08.29.11

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Softpedia Linux Weekly, Issue 162

• Linux and the financial crisis

  The financial industry is out-innovating regulators, experts and common investors. For years, the financial industry hired the best hackers it could find. They have a sizable share of the most creative and smart engineers on the planet. And Linux is one of their favorite tools. It is not difficult to understand: you can literally rewrite, or help rewrite, the Linux kernel. Today, Wall Street runs on Linux and it thrives thanks to its elite programmers.

• Virtualization With KVM On A CentOS 6.0 Server

• Jailbreak Only: Linux – Coming Soon To Your iPhone, iPad

  A team of jailbreak developers has recently managed to install the Linux desktop operating system on Apple’s A4 equipped iOS devices. The news comes as the image of an iPad running Linux was tweeted by one of the team’s developers.

• Linux spotted running on an iPad

• Server

  • UNIX Special 4: Linux vs. UNIX

    Although many still consider UNIX the best option for high-demand applications, the technical differences between Linux and UNIX are “going to be pretty minimal” going forward, argued Gartner analyst George Weiss in a recent report.
    Things going in favour of Linux were – better hardware features, internal multitasking and multiprocessing, less expensive resource requirements, stronger application independence and other such bullets.

    Gabriel Consulting Group takes the same vein.

  • In pursuit of affordable shared-storage options

    The breaking of ties between Unix flavours and specific RISC processors was the stand-out example, and Linux OSes on commodity x86 servers were the agent of change to bring this about in the early part of the last decade.

• Kernel Space

  • Linux 3.1-rc4

    Or how about the wiimote driver changes? Or the iscsi target changes?

  • Stable kernels 3.0.4, 2.6.32.46, and 2.6.33.19

  • Graphics Stack

    • Nouveau Fan Management Code Published

      At long last, if your computer has previously sounded like a jet engine when using the open-source Nouveau driver with your NVIDIA GeForce/Quadro graphics card, there is a solution. Fan management code has now been published by the Nouveau developers to support controlling the graphics card’s fan speed when using this in-kernel Linux driver.

      Martin Peres writes to the Nouveau mailing list this morning, “Just saw the bitching on Phoronix about lack of fan management in nouveau (no offence Michael, it was justified ;)). Since it has been working flawlessly for more than a week on my desktop, I decided to let you guys know about it and ask for testing.”

    • A 40-Way Gallium3D Graphics Card Comparison

• Applications

  • Kiwix: An Offline Reader for Wikipedia!

  • Music Composition and Audio Editing in Linux

    Music composition and audio editing software can be quite expensive. There are professional open source alternatives to expensive commercial applications. Open source applications do not get the exposure as commercial applications and may not have the same features or operate in the same way. Deciding if open source software is appropriate is the same as deciding what commercial software to buy, the features of the software need to meet the needs of the user.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Run Linux on Windows without Virtualization using andLinux

    • Virtualization With KVM On A CentOS 6.0 Server

    • Run a local DNS resolver with OpenWRT

    • A crash course in PostgreSQL, Part 1

    • How to… re-energise your Android smartphone’s OS

    • Installing PowerDNS (With MySQL Backend) And Poweradmin On Debian Squeeze

  • Games

    • Music Composition and Audio Editing in Linux

• Desktop Environments

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

    • chinese language blogs on planet kde

      On my recent visit to Taipei, I worked with some of the local KDE community members to identify ways in which we could help support both the various Chinese-speaking KDE communities as well as the local KDE community in Taiwan. One of the things we identified was getting the same level of support and exposure for Chinese language community content, such as blogs, as we do for other language groups.

    • system tray icon hiding

    • collect.kde.org is live!

  • GNOME Desktop

    • Faience: New GNOME 3 Icon Theme By Tiheum

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • Chakra 2011.09

    • Puppy 5.1.4

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Mandriva 2011 is here!

    • Mandriva Linux 2011 Officially Released, Screenshot Tour

      Mandriva proudly announced last evening, August 28th, the immediate availability for download of the final and stable release of the highly anticipated Mandriva Linux 2011 operating system.

    • Mandriva Linux 2011.0 Released

    • First look at Mandriva Linux 2011

      I have mixed feelings about Mandriva Linux 2011. On the one hand, I can understand the developer’s motivation to simplify the distribution in order to create a more uniform, newcomer-friendly and easy-to-support installation class. This would be a perfect scenario for schools and government offices and with Russia’s highest political echelons reportedly encouraging more free software deployment in the country, one can easily see the reasons for having a simple, easy-to-use and pre-configured desktop system provided locally. On the other hand, long-time Mandriva users are likely to be disappointed with the sudden lack of options previously available to them. Yes, the hybrid live/installation DVD image is a step in the right direction, but those users wishing to use Mandriva in a different deployment scenario than the default KDE desktop might be discouraged by the amount of post-install customisation work and the unequivocal endorsement of KDE as the only supported desktop.

      This inevitably brings up the subject of comparison between Mandriva Linux 2011 and Mageia 1 (read our review of Mageia 1 here). As always in these situations, it is best to try both releases and decide which of the two better meets the user’s needs, but in my view, it’s clear that Mandriva 2011 has departed too far from its roots. In fact, Mageia 1, which resisted the temptation to make large scale changes to its first release, is now a more genuine “Mandriva” than Mandriva itself. Those users who enjoyed the older Mandriva Linux releases will undoubtedly feel more at home with Mageia 1 than with the latest Mandriva release.

      Mandriva 2011 feels like a completely new distribution, extravagantly disconnected from its past and with dramatically new values, concepts and orientation. I suspect that it’s targeted mainly at larger organisations with a need to have a uniform desktop setup across dozens of computers and, to a lesser extent, at newcomers to Linux. The only thing that still links this release to the old Mandriva is its superb control centre, but everything else has changed or, as in the package manager’s case, is about the change. This is not necessarily a bad thing and it’s entirely possible that this new philosophy will find acceptance among certain users and organisations where too many choices would present a new set of problems. Furthermore, the Rosa Labs set of desktop tools is an interesting addition, perhaps not entirely bug-free, but presumably well-tested on less technical users. As such, Mandriva could be in a good position to attract new Linux converts, but in the process it has probably shunned many of the more technical users.

    • Five Good Reasons to Try Mandriva Linux 2011

      Canonical’s Ubuntu may frequently dominate the headlines in the Linux world, but the fact remains that it’s just one of many popular desktop distributions of the free and open source operating system.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat 5 STIG: Network Settings

      The draft release of the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency’s (DISA) “Red Hat 5 STIG” earlier this year has a few system administrators panicking. For Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 5 administrators, this Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG) has supplanted the generic UNIX STIG.

      The generic UNIX STIG had the single potential discrepancy indicator (PDI) “GEN003600 – Network Security Settings.” The checklist document required you to check four network settings in the running kernel. The new Red Hat 5 STIG, however, has many more settings and provides better explanations.

    • Red Hat’s biggest enemy? VMware

      Let’s play a game. Who do you think Red Hat’s biggest enemy will be in a few years? Will it be Microsoft, Linux’s traditional enemy? Could SUSE, the number two business Linux distributor, make a try for the top? Might Ubuntu’s Canonical make its big break into corporate Linux? All good guesses, but Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst, is pretty sure that Red Hat’s biggest competitor in 2016 will be VMware.

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • A closer look at Ubuntu 11.10 Oneric with Jono Bacon

        • Google Music App For Ubuntu with Sound Menu and Native Notifications Support

          Google Music Frame runs Google Music web interface in its own window and provides integration with Ubuntu sound menu and notifications. It also remembers last session and the current view (album, genre list, etc.)

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Bodhi Linux: First Impressions

            What I like the most about Bodhi Linux are freedom of choice for applications and profiles (Bare, Desktop, Laptop and Tablet/Netbook) that I truly need, the familiar Synaptic Package Manager and vast choices of themes and icons for customization. It’s a great surprise for such a minimalist OS with such highly customizable aesthetic interface! There are more to learn about the lightweight Enlightenment Desktop and other configurations, though.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Video: Eben at the Bletchley Park Educating Programmers Summit

  • Phones

    • Android

      • LG Enlighten Spotted in Walmart Catalog

        We first heard about the LG Enlighten earlier this month, and we got a better look at it on Tuesday. It appears that the Enlighten will be making its way to Big Red through Walmart, as someone has gotten their paws on a Verizon catalog that’s advertising the device.

      • Rumour titbits: Sony Ericsson Nozomi is global phone; SK19 is cancelled

        Secondly, we recently wrote about the Sony Ericsson SK19 suggesting it could be a Xperia ray pro. However, he says this model is now cancelled. It was a keyboard slide phone being developed for AT&T in the US and would have sat in between the Xperia mini pro and Xperia pro. The reason we trust him? He told us all about the Xperia neo V before today’s announcement including the difference between it and the Xperia neo. We’ll bring you more news as we have it.

      • CyanogenMod Team Gets Android Working On HP TouchPad

        There have been a flurry of efforts in recent days aimed at getting a workable version of Android up-and-running on the webOS-based HP TouchPad. The mission has been funded in part by modding community called HackNMod, which is hoping to give the tablet’s early adopters an operating system with a more certain future: Android.

        It appears that the CyanogenMod team has finally made that happen. According to a public statement and accompanying video, the developers say they now have an alpha version of the CyanogenMod 7 firmware running on the TouchPad.

  • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

    • Sony S2 Tablet is the Tablet P, Specs Continue to Leak

      More specs have recently leaked about the upcoming Sony Tablet S and the codenamed Sony S2 which are expected to launch next month. The S2 will launch as the Sony Tablet P, the dual 5.5″ screened clamshell will weigh 370 grams, have 512Mb RAM, 4GB of storage with a 2GB SD card and connectivity over 4G or WiFi. Both the Tablet P and Tablet S will use Nvidia’s Tegra 2 processor and have 0.3MP front-facing cameras. The Tablet S will weigh 600g, have 1GB of RAM and come in 16GB or 32GB flavours. No word on price or exact shipping dates, but it shouldn’t be too much longer before they’re known.

    • Samsung unveils LTE-equipped phone, tablet

      Samsung announced LTE (long-term evolution) editions of its Galaxy S II smartphone and Galaxy Tab 8.9 tablet computers, claiming potential download speeds of up to 100Mbps, and uploads of 50Mbps. The phone also upgrades to a 4.5 display and eight megapixel camera, while the slate weighs only a pound and is just over a third of inch thick, the company says.

Free Software/Open Source

• Events

  • Ohio LinuxFest Celebrates 20 years of Linux

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla introduces WebAPI

    • Rapid Releases: How Are They Working for Firefox and Thunderbird 6?

• Databases

  • CUBRID Bug Bash Event!

    Today at CUBRID we are very happy to announce yet another contest which will start on September 1st, 2011, and will last for one month.

    The idea of this Bug Bash event is to fix potential bugs which may exist in the latest version of CUBRID Tools and Web Apps, thus, increase the quality of this software, and engage users in CUBRID development.

  • EnterpriseDB Brings PostgreSQL to the Cloud

    Managing the open source PostgreSQL database has often been the domain of command line tools and scripts. That’s now about to change thanks to the release of Postgres Enterprise Manger from commercial PostgreSQL firm, EnterpriseDB.

    EnterpriseDB is also taking PostgreSQL beyond the confines of traditional data center deployments with a new Postgres Plus Cloud Server service. The new services and tools come as EnterpriseDB ramps up their PostgreSQL offerings in the wake of Oracle’s takeover of Sun and the MySQL database.

    “What we’re trying to do at EnterpriseDB is to really make it easier for the user to deploy more PostgreSQL,” Karen Tegan Padir, Vice President, Products and Marketing at EnterpriseDB told InternetNews.com.

• Public Services/Government

  • Untapped: Why the developing world must treat IT as a national resource

    The open source movement has the potential to empower developing countries to use IT as an important national resource — to communicate to its citizenry, expand its educational platform and address national disasters. Open source software is not only free from license restriction; it is also free to be used as a basis for innovation, allowing custom solutions for the unique context of specific issues faced by developing nations. But for many nations, software is not enough.

  • Defence conducts OpenOffice.org trial

    The Department of Defence has reportedly conducted an informal trial of the open source OpenOffice.org productivity suite involving some 100 users.

    According to iTNews (click here for the full story), the initiative was kicked off by Defence chief technology officer Matt Yannopoulos over the past year. However, it does not appear likely the initiative will immediately broaden into a wider rollout at Defence, with Yannopoulos noting it would be a major decision for the department, which has long been a Microsoft shop.

• Licensing

  • Desktop Summit: Copyright assignments

    Copyright assignment (or licensing) agreements for projects is a rather contentious issue that reflects differing views of how free software will be best-positioned to grow over the coming years. Several perspectives were on display at the “Panel on Copyright Assignment” held on August 6 at the Desktop Summit in Berlin. The panel consisted of two opponents of such agreements, Michael Meeks and Bradley Kuhn, as well as perhaps their most outspoken proponent, Mark Shuttleworth, with GNOME Foundation executive director Karen Sandler handling the moderation duties. In the end, each position was well-represented, but, as might be guessed, neither side convinced the other; each will likely continue to pursue its path over the coming years.

  • The Mozilla Public License – almost 2.0 (part 1)

    Over the past 18 months, the Mozilla community has been revising the Mozilla Public License. See earlier post. We recently announced, in true community development fashion, a release candidate–the text that we hope will become MPL 2.0 after one last set of eyes review it. This piece is a brief backgrounder on what has changed in the new MPL, explaining why we’re proud of this work and we hope you’ll consider reviewing it – and maybe even using it for your next project.

  • Citrix CloudStack Shifts to Single GPLv3 Flavor

• Programming

  • Five easy ways to get you coding

  • Getting Started with the Fuel PHP Framework

    Regular PHPBuilder readers are well aware of my personal affinity for framework-driven development. These days I opt to use a framework for every conceivable web project, no matter how minor. Thankfully many other developers feel the same about the framework’s amazing breadth, because a wide range of framework solutions are available for projects large and small. For large projects, you might consider using CakePHP, Symfony, or my personal favorite, the Zend Framework. Smaller projects might take advantage of one of the many microframeworks, such as Fat-Free or Limonade.

  • Opa – a unified approach to web programming

  • Retiring the DLJ

    With Java SE 7 and JDK 7 out of the door, and with OpenJDK as the official Java SE 7 reference implementation, and OpenJDK serving as the basis for future Oracle JDK 7 update releases through the now up and running JDK 7 Updates Project it’s finally time to retire the “Operating System Distributor License for Java” (DLJ).

  • Oracle retires licence for distributing its Java with Linux

    With a brief news item, Oracle has retired the “Operating System Distributor License for Java” (DLJ) that was created by Sun in 2006. The non-free licence had allowed Linux distributors to package and distribute Sun’s, and later Oracle’s, Java versions in their Linux distributions. Sun made this licence available after releasing Java as open source at the JavaOne conference in 2006. It was designed to ensure that users had easy access to packages containing the well-tested Sun Java during the development of the free OpenJDK.

  • sun-java6 packages removed soon from Debian/Ubuntu (and all other linux distros)

  • An LLVM backend for Sparse

• Standards/Consortia

  • TransferSummit: Innovation, commoditisation and value creation

    In the second of a short series of articles introducing some of the topics which will be discussed at the upcoming TransferSummit in Oxford, IBM’s Don Harbison discusses the benefits of an open approach to the development of document standards.

Leftovers

• Science

  • Republicans Against Science

    Jon Huntsman Jr., a former Utah governor and ambassador to China, isn’t a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination. And that’s too bad, because Mr. Hunstman has been willing to say the unsayable about the G.O.P. — namely, that it is becoming the “anti-science party.” This is an enormously important development. And it should terrify us.

• Health/Nutrition

  • Mr PM, what’s in our food?

    Last week, I visited Vanashree, an eco-farm about a 100 km outside the city. Run by IT professionals Srikanth and Priti, the place is an embodiment of minimal human interference with nature. The duo use no pesticides — chemical or otherwise — on the lush eight-acre farm that has bananas, coconuts, chikoo, betelnut, poultry, dairy and bee-keeping, among other things. They’ve been running the place for about six years and by now, a lot of their methods have made the land more fecund, the soil soft and fertile. In their rainwater harvesting ponds, the fish are jumping.

  • Volunteer Doctors Can’t Keep Up with Needs of Uninsured and Underinsured

    A few months before I left my job in the insurance industry in 2008, I was working on a “white paper” to try to persuade people — especially lawmakers and candidates running for office that year—that the problem of the uninsured in this country was not a big deal.

    At that time, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were an estimated 47 million Americans who were uninsured, a number that has increased since then by about 4 million. My job was to slice and dice the Census data in such a way to convince people that most of those without coverage were just shirking their personal responsibility to buy it.

• Security

  • Gopher problem in Squid

• Defence/Police/Aggression

  • UK diplomats in Tripoli as 50,000 rebels listed missing

  • Gaddafi bunkers and tunnels an elaborate setup

    The entrance is hard to find: To get there, you go past the front door equipped with a fingerprint reader, through the garden and behind neatly trimmed shrubs, where there is a mysterious passageway. From there, it’s three flights of stairs down until you arrive at a one-foot-thick steel door. Behind the door, there’s a lair straight out of a James Bond film.

• Cablegate

  • 00. Editorial – Wikileaks Statement on the 9 Month Anniversary of Cablegate: Release of 133,887 Cables

    Over the past week, WikiLeaks has released 133,887 US diplomatic cables from around the world – more than half of the entire Cablegate material (251,287 cables). The new release was met with a sustained Denial of Service (DOS) attack during the first 36 hours. WikiLeaks had to rely on back-up servers for some hours. With supporters’ help, WikiLeaks was able to bring in additional servers to stave off the attack.

    For the first time, the diplomatic cables are available from every country that has US diplomatic representation. Until now, many countries had been excluded from the news stories, partly due to WikiLeaks media partners’ geographical bias, and partly due to Wikileaks’ resource constraints in establishing new media partnerships (there are now over 90).

  • Will the guilty try to implement ways to suppress freedom of speech?

    I write this letter to commend Wikileaks founder Mr. Julian Assange in his brave role in leaking highly confidential and important information in the Embassy of Georgetown cables.
    Wikileaks has been described by Time Magazine as “Could become as important a journalistic tool as the Freedom of Information Act.”

  • 00. Editorial – 30 new revelations from #wlfind

  • Fairfax hoards explosive cable

  • How WikiLeaks has changed the role of journalism

    “The timidity of the New York Times came as a surprise and disappointment to me,” Hrafnsson told the assembly of 60 news executives, editors and reporters. “It was not the New York Times of the early 1970s where the Times was willing to take on the Nixon administration by publishing the Pentagon Papers.”

    It’s pretty much a given that Hrafnsson, or any WikiLeaks official, would be arrested if he set foot in the United States. Hrafnsson also is certain that the National Security Agency monitors every email he receives.

    After his presentation, I asked Hrafnsson, a veteran journalist from Iceland, why he was singling out the Times for criticism. (I spoke to the same group a few hours later.)

    When WikiLeaks released 77,000 Afghan War documents to news organizations in July 2010, the New York Times was accorded the right to publish the scoop on its website. Instead, Hrafnsson said, the Times apparently was so worried about the likely furor over release of the Afghanistan war logs that critical minutes passed, and the Times decided to report the news only after other publications had done so.

  • Diplomatic cables claim Australia has failed to stabilise ‘fragile’ Solomons

    MORE than a billion dollars and eight years of effort by Australia has failed to build political and economic stability in the Solomon Islands, according to secret United States diplomatic assessments.

    The assessments say Australia’s intensive policing and aid effort has not succeeded in stabilising the country and predict it would relapse into turmoil within weeks if the multinational Regional Assistance Mission were withdrawn.

  • WikiLeaks: USA made “enormous concession” in talks on Czech radar

    The Czech team negotiating on the SOFA treaty in 2008 achieved “an enormous, unprecedented concession” of the U.S. delegation by limiting the treaty’s scope to a planned missile defense radar site, according to a Prague U.S. embassy’s cable released by WikiLeaks on August 25.

    The U.S. negotiators pointed out that the USA has general, broad-scoped Supplemental Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs) with other NATO allies, the embassy’s cable from April 29, 2008 says.

  • 240 Wikileaks cables on pharmaceutical data exclusivity

    The following are the cables identified in an August 29, 2011 search of the wikileaks cables, from http://cablesearch.net, using the search terms data exclusivity and pharmaceutical. This search identified 240 cables. Some 40 countries are mentioned in the cables. More than half of the cables involve 5 countries: Turkey (76), Taiwan (21), El Salvador (11), Honduras (11) and Tunisia (10).

  • The Guardian blames Wikileaks for the arrest of Bradley Manning

  • US interested in what makes American-born settlers tick

  • WikiLeaks: Washington and Brasilia Monitoring Chávez in the Caribbean

    As more and more WikiLeaks cables get released, the Brazilian-U.S. diplomatic relationship has become increasingly illuminated. Though somewhat wary of each other, Washington and Brasilia sometimes saw eye to eye on matters of geopolitical importance. Take, for example, both countries’ handling of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. Under the helm of Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, Brazil cultivated a strategic alliance with Venezuela and publicly the two nations embraced South America’s “pink tide” to the left. Yet, WikiLeaks documents reveal that Brazil may have shared Washington’s concern over Chávez’s rising geopolitical importance, particularly in the Caribbean theater.

• Finance

  • Goldman Sachs targeted as ‘Jaws’ joins battle over banking crash

    He is known as “Jaws”, the perfect nickname for a lawyer entangled in a lawsuit filed against a massive investment bank that has been dubbed a “vampire squid” by its critics. But Jacob Zamansky, a renowned Wall Street defender of the little guy, with a record of extracting large settlements from giant firms, does not fear the tough reputation of Goldman Sachs.

    Indeed, he is happy to be helping on a class-action lawsuit against the bank taken out on behalf of a group of shareholders seeking millions of dollars in damages for alleged illegal behaviour. “Goldman misled these investors. So they came to me,” Zamansky said.

    However, Zamansky’s lawsuit is just one o

  • Ceiling at 16: California’s Lack of Recovery

    Total employment in California fell in June from 15.974 million to 15.910 million. The bigger story however is that, in addition to making a lower low in 2010, California employment never regained the 16 million mark first achieved early last decade.

• Civil Rights

  • Revealed: the secrets of Scotland’s dna database

    Given exclusive access to police information, the Sunday Herald today reveals that one in 10 Scottish adult males now has their DNA held on a database containing 300,000 profiles – with 3000 a day being added to the total By Judith Duffy

• Copyrights

  • Web-blocking and Illegal Sites

    In the last week there have been three stories in the news concerning copyright infringement and “illegal websites”. In each case, a group with an interest in enforcing copyright has called for or announced measures against such websites, but this raises an important question of what makes a website illegal. In terms of copyright infringement this is a very tricky question as there is no easy way to tell whether content or a service is unlawful.