Richard Chapman sent me a link to a log of activity for the International Space Station.
* The server was migrated from that other OS to GNU/Linux
* The client was migrated to “T61p”, a Lenovo model that ships with that other OS… The ISS started with Lose ’95 on clients back in the day.
Ubuntu project sponsor Canonical has announced that its Ubuntu Linux distribution will be pre-loaded on new ASUS Eee PC series netbooks. According to Canonical, the Taiwan-based computer manufacturer began shipping three new Ubuntu-based Eee PC models through its sales channels on 1 June.
Chris Kenyon, VP of OEM services at Canonical told The INQUIRER, “The deal with ASUS is an important one for Canonical which will put Ubuntu in the hands of a larger audience, people who would not necessarily download Ubuntu, but would be happy to buy a computer knowing that it will work perfectly on that hardware. Also, Canonical’s extensive work with manufacturers helps make all future versions of Ubuntu run perfectly on specific machines and individual OEM’s hardware.”
This is a very short blog post as both Wim Coekaert and Ewan Mellor beat me by some time in publishing this great news: I was too busy traveling and celebrating. The fantastic news is that Linux 3.0 will have everything necessary to run Xen as both as a management domain and as a Xen guest.
The Xen team has been working for years to get everything needed to run the Linux kernel as Dom0. Some of the components were added last year, but the final elements have now been added to handle everything.
Another addition that will make the mainline Linux kernel more Xen friendly is pvops, a mode which will enable the kernel to switch between paravirtualization (pv), hardware virtualization (hvm) or paravirtual-hardware virtualization (pv-hvm).
Over time, software developers tend to learn that micro-optimization efforts are generally not worthwhile, especially in the absence of hard data pointing out a specific problem. Performance problems are often not where we think they are, so undirected attempts to tweak things to make them go faster can be entirely ineffective. Or, indeed, they can make things worse. That is a lesson that the kernel developers have just relearned.
On the forums, reaction to the news has been mixed, with some wondering if Linus is falling prey to the current trend of large major version number jumps to give the impression of significant progress.
It was back in May of 2009 that DisplayLink began providing open-source Linux support for their USB-interfaced graphics processors in the form of documentation and code. Shortly thereafter, frame-buffer and X.Org drivers for DisplayLink USB hardware arrived and it quickly matured. By early 2010 it was possible to produce interesting results with these USB graphics adapters doing things like driving nine monitors over USB from a single computer.
There was some initial thoughts that the Wine developers would be interested in the D3D state tracker as this natively implements the Direct3D 10/11 APIs where Wine’s existing Direct3D implementation largely lacks 10/11 support for now. With Wine’s Direct3D implementation, they’re also translating the Direct3D calls into OpenGL. The benefit of this is that it’s more platform agnostic and doesn’t place a requirement on the graphics driver being based on Gallium3D. The downside of translating the Direct3D calls into OpenGL is the associated overhead placed on the processor. In the future it could also be of use to the ReactOS in their development of a free software operating system that is Windows API/ABI compatible.
In a former article I’ve talked about the XMPP:Jingle protocol to find a good replacement for Skype.
Some people asked me about Ekiga, is this a good software or not ? and how you can use it ?
Aupeo, a Pandora-like music streaming service, has just rolled out its first smartphone app for iOS and Android devices. Although its wide range of music, genres, subgenres, and preference-tuning features are impressive, Aupeo’s eye-candy-rich smartphone app is frustrating to use.
Or was it ‘Day One’? I can never quite decide… Either way, it was Wednesday, though after spending Tuesday night awake in the airport I was a little disoriented.
The WebWorld Sprint has begun at the Linux Hotel near Essen in Germany. All the attendees arrived throughout Wednesday and – in contrast to conditions in Randa the sun has been shining on us. Yesterday evening we had a barbecue in the hotel garden, enjoyed some evening sun and then got to the first of the meetings about the extravagant number of KDE subdomains and our plans for the sprint.
This functionality did not come out of the box with Kubuntu 11.04, but a little investigation revealed that it was added when I tried out the latest release of Muon Suite (The awesome Package installer which should replace kpackagekit on the next version of Kubuntu) I must have installed a package called plasma-runner-installer and probably forgot all about it.
Another article about the GNOME Shell. Nothing really to see here, it’s just opinion, and yours is as good as mine. If you are bored however, read on.
Recent trials with GNOME 3 using the Fedora Live CD’s did not go so well. They always dumped me into fallback mode which is, despite some claiming it to be a solution for GNOME 2 lovers, nowhere near good enough as a tide me over, and it looked unfinished. To be fair these were all before Fedora 15 final arrived, or were built on Fedora 14 but at that time GNOME 3 was still in development.
[...]
At present GNOME 3, with or without Shell, does not look like a serious desktop for serious work.
I’m amazed what GNOME team accomplished with GNOME 3.0, this is just an amazingly modern, slick and very usable desktop and at the same time original and not going after OSX or any other desktop. GNOME 3 is far from perfect but for a first release it’s a really solid one.
Only downside so far I found is that GNOME 3.0 makes usage of Compiz impossible and incompatible, so you can wave goodbye to great usabillity and eyecandy from plugins like Cube, Wobbly, Expo, Wall and Zoom Desktop. Hopefully GNOME 3 development team will provide some layer of compatility between mutter and compiz so that compiz plugins could still be used with GNOME 3.
Allan, who is working for several gnome applications, posted an update to the recent gnome status about the development of gnome 3.2. One of the updates planned for the latest version of the desktop is a modified overview mode. There are two important changes to the overview mode compared with the version 3.0. One is a modified buttons (windows/applications) that allow you to view the appropriate category.
Gnome 3 looks to the future without fear. It even looks like the future, when everybody will have hooks implanted in their foreheads so they can look at their smartphones while they’re walking down the street. I’m getting old, and I’ve been kind of cranky for a while now. I don’t especially want to learn a new human interface. My phone is dull—borderline retarded, even—but I can usually make and receive calls on it, most of which are on the order of “this is Dr. Proctologist’s office confirming Edward’s appointment”. I don’t hate Gnome 3, but that’s because I don’t hate anything about Linux, and I don’t let myself hate anything in (or out of) Linuxland until I’ve used it for a couple of weeks, and I’m not a hateful sort of person anyway, and I haven’t managed to find the time to use Gnome 3 very much yet.
[...]
But Foresight’s my favorite. Since I installed it, I’ve been gravitating to it: given a choice (all three of my computers are multi-boot, and two have Foresight), I’m going into Foresight more than any other distro
After some useful feedback from visitors to my GNU/Linux & BSD Logo Zoo, I made version 2.0 at last. This time I included Plant distros, too. With them, I tried to take into account as many other distros as I could, but let me apologize if your favorite distro is still missing.
The PCLinuxOS Magazine staff is pleased to announce the release of the June 2011 issue of the PCLinuxOS Magazine. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published by volunteers from the community. The magazine is lead by Paul Arnote, Chief Editor, and Assistant Editors Andrew Strick and Meemaw. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license, and some rights are reserved.
I have been watching the Mageia development since it was first announced. As soon as I saw that Mageia 1 had gone from a release candidate to a final release I started the Transmission torrent download of three of the ISO files to keep and used one of them (mageia-dvd-1-i586.iso) to check it out with VirtualBox.
Santos developed TurboVNC so it could enable its geoscientists to work on reservoir models using light clients, with all of the processing being done in central servers.
Also competing for the award were Nissan, DreamWorks, Verizon and Emirates. The award winner was chosen by voting by the open source developers at the summit.
The Fedora Project, a Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT) sponsored and community-supported open source collaboration, today announced that Ricky Elrod is the recipient of the 2011 Fedora Scholarship, a program now in its fourth year. The Fedora Scholarship program recognizes college and university-bound students across the globe for their contributions to free software and the Fedora Project. Elrod has spent significant time working within Fedora’s Infrastructure Team, a group of volunteers that manage the servers and applications that run Fedora. He was selected from an impressive applicant pool and plans to continue his education at the University of Akron this fall and major in Computer Science.
uGet is a GTK+ download manager that runs on both Linux and Windows. The latest uGet 1.8.0, released today, brings support for Torrent and Metalink files (by using aria2), Ubuntu AppIndicator as well as GTK3 support.
For six years I spent my professional career using and supporting Linux on the desktop. Outside of work and subsequent employment with Imagineer Systems & Memset I’ve been using Macs. A few days ago I decided to head back to Linux.
[...]
Ubuntu is a marvellous operating system. It’s clean, consistent and does what it says on the tin.
The first alpha of what will become Ubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot” has been released by the Canonical and Ubuntu developers. This development milestone is the first on the roadmap which sees another two alpha and two beta versions before the final release on 13 October. The Alpha 1 is specifically aimed at developers as an early snapshot of ongoing work after the major system-wide changes have been made.
Oneiric Ocelot is based on Linux kernel 2.6.39 and uses Gcc 4.6 as the default compiler. Network-manager version 0.9 has also been introduced in Alpha 1, which the release notes point out has broken API compatibility. GNOME 3 has also been brought into the system, and some components have been changed, while other desktop elements are in transition, to make use of GNOME 3′s APIs; this does not mean that the controversial Unity desktop is going away, just that underpinnings are moving from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3. Packages in transition, and their impact, are now being tracked. Progress, planned development and specifications are documented in the Blueprints for Oneiric web page.
Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot alpha 1 has been released today and it comes with GNOME 3 (the GNOME application stack such as Gedit 3, Nautilus 3, etc. – but it doesn’t come with GNOME Shell by default; however, GNOME Shell is available in the official Ubuntu 11.10 repositories) like we saw in our previous Oneiric post and of course, Unity by default. Also, the classic GNOME session has been replaced with Unity 2D so starting with Ubuntu 11.10 alpha 1, those with hardware that doesn’t support the regular Unity will be logged in to Unity 2D.
The Barnes & Noble NOOK Color is turning out to be a ridiculously versatile device. Originally positioned as a color eBook reader which just happened to run Google Android, it didn’t take long for hackers to figure out how to root the tablet and install their own apps. Now another hack shows that it’s possible to run a completely different operating system on the eReader: MeeGo Linux.
MeeGoExperts spotted a demo of a NOOK Color running MeeGo at Computex in Taiwan. The responsible party is a company called Nomovok which develops MeeGo and other open source applications.
The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.4.0, a major release of the free office suite for personal productivity developed by a community of sponsored and volunteer developers, and supported worldwide by local communities of volunteers. LibreOffice 3.4.0 is the second major release of the suite since the announcement of The Document Foundation in September 2010 and incorporates the contributions of over 120 developers (six times as many as the first beta released on the launch date).
One of the unresolved issues in the Oracle v. Google case is whether certain Oracle in-house counsel, including their general counsel, will be given access to documents produced by Google which Google has declared as “HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL – FOR ATTORNEYS EYES ONLY!”
If smartphones progress significantly in the ergonomics, they could slice into the netbook market chunk. Tablets also pose a risk, as they blend phone use with netbook size and comfort, although they remain pricey and not as good as the competition, yet.
Currently, it looks as if the netbook is not going to die anytime soon. Half across the globe, it is still the most cost-effective computing device, in terms of price, size, capabilities, and overall usability. Not quite a high-end gaming rig, but then, it has some ten inches of screen equity, a decent resolution and enough hard disk space to store a handful of data. Internet connectivity can also be quite good. But all this may change.
Netbooks will hold as little as 5% market and as much as 30%, all depending how the competition with the smartphone turns out. This will mainly be dictated by the giants like Intel and AMD. The big CPU vendors may eventually choose to leave the smartphone market dominance to ARM and focus on other segments.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that Windows 8 would would launch sometime next year. His firm says otherwise. “It appears there was a misstatement,” a Microsoft spokesperson recently said
Microsoft has delayed its Windows 8 program after vendor outrage over the extremely tight restrictions that it would have placed on chip vendors and OEMs developing Windows 8 devices. DigiTimes is reporting that Microsoft has postponed its Integrated Development Program (IDP) for Windows 8 over the next two weeks.
the Syrian government Friday shut down all Internet services. Internet monitoring firm Renesys reported that starting around 7 a.m. EDT today, close to two-thirds of all Syrian networks were suddenly unreachable from the global Internet. In just 30 minutes, routes to 40 of 59 Syrian networks were withdrawn from the global routing table, Reneys’ chief technology officer James Cowie said in a blog post. The shutdown has affected all of SyriaTel’s 3G mobile data networks as well as several of the country’s ISPs
[under the expanded cable theft bill it is] a crime to use a friend’s login — even with permission — to listen to songs or watch movies from services such as Netflix or Rhapsody. … services that believe they are getting ripped off can go to law enforcement authorities and press charges. … Stealing $500 or less of entertainment would be a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a fine of $2,500. Theft with a higher price tag would be a felony, with heavier penalties.
Copyright infringement is not theft. The values attributed to these non crimes are as ridiculous as the law itself. Using an otherwise unused service is no more copyright infringement than lending a book to someone. The concept of “blatant offenders” is foolish for many reasons and laws should be written with more precision.
Summary: Tim and Roy talk about FOSS VOIP, several new GNU/Linux distributions, Nokia, and more
TODAY’S show starts by talking about news from Google and ends with some reviews of recently-released operating systems. Tim has the show notes in his site.
Today’s closing track is “Somebody Like Me” by Erica Nicole, taken from SXSW 2010 (get the torrents legally here). We have many more in the pipeline for future shows.
Summary: Realisation that Microsoft not only impedes development in software but also development in hardware, mostly for anti-competitive reasons (but spun as the opposite)
DEVICES which run Linux (sometimes Android) are likely to be hobbled by Microsoft’s dirty schemes in which it pays hardware companies to impose artificial limitations. It helps show just to what degree Microsoft is against innovation; its dogmatic approach makes the products which everyone uses a lot worse and a lot more expensive. We coverred this throughout the week, but there is newer information now. According to this report, having failed in the hardware market itself, Microsoft is trying to gain influence over hardware makers (although it mostly fails because now they have other options to go to, notably Linux). To quote part of this report:
Microsoft wants to influence PC manufacturers over such details as the aspect ratio they choose for displays, where buttons and radio antennas are located, and even the width of the bezel, or rim, around the edge of the screen.
As we pointed out before, we are seeing Microsoft do just what it did a couple of years back when GNU/Linux was growing on sub-notebooks. Microsoft’s Windows profits declined after that. Be prepared Microsoft to spin and lie about it — pretending that the problem was GNU/Linux or Android itself and that Microsoft is doing this to offer “better experience” or something along those lines. Who is that a “better experience” for? Microsoft shareholders?
What Europe needs is not what the United States needs
Summary: News suggesting that IBM is majorly among those who brought Peer to Patent to Europe
IBM is a company which we have ambivalent feelings about. On the one hand, IBM helps the Free software phenomenon (embracing it rather than attacking it), but on the other hand, IBM is still a proprietary software company at its core and therefore it advocates for policies which conflict with a Free software mentality/doctrine. It is no secret that IBM prefers to keep software patents and its strategy for defending Free software in the process mostly covers software that IBM depends on. OIN and RPX, for example, do nothing but legitimise the system while also trying to reform it in some ways (lawsuits deterrence), especially in ways that are beneficial to IBM and its allies. On the surface, this may seem fine. OIN makes the current broken system a little less lethal. However, it does distract from much better and more permanent solutions to the problem at hand. Notably, the OIN does nearly nothing to highlight the fundamental problems with software patents. A glance at its backers shows why.
Recently we wrote about an initiative whose impact is largely similar. The problem is, this initiative now goes further into Australia and the United Kingdom which might, in turn, help validate some patents there. To quote the FFII’s president::
IBM to validate its software patents through the Peer2Patent in the UK:
The peer-to-patent approach is in some ways making matters worse. It takes patents that may already be dubious and then it reaches out for others to either dismiss or reinforce them. Here is what a pro-patents publication writes about this subject:
The first 20 patent applications in the UK IPO’s peer-to-patent pilot have been posted online
Now it is time for volunteers to garden or groom them for the likes of IBM, eh? Well, citing this report, the FFII’s president points out that:
Patent applications granted after using the Peer To Patent website review will be potentially stronger
We explained our views on the subject many times before. Support the FFII, not the Peer To Patent approach. The solution to the patent problem depends on the vested interests; to IBM, “bad” patents are the problem. To Microsoft, “anti-Microsoft” patents are the problem. For the vast majority of people, all software patents (maybe patents in general, depending on the area/country) are a problem.
Summary: Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly fame (the publisher) joins the tongue lashing against software patents; Techrights commends him.
Tim O’Reilly has had a mixed bag when it comes to techrights, in which he commented before. We appreciate the work he did bringing Open Source to the public’s awareness as the books his company publishes definitely help adoption of Free/Open Source software (we have an interview about that coming). The main Issue that we have had with O’Reilly is that he is inclusive to the point where even hostile intrusions (notably by Microsoft) get tolerated and funding from Microsoft is allowed to have impact [1, 2, 3, 4]. Another issue with the company and not the person is its recent deal with Microsoft and also some neglect of “Openness” at the code level, not to mention standards. APIs are not really “openness”, they are an invitation to become dependent on someone else.
At any rate, we wish not to berate O’Reilly. Rather, we strive to highlight areas where there is room for debate and hopefully better understanding. We agree with Tim on many of the points he makes, including his important denunciation of software patents in this tweet where he says “I’m with @fredwilson: Enough is enough http://bit.ly/kfXXMV We need some serious reform on software patents.” Some people who work for O’Reilly, notably Andy, are actually pro-software patents. Maybe that will change.
Yes, software patents are now being fought against also by Tim (we don’t say O’Reilly as that would cause confusion w.r.t. the company/person), who is very influential in the United States. Fred Wilson himself is very pleased with the attention he got for speaking out against software patents the other day:
Clearly this is a hot topic. It’s got me hot and it’s got a few others hot too. That’s a good thing. It’s clear that we need to do more to fix the software patents mess and the reaction to yesterday’s post is a strong signal to me on that front.
We can second that as Techrights grew very fast since it started covering software patents in 2006. Now more than ever we see software patents doing a lot of harm everywhere in the news, so proprietary software developers — not just Free software developers — speak out against these. Let’s keep up the fight. The SCOTUS cannot betray the people for too long.
1. Know your operating system. Knowing what operating system and version you have is a great help for when you have problems and need outside help. It also helps for when you wish to install programs so you can choose the correct one for your operating system.
Well, June has arrived for another year, and that means the dog days of summer can’t be far behind.
Scorching temperatures have already begun to beat down upon parts of the Linux blogosphere, in fact, which may be why there’s nary a barstool to be found down at the seedy but well air-conditioned Punchy Penguin Saloon, where Linux Girl plans to stay until, oh, say, October or so.
There’s been plenty to discuss in recent days, of course, what with Computex going on and all the excitement over Oracle’s (Nasdaq: ORCL) OpenOffice move, but many bloggers have preferred to keep their spirits up with a spirited debate instead.
PC users owe it to themselves to consider their options, and those options include a broad array of Linux distributions tailored to virtually every need.
Asus has started selling its Eee PC netbooks preloaded with Ubuntu 10.10.
Asus will initially sell the 1001PXD, 1011PX and 1015PX, with more models added through the year.
The original Asus Eee PC 701 – which kickstarted the netbook craze in 2007 – ran on a version of Xandros Linux, prompting speculation that Linux was on the verge of a mainstream breakthrough. It was quickly superseded by Windows XP, however, with tales of high return rates of Linux-based netbooks.
The Traditional Desktop computer, on the other hand is a Jack of all trades, a multipurpose, powerhouse tool. With the conventional computer you have flexibility and power. Once again that is not what the Chrome OS is meant to give.
So, being that the mobile netbook/tablet market and the traditional desktop market are not compatible with the new ChromeOS Operating System and the devices optimized for it. What can we use it for? Where, in the vast operating system lanscape, we can find its niche market?
In the medium to large Desktop monitors… I think! With the ChromeOS installed there, we only need to add a keyboard with a touch pad and/or a mouse to have a working, comfortable, Internet access device. Simple to setup, simple to use, and optimized to do what 95 percent of the traditional Desktop Users do with their computers. Surf the net for work and fun.
Independent Ubuntu computer manufacturer System76 refreshed their popular 15.6″ Serval Professional line earlier this year, upgrading the laptop with an impressively fast second gen Intel Sandy Bridge i7 quad core processor, powerful Nvidia graphics, a lovely 1080p display and lots of options for optical drives and storage.
The two-figure version numbers are still creating quite a bit of hassle that the developers are working hard to overcome. Inaccurate work by hardware manufacturers causes problems with rebooting and with the handling of UEFI hardware. The maintenance of kernel series 2.6.38 is soon to be discontinued.
Only hours after the first release candidate of Linux 3.0 was issued, the developers released the first patches to improve the way the kernel handles version numbers which consist of two, instead of three, numbers. Changes include a workaround which allows the version of the depmod program that was current until recently to cope with Linux 3.0. At the same time, a patch to fix the cause of the depmod problems was incorporated in version 3.13 of the module-init-tools, which were also released shortly after Linux 3.0-rc1. Several developers have suggested that, due to these and similar problems, Torvalds should consider using version number 3.0.0 instead of 3.0; however, the alpha male of Linux kernel development has so far not commented on this.
2011 is a year of milestones. Not only is it the year that sees Linux User magazine turn 100, but it’s also a year that Linux celebrates it’s 20th birthday. What better way to commemorate these auspicious occasions than with a walk down memory lane courtesy of past Linux User editor, Richard Hillesley?
Hello, I’am Efim Bushmanov a freelance researcher and here is my project files on skype research.
While “Wall Street Journal” makes politics and skype today’s trend, i want to publish my research on this. My aim is to make skype open source. And find friends who can spend many hours for completely reverse it.
Just weeks after Microsoft announced it had acquired Skype for $8.5 billion, a Russian researcher has announced that he has successfully been able to reverse engineer the official Skype desktop implementation in an attempt to make the service open source.
Good news for Free Software and open protocols: There has been a sucessful attempt to reverse engineer Skype (Magent URI). Nice timing, shortly after Microsoft’s acquisition Skype could finally be broken. He is also including modified Skype executables allowing debugging etc., which is usually prevented by really elaborated anti-features (encryption, kills itself if there is a debugger etc.). The sample code is able to send a message via Skype, awesome!
I’ve been using graphic photo manipulation software programs for nearly 20 years. After using several, I’ve come to the conclusion that all of them are quite similar in features, bells, and whistles. The main difference comes in how they carry out the task at hand. That is to say, the menus, tool bars, and commands are laid out differently from program to program. So, migrating from one program to another isn’t difficult, it’s just that you need to learn (or relearn) the “moves” and menus in order to get the application to respond to your input.
Oil Rush is a real-time naval strategy game based on group control. It combines the strategic challenge of a classical RTS with the sheer fun of Tower Defence genre. OilRush was expected to be available by 2010 itself, but it didn’t happen. OilRush RTS game for Linux is now available for pre order and you can expect a release very soon. Price: $19.95
The bottom line is, if you work a lot with text, consider working with raw text and a powerful editor. Putting the whole thing through an HTML-based piece of software like WordPress or even LaTeX-powered software/front ends like LyX is always possible to do at the end. But the real power is in words; the lighter and faster, the better. To improve access to files and information of interest, divide the text editors/sessions into separate desktops. This reduces movement between desktops and enables focus on particular activities, leaving distractions aside. If you have to open the file manager a lot, then perhaps a better workflow is being missed. Shortcuts too can help.
Final Thoughts: The last time I used an LXDE-based distribution, LXDE was considered a geeks-only desktop environment. Since then, it seems to have developed into a nearly fully-featured desktop environment. It is usable by all, but not yet at the level of a KDE desktop. The main problem with Fedora Spins is that they do not seem to have received the same level of development attention as the main edition. But if you are looking for an alternative distribution to a GNOME 3-based distribution, and have the time to tweak and customize a lightweight distribution to fit your needs, this LXDE spin might be what you are looking for.
Last week, Fedora 15 was officially released. I installed a copy on my laptop, and quickly got back to work. The install process was the fastest I’ve seen for any Linux distro – about 15 minutes to install the complete operating system from the LiveCD installer.
Over the last few months we have crossed the barrier of over 100 server models certified across all Ubuntu releases currently in maintenance. Last monthly alone we add 30 new servers to the certification list.
We have been working with DELL to certify a large portion of their PowerEdgeline via what we call component equivalency.
A new official Ubuntu YouTube channel has popped up stuffed with short promotional videos.
Called ‘Celebrate Ubuntu’, the channel was set up by Canonicals’ Iain Farrell as a result of discussions held at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in May. Those discussions centred around the idea of creating a ‘community toolkit’ that, as Iain explains on his blog, ‘…would allow anyone excited enough to show off and celebrate their use and love of Ubuntu.’
We added Family Farm to the Software Center last week and I took a few hours (of non-work time!) to have a look at it. Summary is that it’s a fun simulation game for the whole family where your job is to build up your farm.
Most VARs in the open source channel are happy just to get free code contributions from their users. Canonical, however, has taken community engagements one step further with the announcement of a user-driven hardware-certification program. Will it work? Here are some thoughts.
Most software vendors can probably think of more than a few things they’d rather do than test hardware to make sure it works well with their products. Hardware certification demands many tedious hours, not to mention the acquisition of lots of hardware. Nonetheless, for companies like Canonical, whose main product is the Ubuntu operating system, hardware certification is a must-have to appeal seriously to users who want to be sure the Linux-based OS will be compatible with their computers.
With the extensive Linux power consumption tests that I’ve been carrying out to solve some nasty Linux kernel power regressions and find other areas for optimization, one of the requests that has come in frequently is to compare the power consumption of the KDE, GNOME, Unity, Xfce, and LXDE desktops. After the article earlier this week to look at how the desktop environments / compositing window managers affect OpenGL performance, I carried out a quick desktop power test. In this article are battery power consumption results for Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Lubuntu.
Last week the PowerUser community ran a poll to decide the new logo/branding for our community and the submission by Thorsten Wilms was selected as the winner. Many thanks to Thorsten and all the other people who submitted artwork, they were all fantastic.
Linux Mint is currently my favorite Linux distribution of all and is the one I use almost exclusively on a regular basis. Since the release of Linux Mint 9 LTS “Isadora”, I have made it a point to review new releases of Linux Mint. Six months ago, I previewed Linux Mint 10 “Julia” GNOME RC. Since then, I have also reviewed two versions of Debian-based Linux Mint. However, due to Ubuntu’s fixed 6-month release schedule, I haven’t been able to check out the latest version of Ubuntu-based Linux Mint until now.
Regular readers of this blog know Linux Mint needs no further introduction. The only things to consider while reading this are that Linux Mint also has a Debian-based version that is going strong, while Ubuntu’s state of transition (what with Unity, Wayland, et cetera) could pose difficulties for Ubuntu-based Linux Mint in the future.
One of the many features the Enlightenment desktop has that sets it apart from other desktop environments/window managers is the profiles. Those that have used Bodhi Linux or have compiled Enlightenment from source should already have some idea of what profiles are.
Profiles are a powerful tool, they control the layout of your enlightenment desktop. I’ve found those coming from other desktops (such as KDE or Gnome) often confuse the idea of profiles with theme. Themes control the colors of your desktop and the appearance of your gadgets.
The open nature of the Android Market is becoming diminished as Google realizes it needs to take a more active role in its policing it.
Over the weekend developer Yong Zhang, known on the Android Market as yongzh saw his Android developer account revoked and all the apps he offers removed from the Market. The apps he was offering were all emulators for popular older systems including the NES, SNES, Genesis, N64, Atari, Game Gear, and Game Boy. But Google has seen fit to remove all of them ( including Nesoid, Snesoid, Gensoid, N64oid, Ataroid, Gearoid, and Gameoid).
Android has been a hot topic at Computex Taipei this year, with various players discussing the pros and cons of developing apps for the respective hardware platforms such as ARM or x86. However when it comes to the MIPS platform, CEO and president of MIPS, Sandeep Vij pointed out that in terms of the application universe, well over 90% of the apps that are available in the Android marketplace work on MIPS.
The open source w3af project released a 1.0 stable version this week after five release candidates and months of development. W3af enables developers and security researchers to audit, discover and test Web applications for vulnerabilities.
Don’t expect Oracle’s donation of the code of OpenOffice.org to The Apache Software Foundation to settle anything about the troubled office suite. If the situation does improve, it will be small thanks to Oracle.
According to Oracle, the donation is proof that “Oracle continues to demonstrate its commitment to the developer and open source communities. Donating OpenOffice.org to Apache gives this popular consumer software a mature, open, and well established infrastructure to continue well into the future.”
However, from the way that the donation was done, and the situation it leaves the project in, it looks very much like a last spiteful gesture toward the rival Document Foundation, the project that develops LibreOffice, the OpenOffice.org fork. The result is a future that leaves the future as troubled as the present. At the very least, to some observers it appears to show a disdain for the community that borders on arrogance.
IBM is still making Lotus Symphony. Remember Symphony? (Don’t worry, it slips my mind occasionally, too.) But IBM is still pushing this OpenOffice.org-based suite as a business desktop application, and Big Blue will be much happier keeping OpenOffice.org with the Apache Software Foundation than The Document Foundation.
Why? Because when, not if, the OpenOffice.org proposal is approved by the Apache Software Foundation, the OpenOffice.org will be licensed under the Apache Software License (ASL) v2. This means IBM and any other Apache OpenOffice.org project member can innovate the heck out the source code and not be obligated to give back to the mainline OpenOffice.org code, since the ASL is a non-copyleft license. IBM and other OpenOffice.org contributors will also be able to re-license OpenOffice.org code under any license they want, including a proprietary license, should they wish. It also keeps a major Open Document Format project ensconced within IBM-friendly governance.
Why The Document Foundation is a better choice than the Apache Foundation
Another point to consider is the developers who will be taking care of OpenOffice. With OpenOffice in the hands of the Apache Foundation, they have to get a new team of developers to take on the development of the project. I am not saying that the Apache Foundation is not capable of doing that. But, for a completely new team to take over a project the size of OpenOffice can be very tough. In fact, that was what happened to Oracle after almost all of the previous developers left. But, The Document Foundation has most of the previous OpenOffice developers. After forking OpenOffice, they are developing one of the best office suite around – LibreOffice.
IBM has announced its supporting role in the new OpenOffice.org code base submitted to The Apache Software Foundation Incubator. This is all part of an effort for the company to continue its long-standing commitment to open source. The firm will contribute staff resources to collaborate with the Apache community during the project’s incubation period to further the Open Document Format standard.
The Java Community Process may get a welcome and much-needed breath of fresh air if a new proposal from Oracle is approved.
The proposal, entitled JCP.next JSR 1, which is actually Java Specification Request 348, would see a reorganization of the existing Java Community Process to make the JCP a more open environment in which developers can work.
According to the JCP Program Office, JCP.next JSR 1 (JJ1) “will focus on changes to the JCP Process Document in the following areas: transparency, participation, agility and governance. The Process Document describes the formal procedures used in the JCP program.”
JSRs, by the way, are defined as “actual descriptions of proposed and final specifications for the Java platform.”
The ASF is best known for project like the ubiquitous Apache HTTP server — but Apache is home to dozens of projects. Still, doesn’t OpenOffice.org seem just a bit out of place here? Jagielski says no. “Although Apache is mostly known for server-side code (either complete servers, middle-ware, libraries, etc…) we do have some client-side and userland projects. Apache OFBiz is likely the best example.” In fact, Jagielski says what is “typical” for Apache is “building (or even “re-building”) communities around those codebases.”
On Wednesday, the Commission laid out its strategy for reforming the way EU public institutions deal with standards. Open-source advocates welcomed the strategy, saying it would promote competition, reduce lock-in and lead to faster standard development.
[...]
Taylor added that Oasis would not have had to cede control of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard to ISO in 2008, if the European Commission had not mandated this as a condition for accepting the standard. “Under this new arrangement there’s potentially no need to go to ISO,” he said. “Hopefully what we will get is faster standards to market without adding levels of bureaucracy.”
iLeaks founder Julian Assange has been awarded the Martha Gellhorn prize for Journalism.
The prize is awarded annually to a journalist whose work has “penetrated the established version of events and told and unpalatable truth that exposes establishment propaganda, or ‘official drivel’, as Martha Gellhorn called it.”
Gellhorn, who died in 1998, was a well-known war correspondent and author.
Hundreds of employees worked closely in teams, devising mortgage-based securities — billions of dollars’ worth — that were examined by lawyers, approved by management, then sold to investors like hedge funds, commercial banks and insurance companies.
At one trading desk sat Fabrice Tourre, a midlevel 28-year-old Frenchman who was little known not just outside Goldman but even inside the firm. That changed three years later, in 2010, when he achieved the dubious distinction of becoming the only individual at Goldman and across Wall Street sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for helping to sell a mortgage-securities investment, in one of the hundreds of mortgage deals created during the bubble years.
What was Timothy Geithner thinking back in 2008 when, as president of the New York Fed, he decided to give Goldman Sachs a $30 billion interest-free loan as part of an $80 billion secret float to favored banks? The sordid details of that program were finally made public this week in response to a court order for a Freedom of Information Act release, thanks to a Bloomberg News lawsuit. Sorry, my bad: It wasn’t an interest-free loan; make that .01 percent that Goldman paid to borrow taxpayer money when ordinary folks who missed a few credit card payments in order to finance their mortgages were being slapped with interest rates of more than 25 percent.
One wonders if Barack Obama was fully aware of Geithner’s deceitful performance at the New York Fed when he appointed him treasury secretary in the incoming administration. The president was probably ignorant of this particular giveaway, as were key members of Congress. “I wasn’t aware of this program until now,” Barney Frank, D-Mass., who at the time chaired the House Financial Services Committee, admitted in referring to Geithner’s “single-tranche open-market operations” program. And there was no language in the Dodd-Frank law supposedly reining in the banks that compelled the Fed to reveal the existence of this program.
Of course, on its own the report can’t achieve much in these three areas. But by raising these issues in a public way it has effectively put down markers. It means that when writing about the area of copyright and its enforcement, we can point back to statements about the need for evidence-based policies, and the fact that practically all the studies trotted out by the content industries are worthless, or that the economic damage of piracy is by no means a given.
James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage: Together with Paradis, you will be working on the fourth attempt at Canadian copyright reform. Bill C-32 provides the starting point, but we need to establish a stronger link between copyright and innovation by instituting greater flexibility on digital locks and fair dealing.
The next four years also offers the chance to create a true national digital library as the foundation of a digital cultural policy. Canada has only digitized 13 per cent of its documentary text and less than one per cent of its video, audio, and photographs. You should assume a leadership position by actively working with provincial and local groups to develop a world-class national digital library that makes Canadian culture available from coast to coast and around the world by July 2015.
The Green Group (Greens / EFA) in the European Parliament are working hard to ensure that the European Parliament does not give its consent to the ACTA treaty. På ett möte i dag antogs att gruppen kommer att driva kravet på att alla av unionens förhandlingsdokument skall offentliggöras, i enlighet med den förfrågan som EDRi (European Digital Rights) framförde till utskottet för Internationell handel (INTA) den 11.e maj i år. At a meeting today was that the group will drive the requirement that all the Union’s negotiating document to be published in accordance with the request that EDRi (European Digital Rights) expressed to the Committee on International Trade (INTA) on 11th May this year. Vidare kommer man fortsätta driva kravet på att skicka ACTA-avtalet till European Court of Justice (ECJ) och kommer att försöka få upp sin resolution på dagordningen vid nästa plenarsammanträde. Moreover it will continue to drive the requirement to send ACTA treaty to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and will try to bring up his resolution on the agenda at the next session.
Resumen: La Corte Suprema de los Estados Unidos (SCOTUS) muestra su compromiso con otros dudosos departamentos/ramas del gobierno de los Estados Unidos (USPTO) en lugar de justicia para el pueblo.
SCOTUS dá otro golpe a los desarrolladores de software (como antes[http://techrights.org/2010/06/29/scotus-bilski-analysis/]) por apoyar lo irazonable y exigir que los codificadores esencialmente estudien cientos de miles de patentes antes de escribir una sola línea de código. Ars Technica dice que, según SCOTUS, “‘ceguera voluntaria’ para infracción de patentes no aceptable[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/06/scotus-willful-blindness-to-patent-infringement-not-ok.ars]“:
En una decisión desequilibrada 8-1, la Corte Suprema el martes sostuvo que “ceguera voluntaria” a la existencia de una patente no te salvará de los cargos de inducir a otras empresas para violar la patente en cuestión. El caso ha atraído el interés de la industria del software ya que una sentencia de primera instancia había elegido un estándar más laxo, “indiferencia deliberada”, que una coalición de empresas de software advirtió sería malo para la innovación. La Corte Suprema estuvo de acuerdo con el tribunal de primera instancia que el acusado era responsable aquí, pero lo hizo con una regla más estrecha que tiene menos posibilidades de atrapar a los infractores inadvertidos en el futuro.
Recuerde que la “justicia” es relativa y también puede ser pronunciado “como nosotros” (los ricos, los poderosos que utilizan el sistema legal para protegerse de la población). Esta magnitud de amiguismo puede hacer fácilmente los desarrolladores europeos de software digan que la USPTO y SCOTUS (quienes defiende la misma línea, ser parte de la misma institución) “¡Metánsela donde no les llegue el sol!” “Innovamos en paz”, aconsejó Knuth al sistema europeo[http://techrights.org/2009/05/20/knuth-tells-europe-no-sw-pats/] cuando instó contra las patentes de software. Knuth está exactamente respaldaldo a Google, que sufre mucho de los ataques de patentes de Microsoft (y el impuesto de patente). █
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)
The US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is planning to weigh in on a case which will quite likely drive patent trolls out of the Eastern District of Texas, where all the courts that are notoriously friendly towards them reside
The scope of patents in the United States is rapidly tightening (meaning, fewer patents are deemed acceptable by the courts) and Fitbit’s patent case is the latest case to bite the dust
Pretending there is a violent, physical threat that is imminent, Paranoid in Chief Benoît Battistelli is alleged to have pursued weapons on EPO premises
A look at actions taken at a political level against the EPO in spite of the EPO's truly awkward exemption from lawfulness or even minimal accountability
Selective emphasis on very few cases and neglect of various other dimensions help create a parallel reality (or so-called 'fake news') where software patents are on the rebound
Example of abysmal service at the EPO, where high staff turnover and unreasonable pressure from above may be leading to communication issues that harm stakeholders the most
Battistelli's circle (or "Team Battistelli") is starting to disintegrate, perhaps in anticipation of a tough year full of new leaks ("WillyLeaks" as some put it)
In light of Trump's awkward history with judges (e.g. attacking them) one can hope that upcoming patent cases at the highest court won't be affected by his pro-big corporations agenda
Free/Open Source software (FOSS), which encourages sharing, is increasingly becoming infested or subjected to software patents barbwire, courtesy of those who want to monopolise rather than share
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), led by David Ruschke, continues to function as another 'layer' that ensures patent quality by weeding out bad patents and here are some of the latest cases
Nokia's saber-rattling (and now lawsuits) against Apple are a worrying sign of what's to come, impacting Android OEMs as well as Apple, which is why the post-Microsoft Nokia is dangerous
Now is the time for Australian software developers to explain to their government that they don't want any software patents, otherwise their voices will be hijacked by a bunch of law firms that totally misrepresent them
Summary: Realisation that Microsoft not only impedes development in software but also development in hardware, mostly for anti-competitive reasons (but spun as the opposite)
He is also including modified Skype executables allowing debugging etc., which is usually prevented by really elaborated anti-features (encryption, kills itself if there is a debugger etc.). The sample code is able to send a message via Skype, awesome!
Content is available under CC-BY-SA