• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Master Linux Now! 2012 – On Sale Now

Audiocasts/Shows

• The Linux Link Tech Show Episode 447

Kernel Space

• PCI-E ASPM Change For The Linux 3.4 Kernel

  First of all, this was the last pull request where Jesse Barnes of Intel is handling the role as maintainer of the Linux PCI sub-system. Jesse has announced he’s handing off the PCI maintainer role to Bjorn Helgaas, a software engineer at Google. “He’s been a core PCI and Linux contributor for some time now, and has kindly volunteered to take over. I just don’t feel I have the time for PCI review and work that it deserves lately (I’ve taken on some other projects), and haven’t been as responsive lately as I’d like, so I approached Bjorn asking if he’d like to manage things. He’s going to give it a try, and I’m confident he’ll do at least as well as I have in keeping the tree managed, patches flowing, and keeping things stable.”

• HP says it will commit to Linux as mission critical market share rises

  HP, which has a long history of developing and maintaining its own UNIX operating systems such as HP-UX and VMS, now sees Linux and Microsoft Windows gaining market share in the mission critical market. HP said it will commit code to the Linux kernel, working with Red Hat as its mission critical Linux distribution, and added that it wants to work with the open source community rather than just do its own thing.

• Graphics Stack

  • Radeon Gallium3D Still Long Shot From Catalyst

  • Setting Up A Xen Graphics Card Pass-Through

  • Linux 3.4 will support GeForce GTX 680 and Southern Islands GPUs

    About eight hours after the introduction of the GeForce GTX 680, rudimentary support for this NVIDIA graphics card has been added to the Nouveau DRM/KMS driver in the Linux main development branch. At the beginning of the week, the developers began to prepare this branch for Linux kernel version 3.4, the release of which is expected at the end of May. With version 3.4, Nouveau will also cease to be rated as a staging driver.

  • AMD releases open source Linux driver to support Southern Islands GPUs

    AMD said it will complement its closed source Catalyst drivers with open source versions for Linux users. Although the firm’s open source efforts lag considerably behind its Catalyst drivers, AMD’s Alex Deucher announced that the firm’s latest open source driver release supports its Southern Islands GPUs found in Radeon HD 7000 series graphics cards.

Applications

• Five easy-to-use Linux encryption tools

• Plain and simple, Linux needs applications

  We dance around the topic of what the Linux desktop needs to succeed all the time, and usually it comes down to this argument: the Linux desktop needs to have a better design. That is the core thread of almost every argument I hear lately.

  For example, it was the first topic listed by Canonical’s Jonathan Riddell, who (up until recently) was Canonical’s lead developer of Kubuntu, the company’s KDE-flavored release when he stepped through a list of answers to the question “So how can KDE remain relevant?”

• Darktable- An open source photography workflow application and RAW developer

• FreeFileSync: Free Folder Comparison and Synchronization Tool | PPA Ubuntu

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Getting the integrated fingerprint reader on my laptop to work in Linux

  • The F4 trick in Gnumeric

  • How to dual-boot BackTrack 5 R2 and Windows 7 alongside each other

  • 10 Funny And Useless Linux Command

  • Programmer’s friend – the editor: Part 2 – emacs

  • How to Quickly Resize, Convert & Modify Images from the Linux Terminal

  • Almost There! Adding Methods to Our Classes

  • How To Configure PureFTPd To Accept TLS Sessions On CentOS 6.2

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • forums, bodega client code, partners

    We were contacted by Matthias Lee, owner of opentablets.org, a couple weeks back. Since then, they have put together forums for Vivaldi and have started posting news and information about our efforts.

    I know some of you will ask “What about forums.kde.org?” Plasma Active forums and related KDE discussions will continue there, while opentablets.org will focus on our specific tablet (and other) future products. This is the beauty of open participation: everyone gets to add their own flavour.

    We’re really excited about opentablets.org as it is one more piece of the community support and interaction puzzle being filled in by the community itself.

• GNOME Desktop

  • I don’t need sex, gnome 3 fu*ked me in the brain

    I am not just another gnome 3 hater in the most fashionable and popular way. That’s, though I don’t like the way it defies the traditional workflow, the biggest problem for me, is something else. It’s the shoddy quality of the software, even after one year of its initial release.

    Forget the usability, still the gripes are many, ranging from its integration into the system to how it talks with various other core components such as graphics, desktop effects, and the overall stability.

  • Review: Cinnamon 1.4

    This was actually going to be a preview of SolusOS, both because I wanted to do it and because a commenter had requested it. Unfortunately, MultiSystem refused to write SolusOS to the USB, while SolusOS was unbootable after being written to the USB by UnetBootin. Hence, I could not try it out. Instead, I am trying out Cinnamon 1.4.

Distributions

• Gimme A Light Linux from Vector (7.0)

• VectorLinux 7.0 Light Edition Officially Released

• New Releases

  • Bodhi Linux 1.4.0 Released

  • Announcement: RapidDisk (rxdsk) 2.0.1b Stable release

• Red Hat Family

  • Lighthorse Networks Announces Network Forensics Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux

  • Oracle 11g certified for Oracle Linux and Red Hat

    Oracle has announced that it is making supported versions of Oracle Database 11g Release 2 and Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g Release 1 (R1) available on Oracle Linux 6; currently, this is only for Oracle Linux 6 with the company’s Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel. Oracle Linux 6 is a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Oracle’s own kernel added.

  • Red Hat Inc. Fourth Quarter Earnings Sneak Peek

  • Execs cite talent, incentives for growth

    Fidelity’s Scot Blessington, Quintiles’ Steve Brechbiel, ABB’s (NYSE: ABB) Gary Rackliffe and Red Hat’s (NYSE: RHT) Craig Youst all praised the area’s talent pool of educated workers as a major factor in their company’s decision to expand in the market.

  • Scientific Linux, the Great Distro With the Wrong Name

    Scientific Linux is an unknown gem, one of the best Red Hat Enterprise Linux clones. The name works against it because it’s not for scientists; rather it’s maintained by science organizations. Let’s kick the tires on the latest release and see what makes it special.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Development Update

      • The New Wallpapers of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

        Iain Farrell, project manager at Canonical’s Design Team uploaded today the new wallpapers for the up-coming Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) operating system.

        The wallpapers are not yet officially uploaded in the current development release of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, but we have the originals and there are 16 new beautiful photos.

        Without any further introduction, we’ll present below the photos that were already approved for the final version of Precise Pangolin.

      • A first look at Ubuntu 12.04 (Gallery)

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Xubuntu 12.04 Beta Screenshots

        • Comice OS 4 – available now

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Android

    • Sony colorfully reveals Android 4.0 schedule for tablets

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Wishtel Ira tablet takes on Aakash with Rs 4,000 price

    It is planning to release two variants of its tablets in the country. While one variant will be running on Android 2.2, the other variant will have Linux Sugar OS on-board. The Linux variant of the tablet will also have the native Hindi language support.

Akamai open sources Mobitest benchmarking tool

Akamai Chief Product Architect Guy Podjarny has announced that the company’s Mobitest tool is now available as open source. Mobitest is a testing agent for benchmarking the performance of mobile web pages, originally created by Blaze. Blaze was acquired by the Massachusetts-based content delivery network and cloud services provider in February of this year.

CocosBuilder development tool open sourced

GlobalSign Launches Open Source PHP Library for Fully Automated SSL Secure Site Activation

Major decisions under new HP CEO Meg Whitman

HP says that instead of selling its webOS mobile system or killing it off, it’s making it available as open-source software that anyone can use and modify freely. The company is hoping more mobile apps will be developed under webOS by offering it to the open-source community.

Open source – customer choice

Open source software is available for free, along with its source code, and it has developed its own substantial following since the early days of computing. The best known implementations are in infrastructure areas, with the well-known Linux, Java, and PHP packages. Recently, it has gained added attention due to its central role in cloud IT, and through the growing Linux-based Android ecosystem. There are many open source programs available, and there is major support from companies such as IBM and Red Hat. Well known applications include the Mozilla web browser, LibreOffice, Pentaho, WordPress, Moodle, Drupal, and SugarCRM ; but these are just the tip of the iceberg.

Open Source: OS Quality Often Trumps Proprietary Alternatives

A decade ago most enterprises avoided Open Source software, but things have changed. Right now Open Source use at enterprises stands at higher than 75 percent, and Gartner predicts that in just five years that 99 percent of enterprises will have adopted some amount of Open Source software. So rather than Open Source being considered as a marginalized alternative to commercial software, Open Source is increasingly becoming the mainstream option.

Google Wave Still Shutting Down April 30

Is BYOD the precursor to the open source desktop?

Users are taking control, and there’s no stopping them from bringing their own network-connected devices to the office. Today, every phone, every e-book reader, every tablet is a gateway to a world of networked computing. Even if you tried to prevent your employees from bringing them into the building, only military-grade security could stop them.

The BYOD (bring your own device) trend is variously viewed as “a world of pain for IT,” a security challenge that’s solvable, and something to be tolerated with grim resignation. And there’s a growing industry of companies who want to help you stop it, cripple it, or control it.

Events

• Open source has a cyber security posse heading to POSSCON

  One of my favorite projects I have the good fortune to be contributing to was created by the US Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (that’s DHS S&T in Beltway lingo, the equivalent of the R&D arm of the agency for the rest of us mere mortals) It’s called the HOST program (Homeland Open Security Technology).

• The Cloud, KVM and NYSE Star at Our Upcoming Enterprise End User Summit

Web Browsers

• Why is Firefox – and Open Source – a Disaster in China?

  Like many people, I’ve been tracking the steady ascent of Google Chrome – and corresponding decline of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer – for some time now. Just recently, yet another milestone has been reached, apparently:

  Google’s Chrome narrowly became the world’s top internet browser for the first time on Sunday 18 March 2012, according to StatCounter, the independent website analytics company.

  As the accompanying graph indicates, there are some very interesting patterns to be observed.

• Mozilla

  • Firefox to get new home page and tabs in three months

    Mozilla has announced the arrival of the latest development version of Firefox 13 in the Aurora channel. This in-development version will arrive as the production version of Firefox in approximately twelve weeks. The development version includes a redesigned home page, changed “new tab” behaviour, and auto-completion in the browser address bar.

SaaS/Big Data

• OpenNebula: Open Source Cloud Setup

• AWS partners with open-source private cloud provider Eucalyptus

• Eventbrite: Hadoop isn’t for everybody

• MapR and Talend Partner on Open Source Big Data Solution

  Software features are good, but certification that they actually work is even better — particularly in the open source channel, where users don’t always enjoy the same kind of warranties that are common in the proprietary ecosystem. In this respect, the world of open source Big Data management became a little more stable with the recent announcement that MapR’s distribution of Apache Hadoop has been certified for Talend Open Studio for Big Data. Here’s the scoop.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• LibreOffice 3.4.6 Released

• LibreOffice 3.4.6 fixes “potential security problem”

• OpenJDK bug database plans changed

• Social Media JSR 357 rejected by Java Community Process

CMS

• Drupal Open Source is Built on Passion (and soon Symfony)

• Drupal Bringing Open Source CMS To The Masses

  Open source is a fantastic element of the software ecosystem and recent studies have shown that it’s on par with traditional proprietary software. Drupal is one of the ring leaders in the open source movement by providing expansive, yet simple tools for Web site content management systems. It’s even so popular that it’s used for the White House’s Web site.

Business

• Does your business benefit from open source?

  Free and open source software has touched all our lives whether we know it or not. Often misunderstood and treated with suspicion, many businesses take advantage of the benefits of it without acknowledging the community that powers it.

  Before going any further, free software is not about price, rather an ideology that advocates that software has most utility when there are no barriers to its ability to be used, improved and studied at the source code level.

• Semi-Open Source

  • Ovum Recognizes BonitaSoft in Business Process Management Report

  • Open Source Server NGINX Makes LeaseWeb its Preferred Infrastructure Partner

Funding

• Nonprofit open source organizations booming

  The Linux Foundation has received the most revenue amongst all of the free software and open source non-profits and directly pays its leader the most, but the highest compensation of any sort is still being received by Mozilla Foundation Chair Mitchell Baker, along with her CTO Colleague Brendan Etch.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• GNU in Google Summer of Code

  Volunteer for The GNU Project by participating in the Google Summer of Code! More information is available at http://www.gnu.org/software/soc-projects/

• Glibc 2.15 released with optimisations and new locales

  The glibc developers have announced the release of version 2.15 of the GNU C Library. The new version fixes a significant number of bugs and adds two new Linux interfaces (process_vm_readv and process_vm_writev). The biggest improvements come in the area of optimisation, however, with many operations being improved throughout the code. This release also adds four new locales, including support for the Native American Unami language, which, according to Wikipedia, is extinct.

Public Services/Government

• Iceland’s public administration and schools moving towards open source

• All of Iceland’s public administrations moving towards open source

• Iceland goes open source in a big way

• Iceland latest to make big noises about open source

• Icelandic Government Moves Towards Open Source

Openness/Sharing

• DRONE: an open source Bluetooth controller for smartphones and tablets

  While using a touchscreen to game isn’t a problem for most people, there are still gamers out there who can’t stand the thought of playing games without an actual gamepad. Well, unfortunately there aren’t a lot of options out there for such purposes. This is where The Evolution Team’s DRONE comes in. Called an open source Bluetooth controller, it is a gamepad designed to work with your smartphones and tablets.

• Kickstarter: Magical Open Source Bluetooth game controller

• iRobot and Willow Garage Debate Closed vs. Open Source Robotics at Cocktail Party

  In this guest post, Frank Tobe, a robotics analyst and publisher of The Robot Report, describes a recent debate between two prominent robotics executives and their opposing views on how to nurture profitable robotics businesses.

• High Tech Cows & Open Source Farm Equipment: Yes, The Economics Of Farming Is Relevant

  I frequently get asked why I spend so much time talking about the entertainment industry here on Techdirt, and one of the points I make is that I think what’s happened to the entertainment industry over the last decade and a half is really a leading indicator of the type of disruptive change that has already started to impact, or will soon be impacting, nearly every industry imaginable. As such, by understanding what’s happening and how not to respond, perhaps we can help lots of other industries move more smoothly into the future. So I’m always interested and intrigued by parallels in totally unexpected industries. Just recently, the good folks over at NPR’s Planet Money put together a fascinating episode about modern farm economics (and host Adam Davidson also wrote a NY Times piece on the same subject). While it mainly focuses on Claudia, the high-tech cow, it also has some key economic points that will likely sound familiar to regular readers (unfortunately, these key economic points are only in the audio version of the podcast, and were left out of the transcript).

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Cantor Quietly Acknowledges Failing to Report ALEC Gift

  In February, Common Cause wrote to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, asking for an explanation about an apparently unreported $1,350 gift from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in 2009. Cantor’s office immediately responded, claiming our inquiry was without foundation, but last week his office quietly amended his financial disclosures to include the gift from ALEC.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Trademarks

  • THQ seeking ’1666′ trademark

    California-based publisher files application with United States Patent & Trademark Office for “video game software.”

• Copyrights

  • Copyright isn’t dead just because we’re not willing to let it regulate us

    The first time I ever heard someone declare the death of copyright, it wasn’t a dreadlocked GNU/Linux hacker or a cyberpunk in mirror shades: it was a music executive, circa 1999, responding to the launch of Napster.

    I thought he was wrong then and I think he’s wrong now — as is everyone else who’s declared copyright to be dead.

    The problem is in the name: copyright. The Statute of Anne and other early copyright rules concerned themselves with verbatim copying because copying was the only industrial activity associated with creative expression at the time. There were lots of crafts associated with culture, of course, – performing music, plays and dance, painting pictures, and so on – but these weren’t industrial activities.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

New Commodore AMIGA mini is a modern PC that comes with Linux

Commodore USA has released the new AMIGA mini and the VIC mini, two small form factor PCs with a bit of retro styling, but very new and powerful guts

Forget the Ultrabook — Go With the New Commodore!

Pirate Bay plans to build aerial server drones with $35 Linux computer

Commodore outs Linux-running Amiga Mini desktop

Kernel Space

• The Main DRM Pull Hits The Linux 3.4 Kernel

• Linux Plus Android Equals Easier Multitasking

• Linux creator turned down Apple job offer from Steve Jobs

• TerraBlock supports Linux

• Graphics Stack

  • NVIDIA Releases 295.33; Kepler Gallium3D Soon

  • Gallium3D Compute Infrastructure Is On Approach

    The Gallium3D compute infrastructure, which is the underlying work for supporting OpenCL over this open-source graphics driver architecture, is on approach for landing in the very near future. This has been one damn good day for open-source Linux graphics drivers following the earlier Nouveau surprise announcements.

  • AMD finally release open source Radeon 7000 GPU drivers for Linux

  • Kernel Log: Drivers for new Radeon GPUs

    Soon, the kernel will support several AMD graphics cores that are used in recent Radeon graphics cards and in various upcoming processors. In systems with Intel graphics, using hibernation can cause memory corruption. The development of Linux 3.4 has started.

Applications

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Using ATA Over Ethernet (AoE) On Debian Squeeze (Initiator And Target)

  • Control VLC, Amarok With Mouse Gestures

  • Windows and Linux System Monitoring With PC Monitor

• Wine

  • PlayOnLinux 4.0.16 Supports Origin and Desura

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • Can KDE Survive Without Ubuntu?

    Jonathan Riddell, the KDE developer, recently announced that Canonical stopping funding the Kubuntu project and reassigning him in a new role. Looking at Canonical’s focus on Unity, that’s not a surprising move. I don’t know how Canonical works, but looking at the new challenges they set for themselves with every release, I do think they need all the hands they can get. The result of that hard work is evident – Unity is shaping up really well.

  • Kdenlive Surpasses Fundraising Goals, Might Actually Work With Kubuntu?

Distributions

• Calculate 11.15 Screenshots

• Legacy OS 4 Mini: Light-weight Linux for older PCs

  Have an old computer lying around that you’d like to use for some light web surfing, document editing, and other tasks? I mean like a PC with a 1999-era Intel Pentium III processor? It turns out there’s an OS for that… and it’s not Windows 98.

• Fun With REMnux — And New Malware Analysis Book

  In my last blog about Linux Live Environments, I mentioned REMnux, an environment specifically built for malware analysis. I’d spent a little time with REMnux when it first came out, but decided to take the latest version (3.0) for a test drive.

• New Releases

  • [Bodhi Linux 1.4.0 Released]

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Say hello to Canonical’s new Linux desktop: Ubuntu 12.04 beta review

        Canonical’s next long-term support release of its flagship Linux distribution, Ubuntu 12.04 is in late beta. This next release, due out on April 26th, is in beta now. I’ve been using it for several weeks now and so far, so good.

        Indeed, the new Ubuntu is good enough already that I’ve it on my default Ubuntu system: a 2009-era Gateway DX4710. This PC is powered by a 2.5-GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor and has 6GBs of RAM and an Intel GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) 3100 for graphics. No, it’s not fast, but unlike Windows 8’s beta, you don’t need a fast computer for Ubuntu.

      • 15 New Photo Wallpapers Chosen for Ubuntu 12.04

        From a pool of thousands, 15 photographic wallpapers have been chosen for inclusion in Ubuntu 12.04.

      • Ubuntu Survey Results Published Part I

      • Canonical Surveys Users

      • Ubuntu 12.04 to be without Wubi installer

      • Ubuntu Continues With Upstart, Releases v1.5

        With Ubuntu remaining uninterested in systemd, the Upstart init system continues to be developed. Released today was Upstart 1.5 with a few new features.

Devices/Embedded

• Raspberry Pi designer hints at future version

  However, while that beefed up version may be available at some point, costs and demand will likely hold it off for a while, the popular mini-computer’s designer said.

• Phones

  • Android

    • Android Goes Orbital With NASA’s ISSLive

      NASA has made great efforts to get the public interested in their various projects and avenues of research using tools such as social media networks and their suite of mobile applications. Unfortunately, those applications have almost exclusively been iPhone exclusive. Of the over 20 mobile applications NASA has released, only a scant have made it over to everyone’s favorite open source mobile operating system.

    • Sony Caters to Open Source Community with Android Code

      Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Android is open source and built on Linux. Fortunately for Android enthusiasts and independent developers, however, Sony has made life a little easier by releasing the open source archive for the Xperia S device. Of course, there are some catches. Read on for what this announcement means for the juncture of Android and free software.

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Acer Iconia Tab A510 with Tegra 3, Android 4.0 arriving in the US and Canada for $450

Organizational Adoption of Open Source Software

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• LibreOffice on track for cloud service next month

  The Document Foundation (TDF), which produces the leading open source office software suite LibreOffice, is on schedule for the release of a cloud version of its software next month.

  The team released the last update to its 3.4 build on Thursday and is now focused on developing version 3.5 further, but the group is now also ready to go live for cloud services in April. That said, the team reserves the right to hold off on launch until the last few software fixes come in, TDF spokesman Italo Vignoli told The Register.

Project Releases

• GNU Parallel 20120322 (‘#518696′) released

Public Services/Government

• Iceland’s public sector IT moves towards open source

  OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE is finding favour on the Icelandic government scene with the announcement that all of its public administration organisations will adopt it.

• Iceland swaps Windows for Linux in open-source push

  Iceland’s push to move its public sector to open-source software has made some headway, with most of the shift seeing Windows swapped for Linux.

Security

• The big leak: Microsoft’s epic security fail

  Some words just seem to go together: “bread” and “butter”; “trial” and “error”; “Microsoft” and “security breach.” The MS12-020 Remote Desktop Protocol vulnerability revealed last week shows once again that when it comes to data security, Microsoft is its own worst enemy and any “secure” system can be compromised.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Universal USB Installer supports four more Linux distros

The busy folks at Pen Drive Linux have updated their handy Universal USB Installer tool to support four more distros. Which means it can now convert live CDs of Deepin Linux, LinHES Linux, Trisquel Linux and Satux Linux to run on USB keys.

Dell Surveys Customers on GNU/Linux

Carla Schroder: Whoever controls technology controls society

CS: My first PC was an Apple LC II back around 1993. Then I got hold of a Windows 3.1/ DOS 5 PC. I spent most of my time in DOS because Windows was barely functional. I learned about Linux from a local computer magazine, Computerbits, and installed my first Red Hat around 1995. From 3.5” diskettes!

Apple was very different then, they actually encouraged users to get under the hood and learn about the system, and you could get detailed manuals. They didn’t evolve into shiny, unfriendly closed boxes until later.

Desktop

• 2012 Will be The Year of The GNU/Linux Desktop

  The GNU/Linux desktop has been around and growing for a while now but 2012 will be special:

  * Android/Linux and GNU/Linux are getting together on ARM,
  * Many OEMs are now producing desktop/notebook machines with GNU/Linux, including some old and new styles,
  * thin clients, which love GNU/Linux, are now respectable (growth 20% p.a.)…, and
  * Android/Linux is invading the desktop space on ARM and x86.

• How Linux Can Bring Life To Your Old PC

Audiocasts/Shows

• Linux Outlaws 256 – The Beards are Coming!!!

Kernel Space

• What’s New in Linux 3.3?

• Greg KH Readies for Collaboration Summit, Talks Raspberry Pi

  Linux kernel maintainer and Linux Foundation Fellow Greg Kroah-Hartman will be moderating the highly-anticipated Linux kernel panel at the Collaboration Summit in a couple short weeks. He was generous enough to take a few moments recently to answer some questions about what we might hear from the Linux kernel panel, as well as some details on his recent work and projects. Oh, and we couldn’t resist asking him about the new Raspberry Pi.

• Linux Kernel May Gain VMUFAT File-System Support

• Graphics Stack

  • AMD Publishes Open-Source HD 7000, Trinity Code

  • An Updated Look At Radeon Gallium3D 2D Color Tiling

  • Intel Publishes More Haswell Graphics Driver Code

  • An Extremely Large Patch Hits The X.Org Server

  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 “Kepler” On Linux?

    NVIDIA has finally introduced their first Kepler-based graphics card: the GeForce GTX 680. The new Kepler graphics architecture is an exciting successor to Fermi, but how well does this new graphics processor work under Linux? Here’s a glimpse in what to expect for the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 600 series on Linux.

    First of all, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 is designed to compete with AMD’s Radeon HD 7970 Southern Islands graphics card. The GTX 680 has a 28nm GK104 Kepler GPU with 1536 CUDA cores, 128 texture units, 1006MHz core clock, PCI Express 3.0 support and initially there’s just 2GB of GDDR5 video memory on a 256-bit bus. The GeForce GTX 680 has a 195 Watt TDP and carries a $500 USD price-tag.

  • Nouveau Project Has Huge Surprises Today

    This morning I wrote about the launch of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 as the first-to-ship NVIDIA GPU based upon their brand new Kepler architecture. At the start of the morning it looked to be the usual NVIDIA launch: binary driver support should be in place with an official driver update due out at any time and it would mark the start of the usual Nouveau driver game of reverse-engineering the support in the coming months. With Fermi and past NVIDIA generations there’s never been same-day open-source Nouveau support in any form, but it’s generally taken months to get the display to light-up with KMS.

Applications

• Why Vim?

  People ask me why on Earth would I subject myself to such dreadful text editor as vim. With it’s weird mode system, nonstandard keyboard shortcuts and all kinds of strange quirks it is not what you would call a user-friendly piece of software. Most users new to this particular editor hit a brick wall at step one: entering text. When you open vim and try to type into it will do strange things. It will mostly beep at you, or display some messages in the status bar but not type. Unless of course you happen to hit a vovel lie a or i or o, in which case it will suddenly come alive and let you type.

• GloboNote: A Sticky Notes Tool on Steroids

  At first sight, GloboNote looks like yet another sticky notes tool. But this unassuming application has a few clever tricks up its sleeve. For starters, GloboNotes offers a handful of text formatting options, including bold, italics, and underlined. The utility allows you to organize notes into groups, and you can display and hide all notes belonging to a specific group in one go. GloboNotes also sports the ability to perform simple calculations directly in notes: type a calculation (e.g., 3+2=) and press F2 to view the result.

• Pacman Package Manager

• Instructionals/Technical

  • How To Set Up Apache2 With mod_fcgid And PHP5 On Debian Squeeze

  • Using ATA Over Ethernet (AoE) On Debian Squeeze (Initiator And Target)

  • Work the Shell – What Day Is That Date in the Past?

  • How to disable Nepomuk, Strigi and Akonadi in KDE4

• Wine

  • PlayOnLinux 4.0.16 now can start exe from terminal, support for Desura and more

• Games

  • CraftStudio, New Real Time Collaborative Game Making Tool for Linux

    CraftStudio is an upcoming collaborative gaming making tool for Linux, featuring Minecraft style blocky graphics.

  • Free and Open Source Puzzle Game ‘Me and My Shadow’ is Quite Challenging

  • Report article Enemy In Sight!

    Our team is working on polishing the game for an alpha release now. I’ve been working on adding info to the HUD as well as giving players a few more options while out in space. Rusty has made an incredible “asteroid belt” themed mission for us.

  • A Linux Game That’s Still Not Selling Well

    While the new Humble Bundle is already pulling in hundreds of thousands of dollars, there’s a new Source Engine game coming to Linux, and Wasteland 2 is likely coming to Linux, as just some of the recent Linux gaming achievements, there’s still not a surplus of Linux-native games. Even without there being excessive amounts of Linux-native games, not all of the titles that do come are destined to sell well.

    Last month I wrote about the Tomes of Mephistopheles reaching an alpha state, which is a game being developed by Kot In Action — the same studio behind the popular Steel Storm series. Tomes of Mephistopheles is powered by the DarkPlaces engine, which is a great game engine for being free and open-source, and that alpha access to this Kot In Action title is available for a $10 USD pre-order.

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • KDevelop 4.3 Brings Support for Basic C++11

    After nine long months of hard work, the KDevelop team proudly announced last evening, March 20th, the immediate availability for download of the KDevelop 4.3 software, which comes with improved performance, lots of new features and assorted bug fixes.

  • KDevelop 4.3 arrives with KDE Projects integration

  • KDE vs Unity: Is KDE Better Than Unity?

    I have been using KDE under openSUSE for a while now, and for the first time in my life started to love KDE. Last night I went on a test driver and installed couple of KDE centric distributions including Mageia and Mandriva just for the sake of comparison.

    These two distributions showed what wonders can be done with KDE, if integrated well. The moment I booted into Kubuntu, I realised why Kubuntu is so low in Distrowatch (at 27). This is ironic because the 26 spots are dominated by KDE centric distros such as Mageia, PCLinuxOS, Chakra, Mandriva, etc.

• GNOME Desktop

  • GNOME Classic in Ubuntu 12.04: It’s Like Nothing Ever Changed

    Come April 26th and the release of Ubuntu 12.04 a vast number of Ubuntu users will be getting their first taste of the Unity desktop since its basic beginnings as the Ubuntu Netbook Remix in the last LTS.

Distributions

• CorePlus 4.4 Screen Shots

• New Releases

  • Vector Linux 7.0 Light released.

  • Zorin OS 6 Lite Released

    The Zorin OS team has announced the release of Zorin OS 6 Lite. This release is based on Lubuntu 11.10 and uses the LXDE desktop environment to provide one of the fastest and most feature-packed interfaces for low-spec machines.

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • Open Source: Using Mageia 1 for Six Months Now

    Back in the Fall of 2011, September 4th to be exact, I decided it was time to migrate from the sinking ship of Mandriva to the new Mageia distribution which is based on the best of Mandriva while leaving the chaff of Mandriva behind. It is now six months later and I am ready to report on my experience so far. To sum up this article in a sentence, “Mageia works and works well.” If you just want the summary, that is it, you can stop reading here. If you want more, read on. I will start with what I haven’t liked since that is my shorter list.

• Gentoo Family

  • Gentoo spotted on space station.

  • Gentoo Linux 12 review

    Gentoo isn’t the highest profile Linux distribution. But that doesn’t mean you should ignore it

• Red Hat Family

  • Fedora

    • What Follows a Fedora Linux Miracle ?

      Though we’re still a few month away from the May release date for Fedora 17 – aka ‘The Beefy Miracle’ – the Fedora community is now turning its attention to naming Fedora 18.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu User Survey: The Results Are In (Partially)

        We may never know every detail about Ubuntu’s user base. But some of its characteristics became a little clearer this week as Canonical’s Gerry Carr began releasing the results of the company’s recent survey of people running Ubuntu, the Linux distribution. Don’t get too excited just yet, as we’ll have to wait a few more days for the full survey findings. But if you’re interested in what’s been learned so far, keep reading…

      • The Smart Login Manager Of Ubuntu

      • Proposal to disable Wubi Installs from 12.04 (but maintain the separate .exe)

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Bodhi Linux, the Beautiful Configurable Lightweight Linux

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Android

    • Year 2012 Will See More Android 4.0 Phones

      The plight of developers will soon come to an end as the industry will see more Android 4.0 phones launched in 2012.

      According to Digitimes, “The supply of smartphones running on Android 4.0 will increase substantially starting the second quarter of 2012, with mid-range to high-end models coming from brand vendors including HTC, Samsung Electronics, and Sony Mobile Communications, while China-based handset makers may launch models based on Qualcomm’s 7227a solution and MediaTek’s MT6565 platform for the entry-level segment, according to industry sources.”

    • Sony Releases Source Code Of Xperia S

      Sony has released the source code for the Sony Xperia S phones. This is Sony’s flagship device (no more Erricson) which runs on 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Dual Core processor. This is the first time the company has released source code for a product built on the Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 platform. The code is targeted at inividual enthusiasts and projects like CyanogenMod to be able to take full advantage of the hardware by creating custom ROMs.

    • Sony Starts Shipping Xperia S, Globally

      Sony has announced that they have started shipping their flagship Android phone Xperia S. The phone will be available globally. The phone is powered by a 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Dual Core processor and runs Android 2.3.

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Zync Releases Rs 8,999 ICS Tablet For India

    India is the next big Android market. Another Indian-based company Zync has launched a Rs 8,999 (US$ 178) tablet ‘Zync Z-990′ for the Indian market.

Direct from the Source: Some Good Interviews with FOSS Leaders

It’s always good to hear from the movers and shakers in the open source community, and in addition to a number of recent interviews on timely open source topics here on OStatic, a number of compelling interviews with FOSS leaders have appeared on other sites. If you’re looking for some great input from the bleeding edge, check out this collection of interviews worth reading.

Announcing the Sixth Annual Future of Open Source Survey

Black Duck Software and North Bridge Venture Partners, in partnership with 451 Research, yesterday announced a collaboration to conduct the sixth annual Future of Open Source Survey.

The survey, an annual bellwether of the state of the open source industry, is supported by more than 20 open source software (OSS) industry leaders and is open to participation from the entire open source community.

Events

• Snake charmers unite at PyCon 2012

Web Browsers

• Chrome

  • Chrome: The people’s Web browser choice

    Yes. It’s true. For one day, March 18th, 2012, Chrome, and not Internet Explorer (IE), was the most popular Web browser in the world. It won’t be the last day. While the start of the work week put IE comfortably back on top. When users aren’t chained to their desks, they’re choosing to use Google’s speedy Chrome.

    StatCounter, the Web-site analytics company research arm StatCounter Global Stats found that Chrome was the number one browser in the world that day. StatCounter data comes fron over 15 billion page views per month (4 billion from the US) to the StatCounter network of more than three million websites

• Mozilla

  • For a Speedy Boot, Try Firefox-Based xPUD Linux

    Enter Linux in general–which is typically much faster, particularly on older hardware–and xPUD in particular, an Ubuntu-based distro built around Firefox that’s lightweight and made for speed.

  • Thunderbird 11 Officially Lands in Ubuntu 11.10

    One week after Firefox 11 officially landed in Ubuntu 11.10 last week, a few hours ago (March 21st) Canonical announced that the Mozilla Thunderbird 11.0 email client is now available on the official software repositories of the Oneiric Ocelot operating system.

SaaS

• VMware Worried About Rackspace, OpenStack Cloud Gains?

  VMware vs. OpenStack: Plenty of pundits are debating the merits of each platform for cloud computing. Now for a twist: Within the cloud storage market, the recent hot rumor involves VMware (VMW) potentially buying Rackspace (RAX) in order to disrupt potential competition from OpenStack, the open source cloud platform. Here’s a reality check from The VAR Guy.

• Dell teams up with Canonical to put OpenStack in the cloud

  OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solutions with Ubuntu are to be offered by Dell to UK, German, and Chinese companies

• Dell delivers one-stop cloud computing service based on OpenStack

• Dell gets more open saucy

• Eucalyptus Doubles Down on its Amazon Bet

  Born as a research project in the computer science department at UCSB, Eucalyptus the company was founded in January of 2009. Originally intended to replicate a subset of the Amazon cloud’s featureset in software that could be run locally, one of the project’s primary differentiators was its compatibility with the Amazon API. Importantly, however, this support was unofficial: Amazon neither supported nor legally blessed this feature. Which meant that its appeal was throttled by the uncertainty of Eucalyptus’ legal footing. More than one large vendor has privately characterized the Amazon API as a “non-starter” because their legal departments could not be assured of Amazon’s intent with respect to the intellectual property issues involved.

CMS

• Drupal Usability Test Conclusions: A Missing Conceptual Foundation

  Earlier this year we announced that we would be conducting a Drupal usability study that we would live stream so viewers could watch as participants worked with Drupal 7. Becky Gessler and I are excited to announce our analysis of the results that we will also present at DrupalCon Denver to the Drupal community in a “core conversation” session with Jen Lampton called “User eXperience for Open Source: How to Galvanize a Community.”

• Drupal’s Plan for Open Source CMS Success

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• GNU Hurd/ news/ 2011-q4

  This quarter, Ludovic Courtès contributed a continuously-built Nix-based QEMU image, raising the count of GNU/Hurd distributions to three: Debian GNU/Hurd, Arch Hurd, and now Nix. His build is still pretty basic, but a step into the right direction: continuous integration is a great facility for automated testing.

• GNU Hurd/ news/ 2012-03-21

  The Google Summer of Code 2012 is on! If you’re a student, consider applying for a GNU Hurd project — details to be found on our GSoC page.

• The GNU C library 2.15 release!

• GCC 4.7.0 released to mark the 25 years of GNU Compiler Collection

  The GCC development team is celebrating the 25th year of the GNU Compiler Collection, a collection initiated by the first public release of GCC (GNU C Compiler) in 1987 by Richard Stallman. Over the years the GNU Compiler Collection, renamed as other languages joined the toolchain, shaped how developers acquired the tools of their trade and provided a platform for new compiler developments. As part of the celebration, the developers have released GCC 4.7.0, a major release of the compiler collection that brings with it new functionality.

• Happy Birthday GCC!

• GCC Turns 25 Years Old, GCC 4.7 Released

Licensing

• Enforcing the GPL with Judo moves

  “In judo, the goal is to use the momentum of the person attacking you to defend yourself, and that is exactly what copyleft does”

Standards/Consortia

• Open APIs: The Fifth Pillar of Modern IT Openness

  Last year, I wrote about the key pillars of openness in today’s enterprise IT industry, highlighting open source software, real open standards, open clouds, and open data as the ‘Four Pillars of Modern IT Openness.’

  More recently, I wrote about what I now consider to be the fifth pillar, which is open application programming interfaces (APIs). Of course, when we talk about ‘open’ anything — open source, open standards, open clouds, open APIs — there tends to be debate about what is really open, how we should define open and who should or should not be able to carry the phrase. My focus on open APIs and on APIs in general generated some good discussion, as well as some pushback (Jim comment on LI, regarding the value of APIs compared to open source software, which APIs are open, and how open is open enough?

Finance

• Goldman loses bid to end lawsuit over risky CDO

  Goldman Sachs Group Inc lost its bid to dismiss a lawsuit accusing it of defrauding investors by selling risky debt linked to subprime mortgages that it planned to bet against.

  The decision by U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in New York keeps alive a hedge fund’s claims over a $2 billion offering of collateralized debt obligations, amid intense scrutiny over Goldman’s activities before and after the 2008 financial crisis.

ACTA

• ACTA in the Civil Liberties Committee 26.3.12