Summary: The largest Free/libre software advocacy group issues a formal statement and call for action against Microsoft’s TiVoization push
ON SEVERAL occasions before we mentioned the situation with regards to UEFI for Vista 8 [1, 2, 3] and we are gratified to see the FSF getting involved because it has a lot of influence, so it can make things happen. From its formal statement:
Microsoft has announced that if computer makers wish to distribute machines with the Windows 8 compatibility logo, they will have to implement a measure called “Secure Boot.” Secure Boot is designed to protect against malware by preventing computers from loading unauthorized binary programs when booting. In practice, this means that computers implementing it won’t boot unauthorized operating systems — including initially authorized systems that have been modified without being re-approved.
Please go ahead and sign the statement.
This just helps show that the FSF was right all along about TiVoization. It had insight and foresight. Speaking of the FSF, its founder Richard Stallman has just told me that “My feelings regarding Jobs are about his work, not about him personally. What I said about Jobs was about his work.” This is worth clarifying for all those who took his words out of context (and we chose not to feed these by doing an article about it). █
The free Linux desktop is mature. It’s not only on par with proprietary desktops on other operating systems, it actually is innovating and moving beyond what other systems do. It covers all the needs of the vast majority of use cases. It has a variety of office suites, it runs several fine web browsers (another area where Windows has lost relevance up to the point of being made fun of), it has excellent tools and applications in almost any area you can think of, it’s a primary choice for software developers, it even moves beyond classical desktops to netbooks, tablets, and more.
So, not only is GNU/Linux on the desktop doing well, people who actually use it for their living have become confident enough to switch distros without much fuss. Compare that with the German Foreign Office which found GNU/Linux brought complaints from users and was too expensive. What’s wrong with this picture? Instead of whining that users should go to M$, users are choosing the distro of their choice. No complaining about “compatibility” or “complexity”. Just getting on with it.
If you are not taken by today’s release of Ubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot”, here are some new Radeon graphics benchmarks comparing the Catalyst driver on Ubuntu 11.10 to the latest R600g driver from Mesa 7.12-devel on the soon-to-be-released Linux 3.1 kernel.
Can computer science change the world? Ask Ken O’Brien, a first-year Ph.D. student at University College Dublin’s Complex and Adaptive Systems Laboratory, and he’ll answer with a resounding “yes.” With his focus on green scientific computing at CASL, Ken works with physicists, mathematicians, statisticians and computer scientists to develop new energy optimization solutions for scientific applications.
For those interested in the GPU hardware acceleration support for Opera 12 that was made available with this morning’s release of Opera 12 Alpha, here’s the stipulations regarding the “out of the box” Linux GPU driver support.
Looking for an enterprise back-up solution for your servers? Is your network too complex to be handled by simple back-up utilities? Does the thought of making backups feel like a headache? Do not worry, there’s Amanda to the rescue!
Amanda is probably one of the best open source network back-up solutions available in the market today. The Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver (AMANDA), as the name suggests, was developed at the University of Maryland. It allows the administrator to set up a single master back-up server to back up multiple hosts over the network, to tape drives, to disks or to optical media, and even the cloud (with the help of Amazon S3 Web services). It provides an array of options for the type of media that can be backed up to, and a multitude of client environments.
Back-ups are a crucial part of our digital lives, yet they don’t always get the love they deserve. Keeping back-ups is sometimes confusing, thanks partly to the jargon—should I have ‘differential’ back-ups or is a ‘full system image’ a better way? To address questions like these, this article sheds light on all aspects of back-ups, from its basic definition, to information that can help you perform the kind of back-ups you need.
Backing up data is the process of making a copy (or more) of our data files—documents, spreadsheets, presentations, e-books, movies, music, browser bookmarks, settings, installed programs—almost everything. Fundamentally, the questions are:
1. What to back up?
2. When to back up?
3. Where to back up?
4. What type of back-ups to perform?
5. Do you need more than one back-up?
I was busy with other things when 3.2 was released, hence my only writing about it now. Having just started using the new release full time, I have to say that I’m really impressed with how it turned out. The rate of progress since the 3.0 has been extremely high.
Red Hat Wednesday announced the new JBoss Enterprise SOA 5.2, JBoss Enterprise Data Services Boss Enterprise Business Rules Management System (BRMS) platform releases.
Pierre Fricke, director of SOA product line management at Red Hat told, InternetNews.com that the overall goal of the new product releases is to help build intelligent, integrated enterprises.
I was hoping to wait a bit before announcing my project but I’m having problems getting my ducks in a row. Because of this I’m reaching out to the community for help.
Linux distributions have been improving by leaps and bounds, and those improvements are becoming visible in the latest beta releases. Fedora, one of the flagship distributions carrying GNOME 3, is no different and should have plenty of new features to make your mouth water.
Some people have a beef with this release name and have been going out of their way to grill its proponents on what a huge faux pas and injustice this is. Beefy Miracle — how could you name something like that? Don’t you see it will make you a laughingstock? What were you people thinking?
Ubuntu received a major update today. The developers behind the popular Linux distribution released version 11.10, codenamed Oneiric Ocelot. The update brings a wide range of improvements, including some much-needed enhancements to Ubuntu’s Unity shell.
Ubuntu 11.10 a.k.a Oneiric Ocelot has just been released. This highly anticipated release brings the latest open source applications along with some great improvements to the Unity interface. In case you’ve been dying to find out what’s so great about the Ocelot, read on as we give you a quick overview of everything that’s new in 11.10.
For the new version of Ubuntu, code-named Oneiric Ocelot, the developers have put particular effort into revising the applications area, improving the usability of the Software Centre and enhancing Ubuntu’s Unity interface.
Ubuntu 11.10 (“Oneiric Ocelot”) was released, featuring makeovers for its Unity desktop and Ubuntu Software Center, plus a switch to the Thunderbird email client and a new backup tool called Deja Dup. On the server side, Ubuntu 11.10 adds ARM support, as well as a new “Juju” cloud management framework, and the integration of OpenStack within Ubuntu Cloud Infrastructure.
Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot was released couple of hours ago and quite a few people would have already downloaded and installed or upgraded it. If you’re one of those wondering – “How does it look?” – here’s a brief screenshot tour.
Hey, here’s one for you: would somebody explain to me why we’re at the point where statements like “OpenOffice.org can’t be allowed to die!” are being made?
Those are the words of Stefan Taxhet, CEO of Team OpenOffice.org e.V., the German non-profit responsible for managing the fundraising for the Apache OpenOffice.org project. Taxhet made this statement in a press release Tuesday that announced new fundraising efforts for the project, which is apparently in need of a cash infusion.
Most of you who follow the tech industry have likely heard of the passing of computer programming icon Dennis M. Ritchie (also known as dmr) on October 8 at the age of 70. While it could be argued that Linus Torvalds is more famous in today’s world than Dennis Ritchie, it’s quite safe to say that there wouldn’t be a Linux without Dennis Ritchie.
Today marks the passing of the pioneer of C and Unix, Dennis Ritchie, the R in K&R. I personally compare his innovation to language. Because both of them gave us the ability to communicate with another creature: humans, and computers. Without him and his partner, programming would be as hard as Electrical Engineering. He is a prophet among computers.
Dennis M. Ritchie, co-creator of UNIX and father of the C programming language, died this past weekend after a long illness. It’s no exaggeration to say that without Ritchie, modern computing would not be what it is today.
Often known as “dmr,” Ritchie was born in Bronxville, NY in 1941. He studied at Harvard University, initially focusing on physics. Ritchie said that he entered computing because “my undergraduate experience convinced me that I was not smart enough to be a physicist, and that computers were quite neat.”
“When Steve Jobs died last week, there was a huge outcry, and that was very moving and justified. But Dennis had a bigger effect, and the public doesn’t even know who he is.”
In a ground-breaking opinion on Net neutrality, the European Data Protection Supervisor stresses that restrictions to Internet access inevitably harm privacy. As the European Parliament enters in the final stage of the negotiations on its resolution on Net neutrality, this opinion underlines that the EU Commission’s “wait and see” approach is bound to fail and is unjustifiable. Members of the EU Parliament – who will soon hold a crucial vote on the matter – must preserve citizens’ privacy by requiring strong regulatory measures to ban discrimination of online communications.
The Government now has a chance to set out clear strategies for assessing the impact of infringement and the effectiveness of different enforcement strategies. Doing so is stage one in finding a way to bring the voices in this debate – be it rights holders, artists, or civil society – closer together to discuss practical, effective and proportionate policy.
One of the most irritating myths promulgated by the entertainment industry is the idea that copyright is an ethical imperative because it’s bad to “steal other people’s ideas”. This is frequently combined with an illustrative story of plagiarism — in other words, a situation in which someone fraudulently claims credit for someone else’s work. Of course, this is nonsense. Plagiarism and copyright infringement are two completely different things. Although they sometimes occur together, there are many examples of either without the other. And if your eyes just glazed over — no problem: Nina Paley has made it easy with her new Minute Meme for QuestionCopyright.org, called “Credit is Due”.
ACTA is a multilateral agreement which proposes international standards for enforcement of intellectual property rights. According to the FFII, research has shown serious fundamental rights issues.
A group of prominent European academics published an opinion on ACTA. They conclude that certain ACTA provisions are not entirely compatible with EU law and will directly or indirectly require additional action on the EU level. They invite “the European institutions, in particular the European Parliament, and the national legislators and governments, to carefully consider the above mentioned points and, as long as significant deviations from the EU acquis or serious concerns on fundamental rights, data protection, and a fair balance of interests are not properly addressed, to withhold consent.”
Nobody can deny it: many articles have been written about why GNU/Linux didn’t make it, hasn’t made it, and will never make it on the desktop. If there were another time dimension besides past, present, and future, we would probably see articles explaining why Tux does not work in there, either.
Many reasons have been given: Linux is too stiff/ too flexible; Linux is too ugly/too beautiful; Linux is too weak/too powerful; Linux is too outdated/too ahead of our times; Linux is too cheap/ too expensive (yes! some people even have the guts to say this!); Linux is too fragmented (fragmentation: the quality of dazzling users with choices), too exotic, too dangerous (kids! don’t try Linux at home!), too difficult to learn, has weird application names; is linked to communism, anarchy and to the devil. Does Satan use Satanic Linux?
The Linux 3.1 kernel should be released any day now after going through nine test releases, which will be followed by the opening of the Linux 3.2 kernel merge window. Here’s some of the DRM improvements to look forward to in this next major kernel release.
With Kernel.org still being restored, David Airlie’s DRM repository is temporarily hosted in its alternate location at git://people.freedesktop.org/~airlied/linux.git. Listed below is a portion of the Direct Rendering Manager changes that are part of his drm-core-next branch and being queued up for pulling into Linux 3.2.
The Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle, whereby gamers can pay what they want for a collection of multi-platform and DRM-free games, has ended this evening. This latest bundle has pulled in over one million dollars from more than two hundred thousand purchases.
Unigine Corp announced the release of OilRush build 0.81 to the pre-order beta testers earlier today. This new public build succeeds OilRush build 0.80, which was released nearly one month ago with massive performance improvements, improved network synchronization, initial Steam integration, Linux RPM packages, and greater AI speed, among other changes.
Sabayon 7 was recently released bringing lots of updates and improvements. The announcement said, “If you really enjoyed Sabayon 6, this will be even more fun and cute. There you have it, shining at full bright, for your home computer, your laptop and your home servers.” This Gentoo-based everything-but-the-kitchen-sink distro is maturing like the proverbial bottle of wine. It’s getting smooooth.
While the Red Hat / Fedora Project infrastructure has not been compromised, it’s been decided that all users of the Fedora Account System must change their password and upload a new SSH public key prior to month’s end. For users not changing out their password and SSH key, their accounts will be marked inactive.
Wifi works, though bluetooth functionality apparently missing in action.
The laptop at work also has issues with bluetooth coming and going at random days, and is using Fedora 16 too, so now I’m baffled and scared. A geek needs his teeth blue and functional. Halp?
The Fedora Project has posted an announcement advising current users of the Fedora Account System to change their password and SSH public key before 30 November or risk their accounts being marked as inactive.
Ubuntu 11.10 is now available for free public download. Word on the street is that this iteration of the open source operating system will feature “management and orchestration tools” that DevOps practitioners need to embrace cloud computing. Ubuntu 11.10 introduces Juju (previously codenamed Ensemble) for service deployment and orchestration across multiple cloud infrastructures, large-scale bare-metal deployments, and workstation-based service prototyping.
The graph below is from Google Trends. It tells the story of Ubuntu rising from obscurity and the predictable releases pushing the “buzz” higher and higher. 11.04 has had the weakest showing in recent releases and the drop after the release doesn’t seem to be a good sign either. It will be very interesting to see how the release fairs tomorrow.
Now you can install Adobe Flash 64 bit in Ubuntu using the Canonical Partner repository. Earlier Ubuntu 64bit users had to install the 32bit version of flash which was included in a ‘plugin wrapper’ so that it works on 64bit version of Ubuntu. With the recent release of Adobe Flash 11, 64 bit Adobe Flash 11 has been made possible. 64bit Ubuntu users can install Adobe Flash 11 from the Ubuntu partner repository in the Ubuntu Software Center.
Ubuntu 11.10 aka Oneiric Ocelot is now available for free download. Announcing the release of Ubuntu kate Stewart quotes Victor Hugo on Ubuntu mailing list, “There is nothing like a dream to create the future.”
Drupal continues to rack up successes among large developer communities, with x.commerce joining Twitter, which made the move last month. X.commerce is a new division of PayPal that serves as an open, central meeting place for over 700,000 developers for eBay, PayPal, Magento, and other eBay properties.
It only took GNU RCS (gnu.org) 16 years to go from version 5.7 to version 5.8. GNU RCS 5.8 is now available in Portage thanks to the hard work of Mr. Ian ”idella4″ Delaney.
The project SWOI has started classes on and employing Free and Open Source Software (FLOSS) in middle and upper secondary schools in Poland, it was announced on 4 October 2011.
SWOI is the ‘Implementation strategy for the use of open and free software as an innovative model for supporting the development of pupils and students’ key competences in the field of ICT’. The first group of students’ work began in the ‘Circles of Interest’ activity. Under the supervision of ‘Guardians’, the participants explore the secrets of free and open source software.
Those of us who love Linux and other free and open source software are already well-acquainted with the many benefits of FOSS: flexibility, security, customizability and freedom from vendor lock-in, to name just a few.
Quality, of course, is another big one, at least in part because there are typically so many people around the globe constantly improving the code.
There may also be another reason behind that superior quality, however. Specifically, it was recently suggested that volunteer programmers actually write better code than paid ones do.
The Apache Subversion (SVN) open source version control system is out with its 1.7 release today. The new SVN 1.7 release adds new features such as HTTPv2 and WC-NG that improve performance and make version control more efficient for developers.
The SVN 1.7 release comes at a time when the open source Git version control system is gaining in popularity. Git’s popularity is something that SVN backers are aware of and taking steps to bring some popular capabilities of Git into SVN.
“Subversion is no longer the disruptive upstart that it was in 2005. It is now deployed in the largest and most traditional organizations, and it’s now in the mainstream,” David Richards, President and CEO of WANdisco told InternetNews.com
With 3 projects back in 2001, the Eclipse Project has grown to become an awesome, can’t-do-without IDE for developers of almost all programming languages. Currently, it has 273 projects, more than 50 million lines of code and committers from almost all continents and more than $800 million in R&D.
Richie was jointly honoured with several awards during his lifetime, along with Ken Thompson, including the Turing Award in 1983, the Hamming Medal in 1990, the (US) National Medal of Technology in 1999 and, most recently, the Japan Prize for Information and Communications in 2011.
AMD’s most impressive FX CPU that launched this morning is the FX-8150, which is an eight-core CPU with a base frequency of 3.6GHz, a 3.9GHz base Turbo frequency, and 4.2GHz for its maximum Turbo frequency. Yes, a Bulldozer 8-core CPU that can operate naturally above 4GHz. These CPUs also come unlocked for those wanting to push the hardware even further. The AMD FX-8150 has 8MB of L2 cache and a TDP of 125 Watts. What makes this top-end CPU interesting as well is the price tag, which is only $245 USD.
What a farce. Microsoft has put up a web page which purports to “evaluate your browser security”. In fact what it does it look at what specific browser you are using, and then take a few cheap shots at Firefox and Chrome. For an early morning laugh, I just tried it on Opera and got “We can’t give you a score for your browser”. Translated, that means “this don’t know squat about browser security, this is not a ‘security test’ it is a browser identification string scan”.
Wall Street banks often boast that they hire the best and the brightest. Now, scrambling to bolster profits, they have become full-time headhunters for some of their biggest hedge fund clients, a role that is rife with potential conflicts.
The top financial regulator in Massachusetts on Tuesday asked many of Wall Street’s biggest banks for more information on their hedge fund recruiting services.
It has been discovered that German police are using malware to spy on suspects’ computers. The particular case in question involves a suspect whose computer was deliberately infected as he passed through an airport. It was a trojan for that other OS.
The Samba project is making changes to encourage company participation while keeping corporate legal departments at bay.
The project has announced the creation of the Samba Developer’s Certificate of Origin 1.0, which enables employees to retain personal copyrights on code developed and contributed to Samba.
“What this does is allows employees who contribute to Samba on a workday to contribute this code to Samba whilst still allowing the corporation to keep copyright on the code, ” said Allison, in a statement posted on ZDNet today. “It should make it a lot easier for corporate legal departments to sign-off on contributing their changes back to the main Samba code base, as they don’t need to assign copyright to the engineer anymore.”
OSI Days speaker, Mishi Choudhary is the executive director of International Practice at Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) in New York. In this interview, she tells Linux For You, how she became a part of team open source, her fervent desire to see more Indian developers and about the Freedom Box Project while giving a sneak preview into the key topics of her upcoming session at the OSI Days. Also, as a technological and legal expert, she combines the expertise of the two to dole out invaluable knowledge to a law abiding society that consists of more than just tech-savvy citizens!
Europe-based companies invet in protecting, promoting and advancing the Linux operating system
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., October 11, 2011 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that seven Europe-based companies are joining the organization: Codethink, KeyPoint Technologies, Lanedo, Meinberg Funkuhren, Picochip, Puzzle ITC and RPA RusBITech.
Yet another article purporting to show that GNU/Linux is not making it on the desktop…
* LibreOffice – “The biggest features missing from Writer are a grammar check tool, as well as some difficulty with docx page layout when importing from an existing MS Word document.” Hey! Some of us can use language properly and if everyone in the organization uses LibreOffice, where’s the problem?
What we know at this point that someone was able to obtain unauthorized access to the phpmyadmin utility. We do not exactly how they obtained access; it was either by compromising an admins credentials, or by exploiting an unpatched vulnerability in phpmyadmin.
You are also working on another game, Dilogus – the Winds of War for Windows and Linux. Can you let our readers know what to expect from that title after they’ve enjoyed InMomentum?
I think that I am not wrong when I say that Networkmanager is the de-facto way of network configuration management in Linux. Most Linux distributions have implemented it. Slackware on the other hand, traditionally encourages the use of “vi” for network configuration management (by editing “/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf“)… but in recent times, the WICD daemon has been added to the “/extra” directory of Slackware, and that includes a graphical network configuration utility. A lot of (particularly mobile) users like WICD, and so do I.
As said by the title of my last post, one of the things that we are trying to do with Active is “humanizing electrons”… make devices behave how people think instead of making people think like the implementation details behave.
To do that, it is necessary to phase out or better, demote and have in a less prominent way some of the concepts that always been with us, but not because they were good, because for tone technical reason or another 20 years ago we were forced to do this way.
So, in the not too distant future KDE will turn 15 years old. This is normally a time when I will go back and reflect on lessons that can be learned from past activities in the SCM. This year is no different.
After my last blog post I was asked about the history of how many people had committed to KDE. So, for your viewing pleasure:
digiKam offers several ways to showcase your photos. You can view images as a slideshow, push them to a photo sharing service of your choice, and even export them as a static HTML gallery. But that’s not all; digiKam can output selected photos as a KML bundle, so you can view your snaps on the Google Maps service and the Google Earth application.
Fabio Erculiani proudly announced a couple of days ago, October 10th, the immediate availability for download of the Sabayon Linux 7 operating system, designed for Linux enthusiasts who want the latest packages and the best performance, but don’t want to spend days getting things working properly.
The Sabayon Linux development team has released the GNOME, KDE and Xfce variants of version 7.0 of their Linux distribution. According to the developers, Sabayon 7 is “even more fun and cute” than the previous 6.0 release, while also being “bleeding edge” and reliable.
All-in-one Linux-based network servers aren’t a new concept. Distributions like Clark Connect have been around for many years and fit their niche quite well. Lately, however, there seems to be a new batch of all-in-one solutions that offer a similar business model.
A couple months ago, we reviewed Untangle, which is a commercial distribution offering a feature-limited free version. Recently, one of our readers, Tracy Holz, pointed me to a similar project, ClearOS. Although Untangle is largely a firewall and network services system, ClearOS attempts to do more. Using a combination of open-source and commercial tools, it can be a one-stop server platform for many networks.
Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that .ae Domain Administration (.aeDA), the regulatory body and registry operator for the .ae domain name, has standardized its registry infrastructure on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 operating system with support from Red Hat Network Satellite.
Red Hat, Inc (RHT): has a consensus rating of 2.2. This indicates that analysts have a buy recommendation on the stock. The latest rating action was on Mar 24, 2011 when Robert W. Baird upgraded the company from Neutral to Outperform. The result of 22 opinions makes for a mean price target on the stock of $48.73 ranging from as low as $32.0 to as high as $61.0. This month there are 7 strong buys, 10 buys, 5 holds, 1 underperforms, and 2 sells. Shares of Red Hat, Inc traded higher by 1.83% or $0.81/share to $44.98.
The Fedora Design Team Bounty is a type of blog post where we’ll outline a quick-and-easy design project that needs doing for the Fedora Community, outlining all the tools, files, and other resources you’ll need to complete the project. If you’re a designer and are interested in getting involved in the free and open source community, this is a good opportunity to get your feet wet!
Instead, I’ll ask you what Desktop Environment does Debian have? The most likely answer here would be GNOME. That is because GNOME comes as default for Debian. But of course such a Universal Operating System like Debian cannot have only one Desktop Environment available. If you look at Download page, you’ll find other options there: KDE, LXDE and XFCE. Last two are actually shipped on same CD image. But the KDE one is most interesting for me because it was on the 4th place of users poll for best KDE distro, ahead of such KDE-centric distros like Pardus or Aptosid.
I’d just like to say a huge thanks to HP and the folks at Canonical who work on Simple Scan – at long last, HP fixed up the ADF support for my 1212nf multifunction printer in hplip, and Simple Scan has completely awesome multiple document scanning / saving capabilities.
According to W3Techs, Ubuntu is the only web server OS showing a continuous growth rate for (at least) the last year. After passing Suse and Fedora last year, we passed in front of RHEL usage in July. CentOS and Debian are still ahead though.
Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot is scheduled to arrive on Oct 13, 2011. A lot of things have changed with Ubuntu in the mean time. This Ubuntu 11.10 screenshot tour will give you a quick preview of important changes in the upcoming Ubuntu Oneiric release. I have been using Ubuntu 11.10 as my netbook’s primary OS ever since the second alpha release of Ubuntu 11.10 happened. Here is a quick list of things to do after installing Ubuntu 11.10.
As a die-hard Ubuntu 10.10 user, I was less than blown away by the newest version, Ubuntu 11.10. The addition of the new Gnome 3 shell in Ubuntu 11.10 forces a paradigm shift in your computing habits. That does not mean that nothing good is included in the newest Ubuntu release, though. File-sharing and personal cloud storage just got a whole lot more convenient.
As noted here, the official release of Ubuntu 11.10, Oneiric Ocelot, is due this week. In addition, many people are already using the beta releases, and, at ThisisTheCountdown.com you can track the minutes and seconds leading up to the next major release of Ubuntu, and get QR codes and URL strips. Version 11.10 has already generated a lot of discussion, including both praise and criticism. Here are some of the early reports.
The title says it all! Canonical will unleash the highly anticipated Ubuntu 11.10 operating system somewhere around 10:00 AM GTM tomorrow, October 13th.
Have you heard about Vinux? Vinux is a GNU/Linux distribution specially targetted for Visually impaired computer users. It has a host of tools for making the tech lifes of people with vision disorders a lot better. Vinux is based on Ubuntu Linux. Read on to find out more.
On Google+ recently, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols brought back a May 2011 item he posted on Linux Mint because “[w]ith all the chatter on one of my posts about Linux desktops, perhaps it’s time for me to drag out this review of my current favourite Linux desktop.”
It may seem trivial to some, but Steven calls Linux Mint “Mint” throughout the review, and in the back and forth on the comments, that seems to be OK with some. Correction: It seems to be OK with everyone but me. In my opinion, calling it just “Mint” is wrong — especially since the screen shot featured in the article says “Linux Mint” and the symbol is an “LM” — and I find it a little grating to do so, like someone calling me by my last name (Note: Unless you’re a drill sergeant, don’t do that).
Mentor Graphics announced it is bringing its Genivi-compliant Mentor Embedded Linux In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) Base Platform platform to Freescale Semiconductor’s ARM Cortex A9-based i.MX6 system on chips (SoCs). Meanwhile, the Linux Foundation announced the first Automotive Linux Summit (ALS), to be held Nov. 28 in Yokohama, Japan.
Roku announced its lowest-cost streaming media player yet, also adding a new HBO GO service to its service line-up. The $50 Roku LT offers the same Linux-based operating system, Netflix support, 720p video playback quality, and support for 300 channels as the $60 Roku 2 HD, but jettisons the microSD port and Bluetooth connections, according to the company.
Cadillac announced a Linux-based in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) and navigation system that will debut in the 2012 Cadillac XTS. The Cadillac User Experience (CUE) system’s triple-core ARM11 processor controls both an eight-inch capacitive multitouch main touchscreen and an optional 12.3-inch cluster display, and features proximity sensing, haptic feedback, natural language voice recognition, and an open app development platform.
The SOC FPGA virtual target is a PC-based functional simulation of an Altera SOC FPGA development board and is a binary- and register-compatible, functional equivalent of the SOC FPGA board.
Many audiophiles who use an Android phone as their mp3 player are a bit unsatisfied with default music application. For them, the stock application misses out on a lot of features that a modern music player should provide. If you’re one of them, then read on as we list the best alternatives for Android’s default music player.
Open source projects follow a pretty standard pattern in my experience. If the project becomes popular, it grows at a breakneck pace. New features, bug fixes, and more are suggested and submitted daily. Eventually, you have to say no to a couple of things. Once enough things are said no to, those who come up with those ideas move on to the next logical thing, which is to take your ideals and your creativity and make your own version of that project. Soon, you’ve got a hundred flavors of Linux and a few hundred thousand people with their own opinions as to why theirs is better than yours.
As you can see above, the Spyder also has what appears to be a slightly more tactile back, which could well be the Kevlar coating that’s been rumored for the phone. Interestingly, our tipster also says that the processor in this particular Spyder is clocked at 1.5GHz, although the final version will apparently indeed be 1.2GHz, as the earlier leaks have suggested. Check out the gallery below for a closer look at both devices.
Late last night Motorola Mobility formally introduced their newest accessory/companion for webtop-enabled smartphone such as the Droid Bionic and Atrix 4G. Called the LAPDOCK 100, it arrives at AT&T (online) on October 17th and later this quarter through Verizon and Sprint.
Asus’s followup to the popular Eee Pad Transformer tablet maybe be set for a launch early next month. The LambdaTek Component Shop currently lists the Asus Eee Pad Transformer 2, referred to as model number TF201-1I020A, for £537.85 including VAT. Other details on the retailer’s site are limited, though the Transformer 2 listing mentions a quad-core Tegra 3 processor from NVIDIA, 32GB of storage, 1GB of RAM, a 10.1-inch display and Android 3 Honeycomb.
I began to use Linux as my main OS more than five years ago and started programming in open source languages more than seven years ago. In spite of the fact that I struggled to find a reason to use Linux instead of MacOS, I still kept using Linux every day. PHP was one of the first open source languages I started using and I continue to use it even after so many years. A couple of years ago, I took the initiative of working on open source projects and contributing to other projects like Doctrine ORM and Zend Framework. I ultimately ended up basing my whole business on creating open source projects and technologies.
Hard on the heels of recent reports that Google’s Chrome browser may overtake Firefox by year’s end, Mozilla on Monday released its annual “State of Mozilla” report including rosy financial results and a discussion of its efforts moving forward.
For several months now, Google’s Chrome browser has been posting larger market share gains, by percentage growth, than open source rivals. In fact, many analysts predict that its market share will overtake Mozilla Firefox’s next year. The successful rise of Mozilla’s Firefox browser is a legendary story in the open source community, but many people don’t realize that Mozilla gets most of its revenues from Google. In fact, nearly all of Mozilla’s revenues come from deals that involve feeding users into search/ad ecosystems. In November of this year, though, Mozilla’s deal with Google is up for renewal. Is there a chance that it could go away?
It has now been one year since The Document Foundation (TDF) announced the LibreOffice project, and by all counts, the open source software suite is flourishing. After just one year, TDF estimates that there are now 25 million LibreOffice users worldwide.
What a difference a year makes! Twelve months ago, the world of Java was beset by fear and uncertainty. There was grave concern about Oracle’s takeover of the language via its acquisition of Sun Microsystems. Many people wondered how committed the company was to the forward progress of the language. And given the Oracle’s initial ham-fisted handling of several developer communities (such as Open Solaris and the Hudson project), there was a pervasive feeling that the company could easily ruin the language through either neglect or, more likely, by pursuing its own agenda so aggressively that it would destroy the existing Java community. The then-recent lawsuit against Google only furthered these concerns.
The first beta of WordPress version 3.3 has been announced by lead developer Ryan Boren. Among the improvements are a new HTML5 media uploader. In previous WordPress releases the uploader used a standard file selection dialog for selecting files to be uploaded, whereas this latest version uses Plupload, an open source upload handler that includes drag and drop functionality. Image resizing is available within the browser. Plupload has fallback methods including Flash and HTML4 for browsers that don’t support HTML5.
While many technical innovations are produced by massive teams of developers at industry giants such as Google and Microsoft, a number of game-changing technologies are sprouting from grass roots efforts at universities. Through the advent of open source software, multiple developers at colleges around the globe are able to contribute code and innovate new developments without a penny of commercial investment. Tech leaders and investors alike are surprised to learn how the next big breakthrough in technology may not come from their own development teams, but from groups of students and educators collaborating through the Internet.
Today the project posted a plea for $25, or whatever you can spare, to “keep building Diaspora.”
How much are they trying to raise? At least enough to open their own office and provide resources to implement their “larger vision” of “a safer, more secure, and more private social Web.”
Diaspora core member Maxwell Salzberg says “we are trying to obtain ongoing community support. We want to maintain Diaspora as a community-financed project, so the core product can remain non-commercial.”
GNU fdisk is one of those utilities we don’t think about much. It’s been around for ages, it does its job, and it really doesn’t noticed often. But don’t tell the GNU fdisk folks that–they’ve been busy re-writing fdisk to modernize it a bit.
Inside the Open Source Project café, the scent of brewing coffee is identical to every other coffee shop — but the similarities stop there.
Since it opened in May, the Open Source Project has been attracting customers for its coffee, but it keeps them around for its relaxed atmosphere and eclectic mix of an art gallery, music venue and café rolled into one.
Yesterday, I was troubleshooting an issue with Microsoft Exchange 2010. There was a resource mailbox (a room mailbox) that all of a sudden stopped showing its free/busy data to the users in the company in the Scheduling Assistant and in OWA. However, the users could open the resource mailbox calendar in Outlook 2010, and view the contents of the calendar just fine. So, they appeared to have permissions to the calendar folder in one view, but not another view. The first tool I grabbed was “ExFolders.exe” which is an Exchange binary, located in the “bin” folder on the Exchange 2010 server. This tool is supposed to allow the administrator to connect to a mailbox and adjust permissions. Unfortunately in my case, it did not work as advertised. I used the tool and viewed the permissions on the “Calendar” folder in the resource mailbox which appeared correct. I removed the permissions and re-added them with the ExFolders.exe tool, double checked that they set by closing ExFolders.exe and opening it up again. But Outlook and OWA would continue to show “you do not have permissions to view free/busy data” for the resource mailbox. I went in circles for about 2 hours, trying to figure out why permissions looked correct in ExFolders.exe, yet users could not access its free/busy data, even though they could view the Calendar contents just fine (which puzzled me even more).
In the name of “job creation,” Wisconsin GOP legislators are taking another page from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) playbook and pushing a bill that gives huge corporations that manufacture drugs and medical devices immunity from lawsuits when their products injure or kill.
What is Coca-Cola doing behind closed doors with Koch Industries and other multinational corporations in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)? Coca-Cola Refreshments’ Director of Public Affairs and Communications, Gene Rackley, represents Coke on ALEC’s “Private Enterprise” Board, along with Koch Industries’ Michael Morgan.
Coke and ALEC have a lot in common. Both love free trade and have been big boosters of free trade agreements, such as the Korea, Panama and Columbia agreements facing votes this week in Congress. Both are dubious about recycling, especially taxes applied to industry to pay for mandatory recycling. But in one area, ALEC policy benefits Coke and other sweet drink makers directly.
So, Microsoft is supposedly using some flawed *technology* to conclude their browser is the best. It’s more like telling my dog barks the loudest.
[..]
Our brand name is the reason the attacks on IE9 are non-existent. Every cracker knows that our products are insecure and the first thing a user does is install either Google Chrome or Firefox, leaving IE9 to rot. Since no one is using IE9, what’s the point of writing virus for it.
Sherron Watkins, who tried to get her bosses to stop the fraud that brought down Enron Corp. a decade ago, thinks websites like WikiLeaks will strengthen the hand of future corporate whistle-blowers.
Europe’s biggest banks must raise billions of euros in capital to better withstand market turmoil, the European Commission proposed Wednesday, as it embarked on a major push to contain the continent’s escalating debt troubles and avert a second recession.
With Congress expected on Wednesday to take up trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama as well as a benefits package for workers who lose their jobs to foreign competition, the Joint Economic Committee of Congress has released a report showing that the workers most likely to be hurt by free trade are the same groups that will have the most difficult time getting new jobs.
Iran’s top leader said Wednesday that the wave of protests spreading from New York’s Wall Street to other U.S. cities reflects a serious crisis that will ultimately topple capitalism in America.
One current and one former employee at the Swiss private bank Julius Baer have been indicted in the United States in a $600 million tax evasion case.
A Julius Baer AG spokesman, Martin Somogyi, said the Zurich-based bank was cooperating with U.S. authorities in their investigation. He provided no further details.
Wall Street is bracing for major changes from a new rule that would overhaul how the banking industry conducts its trading.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation unanimously approved on Tuesday an initial version of the regulation, known as the Volcker Rule. Two other regulators followed suit, and the Securities and Exchange Commission is scheduled to vote on Wednesday.
As protesters affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement continue to camp out in lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, students at some of the nation’s top colleges are also taking up the banner of antibank activism, beginning with their schools’ on-campus recruiting programs.
The Occupy Wall Street movement, which has spawned grass-roots activities around the U.S. and prompted comments from President Barack Obama, is now drawing political remarks from overseas.
While the Occupy Wall Street movement is sweeping the country and peaceful arrests are mounting, Chicagoans took to the streets this week to hold the big banks accountable for crashing the economy and to demand city, state and federal policies that work for working families.
For many, the goal was stopping the foreclosure mill and telling the big banks it was time to Pay US Back! for the $4.7 trillion bailout. For others, the demands focused on the fallout from the financial crisis including contentious contract negotiations with the administration of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel.
Steve Yegge, a Google engineer, stuck his foot in his mouth in what was meant to be a Google-insiders only rant about Google+, but behind the flames there were some valid points.
Google’s Steve Yegge posted a Google Plus post which was intented for internal sharing. Mistakenly, it was published as public. In his post he rants about Google’s half hearted attempts. But, it tells us something about Google which is not mentioned in the post. It tells us that openness is in the DNA of Google and employees can share their thoughts openly. Yet another browny point for Google.
On the contrary Steve Jobs fired an engineer only because he showed the iPad to none other than Steve Woznaik, the co-founder of Apple.
Both fixed and mobile providers have claimed that increased internet traffic has resulted in “ballooning” costs for networks. Some ISPs have argued that content providers should pay them to help meet the cost of supplying bandwidth-intensive services such as the BBC iPlayer.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which has already been signed by eight countries, poses a dangerous threat to the inherent freedom and openess of the Internet. Under ACTA, ISPs and websites will be given more power to track what we do online, while forcing them to turn over our information and reporting our activity to the authorities — all in the name of copyright protection! This controversial intellectual property accord, which was negotiated in secret, violates our fundamental rights to free speech and access to our culture.
Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (username: dmr, September 8, 1941 — October 8/9, 2011) was an American computer scientist notable for developing C and for having influence on other programming languages, as well as operating systems such as Multics and Unix. He received the Turing Award in 1983 and the National Medal of Technology 1998 on April 21, 1999. Ritchie was the head of Lucent Technologies System Software Research Department when he retired in 2007. [Read on]
Summary: Rusty joins Tim and Roy for a show that covers issues of the day rather than issues of the week
IN LAST night’s show we spoke about Putin mandating GNU/Linux for government use by 2015 and some related topics including Microsoft’s subversive actions against Free software in government. We played “Rule the World” by Inch Chua and then said a few words about the Linux Foundation and Nokia, which comes back to Linux in a sense. “Precious” by Minipop was played followed by discussions about Android and CyanogenMod. “El Tigeraso” by Maluca was then played followed by a discussion about servers, the release of ownCloud 2, and finally a few worlds about Bristol City Council and open source. “Take This One From Me” by It’s True closed the show.
A look at some of the latest spin and the latest shaming courtesy of the patent microcosm, which behaves so poorly that one has to wonder if its objective is to alienate everyone
In defiance of common sense and everything that public officials or academics keep saying (European, Australian, American), China's SIPO and Europe's EPO want us to believe that when it comes to patents it's "the more, the merrier"
The problem associated with Battistelli's strategy of increasing so-called 'production' by granting in haste everything on the shelf is quickly being grasped by patent professionals (outside EPO), not just patent examiners (inside EPO)
Free/Open Source software in the currency and trading world promised to emancipate us from the yoke of banking conglomerates, but a gold rush for software patents threatens to jeopardise any meaningful change or progress
To nobody's surprise, the past half a decade saw accelerating demise in quality of European Patents (EPs) and it is the fault of Battistelli's notorious policies
New trouble for Željko Topić in Strasbourg, making it yet another EPO Vice-President who is on shaky grounds and paving the way to managerial collapse/avalanche at the EPO
The utter lack of participation, involvement or even intervention by German authorities serve to confirm that the government of Germany is very much complicit in the EPO's abuses, by refusing to do anything to stop them
Another example of UPC promotion from within the EPO (a committee dedicated to UPC promotion), in spite of everything we know about opposition to the UPC from small businesses (not the imaginary ones which Team UPC claims to speak 'on behalf' of)
Uploaded by SUEPO earlier today was the above video, which shows how last year's party (actually 2015) was spoiled for Battistelli by the French State Secretary for Digital Economy, Axelle Lemaire, echoing the French government's concern about union busting etc. at the EPO (only to be rudely censored by Battistelli's 'media partner')
In violation of international labour laws, Team Battistelli marches on and engages in a union-busting race against the clock, relying on immunity to keep this gravy train rolling before an inevitable crash
A new year's reminder that the EPO has only one legitimate union, the Staff Union of the EPO (SUEPO), whereas FFPE-EPO serves virtually no purpose other than to attack SUEPO, more so after signing a deal with the devil (Battistelli)
Orwellian misuse of terms by the EPO, which keeps using the term "social democracy" whilst actually pushing further and further towards a totalitarian regime led by 'King' Battistelli
The paradigm of totalitarian control, inability to admit mistakes and tendency to lie all the time is backfiring on the EPO rather than making it stronger
An outline of recent stories about patents, where patent quality is key, reflecting upon the population's interests rather than the interests of few very powerful corporations
The role played by Heiko Maas in the UPC, which would harm businesses and people all across Europe, is becoming clearer and hence his motivation/desire to keep Team Battistelli in tact, in spite of endless abuses on German soil
The latest facts and figures about software patents, compared to the spinmeisters' creed which they profit from (because they are in the litigation business)
Content is available under CC-BY-SA