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04.26.09

Links 26/04/2009: Ubuntu 9.04 Reviews, Android Success

Posted in News Roundup at 6:51 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Bandit Defense site statistics

    48.5% Windows XP
    23.7% Windows Vista
    9.0% Mac OS X
    7.3% Ubuntu Linux
    3.0% Linux (other)
    2.6% Windows NT 6.0
    2.4% Windows Server 2003
    1.2% Windows 2000
    1.0% Debian Linux
    1.0% (other)
    0.3% iPhone

  • Some IT skills see pay hikes during downturn

    Foote Partners tracks pay for 371 certified and noncertified IT skills, and its first quarter research shows that pay for noncertified skills in Linux rose by more than 28%, while Apache and Sybase noncertified skills saw 25% increases in pay.

  • Re-skilling Europe for the new global knowledge economy

    Europe today is suffering from a skills shortage, made even worse by the economic crisis. Over the past decade, many business leaders have stressed that Europe is simply not producing, attracting, or retaining sufficient numbers of scientists, engineers and IT specialists to meet the requirements of its industries, and the ambition of its ‘Lisbon Agenda’ – that is, to lead the global knowledge economy.

  • Editor’s Note: We Put the “No” In Innovation!

    A general rule of marketing is “The more noise they make, the less they have to crow about.” Who makes the most noise about “innovation”? I bet you can guess….

    Every day I get virtually snowed under by blizzards of press releases. (I’m not sure that email is better than paper, because I could burn paper for heat, or compost it. Happy red worms like paper and break it down fast.) A few of them actually have something to do with Linux and FOSS. The rest are horrid collections of buzzwords, broken HTML, political foamings, spam, and irrelevant whatevers.

    For a long time the favorite buzzword was “paradigm.” Remember all those paradigm shifts? There was a bit of humor value because none of them used the word correctly. (Wikipedia has an excellent article and definition.) But it got boring after the thousandth dopey repetition. Finally it died out, as these things do, and its replacement was “innovation”. Now there is a perfectly good word that does not deserve to be abused in this fashion, but marketers are ruthless and without conscience when it comes to word abuse.

  • Universities Get $5 Million To Tap IBM-Google Cloud

    The IBM-Google cloud runs on Linux-based machines using Xen virtualization and Apache Hadoop, an open source implementation of the Google File System.

  • My Linux Personal Lexicon

    In the spirit of Douglas Adams’ The Meaning of Liff, this is the little list of words I’ve come up with to describe aspects of Linux life. They don’t have to make sense – I’m just being silly.

  • Build a DIY Cloud with Euclayptus, Nimbus and Amazon EC2

    Eucalyptus runs on Linux systems, and RPMs are available for the RPM-based systems. The source is also available for building on unsupported Linux systems, but even more exciting is that you can deploy Eucalyptus on a Rocks cluster. With Rocks, Eucalyptus is deployed with basically one command.

  • Five good reasons to switch to Linux

    4. Freedom. From the beginning Linux has been about freedom. This freedom is all about the user and the freedom from software that offers no opportunity for the user to change the way the software behaves. Recently the Linux Foundation held a contest for a “We’re Linux” video. The winning entry elegantly explains what software freedom is all about. See the video here. Freedom is one of the main reasons why I use Linux. When a piece of software doesn’t behave in exactly the manner I want it to behave I change it. Open source allows me to do that. Try altering the behavior of a piece of Windows software (outside of the preferences window). The old Microsoft question “Where do you want to go today?” With Linux that question would be “Where do you want to go, how do you want to get there, do you want the scenic route, do you want a specific map for your trip (or do you want to wing it), and do you prefer first class or coach?”

  • A question about Linux

    The second part of his question was whether the role he sees Linux playing in the deaths of HP-UX, AIX, and Solaris makes choosing Linux counter-productive in the longer term. The answer to that, I think, is No – because Linux isn’t killing any other Unix; it’s giving people who want to move to x86 a better, and often cheaper, alternative to Windows.

  • Humor: Famous Geeks Make Babies With Hollywood Celebrities

    What if Free Software icon Richard M. Stallman got married with Hollywood superstar Angelina Jolie and had a child? What will their baby look like? I know most of you out there are curious so let’s find out with the help of this interesting website called makemebabies.com. –-They have the technology to generate images of future babies by combining photos.

  • My First Boyfriend Was Windows — I Married Linux

    September of 2001 is seared into more than a few peoples’ memories, but not exactly for the same reasons it’s stayed with me through the subsequent years. On September 12, 2001, I ventured into Boston, greeted by the clacking of the subway and the revving engines of taxis stopped at the mercy of jaywalking pedestrians, while overhead the skies were silent, save the occasional unsettling roar of fighter jets. I had an interview as part of the graduate school admission process.

    The interview went well, and by October I knew I’d need (of course!) a new computer when classes started in January. I decided I’d try a home build, and because my husband jokingly said it would be total overkill and uber-geek, I ordered two hard drives for the new machine. Somehow, between my husband, my brother-in-law (a Slack man from way back) and I, it only seemed logical that two hard drives called for two operating systems.

  • Events

    • How about Portland in September?

      LinuxCon brings together members from all aspects of the Linux community, including core developers, administrators, end users, community managers and industry experts.

    • This weekend: LinuxFest NW

      In tech circles, Washington state may be best known as Microsoft’s stomping grounds — but it’s also home to a thriving community of people devoted to Linux and other open-source programs. That community is gathering Saturday and Sunday in Bellingham for one of its big annual events: LinuxFest Northwest, now in its 10th year.

    • ‘Maddog’ Hall: How open-source software can dominate the world

      Open-source guru Jon “Maddog” Hall, executive director of Linux International, spoke to an overflow crowd this morning at LinuxFest Northwest in Bellingham, making the case that open-source software is as relevant and critical now as ever.

  • Kernel Space

    • GCC 4.4 improves open source compiler with Graphite

      What does that all mean?

      Well it means that (some) programs that are compiled with GCC (and that’s a lot) will now benefit from the improved optimizations and could possibly as a result become faster themselves. It never ceases to amaze me how with every new GCC release, software vendors a few months later will come out and say how their software is now faster as a result.

  • Applications

    • ioquake3 Goes Gold WIth Ogg Decoding, x86_64

      Back in February we talked about a new ioquake3 engine was forthcoming that would deliver a number of enhancements, but this week that new version (1.36) has finally gone gold.

    • New Unigine Project Will Work On Linux

      Unigine Corp has done a phenomenal job with its multi-platform game engine in delivering a new level of OpenGL realism to Linux users — albeit it can tax your hardware quite a bit. Last year’s engine was amazing, but as we shared last week, they are working on a host of new features, including but not limited to multiplayer and physics support. They also have a few internal projects they have been working on.

    • Several powerful console music players for Linux

      These players are among the top audio players for console available on Linux. You can run them in a shell instance without the need of an X Server, and although several use only a command-line interface (like ogg123 of mpg123), several come with a nice, ncurses-based interface which makes music management easier and pleasant.

    • Cover Art & Lyrics Widget for your desktop

      Display album art (and lyrics!) for your playing tracks right on your desktop!

    • new boxee version for Ubuntu, update for Mac and Apple TV

      with every new version Ubuntu is inching closer to mainstream appeal, which is why we chose it as boxee’s Linux distro. we are very happy to release a new version of boxee for Ubuntu, including support for Jaunty Jackalope (9.04).

  • Desktop Environments

    • KDE Brainstorm Monthly Digest – issue 1

      First of all, a few words of introduction. There are quite a number of ideas being posted on the KDE Brainstorm, and it would be nice to know how the initiative is faring, and important highlights, like what ideas are more popular, which are more controversial, etc. That is why the idea of a monthly digest was born (in a similar fashion as the fabolous Commit Digest). Our idea is to publish these digests monthly, providing the community (and perhaps even developers) with useful information about the state of the initiative.

    • E17 now available in Entropy

      Now e17 is installed and you can enjoy it by selecting “enlightenment” from the sessions menu in the login screen.

  • Distributions

    • Kubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope overview and screenshots

      I liked to see KDE 4.2 is much faster than how it was in Kubuntu 8.10. Great transparency effects, wobbly windows, animated minimise/maximise of windows are just a few of the wonderful desktop effects KDE has to offer.

    • GParted partitioning software – Full tutorial

      We’ve covered quite a bit, from creating of new partitions, to resizing, moving, deletion, labeling of partitions, we worked with different filesystems, including Ext3 and NTFS, we even dabbled some in advanced command-line stuff like changing of Inode size.

      I do realize I have not covered every possible aspect of partitioning available, therefore, if you have suggestions or questions, feel free to email me; I will study your scenarios and possibly even update the tutorial to cover even more topics.

    • Vyatta – a fortnight in review

      Well this is really simple, its managment interface (not the WebGUI) its awesome, some of our guys are cisco nuts, vyatta manages to deal with those guys – I have yet to dig into it too much but vyatta seem to have replaced bash with their own shell. The upshot of this ? you can type “configure” and it takes you into config mode like a cisco, it then will autocomplete router style commands like “run show bpg summary” its very clever – to really understand what i mean here try it.

    • Distributions: From Ubuntu to Mandriva and Fedora

      This spring sees a burst of activity for Linux distributions. In addition to Ubuntu and Mandriva, FreeBSD and OpenBSD also put final touches on their new releases

    • Netbook boot times compared: Android vs. Fedora vs. Ubuntu

      GeunSik Lim, a Samsung software developer specialising in embedded Linux system design, has compared the netbook boot times for several Linux-based operating systems to see which was fastest. He compared Google’s Android platform against Linux Fedora 10 and the latest version of Ubuntu (Netbook Remix 9.04).

    • Why Gentoo?

      Not many people know that I run Gentoo (a source-based linux distribution) at home. Largely this is because most people don’t care. But for those who may care, I’ve decided to explain how Gentoo is better, at least for me.

    • Red Hat

      • Red Hat Gets Boost From Tighter IT Budgets

        Linux distributor Red Hat is seeing increased demand for its products even as the recession forces many companies to slash their IT budgets, said Red Hat CEO James Whitehurst.

    • Ubuntu

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Review: Glacier Computer’s Ridgeline W200 Wearable Computer

      Available with either Linux or Windows CE 6.0, the device has built-in Bluetooth and 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi to access remote networks. An integrated GPS receiver also is available. The processor is a Marvell (formerly Intel XScale) PXA270 that runs at 400MHz, and it is built with 128 MB of RAM.

    • Phones

      • Android 1.5 Released

        The first major update for Google’s Android platform, based on the Cupcake development tree, was released today in source form at the project’s git repository. Now it’s up to the OEMs and carriers to deploy it, and the community to port it to other platforms. Dig in for a list of new features.

      • Google Brings Product Search To iPhone, Android

        The simultaneous launch on Android and iPhone could signal a shift in Google’s mobile strategy, as it previously released new mobile features on Apple’s handset first. The Linux-based operating system is expected to be on a slate of new handsets this year, and Google expects 2009 to be a good year for the mobile operating system.

      • Google Android Netbooks Hit China

        Looking to get your hands on a netbook with some official Android goodness? While the US manufacturers haven’t caught on yet, China’s Skytone certainly has and would love to offer you the Alpha-680 netbook for about $100. It comes in white, black, yellow, pink and red. 3G, Ethernet, Wifi and USB ports are all included to get you connected and an SD card reader will provide you with more storage. You’re going to need it too since it only sports 1GB of solid state memory.

      • How vulnerable are the iPhone and BlackBerry juggernauts? Very.

        Android is on the move. Notice T-Mobile’s share and how it surged in the fourth quarter. That was mostly due to the G1 phone. Android is just as hip as the iPhone in geek circles and more phones are on the way.

      • Report: Android Now Has 6 Percent of the U.S. Smartphone Market

        The growth in requests from devices is largely being driven by very healthy growth in usage of the app stores for both Android and the iPhone. Here are some of the other key points from AdMob’s report.

    • Sub-notebooks

      • ARM/Linux netbooks attract carrier support

        AT&T is putting its weight behind netbooks using ARM processors, calling them the “next big step,” according to an article today in EE Times. The carrier has also begun selling four different subsidized netbooks (left) in Atlanta and Philadelphia, with plans to roll them out nationwide.

      • Netbooks: Best of the Best

        The dominant Windows XP (which now runs about 80 percent of netbooks) will be challenged by Linux and Google’s Andriod OS.

      • ARM wants the sub $200 netbook market

        The combination of ARM with Linux – see Ubuntu’s latest release – is almost an impossible one for Intel to beat, price wise, with the British Chippie flogging its SOCs for between $10-$20 whilst Chipzilla’s Atom starts at $35 apiece.

      • What Does Linux Benchmarking Look Like?

        With Phoromatic, there are no geographical boundaries for where you can manage your testing. When tests are done, you can be notified by via e-mail or to your mobile device. I happen to be in Italy, but using the latest Phoronix Test Suite code and the Phoromatic management system that soon will be shared with the public, I am able to effectively manage tests of systems back in the office in the United States.

      • Microsoft is The Big Loser Among the Big 3

        Ultimately, all three companies are going to be fine for a long, long time, but for one quarter at least, it looks like Apple and Google get a chair and Microsoft is left standing alone and blue as the battle for dominance continues.

      • How to install Easy Peasy in Acer Aspire One

        I’ve been using Acer Aspire One for the last month and while I really like its GUI, which made it easy to use like a cell-phone, the pre-installed Linpus Lite is well…Lite…

Free Software/Open Source

  • Sun’s Identity Management Solution supports Google Apps

    Sun Microsystems has released a new version of its OpenSSO Express identity management solution with support for Google Apps Premier. OpenSSO Express is targeted at companies and organisations that rely on Google’s software-as-a-service solution (SaaS) as their central communications platform. With it individuals can use a cross-company single sign-on (SSO) to access the web, mail and other applications.

  • Senator Rockefeller Introduces Open Source EHR Act

    The Health Information Technology Public Utility Act of 2009 will build upon the successful use of “open source” electronic health records by the Department of Veterans Affairs as well as the “open source exchange model,” which was recently expanded among federal agencies through the Nationwide Health Information Network-Connect initiative…

  • Don’t fall for the monoculture myth

    You’ll often read similar recommendations to dump Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (I work full-time for Microsoft) and use any other browser instead. To completely protect yourself, they’ll advise moving off of Microsoft Windows all together.

  • Business

    • Interview: Karen Tegan Padir, MySQL VP, On This Week’s MySQL Conference

      OStatic: What do you think are the biggest barriers to adoption of open source in business? Lack of support? Lack of evangelism and marketing? Lack of training?

      I don’t think it’s any of those things, I just think it’s just a matter of time. I worked at Red Hat for several years. When I worked there, conventional wisdom said that Linux was a toy, that it wasn’t reliable or ready for mission-critical deployment. People sure aren’t saying that anymore!

    • Interview: 9 Questions For Alfresco Software’s Chairman, John Newton

      As enterprises get squeezed by the recession, they’re starting to squeeze their vendors for cost savings. At some point, those vendors’ cost structures and business models won’t support the pressure. In a way, this movement, as we see it, is inevitable. Better evangelists, marketing and perhaps most importantly the ability to successfully leverage the power of the open source community can only make the change come more quickly.

  • Open (But No Source Code)

    • The Economics of Open Access Publishing

      Open Access Publishing is the free distribution of research, whether it is as a pre-print (working paper) or a peer-reviewed article.

    • Free Desks and Chairs, Anyone?

      A salesperson walks into your office today and tells you that you have to buy a new, pre-built, expensive desk for every one of your employees. You have to buy a new desk today and replace it every three to five years. Additionally, there are no options for the desk and you may not alter it in any way — one desk is all we make and you have to buy it from us. You see, you don’t really own the desk; you’re simply purchasing a license to use the desk. Chairs are sold separately and we have the corner on the market for chairs that are 100 percent compatible with the desk. The chairs are also very expensive.

Leftovers

  • Censorship/Web Abuse

    • Three days to save the European Internet

      Two days ago I had no idea the European Internet was under severe threat, and I’m a European. Part of the problem is that Europe is incredibly complicated and the governance is baroque and bizarre. It uses terms like (Acquis communautaire) – admittedly I suffer from Anglophone blindness, but in any language the complexity of terminology and governance is horrendous.

      [...]

      I’ve found Twitter very useful here. 2-3 followers have – in the rather cryptic style of Twitter – pointed out that there are two issues.

      * Net neutrality
      * 3-strikes

    • Why promoting democracy via the internet is often not a good idea

      All in all, the world of international digital activism is much more complex that it appears on first sight. As much as I’d like hope that we are already long past the point where most Western governments, agencies, and NGOs operate on the assumption that “Internet=democracy”, I think that the field is still dominated by cyberutopians who do not see the inherent dangers of many cyberactivist campaigns; nor do they see how these campaigns may actually strengthen the governments they were supposed to challenge.

    • Net service providers now can ‘strike out’ pirating surfers

      The Legislative Yuan ratified yesterday the latest revision of the Copyright Law to empower Internet service providers (ISPs) to “strike out” Internet surfers who have violated others’ copyrights and posted unauthorized content on any Web sites.

  • Copyrights

    • The BBC Rehashes MPAA Propaganda

      As a government owned corporation the BBC has a duty to educate, and be evenhanded in its dealings with subjects. Yet in a recent segment on their long-running ‘Film’ program, currently hosted by Jonathon Ross, the BBC ran a biased segment straight from the MPAA. The BBC on the other hand, believes it was fair and balanced.

    • The Pirate Google
    • Danish Pirate Bay Block Sets Sail for Supreme Court

      In 2008 a Danish court ruled in favor of the IFPI, and ordered the ISP Tele2/Telenor to block all access to The Pirate Bay. Now a petition from the ISP against the decision has been accepted, which will see the appeal go Supreme Court.

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

Natasha Humphries on globalization and job security with Free Open Source Software 09 (2004)

Ogg Theora

Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

Microsoft Attacks GNU/Linux (Pardus) in Turkey, Dumps on Students

Posted in Asia, Europe, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Mandriva, Microsoft at 11:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Blue mosque in Istanbul

Summary: Turkey gradually moves to GNU/Linux starting with the administration, so Steve Ballmer pays a visit and pays the government

A LEOPARD (OR KARAKAL) CAN’T change its spots, even if any exist at all. And likewise, Microsoft is doing to Turkey what it did to Russia last week. One country after another, Microsoft is spending as much as necessary to derail GNU/Linux migrations that are massive.

Turkey was recently a victim of Windows and ODF Turkey was established some weeks ago. In addition, at the bottom we append a lot of evidence from the past 2 years about GNU/Linux adoption in the country, including the government. Pardus addresses the needs of the nation [1-4] and some people consider it to be one of the best distributions of GNU/Linux [5-40]. Even the Turkish army is moving to Pardus in very large numbers [17].

Now watch what Microsoft is doing in Turkey. [via FSDaily]

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was in Ankara to announce the opening of Microsoft Innovation Center which is founded in Bilkent University. The most important task of Microsoft Innovation Center in this process will be “Microsoft Government Project”.

[...]

Ballmer said that the software projects have been developed in the scope of academics, students, financiers, health and education in the Microsoft Innovation Center. Microsoft, also, will try to attract the students with “DreamSpark Programme”.

As before, information about what DreamSpark really is can be found in:

The dumping technique is known (internally at least) as “EDGI” and we showed documents about it in:

Turkey should realise what Microsoft is up to and therefore reject those Trojan horses. The company from Redmond is being anti-competitive and it is trying to get this nation locked in even further so that it pays for such neglect in the future. Freedom and national Independence are priceless. █
__________

Policy

[1] Open source tour of Europe: Turkey

There are sporadic examples of Turkish open source projects. In August 2007 Turkey’s Military Recruitment Division, which is part of the Ministry of Defense, announced that it was switching to Pardus Linux on all of its 4,500 desktops and more than five hundred servers.

Pardus is also being used by Turkish Radio and Television Supreme Council as part of its digital television archive and analysis project.

Meanwhile CentOS is used along with Apache and MySQL to power Yerelnet, a web site designed to encourage collaboration between local governments. Other early adepter success stories include Manisa Health Directorate, Petrol-Is, and Neziroglu Motors, all of which are using Pardus Linux.

While there are few examples of Turkish open source deployments to date there is reason to believe that may will be more in the future thanks to the fact that the Ministry of Education is teaching students to use and understand open source software as well as Windows as part of the IT curriculum.

[2] Kurdish operating system under investigation by Turkish attorney general

Previously, we reported that Kurdish Linux was launched in Turkey: Kurdish Ubuntu, a Linux distribution, was launched this week with a reception in Diyarbakir. Ubuntu was the first Linux distribution to implement Kurdish localization[1]. Kurdish localization in Linux was an important milestone for Turkey due to ethnic conflicts

[3] Kurdish Linux launched in Turkey

November 24, 2006

Kurdish Ubuntu, a Linux distribution, was launched this week with a reception in Diyarbakir. Ubuntu was the first Linux distribution to implement Kurdish localization

[4] Free Software Period To Begin In Public Organizations

A new and free software period, which brings the utilization of Linux-based operating systems with open source codes instead of Microsoft’s operating systems in computers, will begin in Turkish public organizations.

The first application will be performed in the Draft Department of the Ministry of National Defence where Turkey’s national software ‘Pardus’, developed by Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK), will be used as the basic operating system.

2008-2009

[5] News from Pardus

The Team works great in these days :) We have Qt-Creator, Qt 4.5.0 and KDE 4.2.1 in our development repository just after release announcements :) For KDE 4 based technologies I finished my work on Sysinfo just follow;

[6] Review: Pardus 2008.2

I HAVE written several articles about Pardus GNU/Linux since it first appeared on the Linux/Open Source scene in 2005, but in one report to coincide with the release of version 2007.3, I wrote the following introduction.  “Do you know what I love so much about Linux?  It’s the feeling you get when you stumble upon a distribution that’s pure computing gold.”

[7] The Turkish Pardus Linux Distribution

Pardus provides a very important public good to be used by the whole FLOSS community, in Turkey and abroad. The Pardus GNU/Linux operating system is being deployed and used in many government and other public services including the Turkish military and defense sector, in radio and telecommunication, health and education, as well as private vendors. The use of Pardus in all these sectors and institutions will save several millions of Euro in taxpayers’ money.

[8] Review: Pardus Linux

I wonder why Pardus is such an unknown distribution. It is easy to install, has a great configuration center, and a good package management system with plenty of packages to fulfill most peoples needs. The people behind Pardus have spent a lot of time to create a distro that looks good and is stable. I believe my granny can work with Pardus without problems. No messing with config-files in any way, just install it and start working with it. I will continue to use Pardus and have advised others to give it a try.

Good job, Pardus team!

[9] Pardus Linux

Overall, though, working with Pardus has been a very pleasant surprise so far. A very auspicious start indeed.

[10] Pardus 2008 – Where were you?

Pardus is a very good distro, and should really be much higher on the Distrowatch rankings. They really do know what beautiful is Smile and includes a plethora of applications. I highly recommend this distro if you are just starting out using Linux or want to introduce Linux to someone else.

[11] Pardus 2008: A touch of refinement

My experience with Pardus was quite positive. The attention to detail, right down to skinning Amarok with the Pardus colors, is matched by the elegance of the installer and the efficacy of Kaptan and PiSi. Booting and running Pardus is quite speedy on my old AMD Sempron 2800+ with 512MB RAM; other distributions with similar features (such as Ubuntu) run slower on the same hardware. In short, I think Pardus is a distribution worth looking at for any Linux users who aren’t happy with their current choice.

[12] Pardus 2008 Review

Pardus 2008, to a green user, is your average desktop environment. Many of the gems of the system lie under the hood in utilities like TASMA and PiSi. It’s an easy system to get started with, but has some odd quirks such as PolicyKit problems and the somewhat hidden root account. In the end, it’s clear that a lot of effort went into making Pardus a usable desktop for anyone.

[13] Pardus 2008 review

Pardus 2008 is everything I could of asked for it looks good, plays all my multimedia, it’s super-fast/stable and it’s so easy even a Mac OS X user could easily adapt to it. Pardus has taken over my linux partition at the moment I consider it the best distribution available at this time; I won’t switch distribution anytime soon perhaps I may use Pclinuxos 2008 for reviewing purposes but it’ll be hard to top pardus 2008.

[14] Pardus 2008

After my review of do-it-yourself-Arch, I wanted to test a distro with a totally different philosophy, one that aims to give you a complete desktop system from the start. The problem was, I didn’t want to test Ubuntu, OpenSuse, Mandriva, Mint…those are too well known.

[...]

There’s no doubt that Pardus 2008 is one of the better Linux distributions out there. In the week I tested it I found not much wrong with the way it works, apart from an annoying tendency to forget some settings. It’s been reliable, stable, and relatively speedy. However, there is some work to be done before it can compete with the likes of Ubuntu, like providing an even more polished look, especially when it comes to the integration of GTK applications. It also needs better and more up-to-date documentation. Pardus is a very ambitious project, and so far, it doesn’t quite attain its goals just yet. I have no doubt however that it’s just a matter of time. In the meantime, it’s a viable alternative for anyone who isn’t satisfied with the offerings of the big-name distributions.

[15] Pardus 2008 : A testdrive

Pardus surprised me. Today it is listed as nr 49 on Distrowatch, but it deserves a place near or in the top-ten. It is a distro that has everything to become a major newcomer-friendly distro. It is a distro that I will use/propose (along with PCLinuxOS :-) ) when converting Windows Users to Linux, and the Dutch version is also very good (kudos to the Dutch translation team).

[16] Pardus 2008 RC2

I love finding fault when reviewing products, services and software, so
consider this my standing ovation to Pardus for being nigh on faultless.
They’ve got a top notch operating system on their hands and I’m willing to
say this might be one of the best releases of 2008.

[17] Real answers to the question “Can you run your business on Linux and open source?”

He continued, “For the client OS migration, we are experiencing a large scale project for the Turkish Military now. 5.500 clients will migrate to Pardus (a Turkish government-backed Linux distribution.)”

[18] Battle of the Beasts: Wolvix vs. Pardus

Final Score:
Pardus = 7
Wolvix = 3
*Winner, Pardus!

Conclusion:
Pardus won by quite a large margin mainly because in my own opinion it is more polished and complete than Wolvix. However, I can’t fully assume that Wolvix is the ultimately loser in this battle since my judgment was solely based on the results of my tests and on my hardware alone. To be really fair, I need other people’s opinion. So, to those who have also tried these two distros, feel free to give us your thoughts.

[19] There’s Something About Pardus

I’ve tried so many distros already and only few have left a lasting impression on me. Pardus Linux is now one of the very few. I just love almost every vital part of it. The system installer, the package manager, and the control center among others are all wonderfully crafted. I can tell that the developers took their time to really buff up this distro. I’m sorry to say though that Pardus is still pretty much underrated, because many distros are far more popular but are not as good as Pardus. Anyway, I’m so glad that I’ve tried Pardus, and I would highly recommend it to just about anyone who is still searching for a fully featured, easy-to-use, and quality Linux distro.

Pardus 2007.X

[20] Review: Pardus Linux 2007.2

Really, overall, I like Pardus a lot. I honestly have to admit that I was impressed. While it’s certainly not to the level of PcLinuxOS, it most definitely can hold its own against the major players in the Linux market. If you’re new to Linux, or a more seasoned user, you will definitely want to check it out. Right now I can’t give Pardus my official recommendation due to a few flaws mentioned above, the biggest being the package manager. However, if those few flaws are rectified, I don’t see why Pardus wouldn’t find its way onto my recommended distributions list. It really was one of the more enjoyable experiences I’ve had lately in all my testing. And I’ve definitely tested several different distributions lately, some of which were so bad, the only right thing to do was to burn the cd. 0_0;;        

So reviewing Pardus was a breath of fresh air. I look forward to the next version of Pardus in hopes that it will have ironed out these last couple of problems so that I can, with a good conscience, add it to my recommended distributions list.  

[21] Turkey’s Pardus distro is easy to use

Overall, Pardus lives up to the goals and statements made by its developers. It is indeed easy to install and even easier to use. Pardus is an accommodating and customizable desktop system suitable for new and experienced users alike.  

[22] Pardus Linux 2007.3 Duyuruldu

Pardus Linux version 2007.3 is now released.

[23] Pardus 2007.2 — new cat in town

Pardus is one of those distributions that has something unique and intriguing. Caracal is nice, easy, and it works.

[24] Pardus Linux 2007.2 Review.

Pardus Linux  is funded by the Turkish government. With the support from the government, I hope that Linux and open source software  would  be given  more emphasis by the newly elected Turkey  government.

[25] Pardus Linux 2007.2 Review

The last time I tried Pardus (around 6 months ago) there were frequent freezes, and I mean a lot; to such an extent that it did not allow me to do anything usefull to it. But I can see the effect of consistent hard work from pardus developors. Pardus is far from being complete but it is on the right track, may be one year from now, it will be shine amongst rest of distros.    

[26] Pardus 2007.2 – A Review

I hope that with the recent release, Pardus will continue to climb the ranks and get closer to the top where it deserves to be. For those looking for a great out-of-the-box KDE-based distribution, I highly recommend giving Pardus a shot, you will not be disappointed. Unfortunately, as I have a few distributions lined up to review, I will be replacing Pardus with something new tomorrow! For those that can advocate further, regarding their use with Pardus, please post comments so other readers can see what you have experienced.      

[27] Pardus 2007.2 – Unrivalled Wlan Support.

I  managed  to get  these  5 wifi cards  connected  to my  Linksys router  via  the  WPA-PSK encryption protocol out-of-the-box  with the help of the network manager. The connectivity was  excellent.  Despite  still  using  the softmac stack  instead of  the  devicescape  stack, Pardus Kurulan  2007.2 (installation CD)  managed to conquer  all of these  notebook-based wlan cards.    

[28] Review: Pardus Linux 2007 Kurulan RC2
 

I’ve suddenly become an advocate for Pardus Linux. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed playing with this “Kurulan” RC2 release and actually find it as capable as some of the much bigger players that I tend to toy with. It may not have the biggest English community of all the distros but I hope that situation changes because this is actually an excellent release.  

[29] Review: Pardus Linux 2007.1
 

Pardus is a relatively unknown release funded and developed by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey.

[30] Pardus 2007.1 — Almost Perfect

Pardus is a unique distribution which has its own solutions which work very well. I think that the distribution deserves far greater renown than it has currently and if it keeps up such innovation and quality, it’ll be an important player in the category of extensive desktop distributions.

[31] Review: PCLinuxOS 2007 Test 3

I look forward to seeing how this distribution, like SimplyMEPIS, continues to improve and bring a friendly and comprehensive configuration system to Linux. New Linux users would do well to check out either of these distributions. However if you’re using a recent model Nvidia card, I have to recommend SimplyMEPIS over PCLinuxOS for its out of the box Nvidia driver support.

[32] Review: Pardus Linux 2007

I have not used this Pardus system for my production system. Only a few days I have used this system. I can see a lot of innovation are going on in this project. It is my dare saying that Pardus is worth to watch for further innovation in Desktop Linux.

[33] Pardus 2007.1: Warmly Recommended by Béranger pardus

Pardus 2007.1 deserves much more attention than PCLinuxOS 2007 or Kubuntu.

[34] A Second Look At Pardus 2007.1 RC: Surprises, Surprises

My first look at Pardus 2007.1 Release Candidate was somehow pessimistic, however I was confident in the future.

[35] A First Look at Pardus 2007.1 Release Candidate

As announced yesterday, an unexpected RC of the upcoming spring release 2007.1 of Pardus Linux was made available to the public.

[...]

Türkçesi, this is not a Release Candidate, this is more like an Alpha release. Or, judging by Mandriva’s quality standards, a Beta :-)

[36] Pardus Linux 2007.1 Felis chaus: Released!

KDE 3.5.6, a faster PiSi, better networking for wireless users… release announcement and Distrowatch brief.

[37] Pardus gives Linux a custom lift

Apart from a KDE desktop and applications, the developers of the Pardus 2007 Linux distribution have built an entire distribution from scratch. Pardus, released last month, has its own multilingual installer, custom dependency-resolving package manager, and an INIT system that slashes boot times by several seconds. The distribution has come a long way since its first release in 2005, when it was based on Gentoo and lacked a package manager. Thanks to its custom tools, it’s one of the easiest Linux distribution to run and manage.

[...]

If you’ve been using a Linux distribution for some time, getting used to Pardus wouldn’t take long, despite all its custom tools. New users will appreciate the ease in carrying out out system tasks such as setting up firewalls and managing startup services. With its modest hardware requirements and streamlined boot scripts, Pardus could easily turn an old machine gathering dust into a modern Linux desktop.

[38] Pardus Linux 2007

Having seen dozens of Linux distributions announcing themselves with great enthusiasm only to disappear at the sight of a first problem a few months later, I am not easily impressed by any new arrival on the Linux distro scene. As such, when the first stable release of Pardus Linux was announced in 2005, I found myself inserting the installation CD with a considerable amount of scepticism.

[39] Pardus — a penguin from Turkey

ardus is a Turkish distribution that comes with KDE as the default desktop. It is however not just another pack of known open source apps.

[40] A Look at Pardus 2007.3 Lynx

Overall, I had a very positive experience with Pardus, considering I didn’t know what to expect going into it. I was very pleasantly surprised. It really has some innovative features and I like the approach a lot. I really like the fact that it’s backed by the Scientific and Technological Research Council Of Turkey–perhaps this guaranteed support enables the developers to be bolder in their approach, I don’t know. Either way, it’s great to see a national body supporting the development of open source software like this and I wish more nations would follow suit. It could really be beneficial to us all.      

Microsoft ‘Innovates’ Time Limits, Apple Sued, and Microsoft’s Patent Hawk Sues 28 Companies

Posted in Apple, Law, Microsoft, Patents at 3:32 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Balance

IT IS ABUNDANTLY clear based on some shallow surveys that Microsoft’s patents are often very poor in terms of quality. All sorts of simple algorithms which have been around for decades suddenly have Microsoft claim ownership of them. Here is the latest such example:

Microsoft attempting to patent automated console time limits

[...]

The idea of automatically limiting the amount of time kids can play video games is already one of the key features of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Family Settings. But is the approach worthy of a patent?

“Predictive snooping” would be another simple idea. Since UPSTO had it granted as a patent, Apple will need to shell out $19,000,000 in fines. That’s what innovation is all about, right?

Apple has been ordered to pay $19m (£12.9m/€14.3m) in damages after losing a patent infringement case which its lawyers hoped might only cost the firm $270,000.

Well, at least the lawyers make some money. This whole broken system is for them.

This brings us to another new perspective. Patent Hawk used to work with Microsoft, but he is now suing 28 companies including Microsoft. According to this short report, Patent Hawk (Troll) may be violating a contract that he has with Microsoft

You may recall last summer that we wrote about Gary Odom (as known as Patent Hawk) who has been known to stop by our site here to throw around an insult or two (nice guy!). It seems that Odom, who had previously worked with Microsoft, doing prior art research for its patents, had decided to turn around and sue Microsoft for having software toolbars that take different toolbar items and group the items together (stunning innovation, there). It later turned out that he may have violated his contracts in suing Microsoft.

That case is still ongoing, but why stop with just suing one company? Especially when that company is big and has lots of lawyers. Why not sue 28 other companies over the same patent.

While companies in the United States are suing each other for the use of algorithms, China could benefit:

I just read a great paper by Andrea Wechsler ‘Intellectual Property Law in the P.R. China: A powerful Economic Tool for Innovation and Development’, Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition & Tax Law Research Paper No. 09-02, November 12, 2008, download at SSRN here.

In 56 pages Ms Wechsler takes you on a journey to see the changing purposes in and rationales for international IP protection, the political economy of IP protection and the Chinese approach to IP policy in the light of international IP law developments.

[...]

The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPs) is an integral part of the World Trade Organization (WTO)’s Agreement. Therefore this treaty (TRIPs) is a hybrid form which for most countries decreases the manoeuvring space in the field of IP protection policy. That China is an exception in this case Ms Wechsler writes on page 18: “The case of China thus demonstrates that – due to China’s sheer size but also due to its growing economic and political importance – China is to some extent defying the limitation of policy space in the field of IP protection through integration of this area into international trade policy.”

We wrote about ACTA and TRIPs in [1, 2]. It’s supposed to remain a secret for the time being because the ACTA is only negotiated by ‘responsible adults’ [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13]. It’s not about democracy or opportunity for small businesses. It never was. █

“If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today.”

–Bill Gates (when Microsoft was smaller)

Microsoft, Google Sued; Microsoft Funds Legal Action Against Google

Posted in Courtroom, Google, Microsoft at 2:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

One way

Summary: Microsoft’s “if you can’t beat them, sue them” [or daemonise them] approach

Here’s a funny one:

A Utah man is suing Microsoft, Google and Bill Gates for $30,000,000 alleging that his email accounts were blocked by the companies.

Speaking of lawsuits, guess who is still working on having Google sued? Yes, it’s Microsoft. There are some recent examples of hostility that are very blatant (maybe this one too). Wired Magazine wrote about Microsoft's role in the book settlement and now we find this:

One such objection is coming from a group based at NYU law school, an effort partly funded by Microsoft. There have accordingly been some questions about the “independence” of this initiative.

Microsoft’s Google envy is spinning out of control and it now relies on a feeble Yahoo! to join the attack on Google.

U.S. software company Microsoft (MSFT.O) still sees value in a potential partnership with Yahoo (YHOO.O) even though it is no longer wants to buy it, chief executive Steve Ballmer said on Friday.

They are still talking, but is Yahoo making a mistake? █

“Google’s not a real company. It’s a house of cards.”

–Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO

Novell Quietly Releases SUSE Linux Enterprise Mono Extension as a Product

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, SLES/SLED, Windows at 2:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Mono is Novell

Summary: Buy your improved Mono solutions from Novell now!

LAST week Novell made this quiet announcement:

Novell has released a new product based on Mono 2.4, the SUSE Linux Enterprise Mono Extension, which provides commercial support for running .NET applications on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

As seller points out, “the first example of Commercial or Open Source is… Microsoft SQL Server!” There is also VistaDB in there. Why was the press not covering this? This seems like a dodgy business model for Novell, which goes out of its way to spread Mono in competing GNU/Linux distributions.

Mono and “Microsoft Moonlight” (that's what Novell and Microsoft call it now) are nothing but trouble. Beranger did the right thing and we’ve started compiling a list of Mono applications and their recommended replacements.

Yesterday we explained that Microsoft is hoping to ease the migration from GNU/Linux to Windows using all this work (some from Novell). Paula Rooney wrote some more about it and her colleague Dana Blankenhorn added:

I was reminded of this reading Mary Jo Foley’s piece on Microsoft financing an open source version of NFS4 for Windows. The software will let Windows clients easily transfer data from Linux servers. It is of enormous benefit to the Windows community.

What a wonderful transition this whole “interoperability” provision is preparing. If only it worked the other way.

As a side note, reminds us one reader: “It might be worth finding out how Novell is dealing with apparent EOL of its main product [Netware]. Is it staying open source and steering its former customers to Samba, or is it simply yet another sales front for Microsoft?”

Any ideas?

“Samba is in some cases a drop-in replacement for Netware or Windows Server,” reminds us the reader. █

“There is a substantive effort in open source to bring such an implementation of .Net to market, known as Mono and being driven by Novell, and one of the attributes of the agreement we made with Novell is that the intellectual property associated with that is available to Novell customers.”

–Bob Muglia, Microsoft President

Microsoft and Gates ‘Donate’ Training for Microsoft

Posted in Deception, Finance, Microsoft at 2:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Urban poverty

Summary: The “rich uncle” offers as a gift some skills required to buy/use its products

AS THIS WEB site stressed before, Microsoft’s "Elevate America" initiative is a publicity stunt. It is wrongly (or fraudulently) being recast as charity. Microsoft repeatedly calls it that, so the more obedient journalists uncritically pass it as what Microsoft claims it to be. But it’s actually more harmful than helpful; it makes people dependent on an abusive corporation whose products they will not be able to afford. In many ways, “Elevate America” might even be worse than EDGI. Well, EDGI is usually known to the public as “Unlimited Potential”. This was shown before, e.g. in:

With that in mind, let us proceed. The news comes in the form of a press release. Microsoft is bringing to Houston a programme which it typically brags about in developing countries. Is Texas a place in need of “Unlimited Potential” grants? Does Microsoft perceive it as poor? Because that’s what “Unlimited Potential” targets, as a matter of definition.

City of Houston Announces Multi-Million-Dollar Partnership with Microsoft for Digital Literacy and Workforce Preparedness

[...]

The Microsoft Unlimited Potential grant, awarded to the Houston Public Library Foundation for WeCAN Works, includes $4.3 million in software and $200,000 in cash over a two-year period.

There is also an article about it, but it totally misses the key point and instead it parrots Microsoft’s claims.

The Wireless Empowered Community Access Network (WeCAN) provides digital literacy and other job-readiness support services and training to prepare Houstonians for work.

It’s about teaching them Microsoft, it’s neither about working skills nor computing. It is self-serving — for Microsoft to benefit; it’s merely an investment (with ROI) cast as “charity”.

Why does BizJournals.com miss this important point? There are other PR initiatives from Microsoft that BizJournals.com is covering right now in order to improve Microsoft’s image. It is irresponsible when Microsoft’s words are taken for granted without looking deeper at their motives. It’s cowardly, but it’s just so typically coming from the business press.

In Associated Press we find that the Gates Foundation, whose big funds (billions) are investments that go directly to the pharmaceutical cartel [1, 2, 3], also gives money for “training”.

The grants announced this week will focus largely on training librarians to use Internet resources, to make it easier for library patrons to get vital information and educate themselves and their children, officials said.

Will these librarians be taught to use GNU/Linux in order to keep costs low? Experience suggests that it is never the case. █

“They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”

–Bill Gates

Microsoft Deserves to Win Hypocrisy Award

Posted in Deception, Microsoft at 1:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Kettle over the fire
Black kettles and all that malarkey

Summary: Americans are not green enough, says one of the biggest polluters (according to Greenpeace)

Microsoft is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) environmental fiends in its area of technology, so imagine the surprise of being met with the headline: “Americans not green enough, Microsoft claims”

The survey is intended to support “Earth Day”, and quizzed 1,086 people over the age of 18.

What gives Microsoft the privilege of advancing “Earth Day” without looking like total hypocrites? See this for background. █

Windows Vulnerable, Billions in Damages, and Other Security News

Posted in Security, Windows at 1:07 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Chain

Microsoft

• Windows Bugs Never Truly Squashed

Hackers can successfully attack Windows PCs months — even years — after Microsoft Corp. fixes a flaw, a security expert said, because there’s always a pool of unpatched systems.

According to data that Qualys Inc. culled from scans of more than 80 million machines, between 5% and 20% of all systems are never patched for any vulnerabilities, including those disclosed by Microsoft in its monthly security updates.

• Rigged Word docs exploit 2008 bug, say researchers

Attackers, probably based in China, are exploiting a December bug in Microsoft Word to hijack Windows PCs, Vietnamese security researchers warned today.

• The Microsoft Tax: Conficker’s estimated economic cost: $9.1 billion

“The Cyber Secure Institute claims that based on their previous studies into the average cost of such malware attacks, the economic loss due to the Conficker worm could be as high as $9.1 billion,” Dancho Danchev reports for ZDNet.

Others

• After Five Years, Apparently The Mobile Virus Flood Is Really Coming This Time

For about five years, there’s been an effort to whip up hype around the supposed threat of mobile viruses and malware. Pretty much all of that hype’s come from anti-virus vendors, so it’s been pretty suspect, particularly as this threat they’ve been hyping for so long has failed to materialize.

• International hackers, many from China, are attacking NYPD computers

A network of mystery hackers, most based in China, have been making 70,000 attempts a day to break into the NYPD’s computer system, the city’s top cop revealed Wednesday.

• K.gov cautious on EU cyberwar effort

Security chiefs are considering joining an EU wargame to help guard critical internet infrastructure against attacks from enemy states or criminals, but Whitehall officials are concerned other members of the bloc are not ready.

• The Great Brazilian Sat-Hack Crackdown

“This had been happening for more than five years,” says Celso Campos, of the Brazilian Federal Police. “Since the communication channel was open, not encrypted, lots of people used it to talk to each other.”

• Conficker

The New York Times called it an “unthinkable disaster”, the television news show 60 Minutes said it could “disrupt the entire internet” and we at the Guardian warned that it might be a “deadly threat”. Naysayers were few, and drowned out.

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