send photos to each other using Messenger (Huddle).

    • Acer C6 Liquid Express Android phone in Orange leak

      Acer’s newest mobile has been leaked by Orange. The Android-powered C6 Liquid Express has popped up on the network operator’s website, along with a list of its specs.

      The C6 Liquid Express, spotted by Unwired View, will come running Android version 2.3 Gingerbread, backed up by both Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity. It’s going to have a 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen, and around the back it’s set to pack a 5-megapixel camera.

FI: Kankaanpää halves project hardware costs by deploying open source enterprise virtualisation software

The town of Kankaanpää in the western Finnish region of Satakunta has been able to halve its project hardware costs by deploying enterprise virtualisation software from a global open source (OS) solutions provider, it was announced on 24 August 2011.

Events

• Packt Open Source Finalists 2011

• Gnome Executive Director Karen Sandler named as first linux.conf.au 2012 keynote speaker

  After a terrific response to the opening of early bird registrations just one week ago, the linux.conf.au 2012 organising team are excited to announce open source law luminary Karen Sandler as the first keynote for the January conference.

SaaS

• OpenStack Diablo is a Quantum Leap for Open Source Cloud

  The OpenStack Project is moving a bit closer to its proprietary competition with the Diablo release, out today. In addition to improving the three core projects, OpenStack is now adding a Web-based dashboard, unified authentication and an API for configuring virtual networks. With Diablo, OpenStack is poised to manage global clouds.

Databases

• MySQL Moves Closer to Closed

  MySQL founder and developer Monty Widenius announced on his blog that the MySQL relational database management system would no longer be a free software project and will instead be under an Open Core model. Widenius pointed to an Oracle announcement last week, which detailed new commercial extensions for MySQL Enterprise Edition.

Education

• Mobile Moodle App Arrives for Open Source e-Learners

  If you’re unfamiliar with the fast-growing world of online learning (e-learning) it’s becoming a huge business, and top universities such as U.C. Berkeley now offer free webcasts and podcasts to the public. Did you know that one of the biggest players in software and platforms for e-learning is a free, open source offering? If not, consider Moodle, which we covered here. Moodle is a course management system (CMS) that leverages developers from all around the world, and allows people to deliver and take courses online. In the latest piece of Moodle news, there is now a Moodle iPhone app.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Fellowship Interview with Stefan Kangas

  People have been using our email servers since around February. The systems are basically up and running, but at this point mainly on borrowed and donated hardware. We set our membership fee at 300 SEK per year (around 33 Euros) and that’s basically covering the running costs of an exclusive internet connection for the main server. Though it’s consumer grade at this point, we’re currently looking at a better solution; we want to be hosted in a more serious location.

  We’ve discussed whether or not a virtual private server is OK, seeing as we want to keep everything under our own control. Obviously we want to control all hardware as well as the software. But at the moment we basically receive email and store it on our IMAP server. We have no outgoing email, though we are currently working on setting this up. We received the server just this week which has been lent to us for this purpose.

  This spring we had a party which was quite successful, basically a “launch party”. We are looking to organize another party for October 1st. It’s nice that parts of the Fripost work are already going on outside the “main” channels, which means we can spread the work load amongst more people; a goal that we have for everything in the project.

• GNU Health 1.3.3 is out !

  I’m pleased to announce GNU Health 1.3.3

Top 10 Runlevels for Windows 8

Lo and behold! We discovered that Microsoft is secretly including Unix-like runlevels into their new OS. Some of these runlevels will be available to the user (although they won’t be called “runlevels”) and others will only be able to be activated by MS through the Windows Update feature, without user control. Doesn’t sound good, does it? Things from Redmond seldom do.

So, here it is, our list of the top 10 runlevels for Windows 8….

9. Reboot. It’s predicted this will be the most used runlevel in Windows.
8. Big Brother Mode. We can’t find anything about this because the information is classified and requires clearance from either Homeland Security or the Chinese government.
7. Pre-Infected Mode. Why wait for a drive-by attack. Go ahead and get it over with. Offer your machine as a bot to the Russian mob.

Defence/Police/Aggression

• TSA Employee vs. Advice Goddess

  Just because she offers advice on manners in the modern world, don’t expect blogger/columnist Amy Alkon to stand by quietly if she thinks a government employee is violating her rights at the airport.

Cablegate

• Assange bio: not a manuscript anyone would intend to publish

  They were putting copies of Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Autobiography in the window of Waterstone’s this morning when I arrived to buy a copy, which was cool — I really thought that was no more than a movie cliché. Inside, half a dozen copies sold in 10 minutes — most of the purchasers looked like newsroom interns — and a film crew from German state television was sharking around interviewing people.

• Julian Assange: Statement on the Unauthorised, Secret Publishing of the Julian Assange “autobiography” by Canongate

  Julian Assange Press Statement on the Unauthorised “Autobiography”: Thursday 22nd September 2011, 0100

  I have learned today through an article in The Independent that my publisher, Canongate, has secretly distributed an unauthorised 70,000 word first draft of what was going to be my autobiography. According to The Independent, Canongate “enacted a huge security operation to secretly ship books out to thousands of stores nationwide without tipping anyone off as to the content of the book”. It will be in the bookshops tomorrow.

  I am not “the writer” of this book. I own the copyright of the manuscript, which was written by Andrew O’Hagan. By publishing this draft against my wishes Canongate has acted in breach of contract, in breach of confidence, in breach of my creative rights and in breach of personal assurances. The US publisher, Knopf, withdrew from the deal when it learned of Canongate’s intentions to publish without my consent. This book was meant to be about my life’s struggle for justice through access to knowledge. It has turned into something else. The events surrounding its unauthorised publication by Canongate are not about freedom of information — they are about old-fashioned opportunism and duplicity—screwing people over to make a buck.

Finance

• JPMorgan Chase Stock Hits New 52-Week Low (JPM)

• 52-Week Lows: Goldman Sachs and 16 Large-Cap Stocks Depressed

• U.S. sees challenges in some financial cases

  WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The government is continuing an aggressive drive to hold accountable those responsible for the 2007-2009 financial crisis, but prosecutors may find it tough to prove criminal intent in some cases, a top Justice Department official said in an interview.

• Ex-Goldman Trader Accused of Insider Trading

  A former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) trader and his father were accused by U.S. regulators of making illegal trades based on confidential information related to the Wall Street firm’s exchange-traded fund investments.

• DOJ Mulling Over Criminal Charges Against Former Goldman Director

  The Wall S. Journal reports that DOJ is seriously considering criminal charges against Rajat Gupta, the former Goldman Sachs director whose wire tapped conversations were played at Raj Rajaratnam’s insider trading trial. The SEC, whose administrative proceeding against Gupta was discontinued, reportedly is also considering filing civil charges in court. WSJ, Focus on Goldman Ex-Director

• Focus on Goldman Ex-Director

  Federal prosecutors are moving closer toward bringing criminal charges against Rajat Gupta, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. director who allegedly leaked inside information about the Wall Street giant at the height of the financial crisis, according to people familiar with the situation.

• Breakingviews: Goldman Sachs worth more broken up (2:39)

• Shares of Goldman Sachs Group Has Fallen Below Previous 52-Week Low

  Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE:GS) traded today at a new 52-week low of $92.33. Approximately 8.8 million shares have changed hands today, as compared to an average 30-day volume of 8.8 million shares.

• Wall Street Occupation Continues

  If a protest is considered a success based on whether its revolutionary spirit proves contagious, then Occupy Wall Street may indeed become a triumph in the long run. The event’s official website recently announced that a similar protest is now being planned in Los Angeles.

• Wall Street Sips Champagne While Watching Protesters (Video)

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Is Scott Walker John Doe?

  Wisconsin has been riveted this week by reports that more of Governor Scott Walker’s top aides may be implicated in an ongoing “John Doe” investigation into potentially illegal campaign practices related to Walker’s 2010 gubernatorial race. Although the investigation, first reported on by Dan Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, has been underway for at least a year, a recent FBI raid on the home of Walker’s chief lieutenant, Cynthia “Cindy” Archer, has the state abuzz with speculation about who may be the target of the investigation.

• Hiding the Sausage: How a Well-Funded Right-Wing Organization is Grinding Out State Laws

  When Jeff Wright walked into the lobby of the New Orleans Marriott on Aug. 3, he wasn’t sure what to expect. As the director of public policy advocacy for the Florida Education Association — a prominent teachers’ union that had been bearing the brunt of legislative attacks from Florida Republicans throughout the 2011 legislative session — he wasn’t there for your standard Mardi Gras-themed party. The American Legislative Exchange Council, a national nonprofit organization made up of elected officials and private interests who gather regularly to try to directly influence the substance of public policy, was holding its annual four-day meeting there, so any “partying” would probably be a little more conservative, and — going by a recent glut of press coverage pointing out ALEC’s clearinghouse mentality of privately linking big corporations with the state legislators willing to pursue their bottom-line agendas in the form of “model legislation” — slightly more nefarious. Nevertheless, he wanted to see it for himself.

• Koch Lobbyist is ALEC State Co-Chair for Wisconsin; Scholarships Raise Ethics Concerns

  When Jeff Wright walked into the lobby of the New Orleans Marriott on Aug. 3, he wasn’t sure what to expect. As the director of public policy advocacy for the Florida Education Association — a prominent teachers’ union that had been bearing the brunt of legislative attacks from Florida Republicans throughout the 2011 legislative session — he wasn’t there for your standard Mardi Gras-themed party. The American Legislative Exchange Council, a national nonprofit organization made up of elected officials and private interests who gather regularly to try to directly influence the substance of public policy, was holding its annual four-day meeting there, so any “partying” would probably be a little more conservative, and — going by a recent glut of press coverage pointing out ALEC’s clearinghouse mentality of privately linking big corporations with the state legislators willing to pursue their bottom-line agendas in the form of “model legislation” — slightly more nefarious. Nevertheless, he wanted to see it for himself.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• Eastern Europe schooling US, western Europe on fast broadband

  A new Global Game Download Report by Pando Networks is out, and it includes a ranking of countries by their respective average download speeds. The Pando data also features a drop-down of ten “gamer friendly” countries around the world.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Desktop

• Samsung NP-P580 Notebook and Linux, of Course

  Once Windows installation is done, I booted my Linux Mint (Debian) 201109 Live USB stick. I know that Mint (and Ubuntu) always include gparted on their live media, so I can use that to reallocate the disk partition(s). I’m sure that there are plenty of other disk management tools that can be used for this, depending on what distribution you prefer. In this case all I had to do was delete the D: partition and recreate it as an Extended Partition, then make the necessary logical partitions within that for the various Linux distributions I plan to install. That whole process took less than 5 minutes. Then I went ahead and installed the new Linux Mint 201109 Gnome distribution. That was an absolutely routine installation, it took about 15 minutes and at the end it booted up to the installed Linux system with no problems of any kind. Everything works, including wired and wireless networking, Bluetooth, dual monitors (with an external monitor on the VGA port), sound, touchpad, everything. It took about another 5 minutes to install the latest updates, and the system was ready to use. I tried the obvious Fn-key functions, such as volume up/down/mute and brightness up/down and they work just fine. I even used the Fn-sleep keys to suspend the system, and that worked; press the power button and it is ready to use again in about two seconds. I added the CPU Frequency Monitor to the panel, and verified that frequency stepping was working automatically.

• Linux desktop: Not pining for the fjords

  Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols points out in a recent article that the resounding butt-kicking that Android and Chrome are laying on the digital world these days doesn’t bode well for the Linux desktop. Vaughan-Nichols links to a blog post by Jason Perlow that says that, essentially, we are entering the post-PC era in which, while the x86 may be dead, personal computing across different-sized hardware will continue.

  I can see this and generally have no qualms with that, however I think this sales pitch for a brave new world of tablets and smartphones goes overboard. Arguably, what Perlow describes doesn’t sound like post-PC, but rather PC-plus-(fill in your additional hardware here).

  Linux’s success in the non-desktop realm is hardly an accident and I am neither belittling it nor taking this for granted. On the contrary: Linux’s superiority in servers, supercomputers and mobile provide resounding proof that it is a successful operating system, to the point where “the year of the desktop” has now become laughable since it is no longer the standard by which Linux’s success should be gauged (if that was ever the case in the first place).

Kernel Space

• Graphics Stack

  • Easily remove unused MySQL databases

    Instead of the LGPLv2, Kristian Høgsberg is now looking at moving the “wayland-demos” code from the GPL to the MIT license.

Applications

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Easily remove unused MySQL databases

  • How to use Linux containers (lxc) under Debian Squeeze

  • Using and configuring Samba under Linux/Unix

  • Continuous Deployment With Jenkins And Rex

  • Extracting EML files

  • Tips for dual-booting Windows and Linux

  • Dynamically manage Apache virtualhosts in Linux

  • Get Professional Security Testing with BackTrack

  • Building a NAS Server

  • 9 Awesome SSH Tricks

  • Getting what you want on Arch and Slackware – AUR and Slackbuilds

  • Resolve Firefox Flash Issues in Ubuntu with Flash-Aid

  • How to install Ubuntu 11.10 on a Toshiba AC100 netbook

  • Announcing my second e-book “Sed One-Liners Explained”

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • Users voted for best KDE-based Linux distribution… again!

    Strange enough, announcement did not stop votes. Other way round, number of votes almost doubled during last month!
    Is it a good reason to make another announcement of voting results? Yes, it is.

  • Nepomuk Stability and Performance

    Over at his blog, Sebastian Trüg is raising money for Nepomuk. Short version of this story–please give what you can to an important KDE project and a valuable KDE contributor. Background and details below.

Distributions

• New Releases

  • Versiones estables de LliureX 11.09: adaptaciones Escriptori e Infantil

  • [pfSense] 2.0 Release Now Available!

    I’m proud to announce the release of version 2.0. This brings the past three years of new feature additions, with significant enhancements to almost every portion of the system. The changes and new features are summarized here. This is by far the most widely deployed release we’ve put out, thanks to the efforts of thousands of members of the community. We also have hundreds of customer systems that have been running 2.0 in production for months and years in some cases. More than 108,000 unique IPs have downloaded snapshots in 2011 from snapshots.pfsense.org alone, not counting downloads from the mirrors.

  • CAINE 2.5 – SUPERNOVA is out!

    CAINE (Computer Aided INvestigative Environment) is an Italian GNU/Linux live distribution created as a project of Digital Forensics
    Currently the project manager is Nanni Bassetti.

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • Happy Birthday, MAGEIA!

    Mageia was celebrating its first anniversary yesterday.

    A year! That was fast! Just like my daughter, baby Mageia is “a proud, promising and exciting toddler!”

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat Reports Second Quarter Results

    –Second quarter deferred revenue of $813 million, up 25% year-over-year

    –Second quarter operating cash flow of $77 million, up 20% year-over-year

  • Red Hat net jumps 69%

  • Red Hat (RHT) Posts Quarterly Earnings Results, Beats Estimates By $0.03 EPS

  • Red Hat Q2 Profit Rises – Quick Facts

    Red Hat Inc. (RHT: News ) reported that its second-quarter net income rose to $40.0 million or $0.20 per share, from $23.7 million or $0.12 per share, in the year ago quarter.

  • VMware Rivals Further Expanding Open Virtualization Alliance

  • Open Virtualization Alliance Expands

  • RHEL Clones Advance

    Love it or hate it, Red Hat commands a significant share of the world’s enterprise Linux revenues. This week on the Linux Planet, updated versions of Red Hat’s enterprise clones were released, even as Red Hat moved forward with its own plans.

  • Fedora

    • Kororaa 15 Unleashed

      “The first stable release of Kororaa 15 (codename “Squirt”) has been released and is available for download, in 32 and 64 bit with KDE 4.6 and GNOME 3.” This is second release of the Fedora-based distribution since development resumed in late 2010. Kororaa, once based on Gentoo, aims to provide a “complete, easy to use system for general computing.” It tweaks Fedora “to make the system ‘just work’ out of the box.”

    • Kororaa Linux 15 Released, Based on Fedora 15

      Chris Smart proudly announced last evening, September 20th, the immediate availability for download and upgrade of the highly-anticipated Kororaa Linux 15 operating system.

      Dubbed Squirt, the new Kororaa 15 OS is now based on the Fedora 15 release, it features both KDE SC 4.6 and GNOME 3 desktop environments, and it is available for download (see download links at the end of the article) for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Is Ubuntu falling from grace?

      • Audacious 3.0.3 And 3.1 Alpha 1 Available For Ubuntu Oneiric (PPA)

        Audacious is a versatile music player for GNOME that has a low memory footprint and a clean GTK interface. It also comes with a Winamp-like interface that supports Winamp 2.x skins.

      • Don’t trash that old PC, put it to good use

        Close the Windows

        While Windows works just fine, it does take up a lot of resources. And that can make an old machine run slowly. Consider replacing Windows with a Linux operating system such as Ubuntu. That often will pep up that slow machine.

        And, unlike with Windows, the operating system is free. You can read about it and download it at www.ubuntu.com/.

        There’s another reason to try this. You may find you prefer Ubuntu for all your machines.

        Use the old machine to get familiar with how it works first and then, if you like what you see, move away from Windows entirely.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Review: Linux Mint GNOME 201109

          That basically ended my time with Linux Mint GNOME. I really like the concept of update packs and the thorough testing of them, because it brings much-needed stability to what is otherwise a good rolling-release model. My small gripes about Compiz not working initially, inconsistent GTK+ theming, and Mozilla Firefox not getting the latest updates remain, but they’re relatively minor. Of course, it’s great that this is otherwise functionally and visually identical to the Ubuntu-based Linux Mint GNOME, yet it manages to be so much more lightweight and snappy. (Seriously, this was worlds more responsive than Linux Mint 11 “Katya” GNOME.) The gripes I mentioned might mean that a user considering this should make sure they have a technically-inclined friend to help them out in times of need, but otherwise, I can basically give it my highest recommendation, and I could see myself installing this on my computer and using this regularly. In fact, it is one of the contenders for replacing Linux Mint 9 LTS “Isadora” once its support runs out. It may partially be due to my fondness for Linux Mint in general, but I really like this a lot.
          You can get it here.

Devices/Embedded

• Linux-based home automation system adds tablet controller, Android app

  Control4 announced a seven-inch tablet, meant for portable control of its Linux-based Control4 home automation, surveillance, and music-server system. In addition to the Control4 7″ Portable Touch Screen, the company also announced a “Control4 MyHome — Android” app.

• Phones

  • Android

    • 4.1-inch Android 2.3 phone debuts on Verizon’s 4G LTE for $100

      On Sept. 22, Pantech will start selling an Android 2.3 smartphone on Verizon Wireless’ 4G LTE network for just $100, following rebate and two-year contract. The Pantech Breakout is equipped with a 1GHz processor, an 8GB microSD card, a 4.1-inch, 800 x 480 touchscreen, as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0, says Verizon.

    • HTC Rhyme phone wants to charm women

      HTC announced an mid-range Android smartphone for Verizon Wireless that appears to be marketed at women. The “Rhyme” is equipped with a 1GHz processor, 768MB of RAM, 4GB of flash, five-megapixel and VGA cameras, plus accessories including a free docking station, headphones, and a “Charm” device that flashes a light to indicate an incoming call.

    • 10 Best Free Android File Managers

    • Android Bluetooth Robot Sound Box Unboxing and Review

      I recently had a chance to play with an Android Bluetooth Sound Box with Hands-Free and would like to share my opinion with you all.

    • LG Optimus EX shows up in South Korea

      A new Android handset from LG has shown up in Korea, with the images and specs shared in a leak by SlashGear. The dual-core, 1.2GHz smartphone uses Android 2.3 and gets a four-inch 800×480 touchscreen much like the Optimus Black. The model number, LG-SU880, is also revealed by the spec sheet.

    • HTC Ruby: First Press Shot

      We’ve seen the 1.5GHz dual-core HTC Ruby in the wild a few times already, and now the first press shot of this impressive handset has come to light. Tipped for release on T-Mobile as the HTC Amaze 4G — it will apparently also see an international launch under another name (possibly just Amaze, a la Sensation/Sensation 4G) — Ruby was originally thought to be a codename for Sprint’s HTC Arrive (7 Pro) Windows Phone, but subsequent photographs revealed it to be a high-end Android device.

    • Google and Moto: The Best- and Worst-Case Scenarios

      If Google is able to go ahead with its plans to buy Motorola Mobility, it will mean big changes in store for the Android world. Whether those changes are hurtful or helpful to the OS as a whole is up to Google. Will the Android creator take its OS in a more proprietary direction? Or will Google’s acquisition actually make for a stronger, more diverse ecosystem?

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Asus Slider tablet ships, combining Android 3.2 with slide-out keyboard

    Asus has begun shipping its Eee Pad Slider Android 3.2 tablet in the U.S. for $479 with 16GB storage and $579 with 32GB. The Slider is equipped with a 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, 1GB RAM, 16GB flash, a 10.1-inch, 1280 x 800 display, dual cameras, and all the other standard Honeycomb features, but adds a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.

BRIC Countries A Huge Opportunity For FLOSS (Ed: correct URL this time)

PiCloud: Scientific open source computing in the cloud

This week we interviewed Ken Elkabany, CEO of another company with a business model on top of scientific open source software: PiCloud. PiCloud allows running any Python code on an auto-scaling, high-performance cluster in a server-less cloud. That includes SciPy code. We hope this kind of interview inspires scientist and developers to turn into FLOSS entrepreneurs. Enjoy the interview and leave your comments!

OpenIndiana’s fork of OpenSolaris sees new Illumos based release

With the release of OpenIndiana version oi_151a, the developers of the Solaris 11 compatible operating system have followed up their first release with one that replaces Oracle’s OS/Net operating-system and network component with the Illumos kernel. This new edition of OpenIndiana also includes emulation and virtualisation support through the inclusion of the open source QEMU emulator and the KVM kernel-based virtual machine.

50 Open Source Apps for the Mobile Workforce

As smartphones and tablets become increasingly popular with consumers, they’re also becoming a common work tool for employees. A recent study by Dimensional Research found that 87 percent of enterprises allow employees to use personal devices for work. In addition, 80 percent of those companies allow employees to use personal smartphones for work.

Events

• Apache at JavaOne 2011

  Oracle and Apache have had a somewhat ‘interesting’ relationship in 2011.

  On one hand, Oracle donated OpenOffice to the Apache Software Foundation. On the other hand, Apache resigned from the Executive Committee of the Java Community Process.

Databases

• Trouble on the high seas for MySQL?

• Monty’s Problem with MySQL

  The open source MySQL database became the popular success that it is today, due to the fact that it is open source. MySQL is freely available and in the beginning, all of its features were too.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Oracle v. Google – The Dispute Over Prof. Mitchell’s Patent Report – UPDATED 2Xs

Project Releases

• [OpenShot] Version 1.4, Sweeties, and the Future!

  It’s been 3 months since my last blog post, and I have so much to say. I have been working harder than ever before on OpenShot, and regret that I have not had more time for writing blog entries. I have new details on our next release, version 1.4, a request for translations, a GKT3 update, details on a new Daily PPA, enhancements to www.openshot.org website, an announcement about a new OpenShot video editing library, and more! Let’s just call this… an information explosion for OpenShot fans. =)

Openness/Sharing

• Open sourcing the post-Irene Vermont flood relief effort

  Two weeks ago, in the wake of tropical storm Irene’s devastating flooding in Vermont’s Mad River Valley, local residents organized a MRV Flood Relief initiative. What began as a self-organized volunteer effort to match needs and help offered in our communities, using telephone, handwritten posters, and a Mad-River-Valley-Hurricane-Irene Facebook page created by the Chamber of Commerce, quickly grew into a coordinated project based in downtown Waitsfield’s Masonic Lodge. Now, two weeks later, in an effort to more effectively provide daily coordination for ongoing flood relief efforts in 10 central Vermont towns, Mad River Valley flood relief headquarters has launched a new open source web site.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Coal’s Terrible Forecast

  There are many unfortunate outcomes to Peak Oil. One of the more serious is the world’s transition back to coal. Expensive BTU from crude oil has influenced the energy adoption pathway of the Developing World for ten years now, pushing the five billion people in the Non-OECD towards coal. My work has documented this shift for some time. But, I have paid less attention here at Gregor.us to the effect this paradigmatic change will have on our climate.

Finance

• As California Headed Back into Recession, the San Francisco FED Was Declaring Recovery

  In February of this year John Williams, head of research at the San Francisco Federal Reserve, gave a speech at Stanford in which he asserted the US economy had finally recovered, with 2011 real GDP expected to expand by 4.00% and then by 4.5% in 2012. (see: The Fed’s John Williams: recovery has achieved “liftoff”, Reuters 4 February 2011). Unfortunately, at the very same moment Mr. Williams was speaking in Palo Alto, data on California food stamp participation and employment was sending out a warning that America’s largest state was going back into recession.

Censorship

• Ed Vaizey talks about website blocking

  Today ORG and a number of other groups had a constructive meeting with Ed Vaizey to discuss approaches to copyright and enforcement. The meeting was organized by Dominque Lazinksi of the Tax Payers Alliance after a Twitter storm following ORG and other group’s exclusion from the website blocking meetings.

• Nominet and domain suspensions

  The draft as it stands is not, in ORG’s view, sufficiently precise and reasoned to be backed by us. While it gives plenty of indications of the approach Nominet might take, we feel the final document needs to be very precise, as well as robust and well-argued in order to convey truly useful advice to Nominet’s Board.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • Lib Dems say they want to scrap the Digital Economy Act

    It was very heartening to see the Lib Dems reject the Digital Economy Act as a broken and anti-liberal measure at their Conference yesterday. The main speakers included Julian Huppert, Neil McGovern and Bridget Fox, all making powerful points in favour of a more balanced approach to copyright enforcement.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Desktop

• The Model For Windows 8 Is Linux

  Linux has been more than competitive with Windows for a decade, thanks in part to the Apache Web server. It is more than competitive on tablets and phones, thanks to Google’s Android, now being forked by Amazon and Baidu. It gets laughed at, and perhaps rightly so, because it’s week on the desktop. “This is the year of desktop Linux,” is a running gag.

• Building the Ultimate Modern Linux Desktop

  Despite what we’ve read in various Linux articles lately, there’s a world beyond Ubuntu and their Unity desktop experience. Fact is, you can actually still stick with Ubuntu if you choose to and not feel obligated to use their choice for a desktop experience.

  In short, Unity isn’t mandatory for people who want access to the rest of the Ubuntu experience. In this article, I’ll show how you can take part in the benefits of using Ubuntu without limiting your desktop experience to Ubuntu’s ideals.

  [...]

  On my desktop, I rely on Compiz Fusion. So the idea of using a dock that relies on that technology was a natural fit for me. In the end, I wound up with the Awn dock due to its useful functionality. Not only can I duplicate almost anything that Gnome panels or Unity might have to offer, but I can theme my Awn dock to look more appealing.

Server

• To CFD, or Not to CFD?

  OpenFOAM (Open Source Field Operation and Manipulation) basically is a set of C++ libraries that are used in the various processing steps. OpenFOAM, just like most other CFD packages, breaks down the work to be done into three separate steps. The first step is called pre-processing. In pre-processing, you define the problem you are trying to model. This involves defining the boundary conditions given by the solid objects in your model. You also describe the characteristics of the fluid you are trying to model, including viscosity, density and any other properties that are important for your model. The next step is called the solver step. This is where you actually solve the equations that describe your model. The third step is called post-processing. This is where you take a look at the results and visualize them so that you can see what happens in your model. An obvious consequence of this breakdown is that most of the computational work takes place during the solver phase. The pre- and post-processing steps usually can be done on a desktop, while the solver step easily can use up 50 or 100 processors. OpenFOAM includes several pre- and post-processing utilities, along with several solvers. But the real power comes from the fact that, because OpenFOAM is library-based, you can build your own utilities or solvers by using OpenFOAM as a base. This is very useful in a research environment where you may be trying something no one else ever has.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Episode 166: Shotwell revisited

  Just a short show about the newest version of Shotwell (0.11.1+trunk of September 19, 2011). They got hierarchical tags implemented – the only feature I really missed in comparison to F-Spot.

• Going Linux Sep 20: #150 Nosillacast and Mintcast

Kernel Space

• www.LinuxFoundation.org is Back

  www.linuxfoundation.org and kernel.org have been down a while mopping up after the intrusion.

Applications

• Synapse Launcher 0.2.8 Released With A New Theme, More

  Synapse is a semantic launcher similar to Gnome Do or Kupfer, powered by Zeitgeist. It comes with many plugins for controlling Rhythmbox or Banshee, connect to SSH hosts, upload to Imgur, search the web, Dictionary and more.

• Use Geeqie For An Even Better Image Viewer

• Acclaimed ‘To Do’ App Wunderlist Comes To Linux

  Cross-platform ‘Getting Things Done’ app ‘Wunderlist’ is now available for the Linux desktop.

• Books Lens

• Linux Online Backups

  First I would like to start by saying all of the below systems offer data encryption and redundant servers to make sure your data is safe. They offer good pricing and have comparable up-time guarantees. I have tried these systems out either by using them in my businesses or by playing with them to find out which one is the right one for me. All pricing was at the time of writing this article.

• openmamba 2.2 review

  According to our request page, openmamba (all lower case), is the most requested review at the moment, so it’s only right that we give you what you want.

• Asunder Rips and Encodes Audio Without the Bloody Mess

  Perhaps you’ve been ripping CDs for a long enough time that you’ve already settled on your ripper of choice. But Asunder doesn’t deserve to be ignored. It rips and encodes to a wide variety of formats and uses CDDB to name and tag each track. Also, Asunder lets you encode to multiple formats in one session.

• Best Webcam Software Applications for Linux

  The webcam has become an essential accessory for every computer user. The tiny camera above your monitor helps you chat and ‘hangout’ with all your friends from across the world or turn it into a security spy camera. Another great thing about webcams is that they help you snap your own picture without getting up from your chair. For workaholics, a webcam is a great tool to stay in touch with their colleagues and even hold meetings with them. Being this indispensable, the software for it has to be just as good as the hardware.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Tiny Web Proxy And Content Filtering Appliance On CentOS 6 (Version 1.4)

  • How to Install an Older Version of Java in Ubuntu 11.04

  • Chrome Script/Extension installation error: Could not read source file

  • Understanding Nmap Commands: In depth Tutorial Part II

  • In-depth HOWTO on Linux kernel configuration

  • Running Magento 1.6.0.0 On Nginx (LEMP) on Debian Squeeze/Ubuntu 11.04

  • Empathy Instant Messenger

  • How to Let Your Tea Brew for the Right Time (Linux Mint)

  • Get Firefox Menu Button in Linux

  • Learn the Ins and Out of OpenSSH on Your Linux PC

  • Firewall consistency with Firewall Builder

  • Gnome 3 and Shell – A Complete User Guide [ Part 2]

  • Become an ImageMagick Ninja: Doing Things in Batches

• Games

  • ‘Tiny & Big in : Up That Mountain’ – Innovative Physics Based Game with a Unique Visual Style

    Tiny & Big in : Up that Mountain is an innovative Physics based game for Linux with a very artistic visual style. The game features hand drawn textures and highly appealing comics-like cel-shaded graphics.

  • Gaming In Linux : Dead Cyborg Episode 1

  • Gameolith gives more info for game developers.

  • Latest Hedgewars Release Adds 3D Rendering, New Gameplay Modes, And Downloadable Content

    A new version of cross-platform Worms-like strategy game Hedgewars has been released with new game modes, new utilities, and downloadable content.

Desktop Environments

• GNOME Desktop

  • You can’t go Gnome again

    AS a user of Ubuntu Linux since 1996, I viewed with some trepidation the decision by its commercial sponsor, Canonical, to revamp its user interface, which was based on the Gnome desktop. Over the years, I’ve grown accustomed to Gnome’s simple elegance, which I found gave me a surprising amount of freedom to customize my desktop environment. Combined with special effects from programs such as Compiz and Emerald, my Gnome-based Ubuntu desktop was truly beautiful.

    But starting with the current release (11.04), Ubuntu began sporting the Unity interface, a system that Canonical designed from scratch, obviously with an eye to touch-screen functionality and the simplicity of point-and-drag menus favored by smart phone users.

  • Richard Hughes on color management in Linux and GNOME

    Color management on Linux used to be a thing for brave boys and girls in the past. Two years ago the GNOME Color Manager project led by Richard Hughes and powered by Argyll color management system made a major breakthrough to fix it once and for all. Now that GNOME 3.2 is just a week away, we decided to corner Richard and ask him some very direct questions.

Distributions

• Pardus 2011.2 screenshot preview

• New Releases

  • GeeXboX 2.0 is Based on XBMC Media Center

  • Pardus Linux 2011.2 Has Been Released

    Gökçen Eraslan proudly announced last evening, September 19th, the immediate availability for download and upgrade of the popular Pardus 2011.2 Linux-based Turkish operating system.

• Gentoo Family

  • Stabilizations: situation stable

    I just checked and x86 and amd64 bug queues are fully under control. I’d even say we’re now doing stabilizations faster than maintainers can file new bugs and fix stabilization blockers.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat Shares Poised for Earnings Pop

    The earnings calendar is unusually busy this week, with a number of big names on the schedule. Any time you can find Nike (NYSE:NKE), FedEx (NYSE:FDX), and Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) in the same week, things could be interesting.

    One of the smaller names on the docket this week is Red Hat (NYSE:RHT). The open-source business software maker reports on Wednesday after the close.

  • Red Hat to release earnings on Wednesday

  • Red Hat (RHT) Shares Given a “Overweight” Rating by Piper Jaffray (PJC) Analysts

    Red Hat last announced its quarterly results on Wednesday, June 22nd. The company reported $0.24 earnings per share (EPS) for the previous quarter, beating the Thomson Reuters consensus estimate of $0.22 EPS by $0.02. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 26.6% on a year-over-year basis. On average, analysts predict that Red Hat will post $0.25 EPS next quarter.

  • Open Virtualization Alliance adds 100-plus members

    The Open Virtualization Alliance, a consortium committed to fostering the adoption of open virtualization technologies, today announced total membership of more than 200, up from 65 in just over three months. New members include CA Technologies, DataStax and Jaspersoft.

  • Want to work for Red Hat?

    Respond quickly via email (spot@redhat.com) with your resume/CV and sales pitch as to why I should consider you for a job at Red Hat. This is a limited time opportunity, and I guarantee nothing.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Interview: Stuart Langridge, Strategic Architect for Ubuntu One

        In this interview with Strategic Architect for Ubuntu One, Stuart Langridge, I kick off the first of a series of articles about Ubuntu One.

        Today, we’ll learn a little more about Langridge and his involvement with Ubuntu One and a brief overview along with future plans for this personal cloud service.

      • Ubuntu Linux and Wayland Display Server: Status Update

        Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth announced Wayland graphical server for Ubuntu, the Linux distribution, in fall 2010. Wayland for Ubuntu news made headlines. But almost a year later, Wayland for Ubuntu remains in development and the venerable X server won’t be going anywhere soon — which is not surprising, since replacing a display system that has dominated the open source world for decades is hard work. But when can we expect Wayland for Ubuntu to hit the mainstream? Read on for some updates.

      • Free ‘Ubuntu Software Centre’ Guide Released

      • Ubuntu Software Center: Streamline Your Software Experience

        The Ubuntu Vancouver Local Community believes that one barrier to the widespread adoption of Ubuntu’s ethos and its collection of outstanding software is a shortage of well-written and accessible user guides. Guides that make people say “Wow! I didn’t know Ubuntu is that easy. I didn’t know Ubuntu could make my life easier and more fun!”

        The Ubuntu Software Center is one of the most important components of Ubuntu. It’s the entry point for new users into the universe of excellent software that is written with freedom in mind. It’s our delivery channel. It’s an Ubuntu first (now copied by a fruit company), and it’s full of amazing.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Linux Mint Debian 201109 released

Devices/Embedded

• Industrial-focused Cortex-A8 SoCs offer CAN support, imaging subsystem

  Texas Instruments (TI) announced three ARM Cortex-A8 system on chips (SoCs) featuring a camera imaging subsystem, a wide range of peripheral support including CAN-bus, and an optional evaluation board. Aimed at industrial applications, the Linux- and Android-ready AM387x triplets all feature 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 cores, while two of them offer video subsystems and the top-of-the-line AM3874 is endowed with a 3D accelerator.

• Phones

  • Samsung plans to make Bada open source

    As part of a drive to increase the reach of its own brand OS, the firm has let slip its plan to release Bada to developers and device makers. The change will occur sometime next year, according to the Wall Street Journal.

  • Samsung Looking to Open-Source Bada [REPORT]

  • Android

    • Samsung Galaxy SIII Leaked

      According to the information the Galaxy SIII will come with a quad-core , yes quad not dual, 2.0 Ghz processor and a whopping 1.5GB of RAM. The multi-tasking performance of such a device will be incredible and we’re already excited about the gaming prospects of the device.

    • 5 Free Android apps for capturing ideas and thoughts

      Many writers and bloggers often need to jot down important ideas that they come across. For years, people have relied on notepads, sticky notes and even paper napkins. Even though the traditional method is the best, there are some tech-savvy folks like us who prefer using their smartphones to do the same. If you’re one of those people, then here are some of the best Android applications for capturing new ideas and thoughts.

    • Google preps developers for one-size-fits-all Android update

    • Do You Still Care That Android is Open Sourced? (Op-Ed)

      Android is ubiquitous because it is free and not because it is open source. Except for the popular Cyanogen mods, the FOSS aspect has largely been ignored by most of the ODM’s. Witness the poor implementations of Android devices by Archos, Augen, Camangi, and countless other Tier Three AKA Chinese manufacturers and the animosity towards UI’s like Sense and MotoBLUR. If the FOSS was so easy to take advantage of then why are only a handful of developers able to deliver a customer experience that was comparable to Google’s? And even Cyanogen AKA Steve Kondik only bothered to modify the ‘with Google’ version.

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Google preps developers for one-size-fits-all Android update

    Google is preparing Android developers for the latest edition of its Android mobile operating platform that will work the same on both tablets and smartphones.

    Scott Main, the lead tech writer for Google’s Android Developers Blog, Monday reminded developers that the newest edition of Android — dubbed “Ice Cream Sandwich” — will “support big screens, small screens and everything in between.” Main also emphasized that Android would maintain “the same version … on all screen sizes” going forward.

  • Preparing for Handsets

    Early this year, Honeycomb (Android 3.0) launched for tablets. Although Honeycomb remains tablets-only, the upcoming Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) release will support big screens, small screens, and everything in between. This is the way Android will stay from now on: the same version runs on all screen sizes.

BRIC Countries A Huge Opportunity For FLOSS

Brazil, Russia, India and China all have governments that support use of FLOSS for many different reasons: cost, security, local economies and building IT infrastructure. They also contain 40% of the global market for PCs and have high rates of growth.

Events

• XDC2011 Chicago Recap: Open-Source Graphics, GPGPU, OpenGL 3.0

  For those that missed out on attending XDC2011 Chicago in person or missed out on the Phoronix coverage due to the Intel Developer Forum and other events taking place last week, here’s a re-cap of the interesting bits of information that were revealed during this year’s developers conference that focused upon open-source graphics drivers, GPGPU / OpenCL computing, and open-source OpenGL 3.0 driver support being just around the corner. Here’s also a collection of photos from the event.

Web Browsers

• Acid3 Test Simplified; All Modern Browsers Score 100

• Mozilla

  • Mozilla may shorten Firefox’s six-week release schedule to five weeks… or less

    Mozilla, not content with its monumental shift from four major builds in five years down to a new stable build every six weeks, is looking at outputting a new release every five weeks, or perhaps even less.

    Christian Legnitto, a project manager at Mozilla (and currently the “release manager” of Firefox), announced the intention to shift to a shorter release cycle on Mozilla’s planning mailing list. In response to one developer citing the success of the six-week release cycle, and asking whether it would be feasible to speed it up even further, Legnitto said: “Yes, I absolutely think in the future we will shorten the cycle,” but recognizing the pains caused by the sped-up process, he added “But it won’t be soon. We have some work to do to make 6 weeks smooth from a process, tool, and product side.”

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Oracle v. Google – Update on ’702 Reexamination

  One of the patents asserted in the Oracle v. Google case, U.S. Patent No. 5,966,702 [PDF], is subject to an ex parte reexamination as we have earlier reported. Oracle has now filed their response [PDF] to the first office action [PDF] in this reexamination. Not surprisingly, Oracle contends that the art cited by the examiner in the first office action is not relevant and that all of the claims should reissue as is.

CMS

• Drupal’s Torvalds figure gets life-sucking Android app

Healthcare

• Moorfields opens its eyes to open source software

  An award winning electronic patient record system could help convince the NHS of the value of licence fee free software

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• More partisanship from free software leadership

  But Stallman mentions open source with his little air quotes to make sure that when he’s talking about non-free software, he’s also lumping open source with proprietary software in that descriptor. It’s not enough that he disagrees with open source (which is his right, of course), but he also needs to belittle it as much as possible.

Public Services/Government

• NASA unbolts open source space applications challenge

  NASA said it will coordinate with other interested space agencies around the world on an International Space Apps Challenge that will encourage scientists and concerned citizens from all seven continents – and in space – to create, build, and invent new applications that can address world-class issues.

• MT: Number of open source applications on government desktops doubled

  The number of open source applications installed by default on desktop PCs of public administrations in Malta has increased by 47 percent, between December 2009 and May 2011, says Michel Bugeja, enterprise architect at Malta’s Information Technology Agency (MITA). “The biggest increase is on tools to handle PDFs, for creating diagrams, for mind mapping and for project management.”

UEFI secure booting

The UEFI secure boot protocol is part of recent UEFI specification releases. It permits one or more signing keys to be installed into a system firmware. Once enabled, secure boot prevents executables or drivers from being loaded unless they’re signed by one of these keys. Another set of keys (Pkek) permits communication between an OS and the firmware. An OS with a Pkek matching that installed in the firmware may add additional keys to the whitelist. Alternatively, it may add keys to a blacklist. Binaries signed with a blacklisted key will not load.

Government Provides Details on Do-Not-Call Enforcement

Hardware

• Intel downstream partners request CPU price drop

  Executives from Intel’s PC partners – Acer Taiwan president Scott Lin and Compal Electronics president Ray Chen both have invoked Intel to help drop the Ultrabook price to below US$1,000 by reducing the CPU price.

Finance

• SEC’s Proposed Rule To Stop Banks From Profiting At Investors’ Expense

  Underwriters or sponsors of asset-backed securities would be banned for one year from taking positions to profit from investors’ losses under a plan released by U.S. securities regulators on Monday.

  The proposal by the Securities and Exchange Commission would get at the very heart of issues raised by U.S. Senate investigators in a report earlier this year that accused Goldman Sachs of positioning itself to profit from clients’ losses on complex securities that it packaged and sold.

  The proposal would also prohibit the kinds of conflicts that were seen in the SEC’s civil case against Goldman in 2010 by banning third parties from helping assemble an asset-backed pool that would let those parties profit from investors’ losses.

• Tech Firms Facing the Abyss

  There seems to be quite a few tech companies in trouble these days. In fact, in an article published yesterday on 24/7 Wall Street, tech firms represent six out of the eight major companies listed as being in troubled financial waters. There aren’t any surprises here for anyone who’s been paying attention, but a year or so ago most of us wouldn’t have suspected that some of these companies would even be capable of falling on hard times.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Claimed Monopolies Over ‘Running A Game of Skill Tournament’

  Apparently the Game Show Network felt it could just steal another company’s property by having a computer match, rank and distribute awards to competing contestants based on their relative skill levels. They obviously need to pay dearly for this moral outrage…

• Patents finance illegal drug company payoffs to doctors and worse

  Dean Baker takes issue with a Washington Post story link here on doctors shilling for drugs and drug companies paying them big money to push greater use of their drug including for uses prohibited by FDA link here.

  The Post article is a routine description (“fair and balanced” as the big papers like to claim) leading to the fact that the doctors are well-paid for what amounts to treating patients while never seeing them. In some cases they push uses that are criminal, as when they recommend or prescribe a drug for unapproved use.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Linux Turns Twenty Years Old As It Continues To Take Over The World

Linux at 20, some personal memories

Softpedia Linux Weekly, Issue 165

Linux Counter Project

Desktop

• Hands on with the first Chromebook

  We get hands on with Samsung’s Series 5 3G, the first Chromebook on the market and the international role model for Google’s ambitious new PC landscape.

  After a pilot program in December in which Google shipped out the first prototype Cr48 Chromebooks to beta testers in the United States, the first commercial Chromebooks started shipping in June to the United States and a handful of European countries.

Server

• CMS Tool MemHT Names A2 Hosting Preferred Hosting Partner

  A2 Hosting says its MemHT hosting accounts include cPanel, free CloudFlare CDN service, free Server Rewind backups, the CloudLinux OS and Attracta tools to improve Google listing and rank.

• Looking For i In All The Wrong Places

  Once again IBM has done a fine job of making Power Systems all about Unix and Linux. It’s as interesting that this presentation is listed on the IBM i home page as it is that a presentation like this gets made with essentially no recognition that IBM i is part of the Power Systems equation. You can find it under the heading of “Special Offers,” where none of the four offers have anything to do with i.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Podcast: Pete Savage

• Podcast Season 3 Episode 18

  In this episode: Ubuntu should move to a monthly release, according to Scott Remnant. Bruce Perens has come up with a new scheme for copyright ownership and Linux Format turns 150. Hear how successful we are at discovering things, building mesh networks and thinking up excuses.

Kernel Space

• Kernel Log: Coming in 3.1 (Part 3) – Architecture, infrastructure, virtualisation

  Linux 3.1 contains all the necessary components for passing through PCI devices to Xen guests; KVM offers rudimentary nested virtualisation support for Intel CPUs. Supported CPU platforms now include the OpenRISC open source processor architecture.

• Graphics Stack

  • The Most Comprehensive AMD Radeon Linux Graphics Comparison

    Last month I alluded to a 40-way graphics card comparison being worked on at Phoronix. This comparison is to extensively compare the performance of the open and closed-source drivers for each graphics card and to comprehensively comment on other areas of the Linux graphics driver support. Not only is the OpenGL performance being evaluated, but the thermal performance, CPU utilization, and power consumption is being looked at too. Being published today to mark the beginning of the Oktoberfest 2011 articles are the ATI/AMD Radeon results. This includes 28 of the 40 graphics cards, with GPUs as old as the Radeon X800XL and as new as the AMD Radeon HD 6950.

Applications

• Tsung – Open-source multi-protocol distributed load testing too

• DockBarX 0.47 Released With Themeable Window List And Custom DockX Themes

• Instructionals/Technical

  • How to add Facebook events to Google Calendar with Chrome

  • Guide to disks and disk partitions in Linux

  • How To Install Oracle Java 7 (JDK) In Ubuntu

  • This is a last post on LinuxConfig.org !

  • Braindump: How to get window stacking right

  • One Liner Remove Offending Key sed

  • Flash Doctor – An easy way of fixing Flash problems

  • 3 Secret VLC Player Tips And Tricks

  • Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot Quiz

  • Bash scripting – Statements and variables

  • Quiz: Exit Codes

  • Banshee won’t play musics in new installed Ubuntu 11.10

  • 9 Cool SSH Tricks You May Not Know

  • Resuming a Copy in Linux — like cp –resume

  • How to Password Protect Grub Boot Loader in Linux

  • How to tweak Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, part 3

  • How to Use Aliases to Customize Ubuntu Commands

  • Play APE file in Ubuntu using default Banshee Music Player

  • Understanding Nmap Commands: In depth Tutorial Part II

  • How to use Logical Volume Manager (LVM) to grow etx4 file systems online

  • More Useful and Interesting Bash Prompts

• Games

  • New Release: 0 A.D. Alpha 7 Geronium

  • Desura Launches New Alpha Funding Project with 3 Linux Game Titles

    Desura has launched a new Alpha Funding initiative very similar to other crowdfunding projects like Kickstarter and 8 bit Funding. 5 Indie games have been selected as launch titles and out of which 3 will have Linux versions in future.

  • 0 A.D. Alpha 7 Released With Dynamic Territory

    For those into open-source real-time strategy games, there’s a new alpha release of the growingly-popular 0 A.D. game.

  • Minecraft Adventure Update I

  • Top-Quality Open Source Game 0 A.D. Close to Completion

    The open source channel is known for a lot of things, but breathtaking games isn’t one of them. That may change soon, though, thanks to the people behind the open source game 0 A.D., which in its latest iteration brings gorgeous and elegant gaming to the free software world — and it’s still in alpha. Read on for a look at the amazing things these volunteer programmers have accomplished in recent months, and what they mean for the open source channel as a whole.

  • Desura for Linux Now Available as Closed Beta, New Linux Games Added on Desura Website

    Desura website has been updated and a whole lot of new Linux games have been added. The main page of Desura now features a nice Tux icon at the top. Users are taken to Linux games database once clicked.

  • Deepak Fights Robots : Fun Arcade Platformer for Linux

    Deepak Fights Robots is a fun arcade and platform game for Linux by Tom Sennett. The game is highly inspired by Bubble Bobble, Donkey Kong, and Pac-Man.

Desktop Environments

• The many faces of Linux.

  Human beans of the two legged kind love variety. That is why we always are changing the drapes, moving the furniture and continuously buying new clothes. We like to show our individuality in the way we present our personal surroundings to other people.

  Yet when it comes to compooters there is no such choice for many people. Because they use proprietary operating systems they are very limited in choice for what they can do to customise their “computer room” and have it look and work in a manner to suit their individuality.

• All Change?

  Two developments in the Linux world have spawned a hell of an amount of comment: Canonical’s decision to develop Unity for Ubuntu and the arrival of GNOME 3. While there have been many complaints about the changes made in both, there must be a fair few folk who are just getting on with using them without complaint. Maybe there are many who even quietly like the new interfaces. While I am not so sure about Unity, I surprised myself by taking to GNOME Shell so much that I installed it on Linux Mint. It remains a work in progress as does Unity but it’ll be very interesting to see it mature. Perhaps a good number of the growing collection of GNOME Shell plugins could make it into the main codebase. If that were to happen, I could see it being welcomed by a good few folk.

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • plasma active workshop: day 0

    The last couple of weeks have been ridiculously busy. Or, if you prefer (and I do): ridicubusy. On the personal side of life, I managed to squeeze in a two day paddle-and-camping trip the other weekend, played dinner host to Lawrence Krauss (made some of my favourite dishes, and one new one (for me, anyways): egg yolk ravioli), co-hosted a “Ready, Steady, Cook!” evening at the house along with S. All of that was enjoyable, and great breaks between the long hours of working on Plasma and general KDE “stuff”.

Distributions

• NetbootCD Installs and Updates Multiple Linux Distros on One Disc

  Linux fans, do you burn CDs for multiple distros and have to update those CDs when a new version comes out? As long as you have access to a wired internet connection you can download the latest versions of 7 distros directly from the disc.

  A CD-ROM burned with NetbootCD allows you to download and install the latest versions of CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, OpenSUSE, Slackware, or Ubuntu.

• NetbootCD installs multiple Linux distros on one disc

• Taking a long look at Salix OS 13.37

  From the beginning the Salix OS developers made clear that they had no intention of competing with Ubuntu or Mandriva and they were not trying to create a newcomer-friendly distribution that would be easy for Windows or MacOS users. Rather, they described the target audience as “lazy Slackers.” I’ve always understood that to mean Linux users who want the reliability, stability and performance that Slackware consistently delivers but who also want modern conveniences and features like automated dependency resolution, automated notification when patches are available and a first class set of tools to administer their systems. If those are truly the goals then Salix OS meets them admirably.

• Is Salix XFCE 13.37 better than 13.1.2?

  Nobody can argue there are 2 major Desktop Environments now in Linux world: GNOME and KDE take lion part in installed Linux desktop systems. Most Linux distributions are released with at least one of them available.
  But since system requirements for resources of KDE and GNOME are rather high and growing, there is more and more space for lighter desktop environments like LXDE and XFCE.

• Curse of the semi power user

  I am beginning to feel this curse with the choice of distributions available today. Let me start with a little background information. I have been a regular Linux user on desktops and servers since about 2006. In that time I have mostly worked with Debian, Ubuntu, and CentOS. I have had the pleasure of building a desktop from the ground up using a Debian net install CD. I have setup other users with Ubuntu and Fedora on desktops and netbooks. I have installed new servers and re-purposed retired ones. In short, I can be considered a semi power user, still not among the experts but a bit better than an average user. And this is where the curse strikes most often.

• Building an OS: The workflow!

  The project I’ve been working on does require a bit of thought around enterprise Linux versions run by a community. There is the ever amazing CentOS, Scientific Linux and a few others who have been around the block a time or two. The work that they have done has been immense and very helpful to many, including me.

  For my project, the work was about building a fully binary compatible, enterprise-ready, community version of Linux, very similar to what CentOS and others have done. The question always comes ‘why?’ which will be addressed later on in future posts. Suffice it to say, the work we’ve been doing has paid off in both a individual and community sense.

• New Releases

  • IPFire 2.9 – Core Update 52 released

  • pfSense 2.0

  • Macpup 528

    Macpup is a small,light OS. The .Iso is only 164 MB.It runs in ram and is very fast. It is not a striped down,bare bones,basic core OS. Macpup is a full featured systemright out of the box with apps for office,graphics,multimedia,internetand much more.And it looks really cool.

  • GeeXboX 2.0 has landed

    After countless years of development, the 2.0 release of GeeXboX (codename “Love It or Shove It”) finally has landed. The GeeXboX project was created in December 2002, 9 years ago, to become the major HTPC / MediaCenter dedicated Linux distribution. From a ridiculous 3 MB ISO image, using an ultra-simple customized version of MPlayer OSD, GeeXboX now has evolved into a much more mature system. Our objective always has been to provide you with a Linux distribution, so easy to use, that anyone, regardless of any computer skill, would be able to make use of it.

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • Happy Birthday Mageia!

    Yesterday, September 18, was Mageia’s first birthday. It was one year ago that a fork of Mandrake Linux was announced. From the start Mageia decided to take a new tack in distribution development. They synthesized the community and professional models of development in way no other had quite done before and it’s paying off. Mageia recently unleashed their inaugural release and received overwhelmingly positive reviews.

• Red Hat Family

  • Earnings Preview: Red Hat Reports Results Wednesday

    Red Hat, Inc. provides open source software solutions to enterprises worldwide. It also offers enterprise-ready open source operating system platforms. The company was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina.

    * 52 Week High: $49.00
    * 52 Week Low: $31.77
    * Book Value: $6.88
    * Float Short: 2.06%

  • Fedora Community

    • Software Freedom Day in Fredericksburg.

      The global Software Freedom Day was held Saturday, September 17th. However, as with previous years, the SFD organizers landed their event on the same day as Fredericksburg’s downtown Oktoberfest celebration. We love a good party as much as anyone, but we found in previous years that even though we had more foot traffic our SFD event, most passersby were not interested in software as much as beer and bratwursts. (Go figure!)

    • Software Freedom Day Boston / Ninja Recruitment

    • Freedom redefined – Linux in my pocket

• Debian Family

  • Linux Mint (Debian) 201109 Gnome and Xfce Final Release

    The bottom line: I have been recommending Linux Mint for quite some time now – I happen to have gotten back an ASUS netbook from a friend over the weekend which was loaded with Linux Mint 8, and had been in daily use without a hiccup for a couple of years. The only change now is that I will be recommending the Mint Debian editions first, rather then the Mint Ubuntu editions. If you haven’t tried Linux Mint yet, this would be a very good time to do so.

  • Debian Project News – September 19th, 2011

  • Canonical/Ubuntu

    • Installing Software On Ubuntu Systems

      The stunningly fast ability to install applications at a moments notice is one of the primary reasons Linux is so popular. Ubuntu systems by default comes with the Synaptic package manager or the Ubuntu software center, whichever you prefer. You can also install packages from the internet or from the command line. New items are downloaded through software repositories which store collections of applications that are bundled into packages. When you choose an item to install from the package manager all relevant packages required by an application will also be installed. When you install Ubuntu only the official application repositories are accessed but more can be added without too much trouble.

    • Update Software in Ubuntu

    • Backups and Distro Upgrading

      I don’t recommend using Déjà Dup to hold your data when you upgrade distros (e.g. from Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10) without understanding the risks.

    • Series: Introduction to Ubuntu Development – Part 5

    • Recent Unity Updates Bring Changes to Workspaces Overview, Alt+Tab & Unity Launcher

    • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 233

    • Flavours and Variants

      • Trisquel 5.0 Released

        In what we can now call it a tradition, we celebrate the Software Freedom Day by publishing our latest release: Trisquel GNU/Linux 5.0 STS, codename Dagda.

      • Bodhi Linux Service Pack 2 Ready

        Ten days ago the Bodhi Team and I released our second update to Bodhi Linux 1.0.0 Today I am happy to let all of our users that have limited or no-internet access machines know that our service pack 2 is ready for download. For those that do not know our service packs allow for a single download upgrade of your Bodhi system from the previous stable release to the current (those still on Bodhi 1.0.0 will need to install service pack 1 followed by service pack 2).

      • Kubuntu 11.10 Beta Test Drive

        Canonical recently released its Beta version of Kubuntu 11.10, Oneiric Ocelot, with all eyes toward the final release scheduled for October 13. We take a look at this release and the new KDE 4.7 Desktop and Netbook Plasma Workspaces.

      • Trying out Pinguy 11.04

        Regular readers might remember my review of Pinguy OS 10.10.1 this past April.

      • Linux Mint 11 Saves the Day

        A friend of mine brought me his computer for fixing, a Compaq Presario with XP Home. It was in a reboot loop. I told him about Linux, and all its advantages, and he agreed to try it. I grabbed my PCLinuxOS CD and installed it in a matter minutes. Everything was working, but something about that particular hardware was not sitting well with it. It kept freezing. This is the first time I see this, as all other machines I have installed it on have been very stable. My guess is that it has to do with the graphics. The machine has and old built-in Intel graphics adapter. I did not have a proper graphics card laying around to give him, so I figured I wouldn’t fight it.

      • Installing Linux Mint LXDE – Why Linux Mint LXDE?

        I decided to install Linux Mint LXDE for one reason really – I use a Dell Vostro with 2gb RAM and a Core2Duo running at 2.2ghz. I simply wanted the fasted machine possible given the spec of the hardware.

Devices/Embedded

• Low-vision eyewear runs Linux-compatible Unison 5.2 RTOS

  RoweBots announced that its minimalist, Linux- and POSIX-compatible “Unison” real-time operating system (RTOS) powers eSight’s Alivios Intelligent Eyewear. Currently in clinical trials, Alivios helps to improve vision in people with eye diseases such as macular degeneration, combining Unison OS 5.2, a Texas Instruments (TI) DaVinci processor, an HD video camera, and “near-to-eye” displays, says the company.

• Phones

  • Android

    • What’s Android?

      With 500,000 activations a day, Android is becoming the dominant player in the mobile eco-system…

    • MyGreatFest – The iDroidProject Takes To The Stage

      Back in 2008, the project initially began under the name of the “iPhone Linux Project.” This project aimed to boot a Linux kernel, and by the end of 2008, this aim had been achieved. The year after, the hacker behind the iPhone Linux Project surprised everybody by presenting a working first-generation iPhone running Android OS: The iDroid Project was born.

    • Android market share doubles while Apple IOS falls eight per cent

      According to data from Kantar Worldpanel Comtech, in the 12 weeks ended 7 August, Android had 47.1 per cent share of the UK smartphone market, compared with 22.9 per cent during the same period a year earlier.

      Apple’s IOS however, has fallen by eight per cent to 20.8 per cent share from 28 per cent a year earlier, as Android surged in popularity.

      RIM’s Blackberry OS was the second most popular with 21.5 per cent of the market, up four per cent from 17.4 per cent a year earlier.

    • Prepaid Android 2.3 phone features 1GHz processor, QWERTY keyboard

      Prepaid phone provider Boost Mobile announced a mid-range Samsung smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard and a $230 no-contract price tag. The Samsung Transform Ultra runs Android 2.3 on a 1GHz processor, and offers 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, a three-megapixel camera, a front-facing VGA webcam, and Android Market support, the mobile provider says.

    • Epic 4G Touch powers up nicely with 4G, dual-core, and a ‘Super’ display

      Samsung’s Galaxy S II, Epic 4G Touch is a mouthful to say and a handful to hold, but the 1.2GHz dual-core processor and Sprint’s 4G WiMAX network make it worth the $200 on contract, says this review. Battery life suffers on 4G, but from the 4.5-inch Super AMOLED Plus display to the responsive cameras, there’s a lot to like.

    • Android’s last obstacle overcome – Rocket Launcher

FLOSS, A Better Way To DO IT

If there ever was evidence that FLOSS is a better way to do IT, the smart phone is it:

* lots of choices for the consumer
* Android/Linux (FLOSS OS from Google) shipments at 47.1% of the market, up 105% over last year

Packt announce Finalists for 2011 Open Source Awards

Does open source exclude high context cultures?

High context cultures value personal relationships over process. You have to know someone before you can trust them and work with them. They also tend to be less explicit and rely more on tone of voice, gestures and even status to communicate. Typically Asian countries are more high context than Western countries. Think Korea and Japan.

Low context cultures are process driven. They rely on facts and processes. Their communication style is much more direct and action-orientated. They are orientated towards the individual rather than the group. Western cultures like the US and Germany are considered low context.

Z: The open source generation

Generation Z is beginning to join the workforce. This age group–born between the early 1990s and early 2000s–has never really existed in a world without the web or lacking the widespread use of cell phones, laptops, and freely available wireless networks and digital media.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Firefox 7 Beta Arrives in Ubuntu 11.10, Scores a Perfect 100 in Acid3 Test

    Firefox 7 beta is now the default web browser in Ubuntu 11.10 Onceric Ocelot beta and for the first time ever, Firefox scores a perfect 100 in Acid3 tests. Congratulations Mozilla!

  • Lighting Set to Strike at Mozilla

    One of the big things that Mozilla’s Thunderbird has been missing for years is a calendar. It’s usually the number one thing I hear about whenever anyone compares Thunderbird against Outlook.

    That’s where the Mozilla Lighting project is supposed to come – providing a Calendar plugin (based on Mozilla Sunbird) for Thunderbird.

  • Firefox 25 Due On October 22, 2013

Databases

• To SQL or NoSQL – that’s not the question

  If you haven’t heard about NoSQL by now, we contend that you’ve been in hiding for the past three years. The term NoSQL itself refers to a broad class of data management that is not based on the traditional relational tables in typical RDBMS. Examples include document-based data storage such as MongoDB, key-value pair such as Riak, or column-based storage such as HBase.

  While assessing usage of NoSQL, we are often presented with the CAP model which is great from the theoretical perspective, but grasping its implications on real world enterprise systems is difficult.

  In this post, we’ll explain some of the design factors and the associated implications of using NoSQL in the context of three data-centric enterprise applications: Portal, Reporting and Analytics. Enterprise transactional systems are not included for obvious reasons.

• Oracle adding close source extensions to MySQL

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• LibreOffice Won’t Ship With Global Menu By Default in 11.10

  LibreOffice in Ubuntu 11.10 will not come with global menu support enabled by default.

  Announcing the minor change via his blog, Canonical’s Björn Michaelsen cited ‘stabiltiy concerns’ as the main reason for disabling the add-on by default.

• LibreOffice Conference Program

Business

• OpenERP Review: The Online CRM Module

Funding

• The importance of donating to open source projects (and a giveaway!)

Openness/Sharing

• Open Data

  • Making Open Data Real: A Response

    In a curious way, then, I find myself overwhelmed by the consultation and the issues it raises.

Sony v World: Counter-attack

The latest salvo in Sony v World is that Sony wants users of its Playstation Network to agree not to sue. Imagine going into a “mom and pop” shop on the street and telling the clerk, “I’d like to buy that can of unhomogenized peanut butter.” only to be told, “Sorry, we don’t do business with people who might sue us…”. That should not be part of any model of business no matter the size. Businesses should compete on price/performance and let their quality of service fend off attacks. If people don’t hate you, they are unlikely to sue. That works for me. I have never been sued.

Trolling

• Windows 8 Does Not Pose A Threat To Linux

• The harsh reality of Windows 8 is a bright future for Linux

• Does Windows 8 Pose a Threat to Linux?

Finance

• Goldman to close Global Alpha fund

• HOT: Goldman, Sachs Acted as Exclusive Financial Advisor to Solyndra…

  When it comes to government money, it’s always about insiders running circles around the government money and pocketing a piece. Don’t ever forget that. And usually, there is a crony investment banker as part of the program.

• Goldman Sachs CEO hires criminal defense lawyer

  Lloyd Blankfein retains Reid Weingarten amid the governments inquiry into the financial crisis. The move hints there could be new push to investigate the firm and its executives on criminal grounds.

• There Are Two Big Reasons Why Goldman Sachs Just Got Sued For Fraud Again

  The FHFA’s massive bank lawsuit extravaganza is a reminder of the horrific behavior that took place inside the subprime mortgage machine: fraud.

  In it’s lawsuit against Goldman Sachs, the FHFA claims that Goldman directly committed common law fraud, and particularly claims that Goldman “aided and abetted fraud.”

• Even the smart money is flummoxed by this economy

  Small investors, take note: The smart money isn’t sure what to make of the economy, either.

  Some market strategists say the recent drop in stock prices means the market is expecting a recession. Banks like Goldman Sachs and others have lowered their year-end forecasts for the Standard & Poor’s 500 index. And Mark Zandi, the much-followed economist from Moody’s, says the chance that the economy will fall into another recession is 40 percent.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • Hurt Locker File Sharing Lawsuits Put the Hurt on Everyone

    File sharing lawsuits involving the movie the Hurt Locker have been big news in the United States for months as tens of thousands of lawsuits have been filed against individuals alleged to have illegally downloaded the movie. The lawsuits have now made their way into Canada as the Federal Court of Canada has ordered the identification of subscribers at Bell Canada, Cogeco, and Videotron who face similar copyright infringement claims.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Rugged Linux field computer acts as mission-critical video server

The MCP runs Linux on a 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, with the help of 4GB of DDR3 RAM, says Harris. An optional H.264 video encoder is said to be available for video-intensive applications, supporting video capture, storage, and real-time playback capabilities. A removable 160GB, SATA 2 solid state drive (SSD) “provides ample storage for long duration video recording,” says the company.

More Linux Site Hacks, ReactOS Ready to Go, Obama Signs ‘America Invents Act’

Happy 20th Birthday, Linux: 10 Cool Devices That Embrace You

The Linux operating system is not just for nerds. Even though you may not realize it, chances are you probably have a version of Linux running right under your nose. It’s found its way into a multitude of devices, both large and small.

Today, Sept. 17, 2011, is the 20th anniversary of the date when the first Linux kernel (version 0.01) was released and uploaded to an FTP server by Linus Torvalds in Helsinki. Although Torvalds had been working on the code since April, 1991 (recognized by some as the birthday of Linux), it wasn’t until September of that year that he released the first Linux kernel to the world. That early iteration consisted of a mere 10,239 lines of code.

Desktop

• Why Ultrabooks Should Run Ubuntu 11.10

  When Steve Jobs unveiled the slim but powerful Macbook Air, it was as if a magician had pulled a flailing rabbit out of a hat. Everyone was amazed at how laptop technology had moved forward, and instantly the latest Macbook Air became a massive success.

  The Macbook Air might be an awesome product, but there are currently no alternatives for folks who don’t want to get converted to the Apple religion. But don’t get disappointed just yet; come Q4 2011, Intel will be bringing us the new revolution in computing called Ultrabooks.

  Touted as the direct competitor to Macbook Air, Intel’s ambitious project will leave no stone unturned to prove itself in the not-so-dead laptop market. While it is not confirmed as to which operating system manufacturers will be using, there is a high chance that Windows 7 will be the one.

  However, we here at TechSource believe that running Ubuntu 11.10 (or higher) on Ultrabooks might actually be more profitable.

• LinuxCon: The world’s largest Linux desktop deployment

  Userful deploys Linux in very large-scale “digital inclusion” projects — such as schools in second- and third-world environments — including the world’s largest, a 500,000 seat deployment in Brazil.

Server

• The Little Woman Now Uses a GNU/Linux Terminal Server

  Her former terminal has an aluminium case that sings and must be positioned and burdened just so to minimize the noise. In the hot days of this summer it also put out too much heat so it is banished to the basement in a dark closet. In its place she will be using a tiny thin client about the size of a box of chocolates.

• Will Ubuntu make to Mainframes?

  A recent development between IBM and Canonical, predicts that soon IBM’s p mini-computers and blades; System Z mainframes will be certified for use with Ubuntu. It is most likely that minicomputers should be running on Ubuntu in the next month or so, while mainframes could well receive full support by end of the month.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Linux Outlaws 229 – The Windows of Linux Podcasts

• Full Circle Side-Pod Episode Ten: Dancing in Bare Feet

  Full Circle Side-Pod Episode Ten: Dancing in Bare feet

Kernel Space

• Testing EXT4 & Btrfs On A Serial ATA 3.0 SSD

  Last month I wrote a review on the OCZ Vertex 3 240GB solid-state drive, which was a very impressive Serial ATA 3.0 SSD. The performance of this solid-state drive was terrific and a huge improvement over previous-generation SATA 2.0 SSDs and over SATA 3.0 hard drives. All of that testing was done when the drives were formatted to the common EXT4 file-system type, but in this article are more benchmarks from the OCZ Vertex 3 as it’s tested with Btrfs and various mount options.

• Understanding the File System and Structure in Linux

  The file system in Linux can be intimidating coming from other operating systems like Microsoft Windows. At first glance it may seem that there is no organisation to the files, but there is a method to this madness. After spending some more time with the file system in Linux, it will seem a lot more secure and organised.

• TI Proposes A Low-Level Linux Display Framework

  An OMAP driver developer at Texas Instruments wrote a rather lengthy post about a new low-level display framework.

• Graphics Stack

  • The Proposal For Nouveau GPU Command Scheduling

  • This Is What Started AMD’s Open-Source Strategy

    While AMD’s open-source strategy was announced on Phoronix on 7 September 2007, it was on 17 September of the same year that the Novell/SUSE developers did their first public release of their xf86-video-radeonhd driver. This was the X.Org driver created by the Novell Linux engineers in months prior for R500 and R600 GPUs. Here is some special reading — a letter that was volleyed from Novell to AMD that kicked off this entire process — to celebrate what would have been the fourth birthday of this open-source Linux driver.

Applications

• Linux Video Editor Openshot Prepares New Release

• XBMC, Now with Less XB!

  Xbox Media Center (XBMC) is one of those projects whose name makes less and less sense as time goes on. Sure, people still are using XBMC on an actual Microsoft Xbox, but for the most part, XBMC now is run on computers. In fact, recent versions of XBMC installed on an ION-based nettop makes just about the perfect media center. Version 10 (Dharma) introduced a fancy plugin system that allows XBMC to be extended beyond its built-in media-playing abilities. The next version, currently in development, will focus partially on recording as well as playback.

• ffDiaporama – An application of creation of videos sequences

• Kapow – A punch clock program designed to easily keep track of your hours

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Basic HTTP Authentication With Nginx

  • Gentoo: per-package PORTAGE_TMPDIR settings

  • Understanding Nmap Commands: In depth Tutorial with examples

  • How to Reverse The Mouse Scrolling Direction in Ubuntu (aka Natural Scrolling)

  • How to triage bugs in the Debian bug tracking system

  • Entropy API Tutorial #3: installing packages

  • How to Create Samba (Windows) Shares in Linux the Easy Way

  • Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage

  • The Bodhi Guide to Enlightenment – in HTML

  • Getting what you want on Arch and Slackware – AUR and Slackbuilds

  • NetbootCD: Install Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian & More From One CD

  • PGP/MIME Versus S/MIME

  • Securing Apache—Part 10

  • Two Heads Are Better Than One

  • How-to Install Adobe Flash Player 11 Beta

• Games

  • Chasing Aurora, Upcoming Linux Game Previewed at PAX Prime 2011

    Indie game studio Broken Rules recently previewed their upcoming Linux game Chasing Aurora in PAX Prime 2011. Broken Rules’ earlier award winning physics based game ‘And Yet it Moves’ was part of Humble Indie Bundle 3.

  • Dungeons of Dredmor soooooon!

  • Oil Rush Build 0.80 released!

  • Adamant Armor Affection Adventure (and more) open sourced

    The quadruple-A block-style story-based, sneaky-action pandora game Adamant Armor Affection Adventure is now GPLed. Along with it some other games for that platform by the same author (AAA for one ) were open sourced.

Desktop Environments

• Are Mobile-Style Interfaces Leaving Desktop Power Users Behind?

  Both Unity and Metro borrow heavily from the mobile world, and for that reason seem likely to appeal to an increasingly mobile-minded world of consumers. As I’ve said before about Unity, this is a good way to attract mainstream users, particularly when you’re trying to help them get used to something new.

• A Native Enlightenment EFL Port To PlayStation 3

  From the announcement, “This port comes as great news for the ps3 homebrew community which has been strugling with a complete lack of tools for easily developing application. With PSL1GHT (The unofficial PS3 SDK) and a port of the SDL as pretty much the only available libraries for the PS3, not much could be done without a huge waste of time in order to reimplement all the basic things. The initial port of the EFL was done in just a couple of days, where eina, eet, evas, ecore, embryo and edje were made available and a port of expedite and eskiss were successfully running on the PS3.The port was made using the SDL engine for evas, and while it worked, the performance wasn’t great.”

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • Nepomuk – What Comes Next

    After a very generous start to my fundraiser (thank you so much for your support) it is time I get into more detail about what you are actually supporting. Originally I wanted to do that by updating nepomuk.kde.org. I will still do that but it will take a little more time than anticipated. Thus, I will simply start with another blog post.

  • KDE e.V. Report for Second Quarter 2011

  • KDE Commit-Digest for 11th September 2011

  • Kubuntu and KDE love story continued

    Over the last couple of weeks the better part of the Kubuntu team has been working on bringing KDE SC 4.7.1 to Kubuntu.

    Especially the last week we started to backport it to Kubuntu 11.04. We’ll need some more time since 4.7.1 need a lot being backported to natty.

• GNOME Desktop

  • Top 10 GNOME Shell Themes

    GNOME Shell is at the very beginning of its long treacherous journey. As we saw in our earlier post, it is now possible to easily install GNOME Shell in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneric Ocelot, whose final release is scheduled to happen next month itself. Meanwhile, I have been using GNOME Shell in Ubuntu Oneric beta for sometime now and one thing I am really unhappy about is its default theme. But third party GNOME Shell themes are already pouring in. Here is a collection of top 10 GNOME Shell themes(installation instructions towards bottom of this post).

  • Ten Gnome 3 features that won me over

    I like uncluttered desktops, and Gnome 3 offers about as clean a desktop as you’ll find without running E16. The only object on the desktop is the panel — until you reveal the launcher. But Gnome 3′s minimalist approach does not make it difficult to use. On the contrary, once you’re familiar with it, Gnome 3 is one of the most user-friendly desktops available.

Distributions

• Arch linux: my perspective

  Arch is really simple in the sense at the system level. I was able to create init scripts for Arch far more easily than on Gentoo for the same package. Arch however is not as configurable as Gentoo is. No distribution can match or even come close to Gentoo in this regard. It uses a unique system for this called USE flags. With Arch I can not have a custom KDE; but with Gentoo I have a large number of options as to what I want to have and what not. This flexibility of configuration in Gentoo comes at a price: every package is compiled on your system.

• Chakra GNU/Linux: A Review With Screenshots

  According to Distrowatch, Chakra GNU/Linux is a Live CD distribution aimed at ease of use and originally forked from Arch Linux. Some of its features include a graphical installer, automatic hardware detection and configuration, the latest KDE desktop, and a variety of tools and “extras”.

• Gentoo Family

  • The state of Gentoo

    It’s been three years since LWN last covered Gentoo Linux, so checking in on Gentoo’s activities since then seems appropriate. Let’s start with a re-introduction to Gentoo. Gentoo is a source-based distribution that is unlike the more common binary distributions because packages are compiled on your machines rather than remotely on the distribution’s infrastructure. Source-based distributions allow for far more customization than is possible with binary distributions because you can not only control which packages are installed, but also which features of a given package are enabled (and consequently how many dependencies get pulled in).

• Red Hat Family

  • Earnings Preview: Red Hat Reports Results Wednesday

    Red Hat, Inc. provides open source software solutions to enterprises worldwide. It also offers enterprise-ready open source operating system platforms. The company was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina.

    * 52 Week High: $49.00
    * 52 Week Low: $31.77
    * Book Value: $6.88
    * Float Short: 2.06%

  • Red Hat (RHT) Shares Given a Reiterated “Neutral” Rating by Zacks Investment Research Analysts

  • Fedora

    • Fedora 15 Configuration Series: Gnome Tweak Tool

    • Fedora Design Bounty: Installer Ransom Notes

      The Fedora Design Team Bounty is a type of blog post where we’ll outline a quick-and-easy design project that needs doing for the Fedora Community, outlining all the tools, files, and other resources you’ll need to complete the project. If you’re a designer and are interested in getting involved in the free and open source community, this is a good opportunity to get your feet wet!

• Debian Family

  • Francois Marier, Debian Developer

  • Linux Mint Debian Edition 201109 Is Ready to Roll

    Good day, everybody! What better way to start my morning other than announcing a new release of Linux Mint Debian! Last time I tried it, there was only a GNOME version available, but now Xfce is here to party as well.

  • Derivatives

    • The Tails Project’s The Amnesic Incognito Live System (Tails)

      The live distro, which runs on any PC powerful enough to run Windows XP, is based on Debian Live and runs directly from CD and/or USB Flash memory. No trace is left after using Tails, thanks to many features, such as independent operation of all software and all hardware drivers from the PC’s operating system, no permanent data storage and all the channeling of all Internet connections through the Tor anonymization network. “With Tails”, say the distro developers, “we provide a tongue and a pen protected by state-of-the-art cryptography to guarantee…basic human rights and allow journalists worldwide to work and communicate freely and without fear of reprisal.” The journalists of these pages humbly salute the valiant effort.

    • Linux Mint Debian 201109 Released

      Linux Mint can be a bit difficult to keep up with these days. One is based on Ubuntu, another on Debian. The newest Debian-based version comes with GNOME or Xfce while the Ubuntu-based counterpart is available in GNOME or LXDE. 32- and 64-bit versions are available for both. Today brought a new release: Linux Mint 201109 Debian (GNOME & Xfce).

    • Knoppix 6.7.1 with Firefox 6.0.2, LibreOffice 3.4.3 and Linux 3.0.4 Kernel Is Here

      Knoppix 6.7.1 has been released. The latest version of the popular live CD/DVD Linux distro that started it all, comes with a lot of bleeding-edge software, along with all of the things you’ve grown accustomed to.

      The latest release comes with updated packages from its Debian upstream, picked from the testing and unstable repositories. It brings the latest Linux kernel, modern browser options and the latest LibreOffice 3.4.3.

    • KNOPPIX 6.7 and ADRIANE Audio Desktop Review

      Once upon a time the daddy of this distribution, Klaus Knopper, started a trend with his pioneering Knoppix live CD as rescue and repair tool. It was known for incorporating extensive hardware detection that required minimal to no configuration at boot to arrive at a fully working desktop.
      Nowadays nearly every Linux based project also has a live CD or hybrid live and install image to offer, and Knoppix has been out of the limelight for a while. It’s still around though and has some unique points to offer, as I’m about to find out in this review of Knoppix 6.7, which was recently released to the world on 3rd August 2011 with the 2.6.39.3 kernel.

      As a heavily KDE leaning distribution Knoppix was also one of the first to ship with KDE 4 when it debuted, where it allowed for an early view of things to come. The DVD came with a variety of desktops including GNOME, Fluxbox and IceWM which could be enabled through entering cheat codes at the boot prompt. These days, ever since 6.0 was released, LXDE has become the default on the CD, with more environments and window managers available on the DVD.
      Besides, Klaus Knopper also issues special versions to coincide with the annual CeBIT and LinuxTag expos and conventions, so there are usually three releases a year to keep the system up to date with the ever changing requirements of hardware detection.

    • The Perfect Desktop – Mepis 11

      This tutorial shows how you can set up a Mepis 11 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge. Mepis is a Linux distribution based on Debian Stable.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • New Games, Books and Magazines in Ubuntu Software Center

        Canonical announced that lots of new games, books and magazines will be available in the Ubuntu Software Center
        for all Ubuntu users.

        While Canonical is preparing the final version of the upcoming Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) operating system, many developers submit their interesting apps in the Ubuntu Software Center.

      • Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 Beta Released with Revamped User Interface

        Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 beta has been released with new user interface and all new plugin system.

        The entire interface is divided into four categories – Overview, Tweaks, Admins and Janitor. Plugins can be installed for all of these categories, though in this release they are available for Overview category only.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • PinguyOS 11.04 Review

          PinguyOS is the distribution made for everyone, the out-of-the-box functionality of PinguyOS makes this distribution a perfect choice for Linux newcomers. The massive list of hand-selected applications ensures that users get the best possible experience no matter what they plan to do. Though if you prefer a minimalistic interface, or if you are picky about your applications, PinguyOS may not be the right choice for you. The polished interface is highly functional and easy to navigate. And I feel that the Conky system monitor is a tool that is missing on most distributions. So if you want a full featured distribution that holds nothing back try PinguyOS 11.04 today.

        • Trisquel 5.0 Release announcement

          In what we can now call it a tradition, we celebrate the Software Freedom Day by publishing our latest release: Trisquel GNU/Linux 5.0 STS, codename Dagda.

          Today we publish both the standard GNOME based, and the lightweight, LXDE based Trisquel Mini editions. Current Trisquel 4.5 users can upgrade using the update-manager application, without the need for reinstallation. Advanced installations -server, RAID/LVM, encrypted, etc- can be done using the netinstall images. Two more editions, one based on KDE and other using the educational environment Sugar are on the way.

        • Joli OS 1.2 review

          1.1, and now 1.2 are based on the perennial Ubuntu 10.04 LTS edition

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Android

    • Jellybean to Follow Ice Cream Sandwich

      As each alphabet progresses, it comes with a delectable treat to water your mouth. I don’t know if tasty names are the reason why Android is getting popular, but they certainly make it more interesting.

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Affordable Duke of Holland Honeycomb Tablets

    The Dutch company Medialine anounced several 10.1-inch Honeycomb 3.2 tablets & adds several features the iPad doesn’t have.

Openindiana- The revolution continue | Screenshots Tour

OpenIndiana is a continuation of the OpenSolaris operating system. It was conceived during the period of uncertainty following the Oracle takeover of Sun Microsystems, after several months passed with no binary updates made available to the public. The formation proved timely, as Oracle discontinued OpenSolaris soon after in favour of Solaris 11 Express, a binary distribution with a more closed development model to début later this year. OpenIndiana is part of the Illumos Foundation, and provides a true open-source community alternative to Solaris 11 and Solaris 11 Express, with an open development model and full community participation.

Open source tool enables security tests for chip cards

At this year’s Black Hat Conference, crypto expert Karsten Nohl of SRLabs demonstrated the degate tool that can be used to take a closer look at applications stored on smartcards, such as credit cards and SIM cards.

New Award: Community Member of the Month!

Seven Ways to Celebrate Software Freedom Day

Today is Software Freedom Day, and that means fans of free and open source software around the globe are celebrating all the ways it improves our lives.

Web Browsers

• Chrome

  • Google Releases Chrome 14 Stable for Linux

    The Google Chrome developers at Google proudly announced a few minutes ago, September 16th, the stable release and immediate availability for download of the Google Chrome 14 web browser for Linux, Windows, Macintosh and Chrome Frame platforms.

• Mozilla

  • Password Protect Firefox Bookmarks

    Firefox bookmarks are accessible for all users of a computer system if one user account is used instead of individual user accounts. This can be a issue if you want to protect data from being seen or accessed by other users. But even if there are multiple user accounts, chance is that some may have access to your Firefox profile folder. A system administrator for instance would have that access.

Databases

• Oracle Further Commercializes MySQL Database

  Oracle has added additional commercial extensions to the enterprise edition of its open-source MySQL database, further differentiating it from the community version available to anyone at no charge.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Writer headers and footers revisited

• InfoWorld awards Best of Open Source to LibreOffice

  LibreOffice is one of the winners of InfoWorld BOSSIE – Best of Open Source – Awards 2011.

Openness/Sharing

• Open Source Drug Discovery for Malaria

  We’re starting a new project – open source drug discovery for malaria. Initially the participants are my group at the University of Sydney and the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), but naturally as an open project we need to expand beyond this. If you’re reading this, you can join us. Check here for what’s needed at the moment.

Programming

• A Look at the Future of Perl 5.16 and Beyond

  Despite many assertions that “Perl is dead,” it’s very much alive – particularly Perl 5, which is and will be in widespread use for quite some time. It may not be getting as much attention as JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, Python, and whatever the language du jour is that Google wants to put out – but it’s not going anywhere.

A Beginners’ Guide to Internet Trolling

Nowadays, the phenomenon of trolling other people online is considered a bad thing. But it has not always been so. Trolling was a noble cause once, perpetrated by Usenet veterans, who would pull simple and innocent general ignorance type of jokes on unsuspecting newbies. There was much rejoicing and a handful of tears, but in the end, people learned through whimsical, violent allegories.

Finance

• Rudolf Elmer – the man who exposed the dark side of global finance

  Blowing the whistle on government or corporate malpractice takes great courage and involves a high sense of civic duty, as whistleblowers often put their lives on the line in order to inform society on behaviour that is against its citizens’ interest as well as the basic principles of democracy and human rights. Because of the possible consequences of such an act, it is important to have the feed-back of prominent whistleblowers who share their experience, thoughts and advice with potential whistleblowers and society as a whole, as anyone can find themselves in the uncomfortable seat of government or corporate crime witness from inside. Also, because they are often the victims of smear campaigns, at Liberté-info we like to give whistleblowers the opportunity to be heard without the bias and censorship that can surround economically motivated media outfits. Plus this is #OccupyWallStreet day, a good occasion to talk about global financial crime.

Civil Rights

• Tesco threatens journalist with arrest for writing down prices

  A Guardian journalist who was researching prices at a Tesco supermarket was threatened with arrest for writing down prices as he walked around. The security guard who questioned him claimed that it was illegal to write down prices at Tesco’s. The manager later allowed as how it wasn’t illegal, merely against store policy.

DRM

• FSF speaks against patent and DRM provisions at Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiators’ meeting

  The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) is a free trade agreement currently under negotiation that could require member countries to enact strict copyright and patent legislation that hurts free software users and developers. Our license compliance engineer Brett Smith talked about the FSF’s opposition to these terms with negotiators last weekend; in this blog post, he shares his perspective on the event.