05.08.13
Posted in News Roundup at 5:15 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
![GNOME bluefish](/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/120px-Gartoon-Bluefish-icon.png)
Contents
-
Three Android-powered NASA “PhoneSat” nanosatellites deorbited and burned up in the atmosphere on April 27 after successfully completing their six-day mission. Meanwhile, the Android- and Linux-powered STRaND-1 nanosat, which was launched by the U.K.’s Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. and Surrey Space Centre on Feb. 25, is still orbiting, but has yet to phone home.
Despite the risks of space, a growing number of organizations are developing tiny, low-cost nanosatellites built with Linux, Android, and Arduino gear. Like the NASA and Surrey missions, many are using open source designs.
-
When Austin startup TrackingPoint calls their product “Precision Guided Firearms – PGFs” they are serious about it living up to the name. We are talking about customized hunting rifles, such as the .300 Winchester Magnum, that have been fitted with scopes out of a sci-fi movie.
-
Coverity has called Linux the “benchmark of quality” in its newly published 2012 Coverity Scan Open Source report. The company annually brings together millions of lines of code from open source and, using the same defect-scanning technology that it uses with its enterprise customers, scans that code for problems to produce data on defect densities.
-
-
-
Linux use in the enterprise is increasing as the Linux Foundation verified last month in its Enterprise End User Survey.
In fact, more than 80 percent of respondents plan to increase the number of Linux servers in their organizations over the next five years. And 75 percent reported using Linux in the last two years in new applications, services and Greenfield deployments.
-
Android TV sticks with Rockchip RK3066 dual-core processors available sell for as little as $42. But these little boxes let you turn a TV or monitor into a computer capable of running thousands of Android apps. Or if you really want to use an RK3066 stick as a computer you can install Ubuntu.
-
Desktop
-
Quck, when did the first Chromebooks (portable computers running Google’s Chrome OS platform) arrive? The answer is that the initial Chromebooks went on sale in June of 2011, nearly two years ago.
It’s no secret that Chrome OS has not been the same striking success for Google that the Android OS has been. But at the same time, many users have taken notice of the low prices that these portables are offered at, and the many freebies that they come with. For example, the Acer C7 Chromebook, shown here, sells for only $199.
-
I currently run Fuduntu Linux on my main desktop PC. Until just recently I dual-booted Ubuntu and Windows 7, but I finally wiped Windows (hadn’t actually needed it for a long time) and installed Fuduntu, which came really highly recommended. I’m loving it so far. Meanwhile I also have a Samsung Chromebook and an Android phone. We have a bunch of other laptops in my family, but my 12-year-old son is constantly installing new distros on them (he got the Linux Diversity collection for Christmas), so I couldn’t tell you what’s on them at the moment.
-
That’s a much better deal for you than that other OS which forbids all of those things. Oh, sure, you can run that other OS but there are restrictions like a limit of 20 machines networked before having to pay extra, not sharing the software with a friend nor having more than one person at a time using it. That prevents you from getting the value you paid for in the hardware you buy. A computer knows no limits. Why accept such limitations in the software you use? As well, GNU/Linux is much easier to maintain as a few clicks updates all software in the operating system and the applications rather than you having a bunch of applications vulnerable to attack and having to do lots of re-re-reboots. Then there’s malware… In more than a decade of use of GNU/Linux on hundreds of PCs, I have never seen any malware on GNU/Linux while a high percentage of machines running that other OS have malware sapping resources.
You know you want GNU/Linux as an option when you shop for computers. Insist on it and the retailers will supply it. The manufacturers will ship it.
-
On the whole, PC gaming is typically a Windows-only affair. Both Mac and Linux users have had a significantly more limited selection of games to choose from and also a more limited hardware selection too.
-
Audiocasts/Shows
-
Kernel Space
-
-
-
-
-
-
A new version of the Linux kernel has been released. Numbered at version 3.9, the new release has some nifty new features, including support for SSD caching, new processor architectures, power management improvements aimed at tablets and phones, support for Chomebooks and support for Android development.
-
-
-
A new Linux kernel 3.4 has been released, according to a post from Linux fellow Linus Torvalds.
Often a huge barrier for aficionados of both Tux and Android; they now play nicely as Linux kernel brings support for development on Google’s OS along with SSD caching and other Jelly Bean-sweet improvements.
-
CHIP DESIGNER AMD said it is working to get IOMMU v2.5 support in the Linux kernel ahead of the first heterogeneous system architecture (HSA) chip that will come out later this year.
AMD’s upcoming Kaveri chip will be the first to support HSA, which enables the CPU and on-die GPU to access system memory. The firm told The INQUIRER that it is working with the Linux community to get IOMMU v2.5 supported in the kernel in time for the launch of its Kaveri chip.
-
-
Support for the emerging 64-bit ARM Architecture, a.k.a. ARM64 or AArch64, will see better support with the Linux 3.10 kernel.
-
Ten weeks to the day after the arrival of version 3.8, Linux creator Linus Torvalds on Monday released version 3.9 of the Linux kernel.
“This week has been very quiet, which makes me much more comfortable doing the final 3.9 release, so I guess the last -rc8 ended up working,” wrote Torvalds in the announcement email early Monday. “Because not only aren’t there very many commits here, even the ones that made it really are tiny and not pretty obscure and not very interesting.”
-
Along with an assortment of other power management improvements to land with the Linux 3.10 kernel, a cpufreq driver for ARM’s big.LITTLE is being introduced. There’s also a cpufreq driver for the Exynos 5440 quad-core and the new AMD frequency sensitivity feedback support.
-
I am pleased to announce The Linux Foundation is funding three Linux kernel internships through the Outreach Program for Women administered by the GNOME Foundation. These internships have a $5,000 stipend and come with a $500 travel grant to attend and speak at LinuxCon this fall. This is a great opportunity to work with a mentor and get started with kernel development, which as many articles report, is a great way to land a high-paying job.
-
Linux creator Linus Torvalds last night announced the release of version 3.9 of the kernel. Available for download at kernel.org, Linux 3.9 brings a long list of improvements to storage, networking, file systems, drivers, virtualization, and power management.
-
The developers of the GNU Project Debugger (GDB) have released version 7.6 of their tool. Among GDB’s new features are native as well as target configurations for ARM’s new AArch 64 architecture and the addition numerous new commands and options.
-
A Phoronix reader, Emmanuel Deloget, has written in to share an interview he carried out on his personal blog of various ARM SoC GPU driver developers. The drivers covered include Lima (ARM Mali), GRATE (NVIDIA Tegra), Videocore (Broadcom), Freedreno (Qualcomm Adreno), and etna_viv (Vivante) hardware.
-
-
The Linux Foundation offers a variety of ways to get Linux training, including online Linux training courses for those who are not able to travel to a Linux Foundation event or one of our classroom Linux training options. We recently caught up with embedded systems engineer Adrian Remonda of the FuDePAN Foundation to ask about his experience in the Linux Kernel Internals & Debugging course (LF320).
-
From data centers to embedded sensors, energy use is one of the toughest issues facing computing. The Linux kernel community has already made great progress in boosting energy efficiency, but there’s still more work to be done to optimize Linux systems, with one area of focus on power-aware scheduling.
-
Beyond knowing about the graphics driver changes coming for the Linux 3.10 kernel, the ALSA/sound kernel driver changes for the soon-to-open merge window are becoming more clear too.
-
Systemd 202 has been released and it begin experimental work on supporting kdbus, the implementation of D-Bus within the Linux kernel. There’s also other fixes and features to this new systemd release.
-
With the release of the Linux 3.9 kernel being imminent, here’s a recap of the most interesting features coming to this next Linux release.
-
Graphics Stack
-
The DRM graphics driver pull request has been submitted for the Linux 3.10 kernel.
If you have been keeping track of Phoronix content, the pull request shouldn’t be a huge surprise. Key changes for the open-source Linux graphics drivers on the kernel-side come down to:
-
Michel Dänzer of AMD has provided a set of patches that should provide for the necessary patterns and intrinsics for AMD to round out GLSL 1.30 support within their RadeonSI open-source Gallium3D driver for Radeon HD 7000/8000 series graphics cards.
-
One month after releasing the very first NVIDIA 319.xx Linux driver beta, NVIDIA has now released their 319.17 driver as a certified Linux driver that supports an assortment of new features.
The NVIDIA 319.12 Beta for Linux introduced support for Optimus-like functionality, initial support for RandR 1.4, improved EFI support, new hardware support, performance fixes, and a whole lot of other work.
-
This new Weston back-end supports SPICE (Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments) remote rendering protocol as used by Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization on the desktop. There’s been a lot of SPICE driver activity as of late with a QXL KMS driver and talk of a potential Gallium3D wrapper driver. This new driver though isn’t out of Red Hat.
-
The RadeonSI Linux driver that supports the Radeon HD 7000 series and future HD 8000 series of graphics cards can now handle compressed textures and 2D tiling.
-
-
One week after a desktop developer meet-up, the lead developer of the KWin window manager, Martin Gräßlin, has written about the history of using KDE/KWin on the Wayland Display Server.
Martin’s blog post began by talking indirectly about Canonical abandoning Wayland in favor of Mir for future releases of Ubuntu Linux, Wayland support for KWin has been a primary goal of Martin’s for the past two years, it took a while for Wayland 1.0 to have a stable and reliable API/ABI, and then earlier this year plans were talked about the KDE/Qt5/Wayland combination.
-
An extensive list of plans for the Wayland/Weston 1.2 release were shared by the project’s founder, Kristian Høgsberg.
On the Wayland mailing list, Kristian laid out his Wayland 1.2 vision. Key points from his e-mail include:
- New major releases on a quarterly basis (every 4 months) while a six month cadence was talked about long ago in the past. Kristian explains, “The motivation for this is that we have a lot of new features and new protocol in the works and a time-based release schedule is a good way to flush out those features. Instead of dragging out a release while waiting for a feature to become ready, we release on a regular schedule to make sure the features that did land get released on time.”
-
At least three commits seeking to improve the performance of Intel’s open-source 3D/OpenGL Mesa driver were merged on Monday.
On the same day as bringing GL2 to Intel’s i915 Mesa driver, Eric Anholt committed a set of improvements to the Intel i965 driver that supports back from the i965 hardware up through the latest Ivy Bridge, Haswell, and Valley View graphics processors. The performance improvements committed today come down to:
-
-
Benchmarks
-
While nearly all modern Intel/AMD x86 hardware is 64-bit capable, among novice Linux users the question commonly is whether to install the 32-bit or 64-bit version of a given distribution. We have previously delivered benchmarks showing Ubuntu 32-bit vs. 64-bit performance while in this article is an updated look in seeing how the 32-bit versus 64-bit binary performance compares when running Ubuntu 13.04 with the Linux 3.8 kernel.
-
One week after delivering updated Radeon Gallium3D vs. AMD Catalyst benchmarks on Ubuntu Linux, we have to share this morning similar results for the open-source and reverse-engineered “Nouveau” Linux graphics driver compared to the proprietary NVIDIA Linux graphics driver. While the Nouveau driver has come a long way and does support the latest Fermi and Kepler GPUs, it’s not without its share of shortcomings. Eleven NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards were used in this latest Phoronix comparison.
-
Applications
-
My last several articles have covered lots of software for doing research in the sciences. But one important area I haven’t covered in detail is the resources available for teaching the next generation of computational scientists. To fill this gap, you can use the code provided through the Open Source Physics project. This project is supported by the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), and it offers several different packages for doing simulations and analysis.
-
Linux and other operating systems are blessed with powerful tools to retrieve and recover valuable data. However, it is not always possible to recover data on a running system. Sometimes the machine will not even boot. This might arise if the boot loader has become corrupted, there is damage to a partition, or vital operating system files have been lost. Alternatively, loss of access to the system might simply arise from a user forgetting their login password. Not being able to use the computer can be incredibly stressful. Of course, some individuals will be happy to get a computer engineer to run a diagnostic on the computer and repair the computer. However, there will inevitably be a delay in getting the machine up and running, together with a hefty invoice.
-
SFXR was once one of the coolest little sound toys out there. It generates retro 8-bit sound effects – at random, with a bunch of sliders and buttons to play with. If you’re familiar with my last post exploring MIDI music production (and the techno-flavored files I was producing) you’ll see where this is going: Adding old-skool lo-fi sound effects to music tracks, quite probably using Audacity to monkey around with them.
-
We try out the best photo editors on Linux
-
Overdrive is one of the largest technology companies that lays down the infrastructure for libraries to loan out digital books. If you have an Android, Windows 8, or iOS device, you can read books right within its dedicated Overdrive app. Up until now, if you were a Linux user, you were often a forgotten minority.
-
Proprietary
-
Instructionals/Technical
-
Games
-
-
-
-
-
-
Road Redemption takes the motorcycle combat-racing gameplay, pioneered by the Road Rash series, to the next level.
-
Even if you don’t normally play video games, it’s a sure bet that you’ve heard of Atari’s 1972 arcade hit Pong. You’ve probably even played it, either in one of its many ports or in one of those arcades that also sells beer. But you’ve probably never seen it quite like this.
-
-
-
As we reported in the last few days about it coming out, it has now happened! Salvation Prophecy is now available on Linux from Desura!
-
Some colleagues of mine are asking users if they would pay for Linux. Given that folks pay for Windows and Mac, why wouldn’t they pay for Linux? Some of the answers so far are quite interesting. Perhaps they’re not as you’d expect.
-
OpenXcom one of my favourite Open Source projects has a brand spanking new website and new release where it allows you to play the whole game!
-
-
Linux users rejoice! Valve’s popular interactive puzzle title, Portal, is now available on Linux via the Steam client. Although the Steam Store doesn’t show the game as available for Linux yet, you can install a beta version via your Steam Library if you already own the game on any of the other platforms. Phoronix is also stating that Portal 2 will also be publicly available on Steam for Linux soon.
-
Desktop Environments/WMs
-
K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
-
The KDE Project has announced today, May 7, the immediate availability for download and update of the third maintenance release of the KDE Software Compilation 4.10 environment for Linux systems.
-
GNOME Desktop/GTK
-
While many of you, GNOME fans, are still enjoying the newly released GNOME 3.8 desktop environment, the GNOME developers are working hard on the next major version, GNOME 3.10, due for release this Autumn.
-
Cinnamon, the popular GNOME Shell fork developed by the Linux Mint crew, has released a major update to their software stack.
-
GOCL has been introduced, a new GLib/GObject wrapper to OpenCL for GNOME applications. This new wrapper library seeks to make it easier for GNOME software to take advantage of OpenCL.
-
Desklets, a new screensaver and a Spices management component are among the major improvements of the just released Cinnamon 1.8. Like KDE plasmoids and Android widgets, these desklets can be positioned on a desktop screen’s background to display information. The new version includes three default desklets: a launcher, a clock and a photo frame; further community-developed desklets are available on the project’s web page.
-
-
The now defunct Fuduntu team has come together to create a new distribution which they initially called FuSE Linux which was complementing Fedora and openSUSE. The distribution will be based on openSUSE, one of the most popular GNU/Linux based distribution which also contributes heavily to core open source technologies such as the Linux Kernel, Gnome, KDE, LibreOffice and much more.
-
Usually we say enterprises are the home for Linux operating systems across the globe. Apart from being used inside the companies for managing servers and databases, today Linux operating systems have turned out to be quite user-friendly that they are now used across homes.
-
New Releases
-
Screenshots
-
PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family
-
PCLinuxOS was born as a set of RPMs for Mandrake Linux. Remember Mandrake Linux? It was one of the first distros to aim for ease-of-use and user-friendliness with nice tools for system administration, a slick graphical installer, and a full complement of drivers and multimedia codecs. My first Linux was Red Hat 5, but Mandrake (initially based on Red Hat) was the first distro that gave me video acceleration and good video quality, and didn’t choke on my fancy Promise Ultra66 IDE controller. That’s right, 66 screaming megabytes per second transfer speed, which was double the poky 33MB/s of the onboard controllers of that era. Our modern SATA buses deliver gigabytes per second, but back then megabytes were enough, and we liked it that way.
-
-
Red Hat Family
-
After tallying the votes in a naming contest that kicked off in October 2012, leading Linux vendor Red Hat has announced that the product formerly known as the JBoss Application Server (AS) will henceforth be known as WildFly.
-
Red Hat OpenStack, the open source company’s next big product, will grab a massive spotlight during Red Hat Summit (June 11-14, Boston). For channel partners and cloud services providers (CSPs), the summit could provide new clues about when Red Hat OpenStack will actually launch, and which CSPs and enterprises will be among the first customers to embrace the new platform.
-
-
The GlusterFS distributed filesystem community is expanding to take in a range of other storage-related, and generally Gluster-related, projects. The change was announced by Red Hat, who acquired Gluster Inc, the company behind the cloud/cluster-oriented distributed filesystem, in October 2011. Since then, Red Hat has maintained the Gluster Community at Gluster.org while marketing the GlusterFS software as its Storage Server.
-
Fedora
-
-
-
An alpha version of Fedora 19 has been released, so it’s a good time to take a sneak peek at what Fedora 19 will have to offer users. As always you should note that alpha releases like Fedora 19 should be considered for testing purposes and fun only. You should not rely on it as your daily desktop distro.
-
Fedora developers are running another “Graphics Test Week” and are seeking your help in evaluating the open-source Intel, Radeon, and Nouveau graphics drivers.
-
Debian Family
-
Just short of two weeks after the big release of Ubuntu 13.04 ‘Raring Ringtail’, I had Debian 7.0 ‘Wheezy’ arrive on my desk for testing. I have a huge amount of respect for Debian, as do most other Linux users. It’s been around since the very beginnings of the Linux revolution in 1993, just short of 20 years. And it’s contributions to GNU, Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) and Linux over its many years make Debian one of the real-true grandfathers of Linux and is most probably the most respected Linux operating systems to date.
-
Debian 7.0 (Wheezy) is out and it’s time for another review of this venerated linux project.
-
-
Derivatives
-
The recent release of Debian 7.0, also known as “Wheezy”, has triggered distribution updates of CrunchBang and aptosid. CrunchBang project leader Philip Newborough has moved CrunchBang 11 “Waldorf”, which has been in development for over a year and according to Newborough is likely to be “the most thoroughly tested #! release to date”, to stable status. Newborough, who is also known under his online handle of “corenominal”, has rebuilt the images of CrunchBang 11 for the occasion of the Wheezy release and the new images can be downloaded from the CrunchBang site.
-
Canonical/Ubuntu
-
It’s the end of April, so that means that there’s a new release of Ubuntu. Well, actually, no – it means that there are eight of them. Don’t like standard Ubuntu’s Mac-OS-X-like Unity desktop? Here’s where to look.
-
The stable release of Ubuntu 13.04 became available for download today, with Canonical promising performance and graphical improvements to help prepare the operating system for convergence across PCs, phones, and tablets.
“Performance on lightweight systems was a core focus for this cycle, as a prelude to Ubuntu’s release on a range of mobile form factors,” Canonical said in an announcement today. “As a result 13.04 delivers significantly faster response times in casual use, and a reduced memory footprint that benefits all users.”
-
I can clearly remember the day when Canonical announced Ubuntu for Android. My first reaction was – finally, the true convergence is here! The ability to turn smartphone into a full-blown PC is something we’ve been hearing about for quite some time now. And Canonical was first to make that dream into a reality. Except that the mentioned software was never released to the general public. Instead, the company decided to pitch OEMs and allow them to pre-install the application on their devices. Bad idea, considering the tight relations major OEMs have with carriers.
-
The Linux kernel zRAM module allows for creating RAM-based compressed block devices and for common situations can reduce or eliminate paging on disk. The zRAM feature can be particularly beneficial for systems with limited amounts of system memory. It’s quite easy to setup zRAM on Ubuntu Linux, so in this article are some before and after benchmarks.
For some cursory benchmarks this weekend, from an old Apple Mac Mini with 1GB of system memory and Intel Core 2 Duo T5600 processor and i945 graphics, benchmarks were conducted atop Ubuntu 13.04 with the Linux 3.8 kernel. A variety of system benchmarks were carried out immediately after a clean Ubuntu 13.04 “Raring Ringtail” development installation and then again after setting up zRAM.
-
The Canonical developers have announced the availability of Ubuntu 13.04 based Ubuntu Touch images. These “Raring Ringtail” images, available for the Galaxy Nexus (codename: maguro), Nexus 4 (mako), Nexus 10 (manta) and Nexus 7 (grouper) – the four officially supported devices – have been described by some as “beta” images, but are in fact regression test images to ensure the transition from basing Ubuntu Touch on 12.10 to 13.04 goes smoothly.
-
Ubuntu 13.04 is an upgrade that’s a downer. Not that Raring Ringtail is a total failure — it’s just that it lacks any real electricity. Yes, it is easy to use and comes preloaded with lots of apps. However, hardcore Linux enthusiasts will give this distro a pass and wait for the next long-term release.
-
Canonical Founder Mark Shuttleworth has really big, plans to put Ubuntu on your smartphone, on your tablet and (via OpenStack). What he doesn’t offer is details on revenue.
-
Flavours and Variants
-
Good news for KDE fans, Kubuntu 13.04 is now available for free download. This release brings the latest stable release of KDE’s Plasma Workspaces and Applications 4.10 which brings a new screen locker, Qt Quick notifications, color correction in Gwenview and faster indexing in the semantic desktop.
-
The release of Ubuntu 13.04 is less than a week away, bringing with it some refinements to the Unity interface that users either love or hate. But Ubuntu with Unity is far from the only choice for Linux lovers or those looking to avoid Windows and OS X.
-
Linux system developer Canonical launched the new UbuntuKylin operating system, targeting the Chinese market.
-
-
-
There is no denying that Raspberry Pi is at the top of the heap when it comes to mind-share — and profit-share — of small computers. The Raspberry Pi has revolutionized not only the way we think about small computers, but has also given us a glimpse into a future of nearly disposable, single-duty, utilitarian appliances. But the Pi does have it’s competitors, many of which we’ve reported on here at The Powerbase. One of those competitors is the Beagle Board, and for it, a fully bootable SNES appliance has been made.
-
-
While we wait for the giants to play their hands, a number of Android-powered smartwatches are already on the market, and there’s at least one (Leikr) that runs Linux. The accompanying slideshow reveals devices of note, as well as two intriguing open source, Kickstarter-funded watches that don’t run a formal OS but offer hooks to Linux and Android: the MetaWatch Frame and the Pebble.
-
-
Adlink announced a pair of resistive touchpanels that run Linux, Android, or Windows 7 on a 1GHz TI Sitara AM3715 ARM Cortex-A8 processor. The 7-inch, 1024 x 600-pixel SP-7W61 and the 10.4-inch, 800 x 600 SP-1061 are equipped with WiFi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, serial, and USB connectivity, and consume only 5.9 to 6.1 Watts.
-
-
-
Via Technologies announced a tiny, low-power Pico-ITX SBC with optional 3G connectivity and battery power support, aimed at in-vehicle and mobile applications. The VAB-600 is based on an 800MHz ARM Cortex-A9 system-on-chip (SOC) with on-chip graphics acceleration, offers Ethernet, WiFi, and 3G connectivity, operates from 0 to 60° C, and runs either embedded Linux or Android 4.x.
-
Abalta Technologies announced an in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) solution that inexpensively mirrors browser content from smartphones or tablets to Linux-enabled “head” units. The company’s Weblink IVI demo consists of a client app running on a Raspberry Pi-based simulated head unit acting as a remote touchscreen for WiFi- or USB-connected smartphones running a companion server app.
Abalta says its Weblink client/server technology can work with any touchscreen or button-controlled IVI display and can be integrated with existing IVI equipment. The Weblink IVI demo setup runs a Linux Weblink client application on a $25 Raspberry Pi Model A single-board computer (SBC).
-
STMicroelectronics has released ready-to-use software drivers for communication with Linux systems,
-
STMicroelectronics has released ready-to-use software drivers for communication with Linux systems.
-
-
There’s a new player in the low-cost, ARM-based, mini-computer space. The BeagleBone Black is a $45 device which can run Linux or Android software and which can be used as a barebones computer or as the brains of a hardware project such as a robot, a home automation system, or more.
-
Phones
-
-
Today, Samsung is announcing a 7-inch tablet running Android 4.1 called the Galaxy Tab 3, but to our eyes, it doesn’t look much different from the current 7-inch Tab 2. The previous Tab’s 1 GHz dual-core processor gets upgraded to a 1.2GHz chip, and the newer tablet offers 16GB of internal storage as an option — its predecessor was limited to 8GB — but the 3-megapixel rear camera and 1.3-megapixel front camera stay the same. The resolution of the Tab 3′s LCD is also unchanged at 1024 x 600, which isn’t much of a match for the 1280 x 800 display on the Nexus 7. So far there aren’t any details on price, but Samsung says the Wi-Fi-only Tab 3 will be available beginning in May, followed by a 3G model for making calls and browsing the web untethered sometime in June.
-
Finnish mobile startup Jolla has appointed another new CEO and has added the former lead from HP’s now defunct WebOS group to its board.
-
Android
-
-
The recent Google app store software update has turned Barnes & Noble’s HD e-reader into a good, low-end Android tablet.
-
Weight and activity trackers are an emerging trend, assisted by wearable devices like Nike’s FuelBand, the Fitbit, and Withings’ Smart Body Analyzer — but they don’t come cheap. Smartphone apps may have helped users track their fitness for a little or no cost, but until recently there was no easy way of measuring your weight and automatically uploading that data to your chosen fitness service.
-
Shezhen, China-based Promate Technologies claims to have created the world’s first tablet-projector. The “LumiTab” sports a modest 1024×600 7-inch IPS screen, runs Android 4.2, and uses a Texas Instruments digital-light-processing (DLP) chip to render “incredibly sharp 1080p HD images” on walls and projection screens, according to the company.
-
Not satisfied with the speed of your Android tablet? Just wait a while…and then purchase a new model with one of the three yet-to-be-released processors featured here.
-
In the last Android tutorial, we looked at handling a touchscreen event. This only handled a single pointer, though. Android can handle multiple pointers at the same time, reflecting what happens when you have more than one finger on the screen at the same time. This is how multi-touch gestures (like pinch-zoom) work.
-
Combining the GPS, timing and audio-processing available in Android/Linux, the problem comes down to maths and geometry. So, Android/Linux does save lives.
-
-
Jelly Bean is now the only version of Android that is experiencing growth, which is good news for developers because it suggests that the ecosystem is getting less fragmented.
-
Apple posted its March-quarter earnings on Tuesday afternoon, which means the flood gates are open for market research firms looking to detail the global smartphone and tablet markets in Q1 2013. Strategy Analytics was among the first to start pushing out numbers and tablets took center stage in a report released late on Tuesday. While Apple managed a great quarter where iPad sales are concerned, it wasn’t enough to stave off the growing army of low-cost Android slates and Apple saw big losses this past quarter in terms of global market share.
-
-
Sub-notebooks/Tablets
-
A new version of the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) operating system has been released. The Fedora-based Linux distribution now supports the forthcoming OLPC XO-4 Touch laptop.
-
Barnes & Noble won’t be shutting down its own content and apps store — though we imagine most users will prefer to get apps through Google Play than through B&N. Apps previously purchased through the Nook store will still be available. The two tablets will also be upgraded to use the Chrome browser and, as full participants in the Google Play ecosystem, also get access to Gmail, YouTube, and Google Maps. The decision sets the Nook apart from Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets, which are decidedly not part of the Google Play ecosystem and instead rely on Amazon’s own app store.
-
Mobile PC shipments are expected to hit 762 million by 2017, thanks to demand for tablets and touch-screen notebooks, according to NPD DisplaySearch.
-
Human beings are still worth cherishing, even if the computer can do it all, argues Simon
-
The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) has initiated a competition with a $50,000 prize to develop an essential component for the OpenFlow software defined networking (SDN). The ONF is dedicated to promoting SDN, where the routing of traffic in a network is independent of the underlying hardware using the OpenFlow protocol. OpenFlow is at the heart of many plans for software defined networking; for example, the recently announced OpenDaylight project uses the protocol as part of its architecture. The Open Networking Foundation’s board members include Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Goldman Sachs, and Microsoft, and it has an industry-wide membership.
-
Open-source software throws a wrench into traditional software evaluation criteria. Here’s what to look for and what you’ll be expected to contribute.
-
KVM
-
IBM is not at all new to virtualization, but with its shift last month to an open source cloud architecture, the company has put a fresh effort into boosting market share for KVM, the open source Linux “Kernel-based Virtual Machine” for x86 servers.
-
KVM and open virtualization are being rapidly adopted as end users look for lower-cost, enterprise hypervisors. One the major use cases for KVM is to virtualize and consolidate Linux workloads, and the pre-integration of KVM in major Linux distributions makes it easy for Linux enterprise end users to adopt KVM.
-
Web Browsers
-
Chrome
-
Google has made changes to the developer edition of Chrome running on Windows, shuffling around categories on its Chrome Web Store. Now, the “Apps” category only means the new class of packaged apps that are installed in Chrome. Packaged apps are written in HTML5, JavaScript and CSS and designed to behave much more like native apps, most notably by having the ability to run without an internet connection.
-
Mozilla
-
Firefox 20.0 — and a couple earlier versions I think — has a nifty little feature of its “Inspector” tool that allows you to view HTML elements as 3D objects. This lets you to graphically see the DOM structure and how elements lay against one another. As soon as the feature appeared I knew what I wanted to do with it, I wanted to use it for something it wasn’t intended for: 3D Modeling.
-
SaaS/Big Data
-
Databases
-
-
-
-
Version 4.0 of phpMyAdmin, the popular web-based administration tool for MySQL databases, has been released. This latest version introduces a reworked user interface that replaces the somewhat dated HTML frames with a new tree style navigation implemented with JavaScript. Aside from the new user interface, the developers have also fixed a number of bugs and have made the documentation for the software more accessible.
-
CMS
-
The type of brute force attack that’s being used in this case is fairly common and is relatively easy to defend against.
-
Business
-
Tristan Barnum, a former Digium leader, has joined Telcentris as VP of marketing. Barnum is well-known as a pioneer of Asterisk, the open source IP BPX, within business circles and the IT channel. So what is Barnum up to at Telcentris? Here are some educated guesses from The VAR Guy.
-
Identity and access management (IAM) is an integral part of online security across every industry. It is the power of effective IAM solutions that give responsible enterprises the ability to validate the identity of an individual and control their access in the organization, protecting data, information, and privacy of its employees and customers.
-
BSD
-
We knew it was coming and now DragonFlyBSD 3.4 has been officially released. DragonFlyBSD 3.4 brings with it a new packaging system, a new USB stack, a new default compiler, performance improvements, and more.
-
Public Services/Government
-
Governments of all sizes can benefit themselves and their constituents by using GNU/Linux operating systems on servers and PCs and Android/Linux operating systems on tablets and smartphones. Similarly, Apache web server, PostgreSQL database, SugarCRM customer relations, WordPress blogging, and LibreOffice are key applications capable of industrial strength information technology at the lowest cost. The Government of the United Kingdom runs its whole public domain on WordPress. The UK plans to replace much of its bureaucracy with a network of servers cutting the cost of transactions by as much as fifty times over person to person interaction. The UK plans to make Free Software (Open Source, in their terminology) the default for all changes in IT. Typically, it costs about half as much money to run IT with Free Software as with non-free software. Often savings are immediate with less need to upgrade hardware or to fight malware.
-
The Swiss government is studying if it can organise procurement of open source services similar to the way it is done for Sweden’s public administrations. The Swiss government’s Federal IT Steering Unit FITSU funded the translation into German of Sweden’s open source procurement framework.
-
Openness/Sharing
-
Open Hardware
-
At Open Source Junction 4 we invited attendees to present their hardware projects. Some were open source hardware, while some used consumer hardware components in conjunction with open source software to provide an innovative solution to a problem.
-
Not all businesses can stand behind their products, and even fewer can stand on top of them. At LulzBot, it’s not uncommon to find the multi-talented and seriously committed team mounting their 3D printers upside down or bumping along Colorado mountain roads with a functioning 3D printer in tow—all in the interest of testing the durability and strength of their product under the most extreme conditions. And that’s only part of what makes LulzBot different.
-
May 6th, 2013 will stand out in the memory of anyone involved in the 3D printing community as the day that the mass media, for better or for worse, really took notice of this rapidly evolving field. That’s because as of right now, anyone in the United States can legally download and print their own fully functioning handgun.
-
Open Home Control Many open source home automation projects have relied on driving proprietary devices, but the newly created Open Home Control project aims to change that by creating a framework for hardware devices that can be integrated with open sourced home automation platforms such as the respected openHAB software.
-
Programming
-
While LLVM’s Clang C/C++ compiler already has feature complete C++11 support and the developers have already been working on C++14 features, there are some open projects where the GCC alternative is in need of some assistance.
As pointed out within the latest SVN trunk for the Clang compiler code-base in their documentation (or within the Git mirror), there’s several open work items that could use some development help. Here’s some of the highlights for the most pressing Clang projects seeking some love:
-
This April marks both the eighth anniversary of Git and the fifth anniversary of GitHub, so it should come as no great surprise that the distributed revision control and source code management (SCM) system has been the focus of extra attention this month.
-
-
One of the prominent features to be introduced with the LLVM 3.3 release this summer is the SLP Vectorizer. Introduced in the LLVM 3.2 release was the LLVM Loop Vectorizer for vectorizing loops while the new SLP Vectorizer is about optimizing straight-line code by merging multiple scalars into vectors.
-
Standards/Consortia
-
The move will enable better applications and analytics for the so-called Internet of things. Cisco, Eclipse Foundation, Eurotech, IBM, Kaazing, M2Mi, Red Hat, Software AG, and Tibco, members of the OASIS open standards consortium, will develop one version of the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol.
-
-
-
Science
-
Robots inspired by the animal kingdom are already being designed to mimic plenty of creatures, from speedy cheetahs to slithering serpents. Now, researchers are welcoming yet another bio-inspired robot to join the menagerie: a ‘bot built to emulate the movements of baby sea turtles.
-
Hardware
-
Some of these characteristics are no doubt because China is still a rapidly growing market for IT but some derive from frugality and energy of the society. No one in China assumes a free lunch. No one assumes it is OK to waste resources.
-
Health/Nutrition
-
A federal safety official says that 79 gallons of “very slightly radioactive water” from a leaky tank at the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant spilled into Lake Michigan.
-
Peru is the first country in the Americas to ban genetically modified foods, putting its food policy closer to that of Europe, than the United States or many of its South American neighbors.
-
Security
-
Some researchers doubt the effectiveness of Stuxnet. That seems almost immaterial. Where the wide publicity given to Chinese attacks ensures a bogeyman, the success of Stuxnet—and the low cost of developing such weapons—has become a model for other countries to follow.
-
The hacker collective “Hack the Planet” (HTP) has claimed responsibility for an attack on MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) computer systems in late January, in which it claims to have briefly taken control of the university’s domain, redirected email traffic, and obtained administrator access to all .edu domains. HTP also claims to have compromised web servers for other sites, including security tool Nmap, network security service Sucuri, IT security company Trend Micro, and network analysis tool Wireshark.
-
Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
-
-
-
-
Political motive revealed after Cambridge University first claimed scientist’s non-attendance was on medical grounds
-
Professor Stephen Hawking is backing the academic boycott of Israel by pulling out of a conference hosted by Israeli president Shimon Peres in Jerusalem as a protest at Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
-
Congress isn’t actually stopping him.
-
With both the CIA and MI6 secretly providing ‘ghost money’ bribes to the Afghan political establishment, it’s likely that Afghans will increasingly support a resurgent Taliban and the drug trade will be further propped up.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, has recently been criticized for taking ‘ghost money’ from the CIA and MI6. The sums are unknown – for the usual reasons of ‘national security’ – but are estimated to have been in the tens of millions of dollars. While this is nowhere near the eye-bleeding $12 billion shipped over to Iraq on pallets in the wake of the invasion a decade ago, it is still a significant amount.
And how has this money been spent? Certainly not on social projects or rebuilding initiatives. Rather, the reporting indicates, the money has been funneled to Karzai’s cronies as bribes in a corrupt attempt to buy influence in the country.
-
-
CIA spooks regularly review spy fiction for a classified in-house journal, rating John le Carré above American writers for his veracity, reports Jon Stock.
-
Fox News is falsely suggesting a new Weekly Standard article proves the CIA didn’t link the Benghazi attacks to an anti-Islam YouTube video. In fact, CIA talking points obtained by the conservative magazine actually demonstrate the intelligence community believed there was a link between the attacks and reactions to the video.
Conservative writer Stephen Hayes’ piece for The Weekly Standard reported that an initial September 14 draft of talking points by the CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis stated that members of an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group were involved in the Benghazi attacks, but that point was later removed by administration officials. Hayes provided images of various versions of the CIA’s talking points, including a bullet in “Version 1″ stating: “We believe based on currently available information that the attacks in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex.”
-
The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has continuously refused to refer to Chechen and Islamic Emirate terrorists operating in Russia as «terrorists». NSA analysis reports of signals intelligence (SIGINT) intercepts of Russian police, Federal Security Bureau (FSB), Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), and Russian military communications, including radio, landline and cellular telephone, fax, text message, and fax, have, since 2003, referred to Chechen and North Caucasus terrorists as «guerrillas». Prior to that year, TOP SECRET Codeword internal NSA directives stated that Chechen terrorists were to be called «rebels».
-
He said an arms cache in the house exploded but did not identify the suspects killed.
-
…strike was the second in less than a week against suspected members…
-
BRYANT: Now, I really have no clue what I’m doing with my life. Going to school at the university through the GI Bill trying to figure out the next step of my life at the moment.
MCEVERS: You’ve been diagnosed with PTSD, posttraumatic stress, yeah?
BRYANT: Yes.
-
Environment/Energy/Wildlife
-
-
The European Commission is on the verge of a trade war with China over the import of solar panels worth 21bn euros (£18bn) a year.
-
Finance
-
-
Earlier this month I wrote about Bitcoin Mining coming to the open-source Radeon Linux GPU driver. In the weeks since, Tom Stellard of AMD has made more improvements to the AMD R600 LLVM back-end that benefit the performance of Bitcoin mining.
-
Censorship
-
Internet activity in Syria dropped off sharply on Tuesday afternoon, according to various sources.
Internet monitoring firm Renesys tweeted this afternoon that it confirmed a “loss of Syrian Internet connectivity 18:43 UTC. BGP routes down, inbound traces failing.”
Google later tweeted “Google services inaccessible in Syria,” with a link to its Transparency Report, which showed a complete drop in activity from the region shortly before 3 p.m. Eastern (left).
-
The CIA on Tuesday selected a man to become the agency’s next director of the National Clandestine Service, a key position that involves overseeing spy operations around the world, over the woman currently serving in the role on an acting basis.
News organizations acknowledged on Tuesday that the officers’ identities are hardly a secret in Washington. But they typically withhold the names of undercover officers as a matter of policy and did so in this case, with The Washington Post, Associated Press and The New York Times choosing not to identify the man. Similarly, the woman — who would have been a controversial choice given her ties to torture tactics used in interrogations during the Bush years — remains undercover and was not identified Tuesday or in articles on her interim role a couple months back.
-
-
OpenDNS CTO Dan Hubbard appeared on Bloomberg TV this morning to discuss the technology behind Syria’s recent Internet outage. He discusses the likelihood of government involvement vs. technical failure, and shares details on how online behavior differed after Syria’s Internet came back online.
-
Privacy
-
“A German court rejected eight out of 15 provisions in Apple’s general privacy policy and terms of data use on Tuesday, claiming that the practices of the Cupertino, Calif. company deviate too much from German laws (Google translation of German original). According to German law, recognized consumer groups can sue companies over illegal terms and conditions. Apple asks for ‘global consent’ to use customer data on its website, but German law insists that clients know specific details about what their data will be used for and why.”
-
-
ORG, our supporters, Liberty, Privacy International, No2ID and Big Brother Watch will be celebrating a victory today, with the withdrawal of the Snoopers’ Charter from the government’s legislative programme.
-
The draft Communications Data Bill has been vetoed by Nick Clegg and is not set to feature in Wednesday’s Queen’s Speech, which has been welcomed by civil liberties campaigners.
But a senior Liberal Democrat has accused his leader of putting party politics above national security. David Thompson reports.
-
-
The EU Data Retention Directive (2006/24/EC) provides an obligation for providers of publicly available electronic communications services and of public communications networks to retain traffic and location data for six months up to two years for the purpose of the investigation, detection, and prosecution of serious crime. Considering potential uses and misuses of retained data such as traffic analysis, social network analysis, and data mining, this paper examines the suitability, necessity, and proportionality of the interference with the fundamental rights to privacy and data protection as guaranteed by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
-
Civil Rights
-
Members of the Anonymous “hacktivist” collective have launched OpGtmo, a full-bore campaign aimed at convincing the U.S. government to shut down the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
-
THEY were labelled traitors and barred from state employment, but yesterday the Irish government formally apologised for its treatment of thousands of men who deserted the Irish army to fight in the Second World War.
An estimated 60,000 men from Ireland served in the British Army, Royal Navy or RAF between 1939 and 1945. Of those, nearly 5,000 deserted the Irish armed forces to join the fight against Nazi Germany.
-
Document shows agency requested removal of interrogation scene with dog, and shots of operatives partying with AK47
-
-
Screenwriter Mark Boal asked to take out scenes showing Enhanced Interrogation Techniques
-
-
Lawyer who drafted White House drone policy says US would rather kill suspects than send them to Cuban detention centre
-
…sparked an international outcry and a fierce domestic debate…
-
Witness testimony undermines administration claims that only al-Qaida leaders are drone targets
-
-
Pursuing criminal hacking groups is high on the FBI’s list of priorities—but the bureau is adopting some hacking techniques of its own. And a Texas judge isn’t happy about it.
On Monday, a judge denied an FBI request to install a spy Trojan on a computer in an unknown location in order to track down a suspected fraudster. The order rejecting the request revealed that the FBI wanted to use the surveillance tool to covertly infiltrate the computer and take photographs of its user through his or her webcam. The plan also included recording Internet activity, user location, email contents, chat messaging logs, photographs, documents, and passwords.
-
Intellectual Monopolies
-
Copyrights
-
People seem really good at forgetting history. While most people realize that Google bought YouTube early on in that company’s existence, they tend to forget that this was, in part, because YouTube was beating the pants off of Google’s own online service called Google Video. The big difference? Google Video’s launch focused very much on selling videos and using annoying DRM that had to check in with a server any time you wanted to watch. It was a complete and total failure, which probably cost an even larger amount when you realize it made Google more desperate to buy YouTube.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
05.07.13
Posted in News Roundup at 3:06 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
![GNOME bluefish](/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/120px-Gartoon-Bluefish-icon.png)
Contents
-
But it’s not just Red Hat that is focusing the mindset of the Linux platform. Canonical has taken the desktop-centric Ubuntu and completely turned that business model on its head. With the switch to the Unity desktop, it is now possible to support every device running Ubuntu much more easily — as the interface remains the same. Not only that, but Canonical has made sure that every aspect of Ubuntu is polished and professional. As much as many want to deny it, in the world of business, image actually matters. With the efforts of Red Hat and Canonical, the Linux image has evolved into something ready and able to take on the tasks thrown at them by enterprise needs.
But what about the software itself? How has it evolved?
Cloud computing
One of the aspects that really shows off the power of Linux is cloud computing. Most major clouds are run from Linux platforms. Two of the largest clouds on the planet are run off Linux servers:
* Amazon EC2: Almost half a million Linux servers
* Netflix: nearly 1,000 Linux servers run the front end which connects to hundreds of Amazon S3 servers
From inception, Linux was built for the likes of cloud computing. It’s networkability, security, and reliability make it the perfect candidate and companies like Red Hat, OpenStack, RackSpace, SUSE, and Canonical have used those strengths to their advantage to develop outstanding cloud platforms.
-
The International Space Station’s laptops are moving from Windows to Linux, and R2, the first Linux-powered humanoid robot in space, is now under-going in-flight testing.
-
-
Server
-
If IBM (NYSE:IBM) sells its x86 server business to Lenovo (as many reports expect) it’s a safe bet that Lenovo will remain committed to supporting Linux (Red Hat and SUSE, in particular) and Windows Server across the hardware line. Here’s why.
-
Kernel Space
-
After eight Release Candidate versions, Linus Torvalds proudly announced a couple of hours ago, April 28, the immediate availability for download of the highly anticipated Linux 3.9 kernel.
-
Applications
-
-
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is the conversion of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into searchable, editable documents. OCR software is able to recognise the difference between characters and images, and between characters themselves.
The use of paper has been displaced from some activities. For example, the vast majority of journeys on the London Underground are made using the Oyster card without a paper ticket being issued. We have witnessed talk of a paperless office for more than 40 years. However, the office environment has shown a resistance to remove the mountain of paper generated. Things have changed in the past few years, with a marked shift in the paperless office concept. Paper documents contain a wealth of important management data and information that would be better stored electronically. There is computer software that makes this conversion possible. The benefit of scanning documents is not purely for archival reasons. OCR technology is vital for gaining access to paper-based information, as well as integrating that information in digital workflows.
-
Instructionals/Technical
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
You know that Linux kernel thing, that has thousands of developers from all over the world, some of which do it professionally, most of which do it for the love of solving problems (or something)?
-
The following tutorial will teach you how to install the Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) operating system.
Also known as the Raring Ringtail, Ubuntu 13.04 arrived on April 25, 2013 and is the 18th release of the Ubuntu operating system.
-
Wine or Emulation
-
The Wine development release 1.5.29 is now available.
-
Games
-
-
Receiver was created for the 7-day FPS challenge to explore gun handling mechanics, randomized levels, and unordered storytelling. Armed only with a handgun and an audio cassette player, you must uncover the secrets of the Mindkill in a building complex infested with automated turrets and hovering shock drones.
-
-
Planetary Annihilation is really starting to look awesome, the RTS that was Kickstarter funded has been doing regular live streams for people to ask questions, see gameplay and all that jazz, their latest one shows off combat!
-
-
-
-
-
Hidden Path Entertainment did a Kickstarter last year that sadly hit no way near it’s goal for a sequel, even though the Kickstarter was successful for an expansion to the original (Not on Linux).
-
-
-
The Castle Doctrine is a massively-multiplayer game about burglary and home defence by Jason Rohrer. The website is a bit odd using one of the old “start pages” from the 90′s where you click an image to go to the actual website, on the website…eh?
-
Desktop Environments/WMs
-
It’s been a while since I’ve written a real blog post, so I’m going to do a bit of a roundup here. Brace yourselves.
-
K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
-
May 7, 2013. Today KDE released updates for its Workspaces, Applications and Development Platform. These updates continue the series of monthly stabilization updates to the 4.10 series. 4.10.3 updates bring many bugfixes and translation updates on top of the 4.10 release and are recommended updates for everyone running the 4.10 release series. As this release only contains bugfixes and translation updates, it will be a safe and pleasant update for everyone.
-
Today we released the KDE release of OS4 OpenDesktop 13.4. With this we bring you the very best the K Desktop Environment offers along with the ease of use that people have come to expect with OS4 OpenDesktop.
-
GNOME Desktop/GTK
-
The GNOME Projects announced a few days ago that the first maintenance release of the GNOME Settings Daemon 3.8 package is now available for download, ready for the GNOME 3.8.1 desktop upgrade.
-
A new stable version of the GVFS application for the GNOME desktop environment has been announced a few days ago, bringing various fixes and the usual translation updates.
-
The first maintenance release of the GNOME Documents 3.8 app, the main document viewer of the GNOME desktop environment, has been released a few days ago, bringing various fixes and improvements.
Thanks to Alexander Larsson, GNOME Documents 3.8.1 now supports rubberband selections in views. Also, thanks to Debarshi Ray, the default response in Properties has been fixed in this version.
-
-
Desklets, a new screensaver and a Spices management component are among the major improvements of the just released Cinnamon 1.8. Like KDE plasmoids and Android widgets, these desklets can be positioned on a desktop screen’s background to display information. The new version includes three default desklets: a launcher, a clock and a photo frame; further community-developed desklets are available on the project’s web page.
-
-
The GNOME developers announced a few days ago that a new version of the GNOME Initial Setup software for the GNOME desktop environment is available for download, fixing various issues found in previous releases.
-
-
-
Recently I’ve posted an article about the Windows manager and desktop environments that use less resources on Linux and thanks to a comment of Sebastian I’ve discovered Livarp, a lightweight GNU/Linux Distro.
-
Brian Manderville has announced a couple of hours ago, April 28, that the 4th release of his Descent|OS Linux operating system is now available for download.
-
Offensive Security, the developer behind the Backtrack and Kali Linux operating systems, has announced on April 26 that a new version of the the Kali Linux distribution for forensic and penetration testing tasks has been released.
-
I’ve written lots of distro reviews over the years, but every once in a while I find a new one that turns out to be a delightful surprise. Manjaro 0.8.5 is definitely one of those. Manjaro is based on Arch Linux, and promises to provide an easy to use distro that is still highly customizable.
-
New Releases
-
-
Philip Müller and the Manjaro development team has announced the first maintenance release for Manjaro 0.8.5, which was made available for download two weeks ago.
-
Eugenio Paolantonio has had the pleasure of announcing today, April 27, that the 4th version of his Semplice Linux operating system is now available for download.
Dubbed Atom Heart Mother, Semplice Linux 4 brings beautiful new artwork and visual effects, which consists of a new default theme, a new wallpaper, as well as the Faenza icon theme.
-
Screenshots
-
PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family
-
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 Editor Meemaw. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license, and some rights are reserved.
-
There hasn’t been a time that I can recall over the past year that when I check the Distrowatch ranking that Mageia wasn’t in the top 5.
It goes to show that this Distro has legs and has the essential attributes of a thorough-bred commercial Distribution.
That’s because in spite of its community status, Mageia is a fork of commercial Distro Mandriva Linux.
-
Red Hat Family
-
Fedora
-
-
Lennart Poettering has announced the release of systemd 203 or as he calls it: “a good release to synchronize a distribution on.” Poettering says the Fedora developers are planning to include this version in the upcoming Fedora 19 release because the development branch of systemd will most likely receive extensive changes in the near future that would introduce too much uncertainty so close to the distribution’s release date. These changes are necessary as Poettering and his team are planning to introduce a number of bigger features with the next version of their open source startup manager.
-
Debian Family
-
Derivatives
-
Canonical/Ubuntu
-
It’s that time again for a new Ubuntu – should you be raring to go with it, or is it a case of more of the same?
-
Now that Ubuntu 13.04 has been released, Caonical has started work on Ubuntu 13.10 (code-named Saucy Salamander), CEO Mark Shuttleworth announced in his personal blog. The blog gives the Ubuntu community a preview of what version 13.10 will look like.
For starters, expect that version, or at least its artwork, to have a lizard theme, since Shuttleworth has dubbed Ubuntu 13.10 the “Saucy Salamander.” This is, of course, in keeping with the trend that began with the first Ubuntu release, Ubuntu 4.10 “Warty Warthog,” of bestowing an alliterative codename on each new version of Ubuntu. Since Ubuntu 5.10 “Breezy Badger,” the names have also progressed in alphabetical order, although Shuttleworth inexplicably skipped “C.” (Was it a slight, in the tradition of the apocryphal Pierre l’Enfant vs. John Jay tale, against New Jersey governor Chris Christie? We can only speculate.)
-
So why is FOSS held to a different standard?
Because FOSS developers have no accountability. If you don’t like it, fix it. And if you can’t fix it…..
Fuh-Q. Move on.
-
Over the years, I have almost always opted for a clean install rather than an update. That meant backing up my data files and formatting my drive for a fresh installation of the new operating system. I know, that sounds like a lot more work than simply clicking on the Upgrade button in Ubuntu’s Update Manager, but experience has taught me this approach was the most trouble-free in the long run.
-
Finding the right Ubuntu software titles used to be a bit of an art form, especially before the Ubuntu Software Center became available. And even with the benefit of the Ubuntu Software Center, knowing whether an application is worth checking out still requires a bit of research.
In this article, I’ll share my preferred applications, plus my own methods for discovering new software.
-
-
Ubuntu 13.04 was released yesterday, but is 13.04 a hit, or miss? This release brings some major underlying changes to Ubuntu, though Unity is still nearly the same. Here are some of the new features for anyone that is looking for an excuse to download Ubuntu 13.04.
-
With the release of Ubuntu 13.04 today, Canonical have revealed the name of the next version – Saucy Salamander
-
I’ve always had a little bit of “distrohopper” in me. I’d usually get bored and want to try something new after reading about it.
Almost always I end up back on Ubuntu after a while. I’ve really been using Ubuntu pretty much exclusively since 2005.
-
Ubuntu 13.04 is out tomorrow, 25th April, and the Raring Ringtail is getting some new features over the Quantal Quetzal
-
Apple iOS and Google Android remain the dominant operating systems for smartphones and tablets. But alternatives like Canonical’s Ubuntu and Firefox OS are hoping to disrupt the mobile market — despite the stark reality that even Microsoft and Blackberry are having trouble gaining ground. So how do upstarts like Ubuntu hope to grab market share?
-
Flavours and Variants
-
The Edubuntu team has announced today, April 25, that the final release of the highly anticipated Edubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) operating system is now available for download.
-
-
I haven’t checked out Fuduntu in over a year. I wasn’t particularly planning to do so either, because I wasn’t exactly expecting huge changes. But then I saw some news that changed my mind.
-
-
The EMB-2500 is the latest single-board, SoC computer to be released this year. Ever since the Raspberry Pi hit the streets and became hugely popular with its target audience, there has been several similar attempts to outdo it, but none has shipped with standard storage connectivity that the average computer user can use.
-
Congatec AG announced a Linux-ready COM Express Type 6 computer-on-module (COM) based on AMD’s new Embedded G-Series system-on-chip (SOC). The Conga-TCG is offered in two quad- and two dual-core versions backed with up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and features extensive I/O, including HDMI, DisplayPort, SATA, and 10 USB ports.
-
Roboteq launched a Kickstarter project to build an I/O add-in card for robotics navigation that stacks atop a Linux-based Raspberry Pi board. The RIO (Raspberry IO) is based on a 32-bit STM32 microcontroller, and includes a 3A DC/DC converter, several serial interfaces, a CAN interface, 21 GPIO, and an optional module with an accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer for robotics navigation.
-
The Automotive Grade Linux workgroup aims to get more open source technology in vehicles
-
Plair says it is now shipping its “Plair” media-streaming device to U.S. customers. Unveiled earlier this year at CES, the $99 embedded Linux-powered gadget is said to provide AirPlay-like beaming of multimedia content from Apple, Windows, and Android devices to “any HDTV” with an available HDMI port.
-
ARM has added embedded Linux support to its free ARM Development Studio 5 (DS-5) Community Edition (CE) integrated development environment (IDE), which previously had only targeted Android. DS-5 CE now offers full Linux support for its Eclipse IDE, GNU cross-compiler, DS-5 Debugger, and the ARM Streamline performance analyzer.
-
Inforce Computing has unveiled a $149 Linux- and Android-friendly Pico-ITX single-board computer (SBC) based on a 1.7GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 processor. The tiny SBC comes with 2GB RAM and 4GB flash memory, and provides HDMI out, MIPI-CSI camera input, WiFi and Bluetooth wireless, a GbE port, and numerous other functions.
-
A developer by the name of “threewater” has posted a video showcasing a device powered by the ARM-based AllWinner A10 booting Linux in just 1.2 seconds.
-
Phones
-
Android
-
-
Wind River, a software subsidiary of Intel, has announced an enhanced version of the National Security Agency’s Security Enhanced (SE) Android, along with two other tools designed to improve the security of Android devices. “Wind River Solution Accelerators for Android, Security” includes modules for SE Android, Lightweight Partitioning, and Secure Boot.
-
In my last post I showed you one view of the Apache Software Foundation, the relationship of projects as revealed by the overlapping membership of their Project Management Committees. After I did that post it struck me that I could, with a very small modifications to my script, look at the connections at the individual level instead of at the committee level. Initially I attempted this with all Committers in the ASF This resulted in a graph with over 3000 nodes and over 2.6 million edges. I’m still working on making sense of that graph. It was very dense and visualizing it as anything other than a giant blob has proven challenging. So I scaled back the problem slightly and decided to look at the relationship between individual members of the many PMCs, a smaller graph with only 1577 nodes and 22,399 edges.
-
Churnalism US is a new web tool and browser extension that allows anyone to compare the news you read against existing content to uncover possible instances of plagiarism. It is a joint project with the Media Standards Trust.
-
Businesses are moving from closed systems to open, collaborative innovation. Red Hat CEO, Jim Whitehurst, focused on the three major components influencing this shift in his keynote, Open or die?, at the Open Business Conference held in San Francisco this week (April 29-30, 2013).
First, there are two major shifts happening in technology and innovation that are laying the foundation for the open innovation model. On the technology side, the way computing is being built and delivered has changed. During the industrial revolution, the auto lathe revolutionized the making of standard parts. We’re seeing that same paradigm shift happen today in how computing is becoming a commodity.
-
A group of IBM researchers has released a Github project that implements a homomorphic encryption system – a way to work on encrypted data in a file without first decrypting the whole file.
-
-
Massive disruption is occurring as marketing goes digital. Business is moving steadily towards providing a fully personalized and truly integrated digital experience—building upon recent advances in user experience, analytics, cloud computing and storage, and an omni-channel experience across mobile platforms and social media.
-
During my second year at Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey (SNDT) Women’s University, the first of its kind in India as well as in South-East Asia, I attended a workshop on Python and Orca by Krishnakant Mane. My classmates and I were novices to free and open source software (FOSS) and astonished when we saw a visually impaired person using a computer with the same ease as we did.
-
Here’s a job title you may not have considered: Open Source Officer. The CIA hires Open Source Officers (OSOs) to collect and analyze publicly available information in foreign affairs to provide unique insights into national security issues. OSOs may specialize in an area of the world (country or region) or a specific topic (like, emerging media technologies or cyber security).
-
“The biggest danger is when an open source company gets confused about what it sells. If you think you are selling open source software, there aren’t a lot of buyers for that now,” said Puppet Labs Founder and CEO Luke Kanies. “But if you have promises about what you sell, those promises make a very lucrative business. “
-
Web Browsers
-
Mozilla
-
Mozilla released its first fully-baked simulation engine for Firefox OS, while the first Geeksphone “Keon” development phones for the open source Linux-based mobile operating system remain sold out. Firefox OS Simulator 3.0 adds rotation and geolocation API simulations, faster boot-times, and a push-to-device feature that lets users transfer apps to a developer phone.
-
-
SaaS/Big Data
-
-
The Hadoop ecosystem relies on composability — the ability to use output from one tool as input to the next — to efficiently process data at scale, from simple projects, to processing streams of real-time data, to building data warehouses.
-
MapR, the Hadoop and Big Data company, has big European ambitions despite a mixed economic outlook in the region. MapR recently opened a new Paris office that will focus on operations in France, Benelux and southern Europe. The move follows the company’s establishment of a European headquarters late last year in London.
-
-
-
Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
-
Is Oracle VM, built on the open source Xen hypervisor, a true market alternative to VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization? And will Oracle leap beyond virtualization to support Software Defined Networking (SDN)? Perhaps it’s time to rethink those questions — especially as a new Oracle Desktop Virtualization offering (called Oracle Secure Global Desktop) reaches the market. Here’s the update, including an exclusive interview with Oracle Senior VP Wim Coekaerts.
-
Education
-
Blender is a powerful open source 3D drawing and animation program. This software was previously a commercial product, but is now available as a free download. Blender has been used to create stunningly beautiful 3D animated videos, including Big Buck Bunny. Check out some of the gorgeous animated movies made with Blender at the web site’s Features Gallery.
-
BSD
-
Test Releases
2013-04-19 – First ISO image as a test release.
Based on OpenBSD 5.3 (not official release yet)
No additional application softwares
-
FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
-
Trisquel is a 100 per cent ‘free as in free speech’ GNU/Linux distribution started by Rubén Rodríguez Pérez nine years ago.
“It started as a project at the university I was studying at. They just wanted a custom distro because… everybody was doing that at the time!” Pérez says.
-
Licensing
-
Jim Whitehurst has been president and CEO of prominent Linux distributor Red Hat since December 2007. During that time, Red Hat has blazed a trail in becoming a profitable vendor in the open source software space, challenging Microsoft and Unix companies and adding such technologies as the JBoss application server. InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill spoke with Whitehurst, asking him about the company’s dealings with Microsoft, how Linux sizes up against rivals, and where Red Hat’s technology is headed.
-
Programming
-
-
In an effort to help increase female participation in open source development, the Ada Initiative recently announced they had entered into an agreement with social programming site GitHub, wherein any female who requested a private repository on the service could receive one free of charge (a feature which usually costs $7+ per month).
-
Standards/Consortia
-
Last week Open Source, Open Standards 2013 took place in London, an event focused on the public sector. Naturally these being two topics we’re very keen on here at OSS Watch I went along too.
Overall the key message to take away from the event was just how central to public sector IT strategy these two themes have become, and also how policy is being rapidly turned into practice, everywhere from the NHS to local government.
-
On 30 April 1993, Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau were given official permission by CERN in Geneva to distribute the libwww library free of charge, “to create a server or a browser, to give it away or sell it, without any royalty or other constraint. Whew!” (Tim Berners-Lee in Weaving the Web).
The architects of this particular World Wide Web (WWW) anniversary deserve recognition even today, though the commercialisation of the internet was certainly not their objective. Complex negotiations between the universities involved were required before the go-ahead for a general release could be given – there was no commercial involvement at that time.
-
-
Science
-
-
I retired 10 years ago after a long career as a research scientist for Agriculture Canada. When I was on the payroll, I was the designated scientist of my institute to address public groups and reassure them that genetically engineered crops and foods were safe. There is, however, a growing body of scientific research – done mostly in Europe, Russia, and other countries – showing that diets containing engineered corn or soya cause serious health problems in laboratory mice and rats.
-
Health/Nutrition
-
-
Wisconsin ranks 44th in the nation for new job creation. Rather than rolling up their sleeves and finding new and innovative ways to help create jobs, the Wisconsin legislature is spending its time telling people needing food assistance what they should be eating. AB 110, which will be up for a vote in the Assembly on Tuesday, May 7, is geared toward limiting “the amount of food stamp benefits that could be spent on junk food.” But some of the fine print of the bill, bizarrely, would ban people from choosing more healthy and less expensive options for their families. The bill is one of many being considered that are unduly punitive of the poor.
-
Security
-
Nice little business you have there, but it has vulnerabilities. It would be a shame if anything happened to it. Can I help?
-
Network equipment supplier D-Link has released firmware security updates for five routers and eight IP cameras. Whilst the router vulnerabilities are strongly reminiscent of vulnerabilities previously fixed in other models, the camera vulnerabilities conceal a nasty surprise – unauthorised viewers can intercept the camera stream as either a video stream or ASCII output.
-
Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
-
On Sunday, Israel dropped massive bombs near Damascus, ones which the New York Times, quoting residents, originally reported (then evidently deleted) resulted in explosions “more massive than anything the residents of the city. . . have witnessed during more than two years of war.” The Jerusalem Post this morning quoted “a senior Syrian military source” as claiming that “Israel used depleted uranium shells”, though that is not confirmed. The NYT cited a “high-ranking Syrian military official” who said the bombs “struck several critical military facilities in some of the country’s most tightly secured and strategic areas” and killed “dozens of elite troops stationed near the presidential palace”, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that “at least 42 soldiers were killed in the strikes, and another 100 who would usually be at the targeted sites remain unaccounted for.”
-
Israel used “a new type of weapon”, a senior official at the Syrian military facility that came under attack from the Israeli Air Force told RT.
[...]
Depleted uranium is a by-product of the uranium enrichment process that creates nuclear weapons, and was first used by the US in the Gulf conflict of 1991. Unlike the radioactive materials used in nuclear weapons, depleted uranium is not valued for its explosiveness, but for its toughness – it is 2.5 times as dense as steel – which allows it to penetrate heavy protection.
-
Israel’s massive air strikes against Syria are, beyond argument, illegal. There is no provision in international law that enables you to bomb another country because that country is in internal chaos. Yet the reporting on the BBC, and indeed throughout the mainstream media, makes no mention of their illegality, and makes no mention of the people killed. Contrast this to the condemnatory tone of BBC reporting of North Korean ballistic missile tests, or of Iran’s civil uranium enrichment programme, both of which I view as neither wise nor desirable, but both of which are undoubtedly quite legal.
-
These airstrikes bring to mind the previous round of Israeli airstrikes inside Syria in January of this year (FAIR Blog, 2/4/13). Then, like now, the story from anonymous officials was that Israel struck a convoy of weapons heading to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Those sources were telling U.S. reporters what had happened, and some of those reporters were reporting these anonymous claims as “confirmation” of the story.
All of this could be true, of course. Or perhaps none of it is. What is certain is that the assessments of the airstrikes are being shared anonymously by governments involved in carrying them out, a scenario that cries out for more skepticism.
-
Around 1,000 people set out Monday on a three-month peace march from Tokyo to Hiroshima in western Japan, calling for the abolishment of nuclear weapons and nuclear power generation, according to organizers.
-
-
Finance
-
David Gauke reacted positively to plan to challenge Osita Mba’s account of ‘sweetheart’ deal, according to leaked emails
-
It was of course Lawson who was Thatcher’s accomplice in destroying most of our real industries, the ones which actually made something visible. It was replaced by the crazed idea of elevating the financial services sector, from providers of middlemen services for a small percentage, into the greatest net recipients of income in the economy, through creation of price gambling instruments and South Sea Bubble schemes. The result has on average cost everybody in the UK and US the equivalent of their housing cost again in extra tax, plus plunged the entire world into recession.
-
PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
-
In anticipation of protests at ALEC’s recent meeting in Oklahoma City, state legislators were handed a set of talking points that read “The American Legislative Exchange Council recognizes the first amendment rights of free speech and assembly, and asks that _____ do the same,” apparently to prepare legislators for press questions about citizen activism. But ALEC didn’t live up to those spoon-fed talking points: ALEC assembled a dossier of disfavored reporters and activists, kicked reporters out of its conference who might write unfavorable stories, and managed to boot a community forum critical of ALEC from its reserved room.
-
Shortly after the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) told the press “we really believe in transparency,” new documents show the organization directing legislators to hide ALEC meeting agendas and model legislation from the public. This effort to circumvent state freedom of information laws is being called “shocking” and “disturbing” by transparency advocates.
-
Privacy
-
For more than a year, the EU Parliament have been examining the Proposal for a Regulation of the EU Commission aimed at reforming the European data protection legal framework. Until now, the parliamentary committees examining the Proposal have so far proposed to restrict the protections of our fundamental right to privacy. As a crucial vote is approaching1 in the “Civil Liberties” (LIBE) Committee, La Quadrature du Net launches a series of analysis dealing with key points, stakes, development and threats of the reform.
-
Civil Rights
-
Columnist Jim Dwyer, one of the brighter lights at the New York Times, had an exceptionally dim moment on Friday (5/3/13)–comparing sending innocent teenagers to prison with holding the prosecutor who did so accountable.
Dwyer was writing about a petition that asked that Manhattan assistant district attorney Elizabeth Lederer–the lead prosecutor in the case of the Central Park Five, young African-Americans who were falsely convicted of rape–lose her part-time teaching position at Columbia Law School.
-
A new computing facility at the National Security Agency will help the country better defend against cyber attacks , agency officials and members of Congress said Monday.
-
-
-
During last year’s U.S. floor debate on the reauthorization of the notorious “indefinite detention” sections of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) shouted at a hypothetical detainee, “And when they say, ‘I want my lawyer,’ you tell them, ‘Shut up.’ You don’t get a lawyer.”
-
The definitions of terror currently employed by Washington are far more ambiguous. The United States government has passed laws (e.g. The Patriot Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA], the National Defense Authorization Act [NDAA]) that are grounded on broad formulations of what constitutes terrorist acts. They include an encompassing category of aiding and abetting terrorism. These statutes are so loosely drawn that, as a practical matter, a terrorist is anyone the authorities want to declare a terrorist. It should be noted that the U.S. government’s charge against the Boston bomber includes “the use of weapons of mass destruction.” Anyone want to define WMD in this context? For scholarly and analytical purposes, therefore, the term “terrorism” as widely employed has no value — unless the subject of study is its several uses and abuses. For the purpose of making ethical judgments, these broad formulations are equally pointless since they do not frame the questions of standards, responsibility and accountability in any instructive way. In the vocabulary of American officials, and most commentators, “terrorism” is used for hortatory purposes alone.
-
Noam Chomsky: I don’t know what base he’s appealing to. If he thinks he’s appealing to the nationalist base, well, they’re not going to vote for him anyway. That’s why I don’t understand it. I don’t think he’s doing anything besides alienating his own natural base. So it’s something else.
What it is is the same kind of commitment to expanding executive power that Cheney and Rumsfeld had. He kind of puts it in mellifluous terms and there’s a little difference in his tone. It’s not as crude and brutal as they were, but it’s pretty hard to see much of a difference.
-
Special Report: Lawyers and human rights groups say it is just a matter of time before the detainees start to die
-
For many Greeks, Orthodox Easter is a chance to see friends and family, to eat good food or to worship. But for the neo-Nazis in Golden Dawn, who only recently made the switch from “Hellenic” paganism to a professed love for Christianity, it has been an opportunity for propaganda. Last Thursday, the party made headlines with its attempt to stage a “Greeks-only” food distribution in Athens’s Syntagma square. The next day, when Athenians were driving back to home towns and villages, Golden Dawn members held open motorway toll booths – which have become a symbolic point of resistance against the rising cost of living in the wake of austerity – so cars could pass for free.
-
Intellectual Monopolies
-
Today the FFII sent a letter to the European Parliament committee on International Trade. Thursday 25 April 2013 the committee will vote on 198 amendments to a draft resolution on the EU – US trade agreement (TTIP / TAFTA)
-
Copyrights
-
The long-awaited order following last month’s Prenda Law sanctions hearing is now out, and it’s a doozy. After a hearing that lasted 12 minutes and consisted of lawyers pleading the fifth, there was little doubt that Federal Judge Otis Wright was not best pleased, and it was evident in the order he released late yesterday.
-
Megaupload’s legal team are not restricting their fight with the U.S. Government only to the courts. Today they published a detailed white paper accusing the White House of selling out to corporate interests, particularly Hollywood. “The message is clear. The White House is for sale. More and more of our rights are eroding away to protect the interests of large corporations and their billionaire shareholders,” Dotcom summarizes.
-
Here are two words that have no business hanging out together: “used MP3s.” If you know anything about how computers work, that concept is intellectually offensive. Same goes for “ebook lending”, “digital rental” and a host of other terms that have emerged from the content industries’ desperate scramble to do the impossible: adapt without changing.
-
…powerful corporations are deemed to be of greater importance than the rights of individuals.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
05.06.13
Posted in News Roundup at 3:34 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
![GNOME bluefish](/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/120px-Gartoon-Bluefish-icon.png)
Contents
-
It’s no secret that GNU/Linux is being used by the Hollywood studios to create block-busters. Pixar is working on OpenSubdiv, a new open source library that implements high performance subdivision surface drawing and evaluation on modern GPU and massively parallel CPU architectures.
-
Not to being totally free, that is a completely different kettle of fish. Linux is a tantalising sample and example of what freedom can deliver.
-
THE SPANISH REGION of Extremadura has announced that it will switch 40,000 government PCs to open source software.
The government of Extremadura has worked out what many already know, that open source software can deliver significant cost savings over using proprietory software. The region’s government has decided to switch 40,000 PCs to open source software, including a customised Linux distribution called Sysgobex.
-
-
Desktop
-
The latest incarnation of the Linux Kernel was released this week, and for the first time, it includes code for running Linux on Google Chromebooks. Chromebooks come loaded with Chrome OS — a web-happy, Linux-based operating system designed by Google — but the new kernel code will make it easier to run other versions of the popular open source operating system on these machines.
-
Kids don’t always treat technology with care, so we selected systems that were either ruggedized against drops and spills, low-cost to make replacement less painful, or both. The K-5 set probably won’t be using any performance straining software tools, but they will definitely want to play games or get online, so we focused on laptops that would meet those needs without the expense of high-end processors. And finally, we looked for kid-friendly features, such as the educational tools found in the DirAction Classmate PC, or the dead-simple ease of use offered by Google’s Chromebooks.
-
Server
-
Kernel Space
-
The Linux 3.10 kernel will feature new improvements and features when it comes to KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) virtualization.
The KVM pull request for the Linux 3.10 merge window was volleyed on Sunday morning to the kernel mailing list. Interesting bits include:
-
Graphics Stack
-
Are you itching to try out open-source AMD Radeon “UVD” video acceleration support over VDPAU on Fedora Linux?
It was in early April that AMD provided open-source Radeon UVD video acceleration code at long last for the past few generations of Radeon HD graphics cards for use by their open-source Linux driver. This allows applications that support VDPAU (the Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix) to leverage GPU-based video hardware acceleration.
-
Applications
-
The Linux world is home to some unusual controversy. None is greater than the phylosophical battles regarding text editors. Some will tell you emacs is the best, while others will argue for vi as the supreme editor. I happen to like vi though I will tell you about emacs in a later article. The vi editor holds an almost mythical place in tech lore, with jokes like “vivivi, the editor of the beast” (think Roman numerals). You can almost hear this fearsome voice echoing eerily across the walls of your office or home; “I am vi, the Great and Powerful!” Yes, if there is one editor that strikes fear in the hearts of newbies alike, it is certainly vi (or “vim”), the visual editor. “vim”, by the way, stands for “vi improved” and is the version of “vi” that you will find in your Linux system. Anyhow, pay no attention to that fearsome voice behind the program. vi, or vim, is not so frightening once you get to know it.
-
-
-
-
-
Instructionals/Technical
-
Wine or Emulation
-
-
CodeWeavers, through Josh Dubois, CrossOver product manager at CodeWeavers, proudly announced a few hours ago, May 1, that the CrossOver 12.2.0 software has been officially released for both Linux and Mac OS X platforms.
-
Games
-
-
-
The German game publisher Runesoft has released the “point-and-click” adventure Jack Keane on the Indie gaming platform Desura. This game is based on the free rendering engine OGRE and has won numerous game awards.
-
-
So with some recent titles including Brutal Legend and now Stacking and Costume Quest all hitting the Steam Linux Database and no weekly sales on Humble could the time be ripe for a Humble Double Fine Bundle? This is all pure speculation of course.
-
-
-
-
-
A tree killed his granny and now he is out for revenge. Meet Jack Lumber, the supernatural lumberjack who hates trees, loves animals, and hates trees. Did we say that twice? The guy really hates trees, and boy does he have an axe to grind.
-
After the success of Anomaly: Warzone Earth and Anomaly Korea, the famous 11 Bit Studios announced at the beginning of the year that they were working hard on a new version of the popular game, Anomaly 2.
-
Desktop Environments/WMs
-
K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
-
-
KDE’s Plasma is one of the most popular desktop environment in the GNU/Linux world. The community was also working on a Windows port of KDE applications so that these users can also take advantage of KDE’s technologies. The Windows project was in the state of limbo for quite some time and now KDE SC 4.10.2 is available for Windows.
-
GNOME Desktop/GTK
-
The first maintenance release of the stable PyGObject 3.8 library for the GNOME desktop environment has been announced some time ago, fixing a few bugs and introducing new rules.
-
Matthias Clasen had the pleasure of announcing last evening, May 3, that the first development release of the upcoming GNOME 3.10 desktop environment is ready for download and testing.
We, here at Softpedia, are monitoring the development process of the GNOME desktop environment very closely, and we can report that this first development release has very few updated packages, as compared with other testing versions from the past.
-
-
New Releases
-
After over a year sense the last release of JULinux (2011-06) A New Release is Born, and It’s Awesome !
-
Jitsi 2.2 is now available for download…
-
Kwort 4 is finally here! For those who don’t know, Kwort 4 is a full x86_64 system (finally!). In the last couple of week we’ve been testing Kwort 4 hardly to see if everything is “stable-enough”.
-
Screenshots
-
PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family
-
Last week we looked at PCLinuxOS, an excellent Linux distribution based on Mandriva Linux. Today we’re kicking the tires of Mageia Linux, which is a fork of Mandriva. Mandriva Linux has had its ups and downs as a commercial venture, but despite the financial struggles it’s a first-rate distribution that offers enterprise support and a number of enterprise products such as Pulse, their enterprise IT management system, Mandriva Business Server, and training and consulting. Mageia was created in 2010 as an independent, non-profit project, not tied to the fortunes of a commercial company, after most of the Mandriva developers were laid off.
-
Arch Family
-
Almost a year after the last release of the Open Build Service (OBS), the openSUSE developers have announced version 2.4 of their software. The biggest new feature in the distributed packaging and build service is support for the PKGBUILD format from Arch Linux which becomes the third packaging format the service can now use – the other two being RPM and Debian’s packaging system. Furthermore, OBS 2.4 introduces the 64-bit ARM AArch64 architecture as a target infrastructure and kernel, and bootloader packages can now be signed to work with UEFI Secure Boot.
-
Debian Family
-
Debian Linux doesn’t get all the attention it once did, but as the foundation for other, more popular Linux distributions, such as Mint and Ubuntu, the release of a new major Debian version, 7.0, aka Wheezy, is still a big deal in Linux development circles.
-
Derivatives
-
We appreciate your feedbacks about the overall speed/lightness of the system compared to last stable version of Elive. You can say something in our chat channel directly from the running system. If you detect any lagging in the system please consider different setups like disabling composite (which you can select on the startup of the graphical system) in order to report improvements. We would also appreciate feedbacks about composite enabled or disabled in old computers, suggestions for better performances, and memory usage compared to Topaz.
-
Canonical/Ubuntu
-
Ubuntu is on an exciting journey, a journey of convergence. Our goal is to build a convergent Operating System that brings a uniformity of technology and experience across phones, tablets, desktops, and televisions, and smoothing the lines between those devices in terms of interoperability and access to content. It is a bold vision, but Ubuntu has a strong reputation both in terms of our heritage in the desktop, server, and cloud, and with our passionate and capable community. I just wanted to provide some updates on work that is going on in delivering this vision.
-
Within the past year, there has been an abundance of criticism aimed at Ubuntu and the Gnome 3 projects. At times, it resembled a scorched earth carpet bombing mission. The outer edges of the Linuxsphere are still hearing echos of that event and while it has calmed a bit, there are those who have left one or both of those projects in protest.
And to be honest…..
-
Canonical published a few minutes ago, May 3, the regular top 10 app downloads chart, this time for April 2013, extracted from Ubuntu Software Center.
-
Canonical Founder Mark Shuttleworth has really big, plans to put Ubuntu on your smartphone, on your tablet and (via OpenStack). What he doesn’t offer is details on revenue.
-
-
Tablet shipments continued to “surge” in the first quarter of 2013, growing 142 percent year-over-year, according to market analyst IDC’s latest “Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker” report. Additionally, Android vendors had an extremely strong first quarter, shipping 27.8 million tablets versus Apple’s 19.5 million iPad and iPad mini devices.
More tablets shipped during the first quarter of this year than during the entire first half of 2012, with most of the growth “fueled by increased market demand for smaller screen devices,” largely based on a strong performance of Apple and Samsung, notes IDC.
-
The new Linux 3.9 kernel adds driver support for tiny MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems) devices made by ST, including accelerometers and motion sensors. Other Linux 3.9 features that affect the embedded world include SSD caching support, a lightweight suspend power mode, and support for Android’s “Goldfish” virtualization system.
When Linux 3.9 arrived on April 28, its support for MEMS devices was hardly a marquee enhancement. Yet of all the many Linux 3.9 improvements of interest to the mobile and embedded world, MEMs support may have the most significant long-term impact. As devices continue to shrink and sensing applications grow in importance, there is greater demand for the tiny devices, which range in size from a millimeter down to 20 micrometers.
-
f you’re squinting as you read this on a smartphone, here’s some good news: mobile fonts may soon be clearing up. In collaboration with Google and the FreeType project, Adobe has contributed its CFF (Compact Font Format) rasterizer to the open source FreeType font engine.
The open version of CFF is designed to improve legibility of small fonts rendered by the lightweight, resource-efficient FreeType on devices running Android, Linux, iOS, and other Unix-based platforms.
-
Via Technologies announced a tiny, low-power Pico-ITX SBC with optional 3G connectivity and battery power support, aimed at in-vehicle and mobile applications. The VAB-600 is based on an 800MHz ARM Cortex-A9 system-on-chip (SOC) with on-chip graphics acceleration, offers Ethernet, WiFi, and 3G connectivity, operates from 0 to 60° C, and runs either embedded Linux or Android 4.x.
-
Abalta Technologies announced an in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) solution that inexpensively mirrors browser content from smartphones or tablets to Linux-enabled “head” units. The company’s Weblink IVI demo consists of a client app running on a Raspberry Pi-based simulated head unit acting as a remote touchscreen for WiFi- or USB-connected smartphones running a companion server app.
-
Phones
-
It has been quite some time since my last post about Firefox OS running on a Raspberry Pi, but the questions didn’t stop to come in “when will it be released”? Well, I’m sorry that it took so long (sometimes finding time is not that easy), but finally, here we are: the sources and build instructions are available!
-
Ballnux
-
So you think Samsung Electronics America is just a consumer brand? Guess again. Samsung has launched a B2B branding initiative to promote its laptops, Galaxy tablets, smartphones and management software into business accounts. For channel partners, the key opportunities could involve BYOD, mobile device management, vertical market applications and plenty more.
-
Sub-notebooks/Tablets
-
Shezhen, China-based Promate Technologies claims to have created the world’s first tablet-projector. The “LumiTab” sports a modest 1024×600 7-inch IPS screen, runs Android 4.2, and uses a Texas Instruments digital-light-processing (DLP) chip to render “incredibly sharp 1080p HD images” on walls and projection screens, according to the company.
-
The second point release of the XBMC Media Center 12 software has been announced last evening, May 3, 2013, for the Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, Android and Raspberry Pi platforms.
XBMC Media Center 12.2 is a maintenance release, which brings various improvements and bugfixes over previous releases. The infinite loop on add-on dependencies has been fixed in this release, as well as audio-related crashes for Linux builds.
-
I’ve been educating library professionals about open source software for nearly seven years now, and sometimes I feel like I’ve made huge strides and other times, like today, I feel like I have so much more work to do.
-
Web Browsers
-
Mozilla
-
A recent report by Citizen Lab uncovered that commercial spyware produced by Gamma International is designed to trick people into thinking it’s Mozilla Firefox. We’ve sent Gamma a cease and desist letter today demanding that these illegal practices stop immediately.
-
-
CMS
-
Acquia has entered into an agreement with Capgemini Digital Services. Acquia will collaborate with Capgemini Digital Services to develop and operate content driven applications that deliver rich, immersive digital experiences for its clients.
-
Healthcare
-
GNU Health, an free software hospital information system, medical record system and health information system, is rapidly becoming popular in hospitals around the world, says one of its developers, Sebastian Marro. “This project has the potential to grow really large.”
Marro presented GNU Health at the Medetal conference in Luxenbourg, earlier this month. The GNU Health software is supported by a not-for profit organisation, GNU Solidario, set up in Spain. Marro, based in Argentina, is one of the board members of the NGO.
-
Business
-
This week we release the Express and Community Editions of eXo Platform 4.0: The Open Source Enterprise Social Platform.
-
FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
-
The GnuCash development team proudly announces GnuCash 2.5.1, the second release in the 2.5.x series of the GnuCash Free Accounting Software which will eventually lead to the stable version 2.6.0. It runs on GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris and Mac OSX.
-
BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA — Tuesday, April 30th, 2013 — The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today awarded Respects Your Freedom (RYF) certification to the TPE-N150USB Wireless N USB Adapter, sold by ThinkPenguin. The RYF certification mark means that the product meets the FSF’s standards in regard to users’ freedom, control over the product, and privacy. The TPE-N150USB can be purchased from http://www.thinkpenguin.com/TPE-N150USB. Software certification focused primarily on the firmware for the Atheros AR9271 chip used on the adapter.
-
-
Licensing
-
Luis Villa, an OSI board member and Deputy General Counsel at the Wikimedia Foundation, sat down with us to share his thoughts on the behavior he is seeing in the community away from copyleft licenses and how to get involved in the upcoming Open Source License Clinic.
-
Openness/Sharing
-
As the open source ethic has changed the way that we share and develop resources, crowdsourcing is redefining how we can create new resources based upon that willingness to share. One example of crowdsourcing at work for the betterment of us all is public health researchers turning to Twitter to collect real-time data about public health.
-
Open Hardware
-
At Open Source Junction 4 we invited attendees to present their hardware projects. Some were open source hardware, while some used consumer hardware components in conjunction with open source software to provide an innovative solution to a problem.
-
Programming
-
There’s a prevailing ethos among IT hirers that younger is better when it comes to programmers, but a study by academics in North Carolina suggests that employers might be missing a trick by not hiring the grizzled veterans of the coding world.
-
-
The Facebook website has lost 10 million visitors in the US and seen no growth in monthly visitors in the UK over the past year, according to data from market research firm Nielsen.
-
Security
-
The arrest of a 24-year-old Australian claiming to be the head of an international hacking ring and a Twitter hack that briefly sent Wall Street into a tailspin last week has shone the light on hackers as Perth prepares to host its first “hacker con”.
But the figures behind this weekend’s WAHCKon conference say the term hacker has been hijacked and most hackers are simply curious people with a computer.
-
A home science experiment that probed billions of Internet devices reveals that thousands of industrial and business systems offer remote access to anyone.
-
Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
-
-
Six days after the U.S. bombed his village, Yemeni activist Farea al-Muslimi testified on Capitol Hill about the terror of the U.S. drone wars. Al-Muslimi spoke during the Senate’s first-ever public hearing on the Obama administration’s targeted killing program. His family’s village was hit by a U.S. drone strike last week. The White House refused to send an official to defend the program’s legality. “When they think of America, they think of the terror they feel from the drones that hover over their heads, ready to fire missiles at any time,” al-Muslimi says of his fellow Yemenis. “What the violent militants had previously failed to achieve, one drone strike accomplished in an instant.” Others to testify at the hearing included law scholars and members of the U.S. military.
-
-
Environment/Energy/Wildlife
-
For better or worse, the biological research community has become heavily reliant upon an animal that most of us would try to kill if we found it in our homes: the mouse. Mice have lots of good points. There’s about a century’s worth of genetic research on it to draw upon, there are sophisticated tools for pursuing genetic studies, and it’s relatively closely related to us. Results from mice often translate into knowledge of human disease.
-
PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
-
If the journalists who were far too generous in their coverage of Bush’s presidency are the same ones writing about how that presidency should be viewed now, he’s in safe hands.
-
-
That’s the unfortunate thought that raced trough my head while reading the report in Sunday’s New York Times that Charles and David Koch — the notorious billionaire bankrollers of climate-change denial, voter suppression, and much of the right-wing noise machine — could be the leading candidates to buy eight major daily newspapers from the recently bankrupt Tribune Company, including the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune.
-
Privacy
-
Why does your government want a backdoor in all popular Internet products and services? That’s like asking why a prostitute wants you to pay for her services, or why a politician wants a bribe (or is that a campaign contribution?).
-
-
-
In a CNN interview about the Boston Bombings investigations, a former FBI counterterrorism agent admitted a startling (yet unsurprising) fact: “all digital communications” are recorded and stored. All of them. All phone calls, all e-mails and all social media interactions. According to him, there is definitely a way of retracing and listening to any phone call made on US soil. While most Americans ignore or deny this reality, the shaping of the USA into a heavily monitored police state is complete. Here is part of the CNN interview.
-
Civil Rights
-
Building owner, factory owner and engineer accused, as death toll in disaster reaches 622
-
The United Kingdom has denied entry to a Kazakh artist who does not have hands because he cannot provide fingerprints, he says.
Anti-nuclear activist Karipbek Kuyukov was due to travel to Great Britain last month to attend a conference and show his paintings, he told Tengrinews.
-
Internet/Net Neutrality
-
“The Wall Street Journal and others are reporting that longtime telecomm lobbyist Tom Wheeler will be nominated to head the Federal Communications Commission. According to the LA Times: ‘Wheeler is a former president of the National Cable Television Assn. and the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Assn. Despite his close ties to industries he will soon regulate, some media watchdogs are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. “As someone who has known Tom for years, I believe that he will be an independent, proactive chairman,” said Gigi B. Sohn, president and chief executive of Public Knowledge, adding that she has “no doubt that Tom will have an open door and an open mind, and that ultimately his decisions will be based on what he genuinely believes is best for the public interest, not any particular industry.”‘”
-
President Barack Obama will nominate venture capitalist Tom Wheeler to be the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, The Wall Street Journal reported today. Wheeler is “a former top lobbyist for the cable and wireless industries” and will be nominated as soon as tomorrow, the Journal wrote. The Hill reporter Brendan Sasso said the White House has now confirmed that Wheeler will be nominated for the post.
-
President Obama on Wednesday nominated telecom veteran Tom Wheeler to serve as the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
If the Senate approves Wheeler’s nomination, he will replace outgoing chairman Julius Genachowski, who announced in March that he would step down from his post after four years. Until the Senate vote occurs, Democratic Commissioner Mignon Clyburn will serve as interim chair after Genachowski leaves in mid-May.
-
DRM
-
While the shares fall and the smartphone wars rage, Apple’s music store keeps growing – and tying users into its platform
-
Today is the seventh annual International Day Against DRM (Digital Rights Management). We’ve talked a lot here about DRM particularly in movies and books (read my two-part timeline, The DRM graveyard: A brief history of digital rights management in music
-
On April 25, 2012, Tor Books UK announced that it was making all of its ebook list DRM-free. There’s still a lot of debate and interest in the topic. I recently wrote a piece about the subject for Publishers Weekly which I’ve replicated here.
-
Intellectual Monopolies
-
-
Trademarks
-
SOFTWARE DEVELOPER Mozilla has sent a cease and desist letter to Gamma International, claiming the firm is using Firefox’s branding to trick users into downloading and using its malware.
Mozilla’s hugely popular Firefox web browser is trusted by many users because it is not a commercial organisation like Google or Microsoft, making it a good target for those that want to steal some of its good will. Mozilla has alleged that Gamma International is trying to do just that, with its malware masquerading as the firm’s Firefox web browser, and Mozilla said it sent Gamma International a cease and desist letter.
-
Copyrights
-
Earlier this month Finland’s largest ever Internet piracy case ended with four men being found guilty of copyright infringement and two being exonerated. The case involved a so-called ‘topsite’ called Angel Falls and had an interesting twist. During the trial it was revealed that evidence gathered by a local anti-piracy group and the IFPI was also handed to a “senior MPAA executive” who tampered with the evidence before handing it to the police.
-
The Pirate Party in Iceland seem to have booked a major victory in Iceland’s parliamentary election today, scoring 5.1% of the total vote. It’s a truly remarkable achievement for a party that’s only a few months old, and also the first time that a Pirate party anywhere in the world has been democratically chosen in a national parliament. One of the main goals of the Pirates will be to fight increased censorship and protect freedom of speech.
-
POLITICAL UPSTART the Pirate Party has won three seats in the Icelandic Parliament.
The party won just over five percent of the national vote, just enough to ensure its place, according to a celebratory post from Pirate Party spokesman and evangelist Rick Falkvinge.
-
The United States and ten governments from around the Pacific are meeting yet again to hash out the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) on May 15-24 in Lima, Peru. The TPP is one of the worst global threats to the Internet since ACTA. Since the negotiations have been secretive from the beginning, we mainly know what’s in the current version of this trade agreement because of a leaked draft [PDF] from February 2011. Based upon that text, some other leaked notes, and the undemocratic nature of the entire process, we have every reason to be alarmed about the copyright enforcement provisions contained in this multinational trade deal.
-
Swedish authorities have filed a motion at the District Court of Stockholm on behalf of the entertainment industries, demanding the seizure of two Pirate Bay domain names. In addition to the Swedish-based .se domain the motion also includes the new Icelandic .is TLD. In a rapid response, The Pirate Bay has just switched to a fresh domain, ThePirateBay.sx, registered in the northeastern Caribbean island of Sint Maarten.
-
Norway has moved an important – some say unstoppable – step towards legislative change that will enable the aggressive tackling of online copyright infringement. Proposed amendments to the Copyright Act, which will make it easier for rightsholders to monitor file-sharers and have sites such as The Pirate Bay blocked at the ISP level, received broad support in parliament this week and look almost certain to be passed into law.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
05.05.13
Posted in News Roundup at 6:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
![GNOME bluefish](/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/120px-Gartoon-Bluefish-icon.png)
Contents
-
-
-
-
-
Kernel Space
-
Last month’s release of FreeNAS 8.3.1 adds new functionality that allows system administrators of the open source-based network attached storage solution to encrypt entire disks while using ZFS. ZFS has been the primary filesystem for FreeNAS since FreeNAS 8, and has supplanted FreeBSD’s UFS as the project’s focus. The new security functionality applies only to ZFS and is the first time that FreeNAS has supported encryption.
-
Linus Torvalds is now releasing the second major new Linux kernel milestone of 2013. The Linux 3.9 kernel includes new features that will make the open source operating system faster and more efficient than ever before.
-
Sometimes I wonder about the experience level of all us Linux users. Are we mostly a collection of new users or are most Linux users hard core geeks? Well, much like the user-base of individual distros or even the ecosystem as a whole, pinning down the distribution of experience levels across Linux will never anything more than some kind of guess. Today, I’d like to venture another.
I’ve mentioned before, but it bears repeating that my crystal ball of choice is a good poll. What better way to find out what folks’ experience level is that to just ask. I simply named the poll I’ma Linux: and offered various levels for tickable answers.
-
I have been noticing some ads for the Linux Foundation appearing on the web…
Such advertising is one of the things that is needed to generate demand for FLOSS everywhere. The Linux Foundation may get a deal from Google or they may be able to afford the price. We bloggers can help by providing links to various organizations and individuals producing FLOSS. Every bit helps.
-
Jon Masters summarises the latest news from the Linux kernel community as the final 3.8 kernel release approaches and preparation for 3.9 begins
-
Applications
-
-
-
Last but not least, gThumb 3.2.1 now allows users to use the second mouse button in order to drag the image, in the image viewer component.
gThumb is available in most Linux operating systems. Unfortunately, Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) features an older version, 3.0.2.
-
Big Data is an all-inclusive term that refers to data sets so large and complex that they need to be processed by specially designed hardware and software tools. The data sets are typically of the order of tera or exabytes in size. These data sets are created from a diverse range of sources: sensors that gather climate information, publicly available information such as magazines, newspapers, articles. Other examples where big data is generated include purchase transaction records, web logs, medical records, military surveillance, video and image archives, and large-scale e-commerce.
-
Instructionals/Technical
-
Games
-
The following blog was, unless otherwise noted, independently written by a member of Gamasutra’s game development community. The thoughts and opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of Gamasutra or its parent company.
-
-
They have stated that the Alpha will start rolling out around the end of May, if you haven’t purchased a version that enables you to get in on the Alpha you better do it sooner or later as they will probably remove the chance!
-
When I first found out that Unity was supporting Linux, I was very much looking forward to adding one more platform to my programming kung-fu belt. I had already purchased Unity 3.5 Pro, iOS and Android licenses…and was crushed to discover I would have to pay for another license to get Unity 4 Pro. My interest in the Linux port ceased…
-
Desktop Environments/WMs
-
It’s been ages since I last took a look at Elive. A development release has just come out so now is a good time to take a peek at it.
-
This is the translation of an article by Roberto Ferramosca, published in Italian on lffl.org, a great Italian Blog about Linux and Open source.
-
K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
-
We are happy to announce that KDevelop 4.5.0 is now available. For those who don’t know, KDevelop is an IDE for all those developers who want to integrate the tools they need for developing, in a comfortable and simple solution. We have a focus on C++ and CMake, but you can find it useful when using other languages such as PHP and Python.
-
-
There are many ways in KDE to find and launch an application or access files – the simplest being krunner which can be invoked by alt+F2. However, if there are any new KDE converts they might want something like Unity’s Dash or Gnome’s Activities overview.
-
-
Today’s Distrowatch Weekly brought the news that a new distribution has been added to the official Linux database. You know what that means. It’s time to boot ‘er up.
SolydXK is a Debian-based distribution aiming to easy to use, stable, and secure. Founders believe SolydXK would be suitable for home and small office settings. SolydXK comes in two flavors: SolydX featuring the Xfce desktop and SolydK featuring KDE. SolydXK began life as a variant of Linux Mint Debian with KDE, but later broke away and became its own distro. Its inaugural release came just two weeks ago and was promptly put right smack on this month’s cover of Full Circle Magazine. SolydXK 201304 features Linux 3.2.39, Xorg 1.12.4, GCC 4.7.2, and Firefox 19.0.2.
-
Ah, yes, it’s that old argument again. But this time there’s a twist. Everyday Linux User is asking visitors to his site which distributions they might save. His list isn’t exhaustive, but his early results are proving interesting.
Gary Newell, proprietor of Everyday Linux User, says he continues to see that old complaint that there are just too many distributions that are merely re-spins. So Newell asks, “Imagine that tomorrow the world decided there can only be a limited number of distributions. Which distributions would you save?”
I have a little trouble with his poll choices. His theory is about “re-spins” but yet he included some distros I consider grandfathers and some that were forked so long ago they are now their own full-fledged distributions. But as it is, it’s still an intriguing question and his early results are proving interesting as well.
-
New Releases
-
Previous versions of ExTiX were based on KNOPPIX/Debian. Version 7.0 of ExTiX was based on the Swiss Linux System Paldo. Version 8 of ExTiX was based on Debian Sid. Version 11 of ExTiX was based on Ubuntu 12.10.
-
-
-
Linux Kernel 3.8.8 (3.8.10 available through updates, 3.9 available in hours) with BFQ iosched and ZFS, GNOME 3.6.3, KDE 4.10.2, MATE 1.6 (thanks to infirit), Xfce 4.10, LibreOffice 4.0, production ready UEFI (and SecureBoot) support and experimental systemd support (including openrc boot speed improvements) are just some of the things you will find inside the box.
-
The GParted team is proud to announce a well-tested, stable release of GParted Live.
This release includes another critical bug fix for a potential crash that might cause loss of data while moving or copying a partition. We strongly recommend that all users of GParted Live 0.15.0-x and 0.16.0-x upgrade to GParted Live 0.16.1-1 to avoid data loss.
-
-
-
-
We are happy to announce a maintenance release for Manjaro 0.8.5, released two weeks ago. With this update we adjusted or install medias to the new repository structure we have now. This will ease the installation of Manjaro Linux for new users a lot. This release features pacman 4.1 and includes all updates from the 25th April 2013. Also we fixed slight issues we found in our initial release of Manjaro 0.8.5.
-
Simplified page-management with Kajona 4.1 “simplicity”
Five months after the initial release of Kajona 4, the first update v4.1 focuses on simplicity.
-
Good morning, everyone! It’s Day Two of Linux Fest NorthWest, so I’m going to be heading out shortly, but I’m going to elaborate a little bit about what made it into Descent|OS and what didn’t for this release.
-
-
Screenshots
-
aptosid is a full featured Debian sid based live CD with a special focus on hard disk installations, a clean upgrade path within sid and additional hardware and software support. The ISO is completely based on Debian sid/main, enriched and stabilised with aptosid’s own packages and scripts and adheres to the Debian Social Contract (DFSG).
-
PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family
-
In the past couple of weeks I have taken a look at two of the more popular Linux operating systems.
Last week I tackled Debian and before that I tackled openSUSE.
-
Paris the 15th of April 2013: Mandriva S.A. has released a host of security fixes as well as new addons for its server platform, Mandriva Business Server.
Fully integrated with Mandriva Business Server, the Mandriva Proxy-Cache is based on the Squid proxy project and allows the filtering by white and black lists, as well as on an user basis. Specially packaged for the Mandriva Business Server, Mandriva Proxy can be purchased on Mandriva ServicePlace and will install on top of Mandriva Business Server in just a few clicks. Mandriva has also released a dedicated ssh management addon that lets administrators handle their users’ ssh keys in an elegant and straightforward way. It is available free of charge on the ServicePlace.
-
Red Hat Family
-
Red Hat is renaming and rebuilding its open source JBoss application server. The new name is WildFly and with it will come a faster and more transparent development process.
-
The UK government’s love affair with open-source technology has given software house Red Hat a shot in the arm, we’re told.
The company boasted that its government and system integrator business has grown in the “high double-digit rates” over the last three years. Red Hat, which offers various flavours of the open-source operating system Linux, said subscriptions for its software make up the majority of its revenue from Whitehall.
-
Fedora
-
The Korora Project is a Linux distribution which hails from Australia and has been offering a friendly Linux since 2005, when it was based on Gentoo. In 2010, it switched over to Fedora and became a remix – now the developers have released Korora 18, “Flo” based on Fedora 18. Actually, the developers just renamed the beta release as final as they found no major issues during the beta period. Korora 18 comes in two flavours with a GNOME and KDE desktop.
-
Debian Family
-
After many months of constant development, the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 7.0 (code name “Wheezy”).
This new version of Debian includes various interesting features such as multiarch support, several specific tools to deploy private clouds, an improved installer, and a complete set of multimedia codecs and front-ends which remove the need for third-party repositories.
-
The release of Debian 7.0, also known as Wheezy, has taken place – the community-driven and built Linux distribution’s most visible change is a new updated look with GNOME 3.4 and the GNOME shell as the default desktop. But there are important changes behind the scenes which will make Wheezy easier to work with and simpler to use to create private clouds. In all, the developers have worked for just over two years, since the release of Debian 6 “Squeeze”, to produce the new stable version of the distribution.
-
-
Derivatives
-
Canonical/Ubuntu
-
Raring Ringtail, the newest Ubuntu release, is landing with a thud, based on early reviews. It might have some appeal for businesses, though. “In essence, they’re aiming for a more predictable experience, and I think that could make this a potentially interesting offer for businesses that want to get out from underneath the cost and upgrade cycle of Windows,” said tech analyst Charles King.
-
Canonical released version 13.04 of its popular Ubuntu Linux distro, introducing a Developer Preview SDK for creating apps that run on the desktop as well as Ubuntu Touch-based smartphones and tablets. Ubuntu 13.04 (“Raring Ringtail”) offers a more lightweight memory footprint, faster boot, lower power consumption, faster graphics performance, and the debut of Canonical’s MIR display server.
-
With the recent release of VMWare ESXi 5.1 and the associated fully featured web client management (which we may cover in a later article), Linux in general is getting closer and closer to the ‘do anything’ desktop operating system we have all wanted it to be for some time. Maturity breeds integration and although we have always had any number of tools to manage our command line servers, our Windows desktops and Mac OSX or other Linux graphical environments separately, we were lacking in a tool that put all the pieces together and managed our connections for us. There are several tools that are attempting to integrate system management, today we are going to talk about one, the “Remmina Remote Desktop Client”.
-
Mark Shuttleworth made the controversial decision to move Ubuntu Linux to the Unity interface back in 2010. It’s a decision that provoked lots of argument, but with the Ubuntu 13.04 Linux release out this week, Shuttleworth remains confident he is moving in the right direction.
In an exclusive video interview with Datamation, Shuttleworth reflected on the difficult decisions and transitions he has had to make with Ubuntu Linux. Overall Shuttleworth stressed that he deeply cares about the community and its opinions as Ubuntu Linux continues to evolve.
-
Canonical has announced today, April 25, the immediate availability for download of Ubuntu Server 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) operating system, along with Ubuntu 13.04, and all the other flavors.
Ubuntu Server 13.04 includes the Grizzly release of OpenStack software, which delivers a massively scalable cloud operating system.
-
Every six months, Ubuntu Linux comes out with a new server release. It is however only once every two years that one of those releases is labeled as an Long Term Support (LTS) release.
-
-
-
Ubuntu has changed a lot since its early days, as we noted earlier this week. So, too, has what we could call the Ubuntu brand, or the image of the operating system as Canonical presents it to the world. And with Ubuntu 13.04 about to debut, this seems like a particularly appropriate moment to consider how Ubuntu and Canonical as brands have evolved over time to become what they are today.
-
A modest update, bringing no major enhancements but adding polish to the Ubuntu desktop
-
Canonical is banging the drums for Raring Ringtail, or Ubuntu 13.04 — the much awaited new version, which is available today following beta testing. As the Unity interface and other enhancements to Ubuntu have rolled along, many users have become used to more resource-intensive versions of Ubuntu, but version 13.04 actually offers reduced memory footprint, in addition to a number of other notable features.
-
-
Now, here is a treat for all you Hadoop and Ubuntu lovers. Last month, Canonical, the organization behind the Ubuntu operating system, partnered with MapR, one of the Hadoop heavyweights, in an effort to make Hadoop available as an integrated part of Ubuntu through its repositories. The partnership announced that MapR’s M3 Edition for Apache Hadoop will be packaged and made available for download as an integrated part of the Ubuntu operating system. Canonical and MapR are also working to develop a Juju Charm that can be used by OpenStack and other customers to easily deploy MapR into their environments.
-
Once a symbol of openness and freedom, Ubuntu partners with the Chinese regime
-
Reader Ollie Terrance wanted to get the look and feel of Ubuntu phone on his Android device. With a little help from Buzz Launcher and Widget Locker, that’s exactly what he did.
-
The email mentions some of the changes we can expect in Saucy Salamander. The development version incorporates new versions of GCC and boost. GCC (short for GNU Compiler Collection) is a compiler system by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages. Saucy Salamander will use GCC 4.8 as the default compiler, which means it will have improved C++11 support, AddressSanitizer, and a fast memory error detector, among other things. The email also mentions that updates to Glibc and binutils will follow later during the development cycle.
-
-
-
News about the Ubuntu Touch OS have been received like a breeze of fresh air, mostly by those who are already Ubuntu fans, or by those simply bored with the Android experience and who would like a change of scenery, without switching to a different ecosystem / operating system. Others have received the news concerning Ubuntu on smartphones / tablets with little interest, but that’s mainly because the OS’ wide release is set for late this year, or early 2014.
-
The Unity desktop has been seen as an attempt by Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth to position Ubuntu as an OS not only for desktops, laptops or netbooks, but also tablets and smartphones, with the same interface across devices. Shuttleworth says that Unity has buy-in from users, developers and OEMs, such as Dell, Lenovo and Acer.
-
-
Flavours and Variants
-
An enlightened versions of Ubuntu, Bodhi is an incredibly lightweight and highly customisable distro using Canonical’s base. Is Bodhi crippled from this, or much better?
-
Xubuntu 13.04 has been released yesterday, along with the other Ubuntu flavors. Xubuntu uses Xfce as the default desktop environment and is a great alternative for those who prefer a traditional desktop layout with a panel on top, panel applets and so on.
-
-
CalAmp unveiled a 4G LTE cellular router and gateway for AT&T networks that runs embedded Linux on a 400MHz ARM9 processor. The LMU-5000LTE is equipped with LTE, HSPA, and EVDO routers, a 50-channel GPS, and multiple I/O, and features fleet tracking, as well as user-programmable PEG (Programmable Event Generator) monitoring software.
-
Artila Electronics has announced an ARM9 micro-box computer with eight isolated RS-485 serial ports and two versions of preinstalled embedded Linux, enabling boot-up from data flash in the event of NAND-boot failure. The Matrix-516 is equipped with a 400MHz Atmel AT91SAM9G20 SOC (system-on-chip), 64MB of RAM, dual Ethernet ports, and two USB 2.0 ports.
The Matrix-516 appears to be a variation of the company’s Matrix-518, substituting eight 2.5KV-isolated RS-485 ports for the earlier model’s RS-232/422/485 ports. As far as we can see, this is the only difference, aside from the lack of the previous model’s audio out.
-
XBMC is a media center application that started its life as a project to turn the first-generation Xbox into an audio and video powerhouse. The project has since been ported to run on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and other platforms, and we’ve even seen it running on low-power devices with ARM processors such as the Pivos XIOS DS Media Play.
-
WinSystems has introduced its first ARM-based single-board computer (SBC), based on Freescale’s 800MHz i.MX6 processors. The SBC35-C398 series SBCs are available in single-, dual-, and quad-core versions with varying display, expansion, and I/O capabilities, feature extended temperature operation, and are supported with embedded Linux and Android OS builds.
-
When developing systems or devices based on embedded Linux or Android, does it make sense to use commercial development tools? In this guest column, Brad Dixon, Director of Open Source Solutions at Mentor Graphics, suggests several reasons why commercial development tools and support can potentially save time, resources, money, and opportunity costs.
-
Mentor Graphics announced a version of its Sourcery Codebench GNU toolchain and IDE (integrated development environment) that incorporates electronic system-level (ESL) tools for emulating hardware environments, both pre- and post-silicon, on embedded Linux targets. “Mentor Embedded Sourcery Codebench Virtual Edition” integrates trace/debug, hardware analysis, and simulation tools and APIs.
The new Virtual Edition product combines the company’s Sourcery CodeBench and Sourcery Analyzer tools along with its Vista Virtual Prototyping and Veloce2 Emulation Systems platforms.
-
Gumstix has upgraded its Linux-ready DuoVero and Overo computer-on-modules (COMs). The OMAP4430-based DuoVero Zephyr adds 802.11b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth to the DuoVero design, and the Overo TidalSTORM is based on a TI 1GHz OMAP3730 processor, and doubles the RAM to 1GB compared to the previous Overo Tide.
Gumstix has been upgrading and revising its Overo line of tiny, Linux-focused COMs since the first ARM Cortex-A8-based Overo Earth arrived in 2008. It is now doing the same with its newer, Cortex-A9-based DuoVero modules, which similarly use Texas Instruments (TI) DaVinci OMAP system-on-chips (SOCs). As before, both new COMs measure 2.28 x 0.67 inches (58 x 17mm), feature dual 70-pin expansion connectors, and are supported with open-source Linux development kits, including Yocto Project build system support.
-
The market for cheap single-board computers is becoming one of the most surprisingly competitive spaces in the tech industry. On the heels of the million-selling Raspberry Pi, a variety of companies and small groups started creating their own tiny computers for programmers and hobbyists.
-
From the user’s point of view the small cheap computers have huge advantages like price, performance, portability, and running FLOSS operating systems. Underneath that, in the chip itself is a magical combination that used to fill an ATX box with components. For x86/amd64 all of those components were managed well except the graphics which were closely guarded secret places where FLOSS was often second best because the manufacturers did not produce FLOSS drivers and were often not cooperative.
-
The Meld developers have announced the immediate availability for download of the 1.7.2 version of Meld, a visual merge and diff utility targeted at developers, featuring a handful of improvements, bug fixes and updated translations.
-
It’s an obvious thing but in case you didn’t notice, the price of IT using multiple sources of software and hardware competitively priced is good for you and everyone else on Earth.
-
Phones
-
What a difference a decade makes! Ten years ago, Wintel would have been the only way to go for the IT ecosystem but it was too expensive. Now Kenyans have the choice of small cheap computers running */Linux and are loving it. Wintel need not apply.
-
Ballnux
-
Samsung has claimed that it is likely to run out of its new Galaxy S4s and is facing overwhelming global demand.
-
Android
-
Rumour loving Digitimes reports that several major vendors, including Lenovo, HP, Toshiba, Acer and Asus will launch Intel based convertibles sometime in the third quarter. Lenovo will lead the way and it will introduce its first Android based notebook a bit earlier, in May.
Intel is rumoured to be targeting the sub-$500 market with Android based convertibles. Pricier designs, such as Haswell based Ultrabooks should cost at least a couple of hundred more and they will feature Windows 8 rather than Android. In terms of hardware, the convertibles will have to feature a completely detachable keyboard that will allow them to transform into a tablet. With a completely detachable keyboard, the whole concept sounds a lot like Asus’ Transformer series of Android devices.
-
Sony’s Xperia S AOSP experiment was well-received, though it was eventually moved away from the AOSP main branch to Sony’s own GitHub, owing to the limitations of what could be done with the hardware. Sony software engineers Johan Redestig and Björn Andersson want to help continue that work with Sony’s latest. The Xperia Z project will help developers and tinkerers interested in making contributions to Android, and to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 Pro platform do so using essentially a vanilla Android OS installation on the device, albeit starting out on Sony’s own GitHub, and not as part of Google’s own main AOSP project.
-
The military has high-tech equipment to track sniper fire, using microphones carried by soldiers or stationary mics mounted at strategic points. Now that technology is getting shrunk so it can be used in the hands of civilian bodyguards with Android phones.
-
A free Android app is a great thing – if that app is really worthwhile. And fortunately, the number of free apps for Android is always growing, fueled in part by developers offering freemiums designed to entice you to try the app and then opt for the paid version because, hey, you actually like it. Other developers are looking to cash in on the BYOD trend, so they are offering freebies to individual users in the hopes that you’ll push your boss to let you use it for work too (but your boss will have to pay for the enterprise version). Other apps are of the open source, free and wild ilk, and still others are apps by developers looking to do something good for others.
-
-
-
Sub-notebooks/Tablets
-
YouGov’s Quarterly Tablet Tracker for Q1 2013 reveals consumers now see Android devices as equal in quality to Apple’s, deeply cutting into the iPad manufacturer’s share of the ‘premium’ tablet market.
-
-
OpenStack isn’t just a way for tech giants like HP and IBM to mimic Amazon’s wildly successful cloud services. It’s also a teaching tool.
Created little more than three years ago by NASA and cloud computing outfit Rackspace, OpenStack is an open source project in the truest sense of the term. Hundreds of developers are now contributing to the project, and these developers span myriad different companies, including not only HP and IBM, but the networking giant Cisco, virtualization kingpin VMware, and myriad startups. And then there’s Dinkar Sitaram, a professor at the PES Institute of Technology in Bangalore, India who’s using OpenStack to immerse his students in the ways of open source software.
-
-
Cenatic, Spain’s open source centre, has published a model to help calculate cost savings that are possible by switching to open source software on desktop PCs. The model evaluates costs by taking into account the size and complexity of the organisation, Cenatic says. “The methodology is based on our experience with migrations and open source methodologies.”
-
Stick With Open Source – The software that powers many businesses, often also labeled “enterprise”, is equally as bad. Closed source, license restricted, and unbelievably expensive, enterprise software will cause more problems than it is worth at some point. Case in point, we once ran our entire stack on IBM’s WebSphere. The databases, the java application server, the web server, and the load balancer. The load balancer used a kernel loadable module that would break every time we patched the server, and we would have to go back to IBM to have a new binary built before we could patched in production. IBM’s turnaround time was normally around a week or so, but for a load balancer, it was completely unacceptable. Own your datacenter, own your software, don’t let a vendor tell you what you can and can not do, leave that up to your imagination.
-
This local client had decided to abandon Microsoft and change out their office systems for new hardware with new operating systems. Thus already requiring retraining and all that comes with such a change. Of course, I made the pitch for Linux with all FOSS. In general, they only use their systems for e-mail and creating quote documents for clients. Under FOSS systems, the e-mail is covered with any number of FOSS e-mail applications, while the quote documents are covered with LibreOffice to create PDF files. One of the systems does run accounting software for billing and payments. But they do not do their own payroll, so LedgerSMB would work for their billing and payments accounting system.
-
Web Browsers
-
-
Chrome
-
Bug bounties–cash prizes offered by open source communities to anyone who finds key software bugs–have been steadily on the rise for several years now, ranging from FOSS Factory’s bounty programs to the bounties that both Google (for the Chrome browser) and Mozilla offer. In fact, Google has been setting new records with the bounties it offers for meaningful bugs. And now, in a post on the Chrome blog, Google has confirmed that it has paid out more than $31,000 to a single security researcher who identified three Chrome bugs.
-
Mozilla
-
At the beginning of this year, the folks at Mozilla rolled out the 1.0 version of the Firefox OS Simulator, which provided folks–especially developers–an opportunity to try out the company’s promising new mobile operating system. The simulator worked on computers rather than mobile devices, and many developers used to get a taste of the new platform.
-
Rust, the new programming language being developed by the Mozilla project, has a number of interesting features. One that stands out is the focus on safety. There are clear attempts to increase the range of errors that the compiler can detect and prevent, and thereby reduce the number of errors that end up in production code.
-
The Mozilla developers have now released the latest version of the Firefox OS simulator. Designed to allow developers to create and test applications for Firefox OS without having to try and get their hands on the limited supply of application-creator-oriented Geeksphone developer preview phones.
-
Earlier this week, I covered the imminent availability of the first phones for sale based on Mozilla’s Firefox OS mobile platform. The company has already detailed the first five countries that will offically get Firefox OS phones, but the very first phones–aimed at developers–arrived for sale this week and sold out nearly instantly. Mozilla partnered with Spanish start-up Geeksphone to move the phones, and the speed with which they sold could be a very promising sign as Mozilla reorganizes its staff and strategy around mobile phones.
-
-
Mozilla is a perennial favorite of the open source world, a poster child for success. Today Mozilla introduced Heka, which they describe as “a tool for high performance data gathering, analysis, monitoring, and reporting”. Gathering performance statistics of web servers is part of the day to day work of a sysadmin, so an announcement from Mozilla in this space is sure to be interesting.
-
SaaS/Big Data
-
-
The European Union is funding a consortium of researchers, academic organisations, and others to come up with ways to improve decision-making speed and quality when it comes to real world data sets. The AXLE Project is being run by the AXLE Consortium – comprising the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, the University of Manchester, the University of Ljubljana, and Portavita – and is coordinated by PostgreSQL experts 2ndQuadrant.
-
There’s more — much more — to the Big Data software ecosystem than Hadoop. Here are four open source projects that will help you get big benefits from Big Data.
-
-
Security is improving in the open source OpenStack cloud platform, but more work is needed and is still being done. That’s the message coming from the recently formed OpenStack Security Group (OSSG) at the OpenStack Summit in Portland this week.
OpenStack is a multi-stakeholder effort with broad participation from some of the biggest IT vendors in the world, including IBM, Dell, HP, Intel, Cisco and AT&T, as well as Linux vendors Red Hat, SUSE and Canonical. It is being deployed by well-known companies such as BestBuy, eBay, Comcast and Bloomberg.
-
-
-
-
Databases
-
Some consolidation in the world of open source database startups: SkySQL, a provider of open source database solutions, is merging with Monty Program Ab, the creators of MariaDB, an open source database technology that is used by Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia and other services. The merger is also a reunion of sorts: both companies employ key people from MySQL, the database company that was bought by Sun in 2008, and in turn became a part of Oracle. Monty Program was founded and led by Michael “Monty” Widenius, the founder of MySQL.
-
SkySQL last week signed a merger agreement with Monty Program Ab forming one of the industry’s newest and perhaps most logical business agreements.
SkySQL is a provider of open source database solutions for MySQL and MariaDB users, while Monty Program is the creator or the MariaDB open source database itself.
NOTE: MariaDB is a community-developed fork of the MySQL relational database management system, which in itself is a open source Relational DataBase Management Systsem (RDBMS) formerly championed by Sun prior to Oracle days.
-
More bad new for Oracle owned MySQL, which is heading in the direction of OpenOffice. Wikimedia has completed the migration of the English and German Wikipedias, as well as Wikidata, to MariaDB 5.5.
-
Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
-
Continuing along in the vein of exploring all the options in datacenter virtualization, my journey has led me, unavoidably some might say, to Joyent’s SmartOS. SmartOS is a decedent of Solaris, one of the first Unix systems I learned on over a decade ago. Being based on Solaris, and on account of a number of other features, SmartOS is definitely a horse of a different color.
-
Healthcare
-
Tobacco giant warned of loss of jobs in UK before packaging rules were dropped, and anti-smoking camp also cites possible fear of Ukip
-
Business
-
Funding
-
The Software Freedom Conservancy has started a fundraising campaign to create an open source, free software accounting system for non-profit organisations (NPO). Conservancy’s goal is to raise $75,000 to fund a developer for one year to first evaluate existing technologies and then build a solution designed for non-profit accounting on the best available open source system.
-
Donay, a Dutch startup that’s officially launching at TechCrunch Disrupt 2013 NY, wants to make it easier for companies and users to provide incentives to open source developers. Say your company is using a popular open-source application, but you find a bug or need a new feature. Currently, there is no easy way to pay open source developers for their work and, Donay argues, that makes it hard for companies that don’t have in-house development shops to get bugs fixed or new features added.
-
Google Summer of Code selected Bloomington as a participant for a second year.
Bloomington will be participating as a mentoring organization to student programmers through the company’s Summer of Code Initiative.
Bloomington was the first city government establishment to participate in Google Summer of Code in 2012.
-
Project Releases
-
We are about to ship Eucalyptus version 3.3 – and there is no end to our pride and excitement!
-
The developers of ack have released version 2.0 of their grep-like tool optimised for searching source code. Described as “designed for programmers”, ack has been available since 2005 and is based on Perl’s regular expressions engine. It minimises false positives by ignoring version control directories by default and has flexible highlighting for matches. The newly released ack 2.0 introduces a more flexible identification system, better support for ackrc configuration files and the ability to read the list of files to be searched from stdin.
-
Public Services/Government
-
Open source technology should be used to help commoditise government IT to move from cost-heavy bespoke systems to the more competitive end of the market, Tariq Rashid, IT Reform, Cabinet Office has said.
He also warned that by using customised IT solutions, or trying to aggregate demand to drive discounts, government departments were losing their power as a customer and missing out on the fierce dynamics of the commodity market.
Rashid made his comments while speaking at the Open Gov Summit 2013 in London today, where he also reiterated the Cabinet Office’s current approach to IT – specifically, the drive towards user need, agile development and sustained value.
-
Openness/Sharing
-
Building on the ground-breaking work of billionaire genius Tony Stark, the first Linux-powered Iron Man suits may soon be within the reach of homebrew builders.
-
Open Hardware
-
One of the smallest quadrotors in the world is also fully open source. Is it a toy, a development, platform, or both?
-
-
On Saturday, as part of their weekly activities, the GNU Linux Users’ Group (GLUG) of the BMS Institute of Technology, Bangalore, celebrated Hardware Freedom Day.
-
Programming
-
-
Cut to a polite, well dressed assistant at a counter with a big sign saying ‘End of Show Department’ behind him.
Assistant Well it is one of our cheapest, sir.
Chris What else have you got?
Assistant Well, there’s the long slow pull-out, sir, you know, the camera tracks back and back and mixes…
As he speaks we pull out and mix through to the exterior of the store. Mix through to even wider zoom ending up in aerial view of London. It stops abruptly and we cut back to Chris.
In the last tutorial we saw how to model the position on a chess board. However, the interface was pretty basic. It looked like this:
-
The developers of the Ruby on Rails web framework have announced that the first Rails 4.0 release candidate is now available “just in time for the opening of RailsConf”. Rails 4.0 is the first Rails release to prefer Ruby 2.0 and has a minimum requirement of Ruby 1.9.3. The release candidate includes over 1300 commits made since February’s release of the first beta of Rails 4, all landing on top of the numerous changes made since Rails 3.2. The Rails team hope that developers can “give this release candidate an honest try”.
-
-
According to the April 18 court filings, a forensic analysis of computers used during redistricting indicates multiple files were deleted just after Republicans were instructed to turn them over to Democrats — but before they had actually done so.
-
Last September, the research group Project New America tested more than thirty messages on “sporadic, less likely voters who lean Democratic” to see what would motivate them to vote. “One of the most powerful messages across many different demographics was reminding people that their votes were important to counter the extremists who are kicking people off of voter rolls,” the group wrote in a post-election memo.
-
Health/Nutrition
-
The extended comment period on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) review and approval of AquAdvantage genetically engineered (GE) salmon ends April 26. As more comments flood in, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) reports that documents disclosed through a Freedom of Information Request (FOIA) “raise serious questions about the adequacy of the FDA’s review of the AquAdvantage Salmon application.”
-
Security
-
-
-
A former employee of Hostgator has been arrested and charged with installing a backdoor that gave him almost unfettered control over more than 2,700 servers belonging to the widely used Web hosting provider.
-
-
Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
-
-
So the fact that Karzai received money from the United States, presumably in order to do things the U.S. wants him to do…
-
If you were watching the CBS Evening News on April 25, you heard anchor Scott Pelley say, “The Obama administration says nerve gas has been used, and that is something President Obama has called a red line that cannot be crossed.” Moments later reporter Major Garrett weighed in to say, ” The White House says it cannot definitively prove the Assad regime used chemical weapons.”
-
-
-
There was a crackdown by the security forces on peaceful rallies held by civil society organisations in West Papua to protest the handover of West Papua by UNTEA to Indonesian administration. Fifty years ago on the 1 May in 1963, the United Nations Temporary Executive Authority (UNTEA) transferred administration of the Dutch colony of Netherlands New Guinea to Indonesia. From the moment Indonesia took over the administration from UNTEA, the oppression of the West Papuan people began and 50 years later the oppression continues and so does the struggle of the West Papuan people for self-determination During the crackdown two people were killed and three seriously wounded in the town of Sorong. In Timika fifteen people were arrested for simply raising their national flag, The Morning Star and six were arrested in Biak.
-
DALLAS – April 25 – During the opening dedication ceremony of the George W. Bush Library & Policy Center in Dallas, Texas, Dennis Trainor Jr. of Acronym TV and Gary Egelston of Iraq Veterans Against the War wearing Bush and Cheney papermache impressions, were brutally arrested for walking off the curb. The Bush and Cheney characters were in the custody of CODEPINK Co-founder Medea Benjamin, dressed as a pink police, who was forced back to the sidewalk while the Dallas police dragged Trainor and Egelston to the ground. “It was an appalling use of brutal force immediately. What happened to a warning or a request ‘Sir, hands behind your back’?” said Medea Benjamin, who is still recovering from the whiplash of the event.
-
Cablegate
-
Iceland’s Supreme Court has ruled that Valitor (formerly Visa Iceland) must pay WikiLeaks $204,900 per month or $2,494,604 per year in fines if it continues to blockade the whistle-blowing site.
The court upheld the decision that Valitor had unlawfully terminated its contract with WikiLeaks’ donation processor, DataCell.
-
A leader of the notorious “hacktivist” group Anonymous UK was cleared at the Old Bailey today of twice raping a woman inside the Occupy London camp.
Malcolm Blackman, 45, had been accused of attacking the woman after she passed out drunk in her tent on the steps of St Paul’s.
In another incident he was said to have tied her hands behind her back with cable ties before forcing himself on her.
Blackman admitted keeping a “tally mark” of all the women he had slept with at the camp.
-
Nigel Evans is fully entitled to the presumption of innocence; and the media seem more inclined to give it to him than they did to Malcolm Blackman, linked to Anonymous. In this particularly disgusting piece of journalism by Paul Cheston of the Evening Standard, the vicious liar who brought false accusations against Blackman is referred to as “the victim” – not even the alleged victim, but “the victim” – even after Blackman was found not guilty.
[...]
It is particularly sickening that Blackman’s name and photograph has been published everywhere in relation to horrifying and untrue accusations of binding someone against their will with cable ties and raping them. This terrible publicity will follow him everywhere for the rest of his life. The deranged or malicious person who fabricated this story in court continues to have their identity protected.
-
Environment/Energy/Wildlife
-
BP’s cement contractor on the drilling rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 announced Monday that it is trying to negotiate a settlement over its role in the disaster, a focus of trial testimony that ended last week.
-
Opponents of TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline packed a State Department public hearing on its latest environmental analysis of the pipeline to warn that it is all risk for the United States, with no reward.
-
Bee populations have been declining rapidly worldwide in recent years — in the U.S., they have declined by almost 50 percent just since October 2012, according to The Ecologist. The problem is complex, with possible culprits including certain parasites (like Varroa mites), viruses, pesticides, and industrial agriculture. But two studies published in early 2012 in the journal Science suggested a particularly strong connection between the use of a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids and the decline of both bumble bee and honeybee populations.
-
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) suffered a big defeat in North Carolina today when a bipartisan group of legislators killed a bill to repeal the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standards, which require utilities provide a certain percentage of energy from renewable sources. ALEC typically operates in the dark but has expressed rare public support for the North Carolina effort.
-
To date, 11 cities have announced their divestment, and student and community organizers are working on active divestment campaigns in cities and on University campuses around the country. Madison joins San Francisco, CA, Richmond, CA, Berkeley, CA, Bayfield, WI, Ithaca, NY, State College, PA, Eugene, OR, Santa Fe, NM, and Boulder, CO in committing to divesting, along with Seattle, WA, which committed to divestment last fall.
-
Finance
-
-
Missouri is the latest front in the attack on organized labor with so-called “paycheck protection” bills moving through the legislature, with backing from the usual array of corporate interests. But according to the Washington D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute, the bills primarily disadvantage workers while preserving privileges for corporations.
-
An array of right-wing organizations in North Carolina are arguing loudly for Governor Pat McCrory to radically alter how corporations and people pay taxes in the state — and the not-so-hidden hand behind the effort is North Carolina millionaire Art Pope, a close ally of the Koch brothers, who funds the groups and has been appointed as North Carolina’s Budget Director.
-
Last week, Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and David Vitter (R-LA) introduced the first bipartisan legislation aimed directly at putting an end to “too big to fail” financial institutions and preventing future bailouts of America’s behemoth banks.
-
Opponents of the budget provisions say rent-to-own companies prey on people already deeply in debt or those who have language barriers, while charging hefty interest at the rate akin to payday lenders. Bishop Listecki says it’s a method to keep those already struggling month-to-month in economic servitude. “If someone wants to pay seven times the amount for an item, they are more than welcome to pay more than seven times for the amount for the item,” he said. “The difficulty is when you are not told when you are paying seven times the amount.”
-
PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
-
The right-wing network funded by the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers is being revamped after the 2012 elections, starting with a new nonprofit called the “Association for American Innovation” that will act as a hub for funnelling undisclosed spending towards the Kochs’ political projects. With ambiguous IRS rules and a deadlocked Congress, they might get away with it.
-
-
Six influential state tax studies by anti-tax organizations including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), are “deeply flawed,” include “highly inconsistent findings” and constitute “ideologically charged pseudo-social science published to further the interests of corporations and rich people,” according to a major new report released by Good Jobs First, titled “Grading Places: What Do the Business Climate Rankings Really Tell Us?”
-
More than forty bills introduced in the Missouri state legislature echo American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) model legislation, and at least 60 legislators are ALEC members, according to a new report from Progress Missouri.
-
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which is centrally involved with pushing environmentally destructive legislation on behalf of the fossil fuel industry, today complained that “Earth Day has been a largely somber event” when it should be “a celebration of the wonderful achievements humankind has made in cleaning and greening the planet,” wrote Todd Wynn, ALEC Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force Director.
-
-
When reporters pay tribute to rather than scrutinize the powerful people they cover, it’s what’s known as a “beat sweetener”–a story in which the reporter kisses up to a subject in hopes of gaining easier access down the line.
Beat sweetener was written all over John Broder’s April 30 New York Times profile of new Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, “a woman of untamed energy, competitiveness and confidence in the boardroom and on a mountain trail.”
-
The inflammatory statement that Israel should be “wiped off the map” attributed to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “was never made” by him, a distinguished Canadian economist says. in a recently released book entitled: Towards A World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War.
To begin with, says Professor Michel Chossudovsky of the University of Ottawa, the words were not those of Ahmadinejad when he uttered them on October 25, 2005.
-
-
-
The following night (4/24/13), Fox “liberal” Bob Beckel was on to defend his plan to halt all student visas for Muslims for the next two years–a policy that he defended in part because Muslims have never condemned any terrorist acts.
-
The billionaire industrialist Koch brothers have spent tens of millions for decades on a long-term plan to reshape the legislative, executive, and judicial branches according to a corporate-friendly form, and may now make inroads into what is often referred to as the fourth branch of government: the press.
-
Censorship
-
UK PRIME MINISTER David Cameron envisions a world where pornography is unavailable on WiFi connections in public places.
Cameron told the Telegraph newspaper that people ought to be able to sit down and enjoy a cup of tea without having to face images of boobies, or worse.
“We are promoting good, clean, WiFi in local cafes and elsewhere to make sure that people have confidence in public WiFi systems so that they are not going to see things they shouldn’t,” he said.
-
-
-
INTERNET GIANT Google has published its latest transparency report and revealed that governments are making more and more demands of it.
Google publishes its transparency report quarterly. It says it does so to be as open as possible. The reports usually make for chilling reading.
This report is no different, and shows that the numbers of requests to remove or censor content or pass along user data have increased again.
-
Privacy
-
-
Nick Clegg this morning announced on London’s LBC radio that “What people dub the Snoopers’ Charter, that’s not going to happen”. He went on to say that mass snooping on citizens was “not either necessarily workable nor proportionate”.
-
Today we visited Facebook in London, launching a new campaign for a strong Data Protection Regulation.
-
Following Nick Clegg’s rejection of the Snoopers’ Charter, our new report brings together leading Internet experts, lawyers and campaigners to offer credible, less intrusive alternatives to the Home Office’s Communications Data Bill. The authors make a call for more targeted, more transparent and more accountable surveillance laws and offer a number of useful recommendations for how to achieve this.
-
The Senate has advanced legislation that would require law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant from a judge before they could access someone’s email or other data stored in the cloud.
-
-
Civil Rights
-
In the wake of the recent harsh prosecutions of Aaron Swartz and Andrew Auernheimer under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Watt’s experience provides a look at life after a felony hacking conviction and what he calls the “near-impossibility of thriving in a post-conviction life.” It was these post-conviction prospects that friends of Swartz say drove him to commit suicide in January before his trial for downloading academic documents.
[...]
Watt, like Swartz, was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Heymann in Boston
-
-
-
Intellectual Monopolies
-
Copyrights
-
After being targeted by a police raid on a web host previously owned by Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm, Sweden’s #2 torrent site took just three weeks to come back online. Taunting the authorities with their return, Tankafetast rented cinemas and launched a clothing range but for the police there was clearly unfinished business. An admin of the site has now been arrested and questioned. The site, however, remains fully operational.
-
After The Pirate Bay’s new Greenland-based domains were suspended earlier this month, the world’s largest file-sharing site has found a safe haven in Iceland. From now on TPB can be reached via ThePirateBay.is without the imminent threat of another domain suspension. The Icelandic registry informs TorrentFreak that they will not take action against the domain unless a court order requires them to do so.
-
-
The U.S. Government has just submitted its objections to Megaupload’s motion to dismiss the case against the company. Megaupload’s lawyers have pointed out that the Department of Justice is trying to change the law to legitimize the destruction of Megaupload. However, the Government refutes this assertion and asks the court to deny Megaupload’s motion, fearing that otherwise the entire case may fall apart.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
05.04.13
Posted in News Roundup at 6:57 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
![GNOME bluefish](/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/120px-Gartoon-Bluefish-icon.png)
Contents
-
We’re so busy seeking release from Windows that we overlooked all the ways Linux had already freed us
-
Linux interest, despite FUD, is on the rise. You can take a look at the numbers in Distrowatch. When I migrated to Linux in 2009, it took Ubuntu 2249 visits to be the first distro ranked. Today, the 3rd position has 189 visits more than that. Back in 2009, the last distro had 73 hits. Today, the 100th position is counted with three digits and has almost two times that number of visits.
-
In a victory for the free software movement, the Spanish autonomous region of Extremadura has started to switch more than 40,000 government PCs to open source.
All the computers will be migrated this year. Extremadura estimates that the move to open source will help save €30 million per year.
-
ENTERPRISE MESSAGING VENDOR Icewarp claims that it is not hard to sell Linux to firms that have been using Microsoft’s software products once they become open to change.
Icewarp, which produces a messaging and collaboration server that rivals Microsoft’s Exchange and Sharepoint servers offers its daemons on both Windows and Linux. However the firm told The INQUIRER that in certain regions firms are very keen
-
The FreeType font rendering engine has been enhanced with a new rasterizer for Compact Font Format (CFF) fonts, contributed to FreeType by Adobe and Google. The new rasterizer details were included in the latest changes file for the beta version 2.4.12 of FreeType. The new engine is said to be “vastly superior to the old CFF engine and will replace it in the next release”.
Currently though, the new engine is disabled by default and has to be enabled at build time. The code itself is described as a “mature beta”. Google explains that CFF fonts place more of a burden for working out the display trade-offs on the rasterizer, more so than TrueType, and the new Adobe CFF engine for FreeType brings a higher quality engine to the open source font renderer, which is better able to make the appropriate trade-offs for a wider range of displays.
-
Depending on how you pay for it, you’ll probably have to part with at least fifty quid for Windows 8, and double (or more) for OS X, and they come with almost no software compared to the average Linux distribution. Yet almost all Linux distributions are free as in zero-cost.
-
Desktop
-
After a decade of looking for the “year of the Linux desktop”, many Linux columnists have given up. Some say it isn’t coming, while others claim that Linux has simply failed on the desktop.
-
Plenty of specialized companies out there sell PCs with Linux, but Dell is one of the very few mainstream contenders to have done so over the years. After some spotty initial offerings, it’s taken a different approach with its latest Linux PC. Rather than try to sell Linux hardware to the masses, which the company has said typically requires support, it’s focusing instead on developers, a savvy group that tends to need less help.
-
Although many people think of them as older participants in the portable computing market, the fact is that Chromebooks based on Google’s Chrome OS first went on sale in June of 2011–not long ago. In a recent post on the state of Chromebooks, I noted that prices in the $200 range for Chromebooks like the Acer system shown here are attracting users, but also noted that market share numbers are not showing these system making a big splash.
-
When you get right down to it, nobody cares about Operating Systems. Nobody wants to install an Operating System, with minor exceptions including your average ‘Gear Head’ (me) who likes to get grease under his finger nails and tinker with all manner of different technologies. I am in the minority.
So, when you walk by that Chromebook at Best Buy, realize that it’s in the brick and mortar setting because it comes pre-installed. That is a must for any operating system to become wildly popular. You can’t succeed otherwise. It doesn’t matter which GUI you like. Not pre-installed? You are losing in the bigger game played by Microsoft and Apple.
-
Audiocasts/Shows
-
Kernel Space
-
The XFS file-system with the forthcoming Linux 3.10 kernel will have an experimental feature for CRC protection of meta-data.
The XFS file-system pull request for the Linux 3.10 merge window was submitted on Thursday to the kernel mailing list.
-
Applications
-
With animation soaring higher into 3D imagery, there’s something to be said for old school 2D hand-crafted images. For those who are so inclined, Pencil Animation shows a lot of promise as a drawing tool. It’s easy to use and provides lots of options. Installation, though, can be a bear — and we’re not talking Yogi. Lack of developer support is also a drawback.
-
After years of waiting, there is finally a publicly available beta of the Lightworks high-end non-linear video editing software.
Lightworks was originally supposed to be on Linux around 2011 but there were numerous delays and the project finally went into alpha last year but it was very restricted in terms of access. It’s not too open but Linux development has continued.
-
-
-
That’s extra sad, because Blender has gone the way of Gimp – insane. I loaded up the latest version of Blender, and discovered – for the thousandth version now – that every single menu, button, command, keyboard shortcut, and function has been rearranged pointlessly AGAIN!!!!!, meaning I would have to sit down AGAIN!!!!! and devote solid, monastic concentration to learning AGAIN!!!!! a completely new Blender interface for a month before I could produce anything with it. This has been going on nonstop for a decade now. Forget it, I have better things to do with my time than waste it with silly games by the sour trolls of the Gimp and Blender teams. Can’t WAIT for those two projects to choke off. So sad any other projects have to go.
-
Instructionals/Technical
-
Games
-
Here’s the thing about Surgeon Simulator 2013; I didn’t like it very much at first. Not this full version, anyway. I loved the original free release – a silly joke game, primed for Youtube Let’s Plays, in which you play as a floppy surgeon’s hand, with keys controlling each finger. You perform open heart surgery on a guy. The joke is that it doesn’t go very well, even when you succeed. It’s pretty hard to fail, because it’s more of a toy than a game. If you do fail, it doesn’t matter, because it’s the only level, so why are you playing really? To have fun, probably to make videos of it, or to hurl comically-rendered bodily organs around.
I booted up Surgeon Simulator 2013 proper, tried the first op (the same one I’d already played) and failed within two minutes. In the free version, I could last up to ten quite comfortably. I tried again. Failed again. I couldn’t cut the stomach out. I don’t even remember the free version having a stomach stem. I hacked at the stomach stem with a bone saw. The guy died. I tried again. I drilled through his ribcage and pierced his lungs. In the free version, he’d have shrugged this off. I guess he’s gotten more fragile since then. He died, of course.
-
Valve, the company behind Steam and several games on the platform, has released a beta version of their critically acclaimed, physics-based puzzler, Portal, for Linux.
-
-
Closure, an indie game developed by the Eyebrow Interactive studio, is available on Steam for Linux with a 66% discount.
-
-
-
-
-
Portal, an innovative single-player game developed and published by Valve, will soon arrive on Steam for Linux.
-
Every now and then in Linux gaming, it pays off to pick up an old favorite and see how it’s come along. Last time I visited SuperTuxKart, it was a dinky thing with about four tracks, no powerups, and disgusting “burp” sound effects. Maybe it was 2004?
-
Desktop Environments/WMs
-
Every function should have at least four good alternatives. This is where you come into play. Please help us to improve the study with your ideas for alternative metaphors. These can be quite diverse and from different contexts. So every input is appreciated.
Once we have found sufficient metaphors for each of these functions we need to create icons to these metaphors that fit in one icon set. And at this point we need your assistance again since we are not designers but usability experts. Icons should be redesigned to not have any biases because of the color, style, etc. It does not need to have a really fancy design with 3D effects or the like. But the layout must not influence users decision which one to choose in the upcoming test.
-
In the general discussion about “lightweight” desktop environments I have read a few times that one should disable Compositing in KWin. That’s done in Kubuntu’s low-fat settings package and also something Jos talked about in the context of Klyde.
I have never seen an explanation on why Compositing should matter at all. It mostly boils down to “OpenGL is evil” and “I don’t want 3D”. So let’s leave the “educated guesses” behind us and have a proper look to the question whether Compositing matters for “lightweight”. (Remember: lightweight is a buzz-word without any meaning.)
-
KDE community offers one of the the most advanced desktop environments around, Plasma Desktop. But it is not limited to the desktops, KDE has developed technologies for every class of devices, whether it’s PCs, netbooks or tablets. The community develops software packages which are cross platform and are used on different platforms – some of the most notable KDE applications include Calligra suite, DigiKam, K3b and much more.
I run KDE Plasma Workspaces on all my devices – Plasma Desktop on my PCs, Plasma Netbook on my, as obvious, netbooks and laptops and Plasma Active on my Nexus 7. The reason I chose Plasma over others is the features and functionality it offers which are missing from every other desktop environments.
-
K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
-
We just launched KDE Sutra, a KDE magazine by Muktware, to celebrate our 3rd anniversary. Aaron Seigo, the Plasma project leader, has written the introductory column for the magazine launch. Here I present to you Aaron Seigo! — Swapnil Bhartiya (editor KDE Sutra).
KDE is a community with over fifteen years of history during which time it has consistently produced one of the premiere Free software desktops. It is one thing to make a new software project sound and look exciting; it is another to maintain interest and excitement across fifteen years. It is one thing to gather a group of developers to scratch a collective itch; it is another to evolve that into a thriving community encompassing thousands of participants and dozens of companies with a healthy and vibrant culture while managing generational turnover.
Yet all of those efforts pale in comparison to keeping the technology itself relevant for that long. Who uses computers, how they use them, what computers look like and their capabilities shift from year to year, let alone decade to decade.
-
Hi everybody, after over a year of silence, I have something new to announce: I will make a new release available of the KDE SC on Windows tomorrow. There have been several problems in the past year that spoiled new release attempts, beginning with a build server leaving together with Nokia and ending with our web server which hosts the original binary releases. But these problems have been solved and so there we are. I hope this will make it also more obvious that KDE on Windows isn’t dead yet ;-).
-
Members from the Plasma team assemble a couple times each year to get some face time with each other. This is good both for team building and for making large strides forward in the technology we maintain and work on. When we get together on our own, rather than as part of a bigger event, we call the events “Tokamaks”. We held the sixth such meeting last week in Nürnberg, Germany where we were hosted by SUSE with additional support coming from KDE e.V.
-
-
KO GmbH announces extensive support services for Krita, the award-winning graphics application. Krita is an advanced paint application with a complete set of professional paint tools that can handle extremely large images effortlessly. It is particularly well-suited for special effects work in the movie industry.
-
-
GNOME Desktop/GTK
-
With the first GNOME 3.10 development release due this week, the first GNOME 3.10 development snapshots (v3.9.1) of the GNOME Shell desktop and Mutter compositing window manager were checked in.
GNOME 3.10 is tentatively set to be released on 25 September while this is the first development release due this week (GNOME 3.9.1). With just a little more than one month since the GNOME 3.8.0 release, there isn’t too much to look at for the 3.9.1 packages.
-
-
The folk at Packt Publishing sent me an e-copy of GNOME 3 Application Development Beginners Guide a month or so ago.
I’ve been putting off this review because I don’t think this is an very good book and it’s hard to write bad reviews.
-
-
-
One of the comments that is quite often made on Reddit and in other Linux forums is that there are a lot of distributions that are just re-spins of Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE etc.
Diversity is great and it is good that people put the effort in to creating a distribution.
-
A Turkish distro that’s been on hiatus for a couple of years, is this latest version a long awaited sequel, or a disappointing reboot?
-
We pit six Raspberry Pi operating systems against one another to find out which one is the king of the tiny computer distros
-
-
-
GParted, a partitioning utility for creating, reorganizing, and deleting disk partitions with the help of tools that allow managing filesystems, is now at version 0.16.1.
-
A rather long time ago (around a year and a half), I wrote a post about a system I was making which was supposed to be a cloud-based OS, named CosmOS. I didn’t really develop it that much, as I had a rather vague sense of what I wanted to do with it, and I immediately had problems with implementing the most basic concepts. Most of the idea was actually quite boring, and had already been developed by others. But since I had gone through all the trouble of making a tool for creating it (relinux), I decided to try it anyways, and just radically changed the whole design. And I did. I also found that I couldn’t have used the same name, as CosmOS was already the name of at least two different OS’s, and it was also the name of a directory of linux OSs (among other unrelated usages), so I kind of got that I had to change the name.
-
New Releases
-
The OpenWRT team has released version 12.09 (code name: Attitude Adjustment) of the Linux distribution for routers. As was the case in the beta version, Attitude Adjustment no longer supports Linux kernel 2.4. This affects older router models with just 16MB memory and slow CPUs (200MHz), such as Linksys WRT54G models. Attitude Adjustment does now run on Ramips routers and the mini-computer Raspberry Pi (bcm2708), however.
-
-
-
It’s available new iso images of SparkyLinux 2.1.1 “Eris” MATE Edition.
On the beginning of April, the MATE team published new version of MATE environment 1.6.
SparkyLinux 2.1 MATE Edition features MATE 1.4. It can be a little difficult to make clear upgrade of MATE, so I decided to make new iso images, which provide full system updates.
-
PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family
-
Fedo..uh, I mean, Mageia chairman, Anne Nicholas, today announced the final release date for Mageia 3 – again. Nicholas said they didn’t want to say they’d release when ready for fear they’d sound a lot like Debian. Yet Mageia 3′s release schedule is starting to look a whole lot like Fedora 18′s.
-
Gentoo Family
-
-
As ever, you are welcome to choose between Calculate Linux Desktop featuring either KDE (CLD), GNOME (CLDG) or XFCE (CLDX), Calculate Directory Server (CDS) for server solutions, Calculate Media Center (CMC) should you need any and, last but not least, scratch versions for those preferring minimal installations: Calculate Linux Scratch (CLS) and Calculate Scratch Server (CSS).
-
Slackware Family
-
Red Hat Family
-
Red Hat’s Gluster open-source community has been all about its namesake, the GlusterFS, but now it’s expanding to cover other open-source, software-defined storage technologies.
-
Fedora
-
It’s been about three months since the release of Fedora 18 “Spherical Cow,” but this week afforded the first glimpse at the next version of the popular Linux distribution.
-
Is heartwarming to see people writing Free software and is understandable newbie developers will create less than perfect applications, still there are some apps which should never be written, and in this category I include the “scripts” supposed to install and do “everything” on your distro, from installing Flash and codecs to… $DEITY knows what.
-
-
-
Debian Family
-
Twenty cities around the globe, ranging from Bangalore in India to New York in the USA, will be hosting parties this weekend. More are expected to announce they are joining in as the week progresses.
-
The next release of Debian GNU/Linux, 7.0 or “Wheezy”, is less than a week away now — so I decided to take one last look at a pre-release build.
My intention was to see how it looks and works in general, how it gets on with installation on various systems of mine, and whether and how it is working with GPT partitioning, UEFI BIOS, and Secure Boot.
For this test, I downloaded the netinst image of the daily build on Saturday, 27 April. There are a lot of ISO images to choose from when downloading Debian; I generally take the net installer image because it is the smallest download and it gives me the most flexibility when installing.
-
Derivatives
-
In my neck of the woods the Internet doesn’t get any faster, and my six year old dual-core AMD computer still holds up nicely. I don’t like Gnome 3 and I don’t care about Ubuntu’s run everywhere there is lots of memory vision. Linux is all about choice, and I do have plenty of them.
In this article I’ll take a look at Debian. Debian is one of the oldest distributions still in active development. It is a popular distribution for personal use among software developers, it is also the most popular Linux web server platform. Debian has a great community and the amount of software packaged far exceeds any other Linux disto out there.
-
The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made its first Wheezy based release today. This is the release announcement:
-
Canonical/Ubuntu
-
-
Sometimes people ask me why they should use Ubuntu Server. It’s an understandable question, after all, Ubuntu gets a bunch of attention on the desktop (and more recently mobile), but people tend to forget that Ubuntu is an excellent server distribution, quietly humming along helping to run some of the world’s coolest companies at scale.
-
-
It’s that time again for a new Ubuntu – should you be raring to go with it, or is it a case of more of the same?
-
-
Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail was released a few days ago. It comes with many pre-installed applications for several purposes. However, these applications won’t be enough for some users to be able to effectively use Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail. So, here’s a list of recommended applications for Ubuntu 13.04.
-
The Ubuntu Team originally approved some final modifications for the 13.04 release. After getting us all excited about the massive number of new Smart Scopes, the original approval was then retracted. Either way, I felt the need to inform everyone about the upcoming changes. Though unfortunately we must wait for 6 months for the Ubuntu 13.10 release.
-
Or maybe it should read the other way around, unremarkably remarkable. Which one is it? Well, I don’t know, take a look and judge for yourself. Now, the mandatory two paragraphs of introduction. For me, Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal was a fairly big flop. And it was nothing short of a disaster on my high-endish machine, where the Nvidia graphics stack was bonkered.
-
Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) is now out, but it has been release without an important update for Unity, which didn’t made the cut before the launch day.
The biggest feature of Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) should have been the Smart Scopes, a collection of scopes for Unity (like the existing Music, Video, and so on). The developers have decided that this feature is not ready, and Ubuntu 13.04 has been skipped.
-
What’s more important: Ubuntu’s success in cloud computing or on mobile devices? The answer is both, according to Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth. During a quick conversation with The VAR Guy at the recent OpenStack Summit, Shuttleworth said Ubuntu — a popular Linux distribution for PCs — must succeed both in the cloud and mobile worlds because they are the two biggest IT waves empowering customers today. Plus, he added, the world wants a Google Android alternative.
-
Carla hails from Italy and enjoys being the guinea pig for new ideas and kickstarting new projects and efforts on the team. She’s been a wonderful contributor to our ubuntu autopilot tests project, happily helping lead the charge towards automating our favorite desktop applications.
-
Now that we know the codename of the next major release of the Ubuntu operating system, and that the development cycle will start tomorrow, May 2, we are happy to announce that the release schedule has also been published, as a draft, on the Ubuntu Wiki.
-
-
Ubuntu 13.04: The Linux desktop for everyone (gallery)
-
Flavours and Variants
-
-
“I think we can all appreciate what products like the BeagleBone and Raspberry Pi can do for today’s youth,” said blogger Robin Lim. “Understanding how something works is important. These single board computers can even be the basis for some really creative school and commercial grade projects, which go beyond plugging them to a keyboard and monitor.”
-
A US engineer is trying to sell the idea of an open source drone detection system built out of shedloads of Raspberry Pi kits.
The Drone Shield, which is designed by John Franklin, will cost around $60 to $70 to set up. It will combine a, a signal processor, a microphone, and analysis software to scan for specific audio signatures and compare them against what known drones sound like.
-
When the Raspberry Pi first came out, the board-only design got a lot of people desiring a case to go with it. Since then, a few companies and Kickstarters have popped up to supply cases to those that want them. With many different designs on the market, it’s hard to know what to go for, and mainly comes down to how you plan to use the case. SB Components have created a simple case that is suitable for many uses, at a price that reflects the Raspberry Pi itself.
-
A new open source XBMC Media Centre player has been unveiled this week in the form of the new The Little Black Box, which has been designed to specifically run XBMC.
-
-
USA Technologies (USAT) announced a cashless payment device equipped with near field communications (NFC), a magnetic card reader, and support for a variety of contactless payment standards, including Mifare. The ePort G10 runs embedded Linux on an ARM9 processor, and offers an LCD screen plus serial, USB, and Ethernet connectivity.
-
Phones
-
Note, as the market is expected to be very near exactly 1 Billion new smartphones sold this year, you can take those numbers and convert multiply the percentages by 10 to get the number sold. So for China, 27% means 270 million smartphones this year as the Chinese market size, and for North America 13% means 130 million smartphones sold etc. Yes, China alone this year will see approximately twice as many new smartphones sold as in all of North America. And Asia accounts for almost exactly half of all new smartphones sold this year, led by China, but including the rich parts of Asia like Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong etc, and then the Emerging World parts of the ‘Rest of Asia’ ie India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines etc etc etc. Half of all smartphones sold this year will go to Asia.
[...]
(This are based on 2012 numbers, expecting the ratio to be very similar this year, with the exception of if there is a major economic collapse that suddenly kills sales).
-
Android
-
Barnes & Noble seeks to revitalize its Android-powered Nook tablet line over arch-rival Amazon’s Kindle tablets by adding Google Play and full Android app support.
-
Ready to start programming for Google Glass? The tools are out there. While only a handful of Google Glasses are out, Google quietly released its Android-based core kernel code.
-
-
-
We’ve built a full market risk analytics platform for capital markets—with all the bells and whistles you’d expect, such as a declarative calculation engine, a flashy HTML5 GUI, and a comprehensive analytics library—and we’ve released it under the Apache 2.0 License. And, our key customers and users at the moment are some of the world’s most secretive technologists: hedge fund managers. To an outsider, this may look like a curious combination.
-
Last week North Bridge Venture Partners and Black Duck Software released the 7th Annual Future of Open Source survey. Previous years’ surveys have generated interest industry-wide, with implications that cross industries and ecosystems.
-
-
Events
-
Whew. That drive from Felton-to-Bellingham-and-back gets longer and longer. But it goes without saying, of course that it’s well worth it. The 14th annual Linux Fest Northwest was a success and while they take a break before getting ready for next year’s event — April 26-27, 2014, at Bellingham Technical College — I’m going to make my reservation at the Hampton Inn right now so I don’t forget.
-
Web Browsers
-
Mozilla
-
The basic idea behind prefetching is to speed things up for the user. An algorithm is involved that guesses which resources are likely to be accessed by the user in the recent future.Think of Facebook’s login page for instance. The most reasonable assumption is that the user will enter the username and password, and then click on the login link. If you prefetch some of the information you may speed things up for the user in the progress if a prefetched resource is indeed accessed.
-
Samples of FinSpy, part of the FinFisher surveillance software suite sold by Gamma International UK Ltd to government organizations, have been found disguised as Mozilla’s Firefox browser, according to a report published Tuesday.
The report, written by academic research group Citizen Lab, documents the spread of offensive computer network intrusion capabilites — hacking tools — marketed by Western companies.
-
The former Opera Software designer accused of leaking trade secrets to Mozilla denied the charges yesterday, but confirmed that the lawsuit takes aim at a search revamp he worked on while a consultant for the maker of Firefox.
-
Spanish online phone seller and Telefonica partner Geeksphone announced the availability of the first two developer phones running Mozilla’s Linux-based Firefox OS distribution. The $194 Peak smartphone offers a dual-core, 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor and a 4.3-inch IPS display, with 8- and 2-megapixel cameras, while the $119 Keon has a 1GHz Snapdragon S1, a 3.5-inch HVGA display, and a 3-megapixel camera.
-
SaaS/Big Data
-
Swapnil: MySQL became the default database of a majority of projects and companies around the globe, what made MySQL so popular – what characteristics did it have? Was it it’s open source nature, technological superiority or marketing by Sun?
Monty: MySQL was widely popular long before MySQL was bought by Sun. (This was one of the main reasons why Sun wanted to buy MySQL).
-
The open source OpenStack cloud platform is being built by a diverse and large group of vendors and developers. Among those vendors is Linux leader Red Hat, a company that is no stranger to being part of a multi-stakeholder open source effort, like the GNOME Linux desktop, for example.
Helping to lead Red Hat’s OpenStack efforts is Senior Principal Software Engineer, Mark McLoughlin. McLoughlin isn’t just a leader at Red Hat, he was also the leading contributor by code commits to the recent OpenStack Grizzly release. In an exclusive video interview with Datamation (see below), McLoughlin explains how his years of experience in the GNOME desktop community prepared him and Red Hat to help OpenStack to succeed.
-
Databases
-
-
Godfather of open source databases facilitates a merger to quicken development, growth.
-
When Oracle bought Sun, one of its reasons was to gain control of MySQL, the most popular open-source database management system (DBMS). It didn’t work. Some of MySQL’s founders and top programmers had already left to create the MySQL fork, MariaDB, while others started SkySQL, a MySQL and MariaDB support company. Now, the old core MySQL developers have rejoined forces.
-
Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
-
Between January 15th & April 27th 3,002 bugs were reported – I’m serious, no lie, over 3,000 bugs reported! Thanks (partly sarcastic?) to our fantastic users for reporting problems when you find them. This period covers 103 days (so about 29 bugs per day reported). Just maintaining our unconfirmed count would have been a tremendous success…..but, WE DID BETTER!
-
Education
-
Thanks to alumni and faculty of West Virginia University’s Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, students with an interest in software development will now be able to fund their education through an Open Source Scholarship.
-
Business
-
Semi-Open Source
-
Business intelligence could be one of the most essential but little-known secrets that drives executive decisions in the marketplace.
-
BSD
-
The FreeBSD Foundation was so successful in raising funds last year that it has been able to considerably expand its activities.
-
-
FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
-
The GnuCash development team proudly announces GnuCash 2.4.13, another bug fix release in a series of stable of the GnuCash Free Accounting Software. With this release series, GnuCash can use an SQL database using SQLite3, MySQL or PostgreSQL. It runs on GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris, Microsoft Windows and Mac OSX.
-
I have been developing free software for a long time, originally as an independent freeware author in Windows (oh the stories I could tell you there) and more recently in Linux. Why do it? And what are the values and principles that are most functional when working for free? I thought I would take some time out to share the strategies I have developed over the years that make this work.
-
This week the founder of the GNU project and the Free Software Foundation, Richard Stallman (RMS) gave two presentations at the Technical University of Denmark. The events were organized by KLID.
On Wednesday the topic was Copyright vs. Community. Discussing the history of copyright, how it is being extended and (mis)used, and how Richard Stallman proposes to reform copyright.
-
Project Releases
-
After one whole year of hard work, toil, tears and sweat from all our awesome contributors the latest release of the Open Build Service(OBS) is ready for you. Version 2.4 adds support for yet another package format, secure boot signing and appstream app stores. It also brings a constraint system to better match build hardware to build jobs and includes a lot of speed improvements. OBS 2.4 is the latest, greatest and rock solid release that is already used by our reference server since January. We strongly recommended to update to this version.
-
Public Services/Government
-
Using open source software solutions helps public administrations to regain their power as customers, says Tariq Rashid of the IT Reform group at the UK Cabinet. It helps them to move from expensive unique IT to the commodity competing end of the market.
-
“Over the last ten years, Open Source has become unremarkable. I think that’s a great achievement. We no longer argue about whether it’s secure or not, or whether it’s safe to use. We focus now on how best to use Open Source to get the best value for every tax dollar,” said Gunnar Hellekson, Chief Technology Strategist for Red Hat’s US Public Sector Group.
-
75% of the 8600 respondents share news via email, compared to 55% who share stories via Facebook or Twitter.
-
Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
-
I in no way doubt that next year will be a celebration of the city’s stouthearted fortitude. I have no doubt that people will arrive in droves to witness “the spirit of freedom prevail.” But I do think we need to separate the bravery of those who will gather in 2014, and what the security imperatives will undoubtedly be. We need to critically examine what’s proposed and, if necessary, raise our voices in protest.
[...]
building movements now against the militarization of the police force.
-
-
The point is that shifting spending from the military to other types of government spending would be more broadly beneficial to the economy. It’s hard to imagine many people on the left who wouldn’t support this. So why is it portrayed as a “quandary”?
-
But McCormick was just small beer. He was the unauthorised con. The authorised con involved more money by a factor of twenty million; it was a multi trillion dollar con involving entirely fake and planted evidence as a justification for a war in which millions were killed or maimed, the infrastructure of a modern country bombed back to the Middle Ages, and vast personal fortunes made in the arms, mercenary, military support, banking and oil industries.
-
Cablegate
-
Prenda Law’s litigation campaign against people allegedly sharing obscure pornographic films on BitTorrent hasn’t been going well. A growing number of judges has taken notice of accusations that Prenda stole the identity of a Minnesota man named Alan Cooper and named him CEO of the litigious shell company AF Holdings. Prenda’s lawyers have invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering potentially incriminating questions about how Cooper’s signature wound up on AF Holdings legal documents.
-
Finance
-
Oh, are we getting ripped off. And now we’ve got the data to prove it. From 2009 to 2011, the richest 8 million families (the top 7%) on average saw their wealth rise from $1.7 million to $2.5 million each. Meanwhile the rest of us — the bottom 93% (that’s 111 million families) — suffered on average a decline of $6,000 each.
-
The two New York-based banks will pay $247 million to almost 224,000 borrowers, the Fed said today in a statement. The checks — meant to compensate borrowers who may have been mistreated in foreclosures during 2009 and 2010 that relied on improper documentation or faulty procedures — range from $300 to $125,000, depending on the how much harm may have been done.
-
Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN) sued its former vice president of emerging markets, Agostina Pechi, claiming she stole the bank’s trade secrets in a bid to win clients for her new employer, Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS).
-
PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
-
interesting piece (4/21/13) about the libertarian-right Koch brothers’ interest in buying the Tribune Company. Why would profit-seeking businessmen want to buy money-losing newspapers? Chozick reports that “the papers could serve as a broader platform for the Kochs’ laissez-faire ideas.”
-
The Week magazine turned the Caucasian Tsarnaev brothers into non-whites.
-
It is worth asking questions about how different communities or societies react to violence. After the 9/11 attacks, the United States bombed and occupied Afghanistan, based on the argument that the government of that country had tolerated the presence of Al-Qaeda and thus must bear the retribution. As a result, many thousands of people who had nothing to do with terrorism were killed.
Or on to the invasion of Iraq, which was sold as part of a “Global War on Terror” following the 9/11 attacks as well, even though there was never a connection between Iraq and the terrorist attacks. So why did the United States invade Iraq? Tom Friedman explained it to Charlie Rose on May 30, 2003.
To Friedman, there was a “terrorist bubble” in that part of the world, and “we needed to go over there and take out a very big stick…and there was only one way to do it.”
-
The West Fertilizer Co. explosion last week in West, Texas, took the lives of at least 14 and left scores injured and homeless. But the story was largely obscured by blanket coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing. More than that, says legendary EPA whistleblower Hugh Kaufman, a guest on this week’s CounterSpin, what coverage there was often obscured the real story. Here’s a transcript of Kaufman’s appearance:
-
Censorship
-
-
Where money talks, the politicians and the mainstream media do not.
-
-
Privacy
-
-
Joint letter sent to BT, Sky, Virgin and TalkTalk by ORG, Privacy International and Big Brother Watch, asking ISPs to stand up for their customers.
-
Three privacy groups have written to ISPs to demand that they stand up for their customers and warn them about the Snoopers’ Charter.
-
“The Company” is a term that insiders have long used to refer to the CIA…
-
A recent, practical example: The Boston bombers
This story recently came up that Russian intelligence warned the FBI about the Boston bombers. And yet, if you read the text, there’s disagreeing comments from government employees at all levels: “Yes they did.” “No they didn’t.” “I saw that but I thought it was that other guy’s job.” Even more mind–blowing, is the headline Boston Bombing Suspect’s Name Was in US Terrorism Databases!
What if CISPA had been in place? It probably wouldn’t have helped much. Another stack of papers would have gotten shuffled around without getting read. Maybe it would have put the right dot on the right map. If it had, doubtless three other things that demanded attention would have been ignored instead.
Call it “Penguin Pete’s Law of Surveillance”: It doesn’t matter how much data you collect. What matters is having the eyeballs to read that data.
-
Civil Rights
-
U.S. Naval medics are forcing tubes down the noses of detainees at Guantánamo Bay in order to feed them against their will. The U.N. has said this violates international law. When does “suicide prevention” become torture?
-
Apparently the Embassy commissioned these essays from Bahrainians to mark the occasion. Extraordinarily, they have published two essays from pro-despotism propagandists. If they had published two balancing essays from the majority community, I would have viewed the inclusion of the fascist views as wrongheaded but defensible. As it is, this is an appalling disgrace to the foreign office.
Here are some genuine press stories the Embassy might have noted, but didn’t:
Bahrain doctors jailed for treating injured protesters
Teenager Killed in Bahrain on Protest Anniversary
Bahrain Protest Crushed By Security Forces
-
DRM
-
The World Wide Web consortium is considering a proposal to specify standards for HTML extensions to implement Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). The proposal is supported by Netflix, Microsoft, Google and the BBC.
-
Today a coalition of twenty-seven organizations released a joint letter to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the Web’s standards-setting body, condemning Encrypted Media Extensions (EME). EME is a proposal to incorporate support for Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) — the systems used by media and technology companies to restrict watching, sharing, recording, and transforming digital works — into HTML, the core language of the Web.
-
Intellectual Monopolies
-
Novartis has been in the news lately for the lawsuit filed against it by the US government for kickbacks it allegedly gave to doctors for prescribing certain drugs. As we noted about that case, it should be no surprise that this sort of activity happens, given that the incentive structure we’ve created with patents is so extreme. Here’s one example of at least some principled doctors striking back against Novatis. Over 120 cancer researchers and doctors have published a paper calling out Novartis specifically for its pricing on the cancer drug Gleevec (marketed as Glivec outside the US). The doctors point out that it can cost over $100,000 per year for Gleevec currently. And, Novartis has been continually jacking up the price. There had been concern when the drug was first introduced a decade ago, that it was priced way too high at $30,000, leading the company’s then CEO, Daniel Vasella, to acknowledge the complaints, but to argue that it was “a fair price.” Well, now the company is pricing the drug at more than three times what it thought was a fair price, and it should be no surprise that people think this is outrageous profiteering by abusing a government granted monopoly to charge way more than any fair market price would allow.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
05.03.13
Posted in News Roundup at 10:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
![GNOME bluefish](/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/120px-Gartoon-Bluefish-icon.png)
Contents
-
-
I currently run Fuduntu Linux on my main desktop PC. Until just recently I dual-booted Ubuntu and Windows 7, but I finally wiped Windows (hadn’t actually needed it for a long time) and installed Fuduntu, which came really highly recommended. I’m loving it so far. Meanwhile I also have a Samsung Chromebook and an Android phone. We have a bunch of other laptops in my family, but my 12-year-old son is constantly installing new distros on them (he got the Linux Diversity collection for Christmas), so I couldn’t tell you what’s on them at the moment.
-
-
A couple of years into my IT studies and I came across Ubuntu 6, tried it and immediately got hooked. I tried many flavours of Linux and at some stage sported over 10 partitions on my laptop but finally settled back to Ubuntu Linux.
-
On the instructions of e-court committee Supreme Court of India and the Chief Justice, Mr. M. M Kumar and Mr. Justice Mansoor Ahmad Mir, Judge Incharge e-Court Committee, High Court of Jammu & Kashmir, the continued training on “Ubuntu Linux Awareness Cum Training Programme under Change Management” for the Judicial Officers of Jammu and Samba districts was held on April 28, 2013 at J&K State Judicial Academy,
-
John Browning. I’m a systems programmer/engineer for a privately held software company that makes statistical software. I also contribute to Engadget.com in my spare time. At my day job I manage high performance clusters/grids running RedHat Enterprise Linux. I’m responsible for creating a lot of tooling and automation, mostly in Perl. I get to invent cool new ways of doing stuff. I’ve been playing with Conary as of late. I’ve been using Linux since I was a tween.
-
Today, my mother showed me an article she read in a local newspaper. It was about Linux, free software, and how students from a private university (probably the biggest private university here) were using FLOSS.
The article mentioned the benefits of FLOSS in educational contexts and how those students were using GIMP, LibreOffice, and Linux, of course.
-
Server
-
Linux tends to be associated with x86 hardware in a business context, but some well-known companies are running it on mainframes.
“All of the large banks are using it [Linux on IBM System z], but don’t want to talk about it,” CA Technologies distinguished engineer Scott Fagen told iTWire.
-
Audiocasts/Shows
-
Kernel Space
-
I’ve often criticized Canonical and Ubuntu. In fact, I’ve criticized them often enough that some people are convinced that I have a grudge against them. But there’s one point on which I’ll defend them: their decision to minimize the use of the word “Linux” on their website and in other public communications.
This policy is not new, but it is periodically rediscovered by various members of the free and open source software (FOSS) community. It rarely fails to provoke outrage. Is Ubuntu pretending it isn’t dependent on Debian and several dozen other upstream projects? The rediscovers ask. Is Canonical trying to claim credit for all the work of others that goes into Ubuntu?
-
Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin is likely one of a handful of people in the world who has had a front row seat to the largest collaborative development effort in the history of computing, Linux. He understands that speed of innovation and quality of software development is dictated by forward thinkers who are working in collaboration.
That is why he was recently invited to speak at TEDx about what the technology industry has learned from Linux, and specifically its creator Linus Torvalds, and how some of those lessons can be applied to a variety of efforts and projects across geographies and disciplines.
-
A web hosting company has publicly shared their thoughts on the Btrfs file-system for Linux. While often discussed as the next-generation Linux file-system, Btrfs isn’t fully baked for use in a production world quite yet.
Anchor, an Australian web-hosting company, shared their findings after doing extensive research and testing of Btrfs. Overall, the Btrfs experience was “very positive” but they ran into regular issues with hung tasks during snapshotting, a bug causing CPU soft lock-ups, problems when filling up a Btrfs file-system, and some other shortcomings.
-
The Automotive Grade Linux workgroup aims to get more open source technology in vehicles
-
From data centers to embedded sensors, energy use is one of the toughest issues facing computing. The Linux kernel community has already made great progress in boosting energy efficiency, but there’s still more work to be done to optimize Linux systems, with one area of focus on power-aware scheduling.
LWN editor Jon Corbet presented an overview of the issues and potential solutions for improving power management with the kernel scheduler in his Linux kernel weather forecast keynote last week at Collaboration Summit in San Francisco. And breakout session presentations by Preeti Murthy, a software engineer at IBM, and Morten Rasmussen, who works on the power management team at ARM, went into further detail on the kernel changes. All three presentations are available on YouTube and embedded here for your convenience.
-
The Linux kernel is finally able to use SSDs as hard-disk cache. Changes to the network subsystem promise to improve the way server jobs are distributed across multiple processor cores. Linux 3.9 also includes drivers for new AMD graphics chips and soon-expected Wi-Fi components from Intel.
-
Graphics Stack
-
The latest back-end to be published for Wayland’s Weston compositor is for Red Hat’s SPICE.
This new Weston back-end supports SPICE (Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments) remote rendering protocol as used by Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization on the desktop. There’s been a lot of SPICE driver activity as of late with a QXL KMS driver and talk of a potential Gallium3D wrapper driver. This new driver though isn’t out of Red Hat.
-
Keith Packard has announced the release of xorg-server 1.14.99.1, the first X.Org Server 1.15 development snapshot ahead of the official release in the second half of 2013.
-
Benchmarks
-
One week after delivering updated Radeon Gallium3D vs. AMD Catalyst benchmarks on Ubuntu Linux, we have to share this morning similar results for the open-source and reverse-engineered “Nouveau” Linux graphics driver compared to the proprietary NVIDIA Linux graphics driver. While the Nouveau driver has come a long way and does support the latest Fermi and Kepler GPUs, it’s not without its share of shortcomings. Eleven NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards were used in this latest Phoronix comparison.
-
Applications
-
-
-
On the weekend Michael Natterer implemented a new feature that was often requested by painters: Canvas rotation.
The canvas rotation feature lets you set an angle for the whole view of the image window by pressing SHIFT+Middle mouse button. You can also set it by 15° steps when pressing CTRL+SHIFT+Middle Mouse.
-
-
My last several articles have covered lots of software for doing research in the sciences. But one important area I haven’t covered in detail is the resources available for teaching the next generation of computational scientists. To fill this gap, you can use the code provided through the Open Source Physics project. This project is supported by the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), and it offers several different packages for doing simulations and analysis.
-
No tablet would be complete without instant messaging. Thanks to awesome bachelor thesis work we had a non-working mockup of an active client. This active client remains separate from our desktop work.
-
I have a list of tools that are veritable Swiss Army knives — things that can do so much that I could probably dedicate an entire week on how to use them.
On the other hand, they don’t have much of an interface, which makes them only vaguely interesting to me as console applications.
-
-
Nightingale is an audio player with a beautiful interface with a wide range of supported audio formats, all with multi-platform support. Being the fork of Songbird, it offers the user a lot of cool features like the ability to play MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, WMA etc formats, Mp3 download feature, Last.fm integration and much more.
-
GNU/Linux is ruling the roost today – it dominates almost every aspect of our lives by powering devices that we use without consciously knowing that it’s running Linux. One area where GNU/Linux is still behind is the consumer desktop market which is dominated by Microsoft.
-
On a regular basis, we at OStatic compile documentation and guidance resources for popular open source platforms and applications. For example, you can find our collection of free, online books on open source tools here, including guides that can get you started with Blender, GIMP and more great open source applications.
-
And even though the old, old web page vanished and the Wikipedia page has been summarily deleted, I still plop down my money on e3 in any match against any other text editor, any place, any time.
-
-
Tired of the default KDE themes, color schemes, and wallpapers? Then try Caledonia, a bundle containing everything you need to spice up your desktop. Caledonia comes with a set of high-quality wallpapers, a KDE Plasma theme, a splash screen, a KDM theme, and a color scheme. You can download individual parts, or you can use the Caledonia Downloader shell script to grab the entire bundle.
-
Hotshots is a screenshot tool with some editing features. It is particularly suitable for writing documentation (as used in the following chapters) but you can use it to highlight some details on a map image or what ever you want.
-
Instructionals/Technical
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail final is almost out. The final release it scheduled for release on April 25. After you actually get done with the installation, there would likely exist a heap of things you still need to take care of. This post will share some interesting insight and ideas about what you can and should do after a successful installation.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Games
-
-
INSURGENCY is a first-person team-based shooter for up to 32 players designed for Windows® PC and Mac OS X (and in the future, Linux), using Valve’s Source Engine. INSURGENCY is based on the popular total conversion for Half-Life 2 – Insurgency: Modern Infantry Combat – that saw more than a million free downloads and was awarded the ModDB “Player’s Choice Mod of the Year” in 2007. It is a highly intense, realistic experience. This means no cross-hairs, realistic weapon damage, and careful maneuvering.
-
-
Monster Loves You! Recently popped up on the SteamDB so I decided to do my usual checks and get in touch with the developer to see if it is actually coming.
-
While Nemesys Games is going to release its racing game Ignite for Linux only after releasing it for iOS, the developers of SCS Software have already started the closed beta of Euro Truck Simulator 2 for Linux. The game was voted on Steam Greenlight for inclusion in the Steam games catalog by the gamers community.
In this simulation game, the player takes on the role of the truck driver and is responsible for the transportation of various commodities across Europe. Moreover, the player has the influence on the business affairs of his company and crucially influences its success.
-
The Raven – Legacy of a Master Thief, an adventure game developed by KING Art and published by Nordic Games, will arrive on Steam for Linux on June 20.
The developers from KING Art are best known for “The Book of Unwritten Tales” series, which has been very well received by gamers and critics alike.
-
Some colleagues of mine are asking users if they would pay for Linux. Given that folks pay for Windows and Mac, why wouldn’t they pay for Linux? Some of the answers so far are quite interesting. Perhaps they’re not as you’d expect.
Linux users are known, among other things, as being cheapskates. That was the excuse many larger gaming houses cited as why they quit porting to Linux. Some distribution leaders find the exact opposite. Besides all the business sponsors, Linux Mint rakes in over $5,000 a month in user donations. Many others have donation buttons and some raise respectable numbers. Certain software makers have raised some decent funds from Linux users, like the Humble Indie Bundles. But as a general rule of thumb, Linux users ain’t paying for shift.
-
Surgeon Simulator 2013, the Bossa Studios developed “darkly humorous” sim has released the full version of what was once a prototype developed for a 48 hour game jam. Video of yours truly playing that prototype with poor audio mixing up above.
-
-
The 39 Steps, a revolutionary type of game that tries to combine literature, gaming and film into one experience, will launch on Steam for Linux.
The developers from The Story Mechanics have gone to great lengths to replicate the environments of 1914′s London, according to the original John Buchan texts.
-
-
Kairo, a puzzle game developed by Richard Perrin and published by Lupus Studios, has been released on Steam for Linux and on multiple platforms.
Players will enter the lost world of Kairo and start to explore ancient and forgotten monuments.
-
Desktop Environments/WMs
-
K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
-
So I decided to implement it.
The phishing used several method that KMail try to detect…
-
Ever since a certain free software company decided to no longer be part of the larger ecosystem, I have seen lots of strange news postings whenever one of the KDE workspace developers mentioned the word “Wayland”. Very often it goes in the direction of “KDE is now also going on Wayland”. Every time I read something like that, I’m really surprised.
-
KlyDE, a light weight KDE experience was announced recently, there is a lot to know about this new project. We reached out to Jos Poortvliet, openSUSE community manager and one of the core team members of the KlyDE project to understand more about this project. Read on…
-
Last week, members of the Plasma team met in Nürnberg, Germany to discuss open questions on the road to Plasma Workspaces 2. The meeting was kindly hosted by SUSE and supported by the KDE e.V.. For the Plasma team, the meeting came at a perfect point in time: porting of Plasma to a new graphics has commenced, is in fact well under way, and has raised some questions that are best discussed in a high-bandwidth setting in person.
-
The road to Plasma Workspaces 2 has been laid out as the Plasma developers recently met in Nuremberg, Germany, to discuss their open issues around future developments. A new version of the KDE desktop will be based on version 5 of the KDE platform and on Qt 5, writes KDE developer Sebastian Kügler. It will be designed to run on X11 as well as on Wayland. With Wayland, KWin will be used as the compositor.
-
Dear KDE Community,
meet the mailing list where you can now talk about non-technical topics relevant to our community: kde-community. From a debate about our next conference to discussing our collaboration with other organizations and our goals as KDE community, this list is for anything which does not fit on the KDE development lists.
-
When I arrived at Tokamak 6 last week Alex was studying D-Bus communication between various applications. Before I had a chance to really sit down he complained about KWin talking to kded whenever for example a window got moved. This didn’t make much sense, so we had a look at it.
As it turned out that was KWin sending out notifications. Which immediately raised the question of why? Why would a user want a notification that he started/finished moving a window? After all it’s an action the user triggered. What should be done with the notification? Show a message? “You successfully moved a window!”, yes thank you I can see that on the screen. Play an annoying sound? Pling! Hopefully not.
Looking at what KNotify supports only logging to file or running a script make sense in response to the notifications emitted by KWin. But for logging to file it’s rather questionable why one would want that and why one would do that from inside a window manager. So what remains is running a script – fair enough that can be useful.
-
KO GmbH, a Germany firm, has announced the commercial support for Krita, one of the commercial-grade sketching application. KO GmbH, the Magdeburg based company, was co-founded by Krita maintainer Boudewijn Rempt. We reached out to Rempt to talk about Krita and the commercial support for Krita. Read on…
-
Ready to rock out with KDE’s premier music management application? Let’s rediscover our music with Amarok.
-
The future of the KDE desktop was planned earlier this month at a developer event held at the SUSE headquarters.
Already we wrote about the results of KDE, Unity, GNOME, and Razor-Qt developers meeting up at SUSE’s Nürnberg offices. There were also clear statements about KDE support for Wayland. Now over on the KDE web-site is a nice summary of their Plasma planning.
-
-
-
Here we are, finally ready for the 2.3.0 release. After the 2.2 one we targeted some things to fix and features to implement. We now are in the “almost done” level, meaning that quite all things have been done and that the code push is (hopefully) release level.
-
GNOME Desktop/GTK
-
Now we can browse the albums and their content making it our most complete view. Playback to the albums view and songs view is in development (works but is buggy).
-
While many of you, GNOME fans, are still enjoying the newly released GNOME 3.8 desktop environment, the GNOME developers are working hard on the next major version, GNOME 3.10, due for release this Autumn.
GNOME 3.10 will include many new features, such as automatically updated extensions, focus-caret tracking and color tinting functions for GNOME-Shell, new Maps and Videos apps, as well as Git integration and porting to the Wayland display server.
-
The GNOME 3.8 release kept me pretty busy. In the run up to UI freeze I was focusing on tracking bugs, providing guidance and testing. Then it was marketing time, and I was spending all my time writing the release notes as well as some of the website. (Kudos to the marketing team for a great 3.8 release, btw.)
With 3.8 behind me, I’ve been able to turn back to some good honest design work. I’ve been looking at quite a few aspects of GNOME 3, including Settings and GNOME Shell. However, in this post I am going to focus on some of the application design activities that I have been involved in recently. One of the nice things here is that I have found the opportunity to fill in some gaps and pay some attention to some of the long-lost applications that are in need of design love.
-
PCMan has created what looks like a qt fork of PCManFM, and there are some indications there and elsewhere that other LXDE components may be moving in that direction.
-
-
-
Are you a proud Linux user? Do you want to express yourself and show your friends and people around you what is your favourite Linux distribution? You can help the Linux community to grow and enhance your notebook by buying unique Linux-themed stickers and key chains on UnixStuff.net.
-
Our last distro was an Ubuntu 10.04 respin that housed the educational apps and games that make the reglue respin unique. In that support for that LTS is now gone, we’ve had to move on to find another long term solution for Reglue.
This wasn’t an easy decision to make.
Reglue is challenged in many areas. Besides the financial struggles we face, there just isn’t a lot of time to spend adding and removing individual apps and games on each computer. Many days, I am the only one working. When those machines hit my workbench, I need a one-stop solution.
Get it on the bench, get it working, and get it in the Ready Stack. SolusOS is my solution.
Just to give you a peek behind the curtain, there were some in the organization that balked at my choice. Given the recent turmoil in The Linuxsphere, the question was asked pointedly:
Is a small developer choice going to last for us?
It’s an honest question.
-
-
Also in the mag we’ve more on the UEFI debacle, a roundup of image editors, an inside look at audio editing with Ardour, Hotpicks and a gaggle/pride/murder of brain-expanding tutorials. Have fun!
-
To celebrate the cover feature on the latest Linux Format, we’ve built a web app that helps you find out which Linux distro is right for you. Just enter details of what you’re looking for, and it will pick your perfect distro match.
-
After posting my Pantheon DE review, a lot of people emailed me, telling me that what I did was wrong, namely install this desktop environment from a PPA and run it on top of a Ubuntu desktop. All right then, so what should I have done, I asked politely. They said, test elementary OS, which is a Ubuntu fork all right, with the Pantheon desktop environment on top it. Aha. Same thing? Supposedly not. Go figure.
-
ROSA is glad to announce version 2.0 of its environment for building and developing open software – ROSA Automatic Build Farm (ABF). The system got more than 100 different improvements which will help developers and maintainers to effectively control the whole life cycle of distributions (from creation of a source code to building ISO images).
-
Recently I’ve posted an article about the Windows manager and desktop environments that use less resources on Linux and thanks to a comment of Sebastian I’ve discovered Livarp, a lightweight GNU/Linux Distro.
Livarp is a DEBIAN-based distro that tries to take the best part of available Debian GNU/Linux applications without loosing accessibility or design, special attention was paid to the documentation that in a simple page collects all the most important information you need to know on the available software of this distribution and how to configure it.
-
New Releases
-
Today’s Distrowatch Weekly brought the news that a new distribution has been added to the official Linux database. You know what that means. It’s time to boot ‘er up.
SolydXK is a Debian-based distribution aiming to easy to use, stable, and secure. Founders believe SolydXK would be suitable for home and small office settings. SolydXK comes in two flavors: SolydX featuring the Xfce desktop and SolydK featuring KDE. SolydXK began life as a variant of Linux Mint Debian with KDE, but later broke away and became its own distro. Its inaugural release came just two weeks ago and was promptly put right smack on this month’s cover of Full Circle Magazine. SolydXK 201304 features Linux 3.2.39, Xorg 1.12.4, GCC 4.7.2, and Firefox 19.0.2.
-
PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family
-
Paris the 15th of April 2013: Mandriva S.A. has released a host of security fixes as well as new addons for its server platform, Mandriva Business Server.
-
The PCLinuxOS distribution was originally based on Mandriva, but has since split off and become an independently developed project. PCLinuxOS is a rolling-release distribution with the dual aim of being both powerful and easy to use. Officially PCLinuxOS ships with the KDE desktop interface, while community editions are available which provide Xfce and LXDE flavoured download images. The latest release of PCLinuxOS, version 2013.04, is significant in that it marks the first time the project has released 64-bit builds of the operating system. The new 64-bit builds are made available alongside the usual 32-bit ISO images. Aside from the new architecture support the latest release carries few new features, focusing mostly on updating existing software. In particular the latest release features the new KDE 4.10 desktop.
-
Gentoo Family
-
Some weeks ago I got an early version of the BeagleBone Black from the people at Beagleboard.org to create the documentation I always create with every device I get.
Like always i’d like to announce the guide for installing Gentoo in the BeagleBone Black. Have a look at: http://dev.gentoo.org/~armin76/arm/beagleboneblack/install.xml . Feel free to send any corrections my way.
-
Arch Family
-
The Manjaro Linux distribution describes itself as a “user-friendly” version of the popular Arch Linux platform. Manjaro Linux still follows Arch in a rolling-release manner, but it’s designed to offer greater user-friendliness and accessbility, complete with an easy installation routine.
Beyond having an easy-to-use GUI installer, Manjaro is available in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors and also comes in spins for Mate, LXDE, KDE, and Xfce. Two weeks ago marked the Manjaro 0.8.5 release and then released last week were the MATE/LXDE/KDE desktop flavors to Manjaro 0.8.5. Being curious about this Arch-based distribution, I fired it up on a test system today.
-
Within a short span of time, Manjaro seems to have hit the right cord with Linux users. In last 8 months, it had 6 major releases with almost all desktop flavors available in their kitty and currently ranked within top 10 in Distrowatch. For those uninitiated to Manjaro, it is an user-friendly spin of Archlinux with popular desktop environments which just works once you boot up. To me, Manjaro is going the Linux Mint way, to provide highly functional, pre-configured Linux distros to make Linux easy for those who are uninitiated. That they are going in the right track is evidenced by the popularity of the distro within a short span of time. Their first release of Manjaro 0.8.0 XFCE was on 21st August and now their fifth upgrade is out within 8 months!
-
I’ve written lots of distro reviews over the years, but every once in a while I find a new one that turns out to be a delightful surprise. Manjaro 0.8.5 is definitely one of those. Manjaro is based on Arch Linux, and promises to provide an easy to use distro that is still highly customizable.
Arch Linux has a reputation for not being as accessible for non-technical users as some other distros, so I’m happy to see Manjaro 0.8.5 change that and offer an alternative that combines the power of Arch with ease of use. Like Arch, Manjaro is a rolling release distro. So once you install it, you won’t need to install another release later on to keep it updated to the latest version.
-
Slackware Family
-
Slackware 14 was released 17 months after the previous release and in theory there should have been a massive bump. While a lot happened under the hood, for example the introduction of kmod and gtk+ 3, it just felt like more of the same on the desktop and not really worth the upgrade from 13.37, in particular if you’d already updated your stock kernel before. With a Linux kernel 3.2.29 and KDE 4.8.5 the new release seemed quite modest and middle of the road at the time.
-
Red Hat Family
-
-
Red Hat (NYSE: RHT)‘s stock had its “buy” rating restated by analysts at TheStreet in a research report issued to clients and investors on Tuesday, Stock Ratings Network reports.
The analysts wrote, “Red Hat (RHT) has been reiterated by TheStreet Ratings as a buy with a ratings score of B. The company’s strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its robust revenue growth, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures, growth in earnings per share, increase in net income and good cash flow from operations. We feel these strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had lackluster performance in the stock itself.”
-
Fedora
-
-
Jaroslav Reznik posted late last week that Fedora 19 Alpha would be released tomorrow as rescheduled. Fedora 19 will feature things like MariaDB instead of MySQL, Scratch programming environment, optional Syslinux, systemd cron and chroot services, predictable network device names, new first boot wizard, 3D printing, and more Anaconda UI work. Fedora 19 is expected for release July 2, the next development release is due May 28.
-
An alpha version of Fedora 19 has been released, so it’s a good time to take a sneak peek at what Fedora 19 will have to offer users. As always you should note that alpha releases like Fedora 19 should be considered for testing purposes and fun only. You should not rely on it as your daily desktop distro.
-
-
The much awaited Fedora 19 “Schrödinger’s Cat” alpha release has arrived, as announced here. In case you haven’t been following the evolution of this version of Fedora, it’s been through a number of delays due to issues pertaining to the UEFI Secure Boot scheme that has gained notoriety for helping lock many Linux users out of Windows 8 machines. Fedora has been one of only a handful of Linux distros that have been easy for users to put on some Windows 8 machines, due to UEFI workarounds.
-
Debian Family
-
I came across a review of Linux Mint Debian Edition recently and decided to try it out. The review is quite comprehensive as to how Mint installs, what it looks like, and the software it comes with, so I’m just going to add a few points of my own.
Linux Mint Debian Edition is based on “tested snapshots of Debian Testing”, so you get more recent software than Debian Stable, but with a more stable system than Testing. Debian Testing has been frozen for months as the bugs are knocked outgoing towards the new stable version, and even before that it had been pretty stable for many months. No surprise that Debian Mint is also very stable. I don’t know what it will be like when Testing is unfrozen and a cascade of new updates arrives. It would have been more interesting to test it then. Maybe I’ll try it again in a couple of months when Testing really is ahead of Stable.
-
Neil McGovern, on behalf of the Debian Release Team, announced the target date of the weekend of 4th/5th May for the release of Debian 7.0 “Wheezy”.
-
-
Derivatives
-
Canonical/Ubuntu
-
German hardware company Cirrus7 are gearing up to release a new Ubuntu-powered PC.
The aluminium-cased Cirrus7 Nimbus is tiny, measuring just 22cm x 22cm with a height a smidge over 5cm.
But since “mini-PCs” aren’t exactly hard to find Cirrus7 have made sure the Nimbus will stand out by making it fanless. From what we can discern the aluminium case is also a passive cooler, able to tame the heat from an Intel Core i7-3770T with a max TDP of 45W.
-
-
-
-
-
Canonical has recently announced the winning wallpapers approved for Ubuntu 13.04. Canonical conducts this contest through Flickr and relies on user submissions. Ubuntu13.04 is scheduled to be released soon on April 25th, but you can get the wallpapers now if you want them.
-
The release of Ubuntu 13.04 is less than a week away, bringing with it some refinements to the Unity interface that users either love or hate. But Ubuntu with Unity is far from the only choice for Linux lovers or those looking to avoid Windows and OS X.
In addition to the many Linux distributions such as Fedora, Debian, or OpenSuse, there is a thriving open source community maintaining desktop operating systems based on Ubuntu code but with different user interfaces. These often have whimsical names like “Kubuntu” and “Xubuntu.” While you can download the standard version of Ubuntu and apply a different user interface to it, most of these alternative distros are built with a non-Unity interface in mind from the start.
-
Hard core Linux fans won’t care for it, but for the average user the new Ubuntu desktop Linux has a lot to offer.
-
-
-
Canonical has released the latest version of Ubuntu, code-named “Raring Ringtail”. The H looks at what is new in the release, which its developers claim is one of the snappiest and most good looking versions of Ubuntu yet, but which otherwise seems rather low on features.
-
Some of the features that were to be included in Ubuntu 13.04 have been shelved in favour of presenting a polished and solid release, with most of the improvements residing behind the scenes. As a result, Raring Ringtail may seem a bit of a disappointment.
-
Raring Ringtail for Ubuntu desktops and servers now ready to download.
-
In October 2012, Ubuntu’s founder Mark Shuttleworth, blogged that Ubuntu 13.04 would be developed in private, so that the release would be a “magician’s reveal.”
-
The release of Ubuntu 13.04 today sees the latest version of the popular Linux distribution visibly changed little from its predecessors. Canonical has chosen to emphasise the engineering process changes and improvements in quality that came from those changes, such as a more responsive desktop and better visual ambience, in 13.04 and made it clear that any radical changes, like the incorporation of the Mir display server, will happen in October’s release of Ubuntu 13.10.
-
Mark Shuttleworth made the controversial decision to move Ubuntu Linux to the Unity interface back in 2010. It’s a decision that provoked lots of argument, but with the Ubuntu 13.04 Linux release out this week, Shuttleworth remains confident he is moving in the right direction.
In an exclusive video interview with Datamation, Shuttleworth reflected on the difficult decisions and transitions he has had to make with Ubuntu Linux. Overall Shuttleworth stressed that he deeply cares about the community and its opinions as Ubuntu Linux continues to evolve.
The Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail release is set to be officially available on April 25th. The new Linux distribution will continue the evolution of the Unity desktop interface and provide updated applications. Shuttleworth described the release cycle, which pushes out new Ubuntu releases every six months as, ‘performance art’.
-
LINUX DEVELOPER Canonical has said the improvements in resource usage in Ubuntu Linux 13.04 are due to the firm’s ongoing work to adapt the distribution for smartphones and tablets.
Canonical claims that its latest Ubuntu 13.04 release uses less resources, citing improved boot times, lower memory usage and better power management. Canonical CEO Jane Silber told The INQUIRER that the improvements are due to the firm’s work on bringing Ubuntu to smartphones and tablets.
-
While there isn’t yet a release yet of Ubuntu in the Linux x32 ABI flavor, some packages now found in Ubuntu 13.04 make it easier to setup this binary interface that brings some 64-bit advantages to the 32-bit world.
The Linux x32 implementation is a native 32-bit ABI for Intel/AMD x86_64 systems for software that doesn’t need 64-bit pointers but can benefit from features assumed by 64-bit x86 processors. There’s been mainline Linux kernel support, GDB debugging support, glibc support, and GCC support.
-
And back we are with a list of some great books about Linux. Though this time, unlike our earlier post, we’ll be focusing just on Ubuntu.
Ubuntu, which is the most popular Linux distro around, has been one of the principal reasons that Linux ever took off as a mainstream operating system. Before Ubuntu, Linux was almost inaccessible to the so-called ‘normal user’. And, even though Ubuntu, now, is as easy to use as Windows, or even Mac OS X, underneath those glossy icons and helpful tooltips lays a system that is so powerful only few people manage to understand.
-
Ubuntu 13.04 has been released, so it’s time to take yet another look at Canonical’s popular distro. This time around Ubuntu’s code name is “Raring Ringtail.” It appears to be a reference to the ring-tailed cat. I had no idea what a ring-tail cat is, so of course I googled.
-
As you may know, Ubuntu 13.04 is officially release just now! At the same time, Ubuntu Tweak got an update too. This time, it’s Ubuntu Tweak 0.8.4!
Ubuntu Tweak 0.8.4 is still a maintenance version, the support for Ubuntu 13.04, and fixed some critical bugs. Like this one:
-
-
You’ve installed Ubuntu 13.04, followed our ’10 Things to Do’ guide, and now you want some top-notch apps to use on it.
-
Raring Ringtail, the newest Ubuntu release, is landing with a thud, based on early reviews. It might have some appeal for businesses, though. “In essence, they’re aiming for a more predictable experience, and I think that could make this a potentially interesting offer for businesses that want to get out from underneath the cost and upgrade cycle of Windows,” said tech analyst Charles King.
-
You may have seen the official announcements of Ubuntu 13.04 this week, or our coverage of it, but the analysis of this new version of the popular Linux distribution just keeps on coming. One of the most important things of all to realize is that the Ubuntu Server 13.04 release that became available this week includes capabilities based on the “Grizzly” release of the populuar OpenStack cloud computing platform, and deepens Ubuntu’s relationship with OpenStack.
-
First the bad news: most of the big new features planned for Ubuntu 13.04, or Raring Ringtail, haven’t made it – they’ve been pushed back to 13.10, due in October. Despite this, the Ringtail is actually rather good.
-
On April 25, Canonical published details about MySQL vulnerabilities for its Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) operating systems.
According to Canonical, several security issues have been fixed in MySQL and this update includes new upstream MySQL versions to fix these issues.
-
-
The recently released, Ubuntu 13.04, not only brings up-to-date packages (including LibreOffice 4.0), which is pretty usual, but according to its ‘Release Notes’ page, ‘Unity’ desktop 7.0 too brings noticeable improvements, concerning memory consumption & performance.
On a side note, I know this might sound a bit weird, but from all the Ubuntu versions that I’ve tried over the years, the best performing ones (less bugs & solid performance) were the ‘ .04′ numbered versions, the ones that get released in April. Where the ‘.10′ versions are usually buggy.
-
Canonical’s Mir Display Server now has a simple demo shell as well as a multi-window compositing demo.
In continuing to monitor the public Bazaar development repository for Mir, there isn’t too much to report on this week. The only highlights were:
-
A test of the newly-released Ubuntu 13.04 release across four systems shows it’s a solid release. But if you’ve previously been a fan of Ubuntu or feared it, this isn’t the release to make you think otherwise.
-
Flavours and Variants
-
Kubuntu 13.04, the KDE-based Ubuntu flavor, has been released yesterday. Let’s take a quick look at what’s new.
-
Lubuntu is one of my favorite distros for it’s amazing resource efficiency and functionality. It may not be the most eye-candy in the Ubuntu clan but definitely the most resource efficient. LXDE traditionally consumes lower resources than Gnome or KDE and even XFCE. And most importantly, it is customizable enough to make it look really attractive. Though the release note of Lubuntu 13.04 didn’t state a whole lot of incremental improvements, still I was interested to check it out.
-
I haven’t checked out Fuduntu in over a year. I wasn’t particularly planning to do so either, because I wasn’t exactly expecting huge changes. But then I saw some news that changed my mind.
-
The people behind some Linux distros have “the warrior mindset,” observed Google+ blogger Brett Legree. They “choose the road not taken, … chart their own course and stand out. I would say that Fuduntu is one of those, and from what I have read in the past few days, I do believe that the warriors who are part of it have something very special in store. I believe that they are up to the challenge.”
-
-
Bodhi Linux is a Linux distribution which uses Ubuntu’s long term support releases as its base. Upon this stable base, which will be supported for five years, the Bodhi developers add the Enlightenment desktop and up to date applications. The result is a small, very fast Linux distribution which, thanks to the malleability of Enlightenment, sports a highly flexible interface. Bodhi can run on three different architectures (both 32-bit and 64-bit x86 along with ARM) and, according to the project’s website, Bodhi can be run on personal computers with just 128MB of RAM. The project has an attractive website which contains a good deal of useful documentation.
-
For the last three weeks my wife and I have been traveling, which has given us both a chance to try out Linux Mint 14 with MATE on her netbook and my laptop. So far, I’m favorably impressed.
I’ve already reported that Mint was easy to install on both machines, except for one well-known bug which I’m sure will be fixed in the next release. I’m happy to say that, except for one glitch, it has worked perfectly on both machines.
1. I like the MATE desktop environment (a fork of GNOME 2). I particularly like how the pop-up Start menu works. You can switch easily between “Favourites” and “All Applications.” When showing “All Applications” the applications and categories appear in two columns, and it’s easy to scroll through the applications. I came to dislike how KDE4 implemented this; whereas I find the MATE way easy to use.
-
Today, Canonical have released Raring Ringtail, the latest version of their Ubuntu Linux distribution. Here at Tuxradar, we like Ubuntu, but we don’t like the way they send all your desktop searches to Amazon. We want to be able to use our computers without Jeff Bezos seeing all our data. So, we’ve created Privacy Enhanced Ubuntu. It’s exactly the same as Raring Ringtail, but doesn’t return Amazon results for searches in the default lens. There’s still an Amazon shopping lens there if you want to use it (click on the shopping bag icon in the dash).
-
It’s the end of April, so that means that there’s a new release of Ubuntu. Well, actually, no – it means that there are eight of them. Don’t like standard Ubuntu’s Mac-OS-X-like Unity desktop? Here’s where to look.
There are umpteen “remixes” alongside the eponymous distro. These mostly differ by having a different desktop – and therefore overall look and feel – but also in some cases different preinstalled apps. There are more than one hundred – many moribund, very specialised or otherwise of little interest – but seven enjoy official recognition. I’m going to look at the “Big Four” – Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu and Ubuntu GNOME. All have a different interface from the standard distro, meaning something for everyone.
-
Trisquel is a 100 per cent ‘free as in free speech’ GNU/Linux distribution started by Rubén Rodríguez Pérez nine years ago.
“It started as a project at the university I was studying at. They just wanted a custom distro because… everybody was doing that at the time!” Pérez says.
-
An enlightened versions of Ubuntu, Bodhi is an incredibly lightweight and highly customisable distro using Canonical’s base. Is Bodhi crippled from this, or much better?
-
-
Plair says it is now shipping its “Plair” media-streaming device to U.S. customers. Unveiled earlier this year at CES, the $99 embedded Linux-powered gadget is said to provide AirPlay-like beaming of multimedia content from Apple, Windows, and Android devices to “any HDTV” with an available HDMI port.
-
As guys from/around Texas Instruments promised there is new Beaglebone Black on a market. Faster, cheaper, with video output and other extras. For me it looks like Raspberry/Pi killer done right.
-
We’ve covered Android-powered PCs-on-a-stick extensively here on TG Daily. But what about a PC-on-a-stick specifically designed to run the Linux version of XBMC?
Well, a crowd-funding project at Indiegogo wants to make it so and is building on the idea of various Linux-based operating systems designed to run XBMC on the wildly popular Raspberry Pi.
-
Phones
-
-
Spanish manufacturer/seller Geeksphone already has run out of the two Firefox OS phones that went on sale for developers today.
-
-
The developer test phones for Firefox OS are now on sale. They’re being produced by Geeksphone, a small Spanish outfit that used to make Android handsets for true open-source cognoscenti and that is now backing Mozilla’s operating system as the way forward.
Geeksphone is far from the only company pushing Firefox OS – operators seem especially keen, largely because they want to shake up the Google/Apple smartphone duopoly. However, it is the only firm thus far to start selling devices using the operating system (ZTE will also sell Firefox OS phones from around the middle of the year).
-
A hosting company calls for hosting companies to support the open source software that makes them successful
-
It has been a few weeks since I posted an article here at The ERACC Web Log. I have been kicking around some article ideas, but nothing has gelled until today. I do have some projects going that I will be writing about once they are done. I do not believe in writing articles just to have new content. In that direction lay mediocrity. I prefer actually having something worthwhile to write about. At least something I think is worthwhile.
A recent event with a local client has started me thinking, again, about Microsoft, Apple, FOSS and vendor lock-in. I am not a proponent of vendor lock-in. This screen capture of my VirtualBox Windows XP Professional test VM speaks to that.VM with XP-pro on fluxbox window manager under linux
This local client had decided to abandon Microsoft and change out their office systems for new hardware with new operating systems. Thus already requiring retraining and all that comes with such a change. Of course, I made the pitch for Linux with all FOSS. In general, they only use their systems for e-mail and creating quote documents for clients. Under FOSS systems, the e-mail is covered with any number of FOSS e-mail applications, while the quote documents are covered with LibreOffice to create PDF files. One of the systems does run accounting software for billing and payments. But they do not do their own payroll, so LedgerSMB would work for their billing and payments accounting system.
-
Earlier today Sonatype released the results of their annual survey. The survey looks at the extent to which developers use open source components, with a particular focus on how they balance the competing needs of speed and security. The data makes it clear that security is very often not the priority.
The results of the survey show the massive extent to which developers now rely on components. Of course, this has been the case for many years, but the full maturation of the concept of component assembly rather than code writing is well illustrated here.
-
Takers are people who, when interacting with another person, are trying to get as much as possible from that person and contribute as little as they can in return, thinking that’s the shortest and most direct path to achieving their own goals.
-
Events
-
-
Another in the series of public meetings to be hosted by the OSI around its next face-to-face board meeting, OSI will also host the non-profit DC Metro Open Source Community Summit at the Mayflower Renaissance in Washington, D.C. The May 10th, 2013 program will include short sessions by some of our OSI board members and an “unconference” format for maximum attendee participation, collaboration, and learning.
-
Toward the end of this week — well, Thursday to be exact — I’ll be loading up the car with a few laptops, about 100 pieces of CrunchBang media (DVDs, not CDs), a paper #! banner, my daughter and her equipment and we’ll head north to Linux Fest Northwest in Bellingham, Washington on April 27-28.
-
Web Browsers
-
Mozilla
-
The last week has been filled with uncertainty in regards to proposed Firefox customization changes in the wake of the Australis theme release. Mozilla was heavily criticized for its initial proposal, both here on Ghacks but also on platforms such as Reddit, and posted a second proposal soon thereafter. The core issue at hand was that many users felt that Mozilla decided to take away customization options that were pare of the Firefox web browser for a long time, and that it did not really care about the opinion of the browser’s users. Some feared that Firefox would become just like Google Chrome, a browser that is offering barely any customization options.
-
Update: In a post to his own Tumblr blog, Hansen says he believes Opera’s lawsuit is centered on the “Search Tabs” function of Firefox that was demonstrated in the video alongside “Junior.” Hansen claims the feature was originally a concept he developed for an open-source browser of his own he started working on after leaving Opera, which he called “GB”—a browser for which the revenue from searches would be donated to “green” causes. “In the summer of 2008, Opera’s founder and CEO at the time, Jon von Tetzchner reaches out and asks if I want to contribute more to Opera,” Hansen wrote. “I tell him about GB and propose that we could develop GB as a rebooted and simplified Opera browser. He is very interested, but when we start to talk business, and I tell him that I want no salary and no shares, but 1% of the search revenue as compensation, he says that’s not possible. So there is no deal. In fact, there is never any kind of deal or transfer of ownership of GB concepts to Opera.” A year later, Opera brought him on as a consultant; some of the design proposals he made during that period were based on his ideas for GB, he claims.
-
SaaS/Big Data
-
-
In the wake of last week’s well attended OpenStack Summit, there has been much discussion of the state of the project. As is typical, this ranges from heated criticism of the project’s community, governance or technology to grandiose claims regarding its trajectory and marketplace traction. And as is typical, the truth lies somewhere in between.
-
Databases
-
How will the planned merger between MariaDB creator Monty Program DB and support firm SkySQL strengthen the hand of the open-source fork in the wider MySQL world? We talk to the new company’s CEO.
-
Fans of MySQL have expressed alarm at the direction that Oracle is taking the venerable database. Last fall, three extensions for MySQL were released by Oracle, but only for the enterprise version and not for the free, open-source edition. SkySQL said it would support both MySQL and MariaDB, and that MariaDB would always remain open source.
-
-
-
Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
-
Oracle’s whack-a-mole with Java security follows a decade of technical debt. But why won’t it turn to open source community for help?
-
-
-
Funding
-
Software Freedom Conservancy have announced a fundraising campaign for an Open Source non-profit accounting system. The campaign seeks to raise $75,000 to fund a full-time developer for one year to first reevaluate existing solutions for their viability as a non-profit accounting system, and then improve and augment the best available system to create a new solution that will help non-profits around the world manage their finances better.
-
BSD
-
FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
-
The Free Software Foundation (FSF), a Boston-based 501(c)(3) charity with a worldwide mission to protect freedoms critical to the computer-using public, seeks a motivated and organized tech-friendly Boston-based individual to be its full-time outreach and communication coordinator.
-
BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA — Tuesday, April 30th, 2013 — The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today awarded Respects Your Freedom (RYF) certification to the TPE-N150USB Wireless N USB Adapter, sold by ThinkPenguin. The RYF certification mark means that the product meets the FSF’s standards in regard to users’ freedom, control over the product, and privacy. The TPE-N150USB can be purchased from http://www.thinkpenguin.com/TPE-N150USB. Software certification focused primarily on the firmware for the Atheros AR9271 chip used on the adapter.
-
-
Project Releases
-
Public Services/Government
-
Dream School is coordinated by the School of Kasavuori, in the municipality of Kauniainen. The project is already used by 15 schools across the country. “At the end of this year that number will have doubled”, expects Allan Schneitz, the project’s coordinator and a teacher at the School of Kasavuori.
-
-
Licensing
-
This diversity is a testament to both the ingenuity of the teams responsible and the rights enshrined within the GPL. But more than anything else, it’s the ‘freedom’ found in the licence that has made Linux what it is today – an operating system found in the smallest and largest of devices; underground, underwater, in your hand, in space, at school, at the office – everywhere.
-
Openness/Sharing
-
Here in the tech world, it’s become increasingly common to see market research and reports testifying to the growing ubiquity of open source software, such as the one just last week from Black Duck Software and North Bridge Venture Partners indicating that open source is “eating” the software world, as the authors put it.
What’s typically not recognized, however, is that this trend toward openness in software is just one piece of a much bigger picture. In fact, openness is a trend that’s taking hold throughout numerous aspects of the modern world, to the benefit of everyday people like you and me.
“Open,” in other words, appears to be the future – whether we’re talking software or beyond.
Ready for a quick tour? Most Linux advocates are already well aware of the benefits of open source when it comes to software, but here are two other kinds of openness I’ve come to appreciate from the writing I do outside the tech world.
-
Open Hardware
-
3D Printing is all the hype these days, at least among some communities. What it really is however spans a lot of different things, several different uses and in general many different realities. 3D printing has actual uses in lots of industries and can be considered to be born out of the need for more rapid prototyping. But it’s far to be the whole story about it. Rapid prototyping is clearly a well identified use of 3D printing, however new uses, from art to spare parts production (and more) have proven to exist as well. To this day, 3D printers that are affordable come in two different kinds and target a market that’s generally seen as a hobbyist one (not that it’s a wrong way to perceive it).
-
Programming
-
Challenge #6 in the Guile 100 Programs Project is to write a Guile CGI script that accesses a MySQL-family database. It is the second challenge in this month’s theme, which is “Web 1.0 — Web 1990s style”.
The Guile 100 Programs Project is an attempt to collaboratively generate a set of examples of how to use the GNU Guile implementation of Scheme.
-
-
…obligations that are packed down into this term, user?
-
THE UK GOVERNMENT has shown it’s at the forefront of modern technology and online services with its latest form for claiming benefits online.
Those who want to claim either Attendance Allowance, Disability Living Allowance or Overseas State Pension can simply visit the Gov.UK website, where they are then pointed to the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) website to fill out a form online.
-
Hardware
-
Security
-
Researchers at web security firm Sucuri have discovered modified binaries in the open source Apache web server. The binaries will load malicious code or other web content without any user interaction. Only files that were installed using the cPanel administration tool are currently thought to be affected. ESET says that several hundred web servers have been compromised.
-
Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
-
Authorities have identified four more sets of remains of first responders who battled last week’s fire and explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas. Wednesday’s blast and injured more than 200, according to officials cited by .
-
Bodies include those of firefighters who were tackling a blaze at the West Fertilizer Company when blast occurred
-
Expert says Occupational Safety & Health Administration, which last visited West in 1985, is ‘undermanned and overloaded’
-
Engineer becomes ninth person to be detained over country’s worst industrial accident, as number of deaths climbs to 501
-
As more information on the origin of the alleged perpetrators is coming to light, I am concerned to note in the social media a most unfortunate misunderstanding in this respect. The Czech Republic and Chechnya are two very different entities – the Czech Republic is a Central European country; Chechnya is a part of the Russian Federation.
-
We are asked to believe that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was identified by the Russian government as an extremist Dagestani or Chechen Islamist terrorist, and they were so concerned about it that in late 2010 they asked the US government to take action. At that time, the US and Russia did not normally have a security cooperation relationship over the Caucasus, particularly following the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008. For the Russians to ask the Americans for assistance, Tsarnaev must have been high on their list of worries.
In early 2011 the FBI interview Tsarnaev and trawl his papers and computers but apparently – remarkably for somebody allegedly radicalised by internet – the habitually paranoid FBI find nothing of concern.
So far, so weird. But now this gets utterly incredible. In 2012 Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who is of such concern to Russian security, is able to fly to Russia and pass through the airport security checks of the world’s most thoroughly and brutally efficient security services without being picked up. He is then able to proceed to Dagestan – right at the heart of the world’s heaviest military occupation and the world’s most far reaching secret police surveillance – again without being intercepted, and he is able there to go through some form of terror training or further Islamist indoctrination. He then flies out again without any intervention by the Russian security services.
-
Really? 30,000 attacks analysed, including researching the internet traffic of the perpetrators and their public statements?
That is rather a lot of work. Firstly you have to identify the attack and identify the perpetrator. Then you have to access their internet use and go through it looking for relevant reading, comments or relevant messages.
-
Cablegate
-
But I want to focus rather narrowly on one point. Assange talks at length of his disappointment at the presentation of the State Department cables by Wikileaks’ mainstream media partners. In relation to the Guardian, among other things he says this:
“The Guardian redacted two thirds of a cable about Bulgarian crime, removed all the names of the people who had infiltrated – the mafioso – who had infiltrated the Bulgarian government. Removed a description of the Kazakstan elite, which said that the Kazakstan elite in general were corrupt, not even a particular name, just in general! Removed a description that a an energy company out of Italy operating in Kazakhstan was corrupt, so they have redacted for naming of individual names of people who might be unfairly put at risk, just like we do–that is what we require of them. They have redacted the names of mafioso, individual mafioso because they are worried that they might get sued for libel in London by this mafioso. They have redacted the names… they have redacted the description of a class of Kazakhstan elite, a class has been corrupt, and they have redacted descriptions of individual companies being corrupt because they don’t want to expose themselves to any risk at all.”
-
Environment/Energy/Wildlife
-
-
To turn the public off climate change, right-wing media is blaming scientists for hurting kids and being puppets of totalitarianism
-
Finance
-
Robert Johnson: I think the, call it the oligarchy now is audacious. They don’t really care if they’re legitimate. There was a time – you know, I always hear Jurgen Habermas was paraphrased by saying, “Legitimate if you can, coerce if you have to, and accommodate if you must.” And I think we’ve gone past – I almost started, this was really eerie because we didn’t compare notes – I almost started my discussion about John Ralston Saul’s book, The Unconscious Civilization, and I think we’ve gone beyond – I’m grateful we have gone beyond the unconscious civilization. A lot of people don’t buy the package anymore that’s emanating from those corporations you talked about.
-
Large banks, like small ones, would be financially responsible for their own actions
-
The suit does not include the issue that has many members of the investing public outraged: the appropriation of customer funds. But even though the specific failings are familiar to anyone who has been following this sorry affair closely, reading them together is a reminder of just how astonishingly irresponsible Corzine was as an executive. One of the basic requirements of a trading operation is you need to have solid controls and reporting. Yet Corzine instead entered into a outsided trading strategy that produced accounting earnings but drained liquidity. It’s frustrating that the suit misses this element, that the trade actually had a two day funding gap on top its other defects, including the fatal one, the risk of increased haircuts on a levered trade. That meant it drained cash even when it was showing accounting profits…
-
-
-
A judge is being asked to decide if HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) acted illegally by letting investment bank Goldman Sachs off part of its tax bill.
-
-
PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
-
If nobody from the LSE is ever allowed into the terrible North Korean dictatorship again, that will be a bad thing. But the benefit of the very wide spreading of truth by John Sweeney’s documentary is worth a very, very great deal more. The academics of the LSE may not entirely use their “access” to lick Kim Jong Whatever’s arse. But the said academics certainly don’t want to be associated with the spreading of the obvious truth that the said arse reeks to high heaven.
-
-
Censorship
-
Privacy
-
Apparently the Communications Data Bill is dead. I wonder for how long? It’s a zombie bill that has been killed before…
-
A coalition of international and european organisations, including Access, Bits of Freedom, Digitale Gesellschaft, EDRI, La Quadrature du Net, Open Rights Group, and Privacy International, release a commun campaign and website, nakedcitizens.eu. The site allows concerned citizens to contact their representatives in the European Parliament to urge them to vote in a way that ensures the protection of their fundamental right to privacy.
-
Today’s Times newspaper leads with an important development on the Communications Data Bill.
A group of ten leading academics and computer science experts have added their voices to the growing chorus of objection over the bill, far beyond the scope of merely tinkering with the drafted legislation.
-
As our Freedom of Information request shows, Between 2009 and 2011, HRMC made 41,351 snooping requests for details of phone calls and mobile texts. The only police forces to make more requests in the same period were the Metropolitan police and Merseyside police.
-
SNOOPING tax inspectors have made 41,351 requests to see details about people’s private communications in the past three years, The Sun can reveal.
-
-
Tax officials used intrusive powers to rake through Osita Mba’s personal data in attempt to prove he had spoken to the Guardian
-
Authorities in Japan are presumably worried about their inability to tackle cybercrime and, in a bid to stem one of the sources of anonymous traffic, the National Police Agency (NPA) is asking ISPs to block Tor.
-
Civil Rights
-
-
Since the horrific bus rape case, the problems of rape in India have been firmly on the western media agenda. Today BBC World is carrying two different and terrible stories – one of the rape of a five year old girl in Delhi, and one of the death of a rape victim in a botched abortion.
-
First, just in case it’s not utterly obvious, I’m glad that the two murderous cowards who attacked civilians in Boston recently are off the streets. One dead and one in custody is a great outcome.
That said, a large percent of the reaction in Boston has been security theater. “Four victims brutally killed” goes by other names in other cities.
In Detroit, for example, they call it “Tuesday”.
…and Detroit does not shut down every time there are a few murders.
“But Clark,” I hear you say, “this is different. This was a terrorist attack.”
-
Lord chief justice issues urgent guidance to judges following court of protection’s imprisonment of Wanda Maddocks
-
Intellectual Monopolies
-
Perhaps the best way to understand what this report has to offer is through the understanding that the USTR, while wearing an official, government hat, actually represents the interests of a very specific group of American companies. Many of the report’s observations highlight not the state of the countries being discussed but the fear which those companies represented by the USTR have of rival economies there. In many ways, the Special 301 report is actually illustrative of a conflict within the USA itself. Economies such as Ukraine — newly vilified in this year’s report — are popular destinations for outsourcing from the USA, powering the disruptive American businesses challenging the dominance of the companies which grew huge in the last century.
There’s no doubt that being listed in the Special 301 report is a diplomatic issue. One has to wonder how appropriate it is to the new meshed economy, though.
-
Special 301 is an annual report by the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) which places countries on a “watch list” if USTR would like to see greater changes in their intellectual property rules or enforcement practice. This year’s report came out May 1st. We pay attention because USTR relies heavily on comments from big business, and USTR’s opaque standards and criticism of other countries could stymie the development of public interest policies in areas including health. For example, countries have sovereign rights to issue “compulsory licenses” on pharmaceutical patents. Compulsory licensing authorizes price-lowering generic competition with patented drugs in exchange for royalty payments to the patent holder. It’s a key strategy for improving access to affordable medicines, especially in developing countries.
-
Copyrights
-
On 25 April next, the “International Trade” (INTA) committee of the European Parliament will vote on a draft resolution on the proposed EU-US trade agreement, the “Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement” (TAFTA), also touted as the “Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership” (TTIP). After the ACTA, SOPA, PIPA and CETA fights, once again the negotiators of this new trade agreement try to use it as an opportunity to impose online repression. With Thursday’s vote, Members of the European Parliament can and must remove “intellectual property” provisions from the negotiations, and avoid an undemocratic trade agreement that will inflict the worst of both regimes’ rules on the other party. Instead, the current version of the resolution that will be put to vote on Thursday proposes to “include strong protection of intellectual property rights (IPR)” in TAFTA.
-
Today, the “International Trade” (INTA) committee of the European Parliament adopted a resolution1 on the proposed EU-US trade agreement – the “Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement” (TAFTA), also touted as the “Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership” (TTIP). The Parliament unfortunately decided to ignore the calls of civil society groups to keep “IP out of TAFTA”.
-
Following an undercover police investigation, the Vice President of Lithuanian Anti-Piracy Association LANVA has pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges. Vytas Simanavicius, known for his efforts to curb online piracy in the Baltic country, faces up to eight years in prison. Because of the looming incarceration, his role as an expert witness in a Microsoft court case against a local BitTorrent site has become uncertain.
-
Last week Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm was charged with hacking into companies and a bank. While it’s no surprise that the news traveled quickly through the media, one might have expected that Gottfrid himself would be one of the first to hear the news. But Gottfrid’s mother Kristina informs TorrentFreak that her son learned of the charges by watching TV news in his cell. Even today he still hasn’t seen a copy of the lawsuit.
-
Bo Jiang, the Chinese national accused of spying on NASA, was formally charged in a Virginia court this week — not for conducting espionage, but for downloading porn and pirated movies to his computer. A former research contractor at NASA’s Langely Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, Jiang was originally indicted on March 20th, when federal investigators arrested him just before he departed on a one-way ticket from Washington, DC to Beijing. At the time, authorities accused Jiang of sharing sensitive information with the Chinese government — he had a NASA-issued laptop with him at the time of his in-flight arrest — but as Bloomberg Businessweek reports, it now appears that their fears were unfounded.
-
U.S. Ambassador to Australia Jeffrey L. Bleich is back once again with a new Internet piracy missive. The long-time friend of Barack Obama caused controversy by getting involved in the Game of Thrones download debate last month, but now believes that he hasn’t got involved enough. Quoting the earlier words of HBO, Bleich says that if online piracy is a compliment to Game of Thrones, then the same holds true for illegal immigration or someone hitting on your partner.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
04.21.13
Posted in News Roundup at 11:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
[Away for a sunny vacation (100 degrees Fahrenheit) until May]
![GNOME bluefish](/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/120px-Gartoon-Bluefish-icon.png)
Contents
-
The recent emergence of the mini PC has opened up new horizons for the Linux user.
The form factor of the Mini PC is a square having approximately the same dimension as the long side of a DVD box and thin in profile. The mini PC is designed to be very power efficient, typically using a 65 Watt power supply. The CPU is a low-voltage power efficient type, there are no fans, and the power supply is often an external DC adaptor like that of a laptop. Because there are no fans, the computer runs silently.Fanless microserver aims Linux on Core-i7 at harsh environs
-
Desktop
-
I’ve been terribly curious about the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition since we first covered it back in November. This is a different beast from the flippy-touchscreen-equipped XPS 12—this Ultrabook contains zero touchscreens. However, it comes preloaded with Ubuntu Linux, and Dell has spent a substantial amount of time and effort in ensuring that it works—and works well.
-
The Files app of Chrome OS is getting a brand new UI as well as status of a ‘full-fledged’ Chrome packages app status.
François Beaufort has also shared the instructions if you are interested in testing out the new UI of the file manager.
-
Server
-
Revenue dropped five percent over that period as the company missed expectations, with a 13 percent drop in hardware revenues leading a one percent drop in profits in Q1 2013. Year-over-year, System x revenues dropped nine percent compared to a seven percent increase for IBM’s System z mainframe business, which the company is not looking to sell. Lenovo told investors today in a clarification announcement that it “is in preliminary negotiations with a third party in connection with a potential acquisition,” but it has not confirmed talks with IBM specifically.
-
Audiocasts/Shows
-
Kernel Space
-
Graphics Stack
-
NVIDIA’s graphics driver supports hybrid graphics now. As in other areas, NVIDIA took it easy, waiting until other people had done the dirty work building the necessary foundations.
-
Kristian Høgsberg has clarified the scope and goals of Weston, Wayland’s reference compositor. Now that Weston has become somewhat of its own desktop environment, Kristian has clarified its intentions to benefit future patches.
In hopes of clarifying future development work that could be potentially accepted upstream, Kristian has written on the developer’s mailing list about clarifying the scope and goals for Weston.
-
For many months there has been a “shader optimization” branch of Mesa/R600g that sought to rather noticeably boost the performance of the AMD R600 Gallium3D driver. While this work by Vadim Girlin didn’t look like it would be merged, after being revived and cleaned-up, it might reach mainline Mesa/Gallium3D as a new performance-boosting option.
Vadim Girlin had been working on shader optimizations for some time to more efficiently generate shader code and the back-end has evolved quite a bit in recent months. Diminishing prospects for this code has been that it doesn’t use the R600 LLVM GPU back-end, which will eventually become the default for AMD’s Gallium3D driver as it’s needed for OpenCL/GPGPU support. With this custom back-end not using LLVM, it looked like it wouldn’t be merged, but now the story is different.
-
Benchmarks
-
Applications
-
Since I’m tired of trying to get work done with the Gimp development team constantly pissing on the very idea of “utility,” I’ve been investigating some Gimp alternatives. While it’s going to be painful doing without the Gimp, there’s other FOSS graphics applications that don’t get nearly the attention they deserve. If we gave them some exposure, perhaps they would get some support and introduce those few remaining crucial features that will put them over the bar as Gimp replacements.
-
If you frequently write tutorials and manuals for helping other users, screen capture tools are something you can’t do without. Be it capturing a small section of your desktop or capturing a whole video for a tutorial, screen capture makes it easy for you to show your desktop to the world. These recorded tutorials can be posted on sites and even YouTube for helping other users out with their problems. Screenshots and screencasts can also be used for demonstrating a new software to users so that they get a good preview of what they’re going to download or buy.
-
-
Instructionals/Technical
-
Games
-
Dystopia, a total conversion of the Source Engine that requires Half-Life 2, could arrive on Linux, in the coming months.
-
-
What happens when you mix a child’s perspective and imagination, with the surreal nature of dreams? Quite a lot, I guess, but we think one of those things is an interesting premise for a horror adventure.
-
Shoot and swing your way to victory across 40 intense platform/action and puzzle-solving levels in Gravi from Hashbang Games for OS X, Windows, and Linux.
-
So rather than spamming everyone’s feeds here is a list of some recently released Linux games on Desura, three of which have a native version to buy and a further one comes with the source which you can use.
-
Valve has launched yet another Beta version for its Steam for Linux client, this time with just a few minor fixes and improvements.
After a development version garners sufficient changes, Valve promotes that version to stable. The work for the next beta starts almost immediately.
-
Among the Sleep, a horror game developed by Krillbite Studio, will arrive on multiple platforms including Linux, if their Kickstarter campaign will be successful.
-
-
-
Desktop Environments/WMs
-
K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
-
The 2013 Libre Graphics Meeting is over and everyone has returned home and gone back to the drawing board or the keyboard. Krita has been very well represented at this LGM with three artists and a coder, giving three presentations and two awesome workshops!
-
-
Praised, cursed, often misunderstood, what are KDE’s semantic desktop tools for anyway?
The idea of taking the myriad kinds of information stored on a computer, and trying to find the relationships between it so it’s more usable, has been around for a long time. “Semantics”, the dictionary tells us, “is the study of meaning”. The goal of a “semantic desktop” is to take all the bits and pieces of information we as users collect over time, and make it more meaningful, and ultimately more useful.
-
Nepomuk is becoming a great tool, but it still has it’s drawbacks.
A hobby of mine that I’ve done for over twenty-five years now is genealogy. Over the course of that time I’ve acquired a lot of documents and scans of documents, not to mention photos, web snippets, text notes, pdf files and other such things.
As an ardent KDE user, the natural thing to do for keeping track of all these files – and being able to find them again – is by tagging for Nepomuk. With Dolphin I give them a tag or two, add a comment, and I should have no trouble finding the file in the future. While for many users that would hold true, for my usage (and I suspect many other users) there’s still a problem with relying solely on Nepomuk. It’s tags and comments don’t transfer to the cloud, or another computer. In other words, because Nepomuk’s stores all those tags and comments in it’s database and not in the file itself, the tags and comments don’t transfer elsewhere. With me, I sync all my research files in Dropbox, but when I access them with my laptop out in the field, none of those tags or comments are there. That’s a serious handicap to my research.
-
-
KDE’s Martin Grasslin blogged today that despite what the rest of the industry/community does, KDE’s future will be on Wayland. He said he and his fellow developers decided to travel the road more annoying, if not by choice by process of elimination.
It’s been interesting to follow the various desktop camps as they discuss the future of their software in relation to desktop graphical servers. Xorg has been the recipient of some mighty harsh words as far back as when it was still XFree. GNOME already stated their interest in developing for Wayland and Grasslin thinks even the smaller projects will move away from X as well. Basically, Grasslin thinks Wayland is the future.
-
-
Ok, I know, migrating to kmail2 is old news now. But only today I decided to try migrating to kmail2. Gentoo is going to remove kmail1 from their repository in a few months so I did not have much of a choice.
-
GNOME Desktop/GTK
-
-
Ubuntu 13.04, which debuts next week, will have an official GNOME version. That news slipped under the radar for most folks, but it should please some Linux desktop users who don’t like Canonical’s Unity interface. And it could also impact Canonical’s big aspirations of “Ubuntu convergence” across all devices offered by channel partners.
-
-
-
New Releases
-
Gentoo Family
-
Another month has passed, so time to mention again what we have all been doing lately
Toolchain
Version 4.8 of GCC is available in the tree, but currently masked. The package contains a fix needed to build hardened-sources, and a fix for the asan (address sanitizer). asan support in GCC 4.8 might be seen as an improvement security-wise, but it is yet unclear if it is an integral part of GCC or could be disabled with a configure flag. Apparently, asan “makes building gcc 4.8 crazy”. Seeing that it comes from Google, and building Google Chromium is also crazy, I start seeing a pattern here.
-
Slackware Family
-
There are a lot of ways to support Slackware Linux Project. One of them is by subscribing to Slackware Linux CD/DVD releases or by using Slackware Store to purchase merchandises or even donate to the project.
-
Red Hat Family
-
Hortonworks, Red Hat and Mirantis have announced that they will be cooperating on Project Savanna which aims to make provisioning Hadoop clusters on OpenStack systems fast and easy. Savanna is being designed as an OpenStack component with a REST API and UI accessible through OpenStack’s Horizon Dashboard.
-
Fedora
-
Another week of rawhide rolling along and only one really interesting bug hit:
-
So, the other day I wrote the Fedora Got Game story and have been continuing to make my transition from Fuduntu which as you may or may not be aware announced that it would close it doors.
Initially, I had selected the Fedora 18 KDE 64-bit spin but found that it put a bit of a strain on my Netbook. Then, I opted to simply install the Xfce Desktop group onto the KDE spin. The problem with doing that is that your menu winds up having the combined items from both KDE and Xfce and so I opted to reinstall with the Xfce spin.
-
-
Debian Family
-
McGovern said fixes are in the works for most of them. There was no mention of the new installer, but recent reports elsewhere state it is shaping up nicely as well with some new features. Ext4 is the new default filesystem, systemd is an option, and UEFI on 64-bit system is supported. Wheezy features Linux 3.2, GCC 4.7.2, Xorg 1.12.4, KDE 4.8.4, and GNOME 3.4.2.
-
Derivatives
-
It’s been ages since I last took a look at Elive. A development release has just come out so now is a good time to take a peek at it.
Elive is a desktop distro based on Debian, and it uses the Enlightenment window manager. Elive is geared toward providing you with a high quality desktop, with minimal hardware requirements.
-
Canonical/Ubuntu
-
Nicholas Skaggs, a Canonical software engineer and quality assurance community co-ordinator, wrote, “I’m happy to announce the Ubuntu touch images are now available for testing on the isotracker. And further, the images are now Raring based! [That is to say, they're based on the soon to be released Ubuntu 13.04 codebase] As such, the Ubuntu Touch team is asking for folks to try out the new images on their devices and ensure there are no regressions or other issues.”
Specifically, there are four officially supported devices and images for each of them: Nexus 7, grouper; Galaxy Nexus, maguro; Nexus 4, mako; and Nexus 10, manta. These are all early releases and I recommend that only power Ubuntu and smartphone/tablet users try them at this point.
-
I’ve already decided that the next PC I build won’t include an internal optical drive. I just don’t need one often enough anymore to warrant the cost or installation. I can instead rely on a USB optical drive I already own. And I think that’s the case for a lot of PC owners now. They either use hardware that has already dumped the optical drive (e.g. Ultrabooks), or won’t consider it a great loss if their next system doesn’t include one.
-
Ubuntu Touch, Canonical’s mobile aspirations, is getting ready for the market. If the developer preview was nothing more than demo-ware, with place holders, now there are images which you can test of your device with some ‘working’ and functional apps.
-
Today I got in touch with Nathan Heafner, a community member who is actively participating, and wanted me to leave you with this message:
-
Ubuntu Touch, the version of the Linux operating system for smartphones and tablets, is now available.
-
But what can you expect to find in it? Unlike the last few releases Ubuntu 13.04 features few dramatic changes, instead bringing some much need polish and performance-boosts.
-
A few days ago, I decided to give the Ubuntu 13.04 ‘Raring Ringtail’ Beta version a test. I downloaded the Daily Build and installed it successfully. The first thing I have got to share with you all is there are many things to put in mind whenever you’re using any program/system in beta. Do not set too much expectation or you will be let down or frustrated. I was doing some work related word processing using the new LibreOffice Writer and my first experience was terrible
-
Despite all the technical and commercial hurdles, Canonical is well on its way to transforming Ubuntu for mobile devices into the real deal. For proof, look no further than the rapidly maturing application stack for touch-enabled hardware that both Ubuntu engineers and independent developers are churning out.
-
Flavours and Variants
-
This year January, I reviewed the 2013.1 update from Fuduntu and was extremely impressed by it. Since then Fuduntu has been one of my favorite distros and I use it on my netbook, dual boot with Linux Mint 13 XFCE. Fuduntu, though the name has resemblance to Ubuntu in it, is more of Fedora with the advantage of rolling release. However, to me it is truly Fedora + Ubuntu, as it combines the simplicity and professionalism of Fedora with the fun of Ubuntu. It means that once you install it, you need not re-install it again – by just downloading the updates, your system has always the latest release.With the present release, Fuduntu also comes with a Fuduntu Lite version for advanced users and netbooks, which actually provides the basic shell without much pre-installed applications. For this review, I used the Fuduntu “heavy” version only – may be I’ll take Fuduntu Lite next time.
-
-
CompuLab has introduced a rugged, fanless, microserver based on 3rd Generation Intel Core Processors, clocked up to 2.5GHz. The Linux-friendly “uSVR” runs from -20 to 60° C, accommodates up to four internal 2.5-inch drives, networks via WiFi and up to six GbE channels, and expands modularly.
-
The payload will carry a model A Raspberry Pi, plus an Arduino Mini Pro, a UBlox GPS receiver, and 2 Radiometrix NTX2 transmitters. The latter will be on nearby frequencies primarily to avoid conflict with some other flights this weekend, but also to allow those with SDR (Software Defined Radio) receivers to listen to and decode the signals from both transmitters.
-
Mentor Graphics has merged the Linux-based automotive infotainment technology it acquired in February from MontaVista Software into its own in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) platform. Additionally, the new Mentor Embedded Automotive Technology Platform (ATP) complies with Yocto Project 1.3 and GENIVI 3.0 requirements, says Mentor.
Mentor’s ATP and its Sourcery CodeBench and Sourcery Analyzer development tools are aimed at simplifying the process of tuning the Linux kernel and selecting suitable components for Linux-based IVI systems. In particular, ATP’s support for LLTng (LInux Trace Toolkit, Next Generation), helps developers “more easily visually analyze and debug complex interactions between the Linux OS and automotive application software with the Mentor Embedded Sourcery Analyzer,” states the company.
-
The single-circuit-board Raspberry Pi computer, only as big as a credit card, makes it easy to gain experience with embedded Linux systems. We’ll show you some hands-on examples of how to use the Raspberry Pi in an everyday environment.
-
Phones
-
Ballnux
-
Samsung Electronics plans to introduce its Galaxy S4 at the end of April in 50 countries and sources from the supply chain predict shipments in the first month will be close to 10 million units. There have been no rumors regarding component shortages.
-
Samsung’s Galaxy S4 was revealed, all signs point to another hit smartphone and big growth for the Sammy. They keep expanding the Galaxy series as was expected and the juggernaut should continue to roll on. I found it funny that the Galaxy Camera only now arrived to American shores, we’ve had it here in Asia since last year. Samsung’s Q1 financial guidance said massive growth in smartphones, driving up their profits.. yeah, this ‘surprised’ some after the Christmas season, but not our readers, we know China’s gift-giving season is in January for Q1 and as Samsung is China’s top-selling smartphone nowadays (used to be Nokia) that means big good sales for the Samster…
-
Android
-
Google announced their latest quarterly earnings yesterday, and the company had another good three months in the black, earning a revenue of $14 billion, with $3.35 billion of that as cold, hard income. However, Google’s recently-acquired Motorola Mobility is struggling, losing $271 million, but Google CEO Larry Page seems to have big plans for the subsidiary, and teased some of the features we may see on upcoming devices.
-
-
-
Google Inc’s core Internet business grew net revenue 23 percent in the first quarter, softening the effect of a sharp decline in its Motorola mobile phone division.
Shares of Google, which reached an all-time high of $844 (552.28 pounds) in March, were up 1.5 percent to $777.75 in after hours trading on Thursday.
-
Android is moving in to fill the gap created by the failing Windows 8, according to reports. There is no doubt that Microsoft has failed to boost the sales of PC hardware and traditional PC vendors are now losing with Microsoft.
-
-
-
Google released specs of its glasses, Project Glass, earlier this week. While it included information like the camera resolution, storage and everything else, one key piece of information was missing – the operating system.
-
Airbnb today announced that it is open sourcing Rendr, its library for running Backbone.js apps seamlessly on both the client and the server. After launching its Chronos cron replacement a few weeks ago, this marks the company’s second major contribution to the open source ecosystem this year. Airbnb originally developed Rendr for its mobile site.
-
A workshop to promote the use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in Open Web Technology was organised successfully at S N Ghosh auditorium, of the J K Institute of Applied Physics and Technology of Allahabad University, on Saturday.
The workshop was conducted by Mozilla foundation, an open source non-profit organisation working in open web technology.
The workshop was inaugurated by head of the department of Electronics & Communication R R Tiwari who was also the chief guest of the workshop, aimed to benefit B Tech, MCA and BCA students of AU.
-
Web Browsers
-
Mozilla
-
Mitchell Baker has blogged that since Mozilla is celebrating its 15 year anniversary, it was time to tweak their Manifesto first published in 2007. Mozilla gathered input for a year and three new proposed changes are suggested.
-
Want your website to load faster? Slim your images. According to the HTTPArchive, images account for roughly 60 percent of total page size. That means the single biggest thing most sites can do to slim down is to shrink their images.
-
Mozilla CEO says that the Firefox Mobile OS will be available this summer in Venezuela, Poland, Brazil, Portugal, and Spain.
-
We’ve already heard that another mobile operating system will soon be made available courtesy of Mozilla. This summer Firefox OS powered devices will be made available in 5 countries spread over Europe and South America.
-
If you’ve wanted to be one of the first people to check out the new OS then Spanish e-retailer Geeksphone has you covered as they will be releasing two Firefox OS powered devices which they say “will be available for dispatch anywhere on earth.”
-
SaaS/Big Data
-
VMware has contributed plug-ins to the OpenStack Project that guarantees the project’s networking platform will recognize and work with virtual machines running under VMware’s vSphere management environment and VMware’s Nicira Network Virtualization Platform.
-
The second Open Government Summit will take place on 25 April 2013 at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, London. This second event evolves from last year’s debate on open source and open standards, which the UK government adopted last November following a detailed consultation led by the Cabinet Office. This year’s event will examine how the open source model has driven a wave of Cloud computing innovation that government organisations can tap into to deliver major cost savings and avoid the political and fiscal dangers of vendor lock-in.
-
Security is improving in the open source OpenStack cloud platform, but more work is needed and is still being done. That’s the message coming from the recently formed OpenStack Security Group (OSSG) at the OpenStack Summit in Portland this week.
-
-
-
Databases
-
The MariaDB Foundation has expanded its Board of Directors and has appointed Simon Phipps as its Secretary and interim Chief Executive Officer. Rasmus Johansson has been appointed Chair of the Board, which also includes Andrew Katz, Jeremy Zawodny, and Michael “Monty” Widenius as members. Speaking to The H, Phipps said: “The key change here is the Foundation is now officially under the direction of a diverse Board rather than just one director.” With this change, it is on track to be completely member-led in the second half of the year.
-
FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
-
A few days ago Guillermo Garron wrote a piece on his website after seeing you speak live. A link to that article was posted at Scot’s Newsletter Forums – Bruno’s All Things Linux, where a discussion ensued. During the course of that conversation, I thought that maybe it was about time that we started using a less bulky nomenclature for the GNU/Linux operating system. I posted a few suggestions, but I think I like GNix the best.
-
-
The FSF contends that sometimes, proprietary software actually helps its fight for freedom but that Windows 8 is “so bad it’s almost funny” — the group claims that it is “full of spyware and security vulnerabilities” and that it is confusing for users.
The group sets out its stall as follows:
“As our society grows more dependent on computers, the software we run is of critical importance to securing the future of a free society. Free software is about having control over the technology we use in our homes, schools and businesses, where computers work for our individual and communal benefit, not for proprietary software companies or governments who might seek to restrict and monitor us.”
This infographic is linked here, but not shown here in full due its arguably somewhat reactionary nature.
-
As an open source project gathers momentum and the possibility of corporate engagement beckons, developers can frequently be heard saying they need to start a foundation for their project.
But do they? Ask many of the people who have gone down that path, and they’re likely to advise against it. The bureaucracy is daunting, the skills needed to run such an organization are similar to those of any other business, and there’s a very real risk the IRS will refuse to grant tax-exempt status.
-
Public Services/Government
-
We take a first reading of the recent modification to the fundamental law that governs the digital aspects of the Public Administration in Italy. These modifications require Public Administrations to prefer internally made solutions and FOSS solutions over proprietary ones, mandate an increased degree of interoperability and strengthen the push for open data.
-
As I was skimming through a solicitation document the FBI posted surveying vendors that might provide it with new video monitor technology, one word jumped out at me: open.
The FBI is looking for a system that will allow it to monitor video from all sorts of devices, including those it owns itself and those owned by other law enforcement agencies. It also wants to be able to plug tools into the system that help it identify faces and license plates.
-
Openness/Sharing
-
Endy is the co-director of the International Open Facility Advancing Biotechnology — BIOFAB, for short — where he’s part of a team that’s developing a language that will use genetic data to actually program biological cells. That may seem like the stuff of science fiction, but the project is already underway, and the team intends to open source the language, so that other scientists can use it and modify it and perfect it.
The effort is part of a sweeping movement to grab hold of our genetic data and directly improve the way our bodies behave — a process known as bioengineering. With the Supreme Court exploring whether genes can be patented, the bioengineering world is at crossroads, but scientists like Endy continue to push this technology forward.
-
Open Data
-
A patient facing search engine app MedWhat wants to achieve something its co-founder believes is lacking from similar tools — fast, comprehensive responses to patient questions no matter how simple or complex.
In an interview with MedCity News, entrepreneur and co-founder Arturo Devesa said he believes two ingredients are essential to achieving that: open source data from respected medical institutions and natural language processing — allowing people to ask questions in their own words. He envisions a platform that can transform mobile phones into virtual primary care physicians.
-
Open Access/Content
-
The Business, Innovation and Skills committee’s new inquiry into Open Access in academic publishing has revealed a familiar collision between the accepted practices of a sector unused to change, and the disruptive power of the internet, with its greater transparency, economy and reach.
-
Open Hardware
-
A modular, open-source workhorse to help rebuild civilization.
-
Welcome to our 5 Engineers section, part of this blog and our Fun Friday newsletter, where we toss out a question and invite our audience to respond with their wittiest answers.
This week, on the cusp of DESIGN West and its many open-source hardware and software (OSHS) sessions, we’re thinking specifically about open-source hardware (OSH).
-
Programming
-
Rob Pike explains how Google designed Go to address major development issues they encounter while using other languages: long build times, poor dependency management, lack of robustness, etc.
-
jQuery, arguably the most popular JavaScript library, is out with their much awaited major release v2.0. It comes with a 12% reduced size footprint, API compatibility with v1.9.x, and 45 bug fixes & feature improvements. But the most notable change is dropping of support for Internet Explorer (IE) versions 8 and less.
-
Oracle has decided to delay the release of Java 8 into 2014 over their engineers tackling various security-related issues with the language as of late.
-
Standards/Consortia
-
The German Federal Ministry of Economics advocates an “unpatronising” internet, said Otto. The internet and social networks have become a powerful voice for freedom that mustn’t be jeopardised through control and regimentation, he added. However, Otto noted that citizens must also be able to defend themselves against online violations of their personal rights. The Liberal politician spoke out against giving governments more technical control over the global network through established bodies such as the IETF and the ICANN internet management authority. Otto also noted that genuine internet politics require an understanding of “how the underlying technologies work”.
-
For years, we’ve discussed the problematic nature of “distracted driving” laws that seek to outlaw things like talking on your phone or texting while driving. It is not that we don’t think these behaviors are dangerous. It seems clear that those activities can take one’s attention away from driving and potentially increase the likelihood of an accident by a significant amount. However, the laws are often broad and inconsistent — and, worse, they can have serious unintended consequences. As we’ve noted there are lots and lots of things that can distract a driver which are still considered perfectly legal, such as changing the radio station, talking to passengers, eating, etc. Trying to ban each and every distraction one by one is a ridiculous and impossible task. In fact, studies have suggested that bad distracted drivers will often just find a different distraction to occupy their time. And, thanks to these laws, those drivers are often still texting while driving, but are simply holding their phones even lower, taking their eyes further off the road, so as to avoid detection… actually making the roads more dangerous. The real answer is to focus on stopping bad driving, not trying to call out specific activities.
-
-
-
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) director Jamie Love — formally James Packard Love — is the brain behind the “$1 a day” HIV drugs that have saved millions of lives in Africa and other poor parts of the world. Basically, he went around asking, “How much would it cost to make this HIV medication if the patent cost was removed?” At first, no one could answer. After a while, the answer came: Less than $1 a day. At that price, the Bush administration set up a massive program to deliver generic anti-HIV drugs to Africa. Jamie also works on copyright issues, boosts free software (he’s a Linux user/evangelist and had more than a little to do with the Microsoft antitrust suit), and generally tries to make the international knowledge ecology more accessible and more useful for everyone, especially those who aren’t rich. Or necessarily even prosperous. He’s a smart guy (read the Wikipedia entry linked above), but more than that he’s bullheaded. Jamie has worked on some of his initiatives for years, even decades. In many cases you can’t say, “He hasn’t succeeded,” without adding “yet” on the end. (You’ll understand that statement better after you watch the video, which we broke into two parts because it is far longer than our typical video interview.)
-
Yahoo’s China arm will shut down its email service later this year, state media reported Friday, illustrating the brand’s diminishing profile in the country.
China Yahoo! announced it will close its email service by August 19, a move the China Daily said will leave it with just its web portal business.
-
Digital technology makes documents easy to alter or copy, leading to multiple non-identical versions that can be used in unauthorized or illegitimate ways. Unfortunately, the ease of alteration has introduced doubt in users’ minds about the authenticity of many of the digital documents they encounter.
-
Science
-
Most people think computers are built by intelligent design. How on earth can you say their development follows Darwin’s mechanism of “survival of the fittest”? Yet an article at Science Daily announces, “‘Survival of the Fittest’ Now Applies to Computers: Surprising Similarities Found Between Genetic and Computer Codes.” (Emphasis added.) Certain similarities between Linux code and bacterial genomes may obtain, but one thing should be clear: they are not Darwinian.
-
Security
-
Since retinal scans still mainly are used in the movies to set the scene for gruesome eyeball-stealing, for the foreseeable future (pun intended), we’re stuck with passwords. In this article, I want to take some time to discuss best practices and give some thoughts on cool software designed to help you keep your private affairs private. Before getting into the how-to section, let me openly discuss the how-not-to.
-
Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
-
-
-
The president of the humanitarian organisation International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) this week warned of the organisation’s concerns over drones being used in situations that are not official armed conflicts.
-
-
Germany’s neo-Nazi NPD party is holding its national conference this weekend – on Adolf Hitler’s birthday. Facing an attempt to have it banned, an expert believes financial strains, internal conflicts and dwindling support are already crippling the far-right extremists.
-
Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai is determined to curb American CIA operations in his country, his spokesman said.
-
-
The CIA and the United States Government have had considerable success in toppling democracies around the world but they may have met their match in Presidente Nicolas Maduro, the legitimately elected leader of Venezuela.
-
An Opa-lock building served as the CIA base for an operation that overthrew a leftist Guatemalan president in the 1950s.
-
And it wasn’t just Afghanistan–Iraq’s “infrastructure must be destroyed and the population made to endure yet another round of intense pain…. Maybe then the people there will finally overthrow Saddam.” And if Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi did not leave his country, “we bomb his oil facilities, all of them. And we mine the harbor in Tripoli. Nothing goes in, nothing goes out. We also destroy all the airports in Libya. Let them eat sand.”
-
It is perfectly possible that this is not relevant at all, and the Tsarnaev brothers became radicalised in the United States by real, and non-Chechen related, terrorists, or simply auto-radicalised. But presuming the Tsarnaevs really did plant these bombs, just who was ultimately pulling the strings and why may be an extremely complex question – and one to which young Dzokhar Tsarnaev is most unlikely to know the real answer.
-
Cablegate
-
-
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange met Google Chairman (and then CEO) Eric Schmidt in 2011, secretly in the UK. Jared Cohen, a former Secretary of State advisor to Hillary Clinton and Lisa Shields of the Council for Foreign Relations were also present during this secret meeting. Shields was, according to the transcript, responsible for going through the transcript and to adjust it for accuracy and clarity. The interview was conducted to gather content for a book “The New Digital World” which is expected to be released on April 23, 2013. So this leaks is timed well to create some buzz around the upcoming book.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Goa’s beaches were in the cross hairs of suspected Lashkar-e-Taiba terror suspect Nasir Raizuddin, being tried for the 2008 Bangalore serial blasts, Wikileaks has claimed citing a recently declassified US diplomatic cable.
The cable, dated February 2008, was drafted by David T. Hopper, then consul general at the US consulate in Chennai.
Hopper quotes top police officials about other areas identified by Riazuddin before his arrest in Karnataka.
According to Hopper, Raziuddin told the police that along with accomplices from the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), he had identified sites across the country for a series of bomb blasts.
And “beaches in Goa frequented by foreigners” were one of those specifically identified as targets, according to the diplomatic communique.
-
-
Manning follows in the footsteps of those patriots before him who willingly and knowingly broke the law on matters of conscience, and did so knowing the consequences. King broke the law to expose the savagery of apartheid to white America. Ellsberg broke the law to reveal the lies of the US government about its deepening involvement in Southeast Asia. All three — King, Ellsberg, and Manning — were branded as traitors. But all three remind us that following one’s conscience, even if it means breaking the law, is an act of courage and true patriotism.
-
For anyone interested in open standards, privacy, encryption or just general advancements in digital technology, one of the jewels delivered online this week was Wikileaks’ release of a transcript for what is reportedly a five-hour “secret” meeting between Wikileaks’ Julian Assange and Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google. The transcript of the 2011 meeting is here, and it is well worth jumping around in it for surprises. Among them, Assange–who specializes in all things related to privacy and the lack of it online–says that he does not use email.
-
Finance
-
A paper used to justify austerity economics appears to contain an Excel error.
-
Detroit is a city that has been in the national and world news once again. Since March, when Gov. Rick Snyder declared a so-called “financial emergency” in Detroit, therefore setting the stage for the appointment of an “Emergency Manager”, many press reports drew a direct connection between the recent corruption trial of former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and businessman Bobby Ferguson. In fact just prior to Snyder’s declaration, Kilpatrick and Ferguson were found guilty of numerous corruption charges in the months-long federal trial.
Of course the corporate and government-controlled media has never focused on who are the real culprits in the underdevelopment and consequent destruction of Detroit and other majority African American municipalities in Michigan. These media entities fall back on the same notions that have prevailed inside the United States since the period of Reconstruction, i.e. that African American political leadership is inherently corrupt and inefficient rendering them incapable of managing the affairs of governments locally, statewide and nationally.
-
What’s worrying investors the most appears to be the strange mixture of anemic customer trading revenue and institutional bravado when it comes to Goldman’s own money. Such high-risk/high-reward behavior was rather typical of institutions like Goldman Sachs (and indeed Goldman Sachs itself) prior to the crash, and it was largely seen as having created a toxic financial atmosphere.
-
PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
-
The Walton Family Foundation has an overriding interest in school pro privatization. They commit about $160 million each year for charters, vouchers, Teach for America, think tanks, and media. Everything they do has the singular goal of dismantling public education and opening the schools to untrained, uncertified teachers.
Here is news from the Chicago Teachers Union about the role of Walton in the proposed closing of 54 public schools.
-
News Corp. COO Chase Carey said his conglomerate is considering moving programming from its Fox broadcast network, which viewers can receive over the air, for free, to its pay cable networks.
-
Fair-trade officials in Taiwan are looking into reports that Samsung paid people to criticise rival HTC online.
-
In a new report, entitled “P is for Payoff: Inside the Bradley Foundation’s Campaign to Privatize Education in Wisconsin,” the non-profit activist group One Wisconsin Now has detailed the Bradley Foundation’s funding of a coordinated campaign to promote school privatization in Wisconsin and across the nation.
-
Censorship
-
Now, he describes what happened after its wildly popular debut, and what it says about “doing business” in China.
-
The latest twist in the Leveson saga is the Government’s proposed amendments to protect ‘small scale bloggers’.
We previously warned the drafting meant groups like Big Brother Watch could be covered, along with websites like ConHome and Mumsnet.
The amendment makes clear if you’re a multi-author blog with a turnover below £2m, you won’t be considered a ‘relevant publisher’ for the purposes of exemplary damages and cost protections. This is an important clarification. (Although the bill does still appear to lack a definition of ‘blog’, which could prove interesting – and expensive to argue in court.)
However, the drafting only protects either ‘incidental’ publishers of news-related material, or multi-author blogs. So someone who is not a blog, who publishes news-related material on a regular basis, remains in scope even if their turnover is £10,000.
-
Copyfighter, journalist, sci-fi writer and Boing-Boing editor Cory Doctorow has fallen victim to the almighty content empire of Rupert Murdoch. In an attempt to remove access to infringing copies of the TV-show Homeland, Fox has ordered Google to take down links to Doctorow’s latest novel of the same title. Adding to the controversy, Doctorow’s own publisher has also sent DMCA notices for the Creative Commons licensed book.
-
Privacy
-
House intelligence committee chairman Mike Rogers, left, with the committee’s ranking Democrat, CA “Dutch” Ruppersberger. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP
-
-
-
Facebook debuted its Android app family Facebook Home today. This means those of you with compatible devices (sorry Windows Phone and iOS users) have a snazzy new product to try out if you’re looking for a tightly-Facebook integrated mobile experience.
-
The group believes the tax collection agency has run afoul of the Fourth Amendment guarantee against unreasonable searches.
-
The Dangers of Surveillance, written by Neil M. Richards, Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis, was recently published on the Social Science Research Network. In it, Richards proposed “four principles that should guide the future development of surveillance law.” Yet he said we must first recognize that: “Surveillance transcends the public-private divide;” that “secret surveillance is illegitimate;” that “total surveillance is illegitimate” and that “surveillance is harmful.” The courts may understand that surveillance could be potentially harmful, but “have struggled to clearly understand why.”
-
All of those questions, messages, and stern commands that people have been whispering to Siri are stored on Apple servers for up to two years, Wired can now report.
Yesterday, we raised concerns about some fuzzy disclosures in Siri’s privacy policy. After our story ran, Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller called to explain Apple’s policy, something privacy advocates have asking for.
This is the first time that Apple has said how long it’s keeping Siri data, but according to Nicole Ozer, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who first brought these Siri privacy questions to our attention, there’s still more that Apple could do.
-
Plans for a data center in San Antonio were also announced by the agency in 2007. Although the exact size of the San Antonio facility is unknown, it took the place of a 470,000 square foot former Sony microchip plant, reported DataCenterKnowledge.
President Obama’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative calls for “upgraded infrastructure” and “increased bandwidth” as part of enhancing the nation’s cybersecurity capabilities. Yet, the San Antonio data center is only one part of the agency’s capacity.
-
North Korean hackers and the Boston bombings might not appear to have much in common. But not according to some American lawmakers, who are using both to justify passing a controversial cybersecurity bill that civil liberties advocates claim “undermines the privacy of millions of Internet users.”
Yesterday, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, was approved by the House of Representatives by a vote of 288 to 127. The law was first introduced in 2011 and approved last year by the House, though it died in the Senate after an outpouring of opposition from privacy and civil liberties groups. But it has been resurrected and is heading to the Senate for the second time. Predictably, the storm of criticism has also reappeared. Rights groups have consistently raised concerns over how CISPA would allow corporations to pass unanonymized user data to federal government agencies for vaguely defined “cybersecurity” purposes—and be covered by full legal indemnity when doing so.
-
-
Civil Rights
-
Over the past few months and weeks there’s been much greater attention paid to both the CFAA and the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA, and how both are in need of serious reform. The attention to anti-circumvention was galvanized around the fact that unlocking your mobile phone became illegal again, after the Library of Congress allowed an exemption to expire, making many people realize that the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA, also known as section 1201, meant that they often don’t really own the products they thought they owned. The attention to CFAA reform came in response to Aaron’s Swartz’s untimely death, and the light it shed on the parts of the CFAA that he was charged under. Of course, many of us have been fighting back against both laws for years, but the public attention on both has been key over the past few months.
-
To some, hacker Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer is a cause celebré. To others, he’s a famous douchebag. To many, he’s a polarizing figure in a debate that’s roiled Silicon Valley, pitting established tech companies against rogue innovators. When Auernheimer was sentenced to 41 months in prison for collecting and publicizing the names of 114,000 AT&T iPad users, reporters grappled over the right words to characterize him. A headline in Venture Beat reflected their ambivalence: “Terrorist, hacker, freedom fighter: Andrew Auernheimer parties tonight in expectation of jail tomorrow.”
-
In the last three months alone, the House has released three different cybersecurity bills and has held over seven hearings on the issue. In addition, the House Judiciary Committee floated changes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)—the draconian anti-hacking statute that came to public prominence after the death of activist and Internet pioneer Aaron Swartz. Politicians tout this legislation as necessary to protect against foreign threats every single time they introduce a bill with “cyber” somewhere in the text. And it comes as no surprise that every hearing has opened up with a recap of computer security attacks faced by the US from China, Iran, and other foreign countries.
-
Though extensive due process protections apply to the investigation of crimes, and to criminal trials, perhaps the most important part of the criminal process — the decision whether to charge a defendant, and with what — is almost entirely discretionary. Given the plethora of criminal laws and regulations in today’s society, this due process gap allows prosecutors to charge almost anyone they take a deep interest in. This Essay discusses the problem in the context of recent prosecutorial controversies involving the cases of Aaron Swartz and David Gregory, and offers some suggested remedies, along with a call for further discussion.
-
-
Nearly 200 senior IBM executives are flying into Washington to press for the passage of a controversial cybersecurity bill that will come up for a vote in the House this week.
The IBM executives will pound the pavement on Capitol Hill Monday and Tuesday, holding nearly 300 meetings with lawmakers and staff. Over the course of those two days, their mission is to convince lawmakers to back a bill that’s intended to make it easier for industry and government to share information about cyber threats with each other in real time.
-
-
Today, thirty-four civil liberties organizations sent a joint letter to Congressional Representatives urging them to continue to oppose the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). CISPA is a misguided “cybersecurity” bill that would provide a gaping new exception to privacy law. The House of Representatives is likely to vote on it on Wednesday or Thursday of this week. This means that there’s little time remaining to speak out against this bill.
-
Mr. Brown came under the scrutiny of the authorities when he began poring over documents that had been released in the hack of two private security companies, HBGary Federal and Stratfor. Mr. Brown did not take part in the hacks, but he did become obsessed with the contents that emerged from them — in particular the extracted documents showed that private security contractors were being hired by the United States government to develop strategies for undermining protesters and journalists, including Glenn Greenwald, a columnist for Salon. Since the cache was enormous, Mr. Brown thought he might crowdsource the effort and copied and pasted the URL from an Anonymous chat server to a Web site called Project PM, which was under his control.
-
The always patriotic U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham says the Boston bombing “is Exhibit A of why the homeland is the battlefield.” In an interview with the Washington Post:
“It’s a battlefield because the terrorists think it is.” Referring to Boston, he observed, “Here is what we’re up against,” and added, “It sure would be nice to have a drone up there [to track the suspect.]” He also slammed the president’s policy of “leading from behind and criminalizing war.”
-
In 2009, defending the promise he made to close Guantánamo Bay, President Barack Obama insisted: “The existence of Guantánamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained.”
This weekend, the case for the closure of Guantánamo Bay, promised by Obama on his second day in office, has never been more compelling. A hunger strike by the camp’s inmates, half of whom had been cleared for release, has underlined the growing desperation of those 166 still detained. Of that number, some 86 had been approved for transfer (while the rest had been earmarked for trial) but have become stuck in a political and legal limbo that has seen such transfers almost completely halted in the last two-and-a-half years. A recent report by a bipartisan panel of experts has condemned both the conditions there and the use of abusive interrogation techniques.
-
Local and state lawmakers opposing the tyranny of the NDAA and indefinite detention stand on very sound constitutional ground in their battle against federal overreaching. Any unconstitutional act of the federal government is prima facie void and must not be given the respect or force of law. In fact, such measures are not law at all.
-
For many constitutional watchers, the Bill of Rights are in danger. That will be the message of speakers Debra Sweet and Michael Figura, who will be on a tour of Maine from April 19-21. After speaking in Bangor on April 19, Sweet and Figura will travel to Belfast to speak at the Belfast Free Library on Saturday, April 20 at 2:30 p.m. On April 21, they will wrap up their Maine tour in Portland.
-
-
19-year-old Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokar Tsarnaev is in custody. Assuming that Tsarnaev is indeed guilty of these crimes, a very real threat to public safety has been taken off the streets. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that the Tsarnaev brothers have taken the last vestiges of a free society in America down with them.
The Bill of Rights was already on life support before this tragedy. Before the dust settled after 9/11, the 4th Amendment had been nullified by the Patriot Act. The 5th and 6th Amendments were similarly abolished with the Military Commission Act of 2006 and the 2012 NDAA resolution, which contained a clause allowing the president to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens on American soil without due process of law.
-
-
Internet/Net Neutrality
-
Google has formally submitted a package of concessions to European Union competition regulators in a strong signal that the world’s No. 1 search engine may be able to settle a two-year antitrust investigation without a fine.
-
Intellectual Monopolies
-
Hitachi Ltd. (6501) lost a U.S. patent- infringement trial in which it sought as much as four years of royalty payments from TPV Technology Ltd. (903) on sales of high- definition televisions.
A federal jury in Marshall, Texas, last week said TPV, the world’s fourth-largest maker of LCD televisions, didn’t infringe four Hitachi patents and that two of them were invalid.
The dispute is over inventions related to an industrywide standard for a process to transmit digital audio and visual signals, as well as program data, over the airwaves. Hitachi claimed that televisions made by TPV and its units infringed the company’s patents.
-
Trademarks
-
In an Office action filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office last week, the attorney examining Apple’s “iPad mini” trademark withdrew their primary objections to the application, saying only a disclaimer clarifying the mark’s use of the term “mini” is needed in order to move forward.
-
In a brief opinion issued today, Judge Richard Seeborg of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California awarded Christopher Recouvreur more than $46,000 in attorney fees and expenses for having had to defend himself against a series of wild and baseless threats of suit for trademark infringement by Charles Carreon. After we were finally able to get service on Carreon and moved for an award of the costs of service, Carreon served a Rule 68 judgment granting the declaratory relief for which we had sued. We then sought to have fees awarded on the grounds that Carreon had bought threatened trademark claims that had no reasonable basis, thus forcing Recouvreur to seek a declaratory judgment to protect himself against damages claims; that Carreon ducked service and then refused to pay the costs of such service but rather forced us to move to collect those costs; particularly after Carreon demanded the opportunity to conduct discovery over the fee claims, we also argued that his litigation conduct made the case exceptional.
-
Copyrights
-
Hundreds of thousands of people have been sued for copyright infringement in the past three years using a controversial litigation strategy.
-
Mendeley, an open collaboration platform for scientific research, has promised that it won’t become less open after being acquired by journal publisher Elsevier, but some prominent users aren’t waiting around.
-
As Gary Fung is seeking a rehearing of the IsoHunt case in the 9th Circuit, two amicus briefs were filed yesterday. The first from the EFF and the second from Google. Neither brief suggests that Fung should get off as innocent, or that he did nothing wrong. Rather, both are worried about how the broad ruling by the court for the specific situation regarding Fung and IsoHunt will lead to further abuse by copyright holders and massive chilling effects on service providers. The EFF notes that while Fung/IsoHunt may have been bad actors, it appears that the court used this to go way overboard in creating new and dangerous standards for copyright
-
In an epic clash between old and new media, Google Inc.’s video website YouTube has scored another huge victory in the long-running skirmish over copyright infringement brought by television giant Viacom Inc.
A federal judge in New York on Thursday ruled that YouTube had not violated Viacom’s copyright even though users of the popular online site were allowed to post unauthorized video clips from some of Viacom’s most popular shows, including Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and Nickelodeon’s “SpongeBob SquarePants.”
-
Media giant Viacom just can’t win — at least when it comes to the company’s long-running, landmark copyright infringement lawsuit against Google‘s YouTube video service. A federal judge handed a major victory to YouTube on Thursday, one year after a federal appeals court breathed new life into Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit. Viacom had accused YouTube of illegally hosting videos that infringe on the company’s intellectual property, including popular content like MTV videos and TV shows like Comedy Central’s “South Park.”
Permalink
Send this to a friend
04.19.13
Posted in News Roundup at 10:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
![GNOME bluefish](/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/120px-Gartoon-Bluefish-icon.png)
Contents
-
Desktop
-
Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) advises XP users to update to a newer version of Windows or an alternative like Linux by that date at the latest.
-
Server
-
-
IBM is becoming increasingly interested in SystemZ for a variety of purposes, including the use of the Gallium3D LLVMpipe driver. As a result, IBM developers have created a new LLVM back-end for their mainframe computers.
Ulrich Weigand of IBM announced the new SystemZ back-end on Sunday with this mailing list message. He wrote, “We’re interested in this for the same reason we’ve been interested in the PowerPC back-end recently: to enable packages in upcoming enterprise Linux distributions that need LLVM support (e.g. 3D desktop support via llvmpipe).”
-
Intel is aiming at datacentres with new software-defined networking (SDN) products comprising reference designs based on x86 hardware for physical and virtual switch appliances, plus an optimised version of the Open vSwitch virtual switch software.
-
Over the next five years the shift towards Linux seems to be particularly clear, with 80 percent of large IT organizations planning to increase their purchases of Linux servers and only 20 percent planning to make additional Windows-server purchases.
-
Maybe I’m getting old, but the petascale era of supercomputing still feels new to me. On the other hand, the recent decommissioning of IBM’s Roadrunner, the world’s first petaflopper, suggests otherwise. Roadrunner booted up at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory five years ago in 2008. Its retirement last week marks the approximate mid-point between the first petaflop system and the first exaflop one — assuming, of course, you’re an exascale optimist.
-
Audiocasts/Shows
-
Kernel Space
-
Linux 3.9 includes drivers for new AMD graphics chips and for Intel Wi-Fi chips that are expected to become available this summer. Changes to the network subsystem will enable the kernel to be more efficient when distributing network traffic across multiple processor cores.
-
-
The open-source Freedreno driver that seeks to provide a fully open-source Qualcomm Adreno graphics driver for Linux with OpenGL ES acceleration by a Gallium3D driver, is beginning to support the Qualcomm GPU found within the Google Nexus 4.
-
-
Intel’s Integrated Performance Primitives (IPP) and their Math Kernel Library (MKL) provide for very fast math operations with modern processors.
-
Graphics Stack
-
Peter Hutterer has issued unscheduled updates to the X.Org Server 1.13 and 1.14 release series to address a new input security vulnerability on Linux.
Coming about last week was CVE-2013-1940. Red Hat employees discovered, “An information disclosure flaw was found in the way X.org X11 server…used to register new hot-plug devices, when X.org X11 server was instructed (for that particular moment) not to receive input devices events. Formerly when registering new input device, X.org X11 server simultaneously enabled retrieval of input from the particular device (regardless of the setting). A local unsuspecting user, relying on the X.org X11 server disable input feature it to properly prohibit acquiring of events from this newly added hot-plug device, could supply a sensitive information that, due the above bug, would become available to the physically proximate attackers.”
-
Support for HDMI audio output with the open-source Radeon Linux graphics driver might finally be in a state where it could be re-enabled by default.
While HDMI audio is important to many users, especially when it comes to HTPCs, the support within the open-source Radeon DRM driver has had the feature disabled by default. It’s been disabled by default for a long time now since for some Linux users having the support enabled has led to screen issues.
-
JavaScript bindings for the Wayland client have come in the form of a Node.js implementation.
-
Harris Beach is Intel’s compelling Software Development Platform/Vehicle for Haswell in the form of an ultra-thin ultrabook.
Harris Beach has been talked about in the public months back as an Intel reference ultrabook built around their forthcoming Haswell processors. Harris Beach is said to be a 17mm thick ultrabook and that the CPU found within this mobile device will have either a 10 or 15 Watt TDP, complete with high-end graphics capabilities.
-
The first post-1.0 release of the Wayland Display Server protocol and the Weston reference compositor implementation has been released.
Kristian Høgsberg released Wayland/Weston 1.1 on Monday evening after last week laying out the 1.1 release plans.
-
The first post-1.0 release of the Wayland Display Server protocol and the Weston reference compositor implementation has been released.
Kristian Høgsberg released Wayland/Weston 1.1 on Monday evening after last week laying out the 1.1 release plans.
-
Early this morning I delivered benchmarks of the new Intel Gallium3D driver developed by a LunarG employee. Coincidentally, hours later, the developer has proposed merging this Gallium3D graphics driver for Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge hardware into mainline Mesa.
The “i965g-next” driver was started late last year and continues to be frequently worked on by Chia-I Wu. Checking in on it recently, there still was fresh Git activity, I decided to run some benchmarks comparing it to Intel’s official Mesa “classic” DRI driver. The DRI driver is still a ways faster than this experimental driver.
-
Yesterday was marked by the first release of Beignet, an open-source Linux OpenCL solution for Intel Ivy Bridge hardware, however it has drawn criticism by open-source developers.
-
AMD’s Alex Deucher has sent in the first Radeon DRM driver pull request for early Linux 3.10 kernel changes to be merged into the drm-next repository.
-
Intel has now officially enabled support for their next-generation Bay Trail (a.k.a. Valley View) platform within their open-source i965 Mesa graphics driver.
-
Now having shown that Intel Ivy Bridge graphics are faster with the latest Mesa 9.2-devel Git code and also that the Gallium3D LLVMpipe driver is significantly faster, here’s a new round of AMD Radeon “R600g” Gallium3D performance benchmarks.
The OpenGL benchmarks in this article are being done from an MSI WindBox system, which has been dusted off after not being tested in a while, and sports AMD Radeon HD 4330 graphics for the Intel Atom 330 “nettop” device.
-
Per its 01.org project page, “NumaTOP is an observation tool for runtime memory locality characterization and analysis of processes and threads running on a NUMA system. It helps the user characterize the NUMA behavior of processes and threads and identify where the NUMA-related performance bottlenecks reside.”
-
XKB Common is a library for handling keyboard mapping and descriptions along with related tasks like parsing the descriptions, etc. The xkbcommon library is used by Wayland for handling keyboard mapping and is also used by KMSCON, GTK+, Qt, Clutter, and other open-source projects. More xkbcommon details for those interested can be found in its GitHub repository. This keyboard-related library is largely developed by well known X.Org developer Daniel Stone.
-
In the discussion about mainlining the new Intel Gallium3D driver for Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge processors, the long-standing i915 Gallium3D driver for older Intel hardware was brought out. It turns out that this driver might replace the classic i915 Intel driver as the new default.
-
Initial patches are ready to provide support for OpenGL geometry shaders within the Nouveau NV50 Gallium3D driver.
-
The first NVIDIA Tegra DRM driver changes for the Linux 3.10 kernel are now known.
Thierry Reding of Avionic Design submitted his first pull request for drm-next to merge his Tegra DRM kernel driver changes. The most notable change with the 3.10 kernel will be introducing host1x support, which is needed for introducing 2D and 3D acceleration to this open-source graphics driver used by NVIDIA ARM SoCs.
-
-
Benchmarks
-
With the ever-changing state of Linux graphics drivers — both for the open and closed-source drivers — new tests have been conducted to compare the OpenGL graphics performance on Linux with AMD Radeon graphics. In this article are benchmarks of nine different Radeon HD graphics cards when being tested on the very latest AMD Catalyst (13.3 Beta 3) graphics driver as well as the open-source AMD Radeon driver consisting of Mesa 9.2-devel and the yet-to-be-released Linux 3.9 kernel.
-
At the end of March was a new release of ZFS On Linux, a kernel module implementation of the ZFS file-system for Linux, and it was declared ZFS On Linux is now ready for wide-scale deployments. With this release (ZOL/SPL v0.6.1), new benchmarks are being done to compare ZFS to popular Linux file-systems. In this article is a brief preview against EXT4.
-
Applications
-
ModemManager, the component of NetworkManager for dealing with mobile broadband devices and other modem hardware, now has support for the new MBIM protocol.
MBIM is short for the Mobile Broadband Interface Model and is a USB-based protocol for host/device connections of desktops/laptops/tablets/mobile devices. The MBIM 1.0 specification that was ratified in 2011 supports multiple IP connections per USB interface, power-friendly, enables device-agnostic mobile broadband class drivers, drops the need for AT-commands and other crude control channel mechanisms, and minimizes overhead.
-
-
Although markup and document-preparation systems such as LaTeX and Lyx excel at creating long technical documents, they are focused on document content and structure rather than on providing the fine-grained control over layout typically required in documents such as flyers, advertisements, newsletters, and magazines.
Scribus is an open source, graphical desktop publishing tool that focuses on layout, frames, styles, image management, and intercolumn document flow. Scribus is free software that runs on the Linux®, Windows®, and Mac OS X platforms and provides most of the capabilities of traditional DTP tools such as Adobe® InDesign®, Adobe Framemaker®, and QuarkXPress at no cost. Scribus produces documents in Portable Document Format (PDF) and related formats that can be printed on both standard laser and ink-jet printers as well as on dedicated, high-end raster image processing (RIP) publishing and printing hardware.
-
Instructionals/Technical
-
Games
-
The Hotline Miami developers have let the world know next month will be a big patch along with the Linux version!
-
-
-
SPGT, short for Single Player Game Transmitter, is an open-source project that provides support for remote desktop transmission of games and other interactive 3D applications.
An old Phoronix Forums thread about Ubisoft toying with Xen and Linux / VGA support was resurrected today by a Phoronix reader who pointed out another alternative.
-
A few months ago, I found out that Red Orchestra 2 was available without charge for three days on Steam, kind of an early pre-holidays season treat, so I promptly downloaded and tested the game. I was interested to see what this game can offer, since Red Orchestra 2 is a sequel to the same-named first version, which happens to be available for Linux, too. That one will merit its own review, maybe, but that’s for later.
-
Air Conflicts: Pacific Carriers, a flight arcade simulator developed by Games Farm s.r.o. and published by bitComposer Games, will arrive on Steam for Linux.
Air Conflicts: Pacific Carriers was initially launched on the Windows platform back in September 2012. It’s not a true flight simulator and it’s built to provide an arcade experience to fans of the WWII gaming genre.
-
-
-
Desktop Environments/WMs
-
Last week at the SUSE offices in Nürnberg there was a meeting between developers of the KDE, GNOME, Unity, and Razor-qt desktop environments.
The focus of this recent open-source cross-desktop meeting was to collaborate around specifications that are inoperable between the Linux desktop environments.
-
KDE developer David Faure has written a report on the first freedesktop Summit, which took place from 11 to 16 April at the SUSE offices in Nuremberg, Germany. At the summit, developers from GNOME, KDE, Unity and Razor-qt discussed how to improve collaboration between their respective projects by creating new, and refining existing, cross-desktop specifications. The developers reached an agreement on how D-Bus will be implemented by applications across different desktops, talked about modifications to the trash specification and defined a new file format to cache and index .desktop files. The future of the accountsservice D-Bus interface was also discussed.
-
K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
-
GNOME Desktop/GTK
-
Ubuntu users that prefer the Gnome Shell are in for a treat. Ubuntu Gnome has joined the ranks as an official Ubuntu edition. The first official Ubuntu Gnome release will be coming along with the eagerly awaited Ubuntu 13.04 which will continue to use the Unity desktop as before.
-
-
New Releases
-
Slackware Family
-
Volkerding says it’s been fun living on the bleeding edge, but he was actually thinking the next release should be a stable 14.1. “I’d rather be targeting the next release as 14.1 and a stable, evolutionary update to 14.0 rather than a 15.0 that’s churned out before the components have really have a chance to mature upstream. There’s enough of that happening elsewhere, and in my humble opinion it doesn’t need to happen here.”
-
Code-sharing website GitHub has grown so popular that it and open source are practically synonymous for many developers. But new research shows that most of the projects now on GitHub are released under license terms that are unclear, inconsistent, or nonexistent, leaving their legal status as open source software uncertain.
-
Red Hat Family
-
-
Nuage Networks, which provides software defined networking (SDN) solutions for datacenter networks, is pleased to announce it is collaborating with Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, to support the continued tremendous growth of cloud services.
Nuage Networks will work with Red Hat to certify its OpenStack Quantum plug-in for Red Hat’s planned enterprise cloud management solution, Red Hat OpenStack. By working together, the two companies are taking a significant step forward in building advanced SDN capabilities to underpin the cloud networks of service providers and enterprises around the world.
-
Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) has launched a partner program for OpenStack cloud technology to solicit hardware, software and services partners to boost the open source giant’s cloud infrastructure solutions. The move surfaced amid this week’s OpenStack Summit in Portland, Ore. Here’s the update for channel partners.
-
Fedora
-
Debian Family
-
There are about 10 bugs left to solve before releasing Wheezy, Debian’s next release. Most of those bugs have a solution found and it’s just a matter of having the changes percolate through the system. A few will develop pragmatic fixes. It could happen this weekend…
-
Debian, the world’s largest Linux distribution (in terms of repository-size) and the mother of Ubuntu, is set to release its awaited next stable version on the weekend of 4th/5th May this year. Codenamed “Wheezy”, Debian 7.0 will bring a huge amount of changes to the table. Debian is known to make its stable releases under codenames based on characters of the popular animated trilogy Toy Story. It’s interesting to note that Wheezy was a stuffed toy penguin in Toy Story 2 that resembled the familiar Linux mascot Tux.
-
-
-
Derivatives
-
We appreciate your feedbacks about the overall speed/lightness of the system compared to last stable version of Elive. You can say something in our chat channel directly from the running system. If you detect any lagging in the system please consider different setups like disabling composite (which you can select on the startup of the graphical system) in order to report improvements. We would also appreciate feedbacks about composite enabled or disabled in old computers, suggestions for better performances, and memory usage compared to Topaz.
-
The developers of the Pardus Linux distribution have announced the first release of their new Pardus Community Edition. According to the announcement blog post, Pardus Community Edition is a “stable and useful” distribution based on Debian Wheezy. Pardus Community Edition 1.0 complements Pardus 2013 Corporate, which was released at the end of March.
-
Canonical/Ubuntu
-
Hewlett-Packard’s public and private cloud strategy leans heavily on OpenStack, the open source cloud platform. The same is true for Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux. Here’s an HP and Ubuntu update from OpenStack Summit 2013.
-
Ubuntu 13.04, which debuts next week, will have an official GNOME version. That news slipped under the radar for most folks, but it should please some Linux desktop users who don’t like Canonical’s Unity interface. And it could also impact Canonical’s big aspirations of “Ubuntu convergence” across all devices offered by channel partners.
-
Canonical has announced that the Ubuntu One Music Store has been removed from Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and Ubuntu 12.10.
This news is not actually a surprise. It’s unclear how many customers are using the Music Store, but it seems that Canonical’s decision to remove the store from Rhythmbox has to do with the traffic generated by the web store counterpart.
-
Flavours and Variants
-
-
Network World – The team in charge of maintaining and developing Fuduntu, a Linux-based operating system designed as a hybrid of Fedora and Ubuntu, voted Sunday to close down the project.
-
Kubuntu, the KDE flavour of Ubuntu, is getting ready for the 13.04 release. Not only is it getting latest and greatest from the KDE stable, including 4.10.2, it’s also polishing the UI a bit.
-
I was pretty sad when I heard Fuduntu was going end-of-life. It seemed like a very promising distro was being mothballed just as it seemed to be gaining attention within the Linux community. I reached out to Lee Ward, who handles communication for Fuduntu, about the future of the distro, and he had some interesting details to reveal, including the idea that the future distro could be a rolling, curated version of OpenSUSE. It’ll be interesting to see what the new distro shapes up to be.
-
-
Toradex has released an updated embedded Linux BSP for its tiny, SODIMM-style COM (computer on module) based on Nvidia’s 1.4GHz, quad-core Tegra 3 processor. The Colibri T30 COM is equipped with 1GB of DDR3 RAM and 2GB of flash, and integrates controllers for HDMI, Ethernet, USB, analog input, and various other I/O functions.
Announced in early 2012, the Colibri T30 began sampling in January 2013, and only recently shipped with a v2.x beta-quality Linux BSP (board support package).
-
-
-
Z3 Technology has introduced a video transcoding subsystem based on a new Texas Instruments TMS320DM8269 DaVinci system-on-chip (SOC). The FPGA-enabled Z3-DM8169-MCVI-RPS targets 1080p/H.264 video processing requirements in applications such as broadcast video encoding and decoding, real-time transcoding at 60fps, security and surveillance, video conferencing, and industrial video processing equipment.
-
Raspberry Pi co-creator Gert Van Loo (pictured) and master-modder Ben Heck will be active participants in electronic distributor Newark element14′s expo booth at Design West (ESC) in San Jose next week. Events and activities at the booth will include hands-on demos, product giveaways, Q&A sessions, and tutorials on developing Arduino-based applications and using ARM development tools.
-
If it is done right, software updates will become the main revenue generator since people are willing to pay for them if they are reasonably priced. Software can keep the car up-to-date even if it’s not the latest model anymore and is essentially tied to the regular maintenance of the vehicle.
-
Able to be used 24/7 non-stop as unattended controller, Matrix-516 ARM-based industrial SFF computer features 400 MHz Atmel AT91SAM9G20 CPU, 64 MB SDRAM, and 128 MB NAND Flash. I/O includes 2 LAN, 8 isolated RS-485 serial, 2 USB host, micro-SD, and 21 GPIO interfaces. Providing fail-safe design for system backup and recovery, computer is suited for intelligent transportation system (ITS), building automation, energy-saving system, and factory automation applications.
-
Phones
-
-
Ballnux
-
The smartphone maker confirms that its next flagship phone will feature a quad-core processor instead of its octa-core chip.
-
Android
-
-
-
Alibaba – China’s biggest e-commerce company – has ramped up efforts to promote its mobile operating system.
The firm has set up a one billion yuan ($162m; £105m) programme to support app developers and is offering monthly payments to handset makers for every phone using its platform they sell.
A Chinese government report recently warned China had become “too dependent” on Google’s Android operating system.
-
Applications vary depending on the operating system or OS the phone has. One of the most widely used OS is Android. This is so because of the many brands of smartphones that run on Android. Some of these phones are Samsung, Sony, and Alcatel. To make the most out of your phone, below are the essential utilities and tools apps especially designed for Android.
-
HP Cloud Services Vice President and General Manager Roger Levy stopped by #theCUBE at the #OpenStack Summit 2013 yesterday, to talk with co-hosts John Furrier and David Floyer about everything HP is doing in the cloud. HP sees winning DevOps as bringing automation into the private and public clouds and providing DevOps tools.
-
As an undergraduate engineering student Karen Sandler was used to being the only woman in a class. At the time she didn’t want to talk about why there weren’t more women in technology, though, believing the attention would only make things worse. That attitude has changed over time, however, as she experienced sexism more directly. At tech conferences, for example, her male colleagues would sometimes ask her whose spouse she was, not knowing that she was actually a speaker at the event.
-
Gaia Transparence announces the creation of the first open source software platform for financial trade and position management.
-
-
-
Open source monitoring software should get a boost with the expected final release of the Assimilation Monitoring Project in late April.
Originally, the Assimilation Monitoring Project (AMP) was started to fix the configuration woes and workload issues present in traditional monitoring software, but has evolved to include automation and a unique brand of scalability. AMP founder and project leader Alan Robertson expands on the details of its final release in this Q&A.
-
In the software ecology, a special type of evangelist works with organizations that are open to incorporating open source into their technology infrastructure. These “integrators” (sometimes called value-added resellers or just computer consultants) can encourage a business to adopt software because the integrator is a trusted outside party without a sales agenda. If you capture the integrators and keep them interested and dedicated, the growth of your project is guaranteed.
-
Events
-
Now more than halfway through the Linux Foundation’s Collaboration Summit in San Francisco, attendees have started to weigh in on the best sessions and experiences so far. Some cited Monday’s keynote presentations from heavy hitters such as Samsung and Jaguar Land Rover. Others focused on the technical discussions in Tuesday’s sessions, which covered a range of topics from Automotive Grade Linux to kernel scheduler load balancing. And for some, simply meeting the developers on the other side of an email list provided the best experience at the conference. Here, five Linux community members tell us their conference highlights so far. (See their abbreviated answers in video on Tout.)
-
Web Browsers
-
Chrome
-
Mozilla
-
After telecom giant TeliaSonera allegedly allowed authoritarian governments to snoop on their citizens, Mozilla contemplates whether or not to issue it a new root certificate.
-
SaaS/Big Data
-
Intel CIO Kim Stevenson, who has been at the helm for a little more than a year, said OpenStack is the most useful cloud architecture for avoiding lock-in, outlined how the chip giant is using big data techniques, and talked capacity planning for her company.
-
OpenStack is being deployed and used by organizations that many Americans know as household brand names. That’s the message coming from the OpenStack Summit where a conga line of big end users explained to capacity crowds why they chose OpenStack and how it is being used.
In a live demo on the keynote stage, Mark Muehl, senior VP of product engineering at Comcast, showed how his firm is using OpenStack. Muehl brought out a TV set-top box and showed Comcast’s new X1, TV viewing guide system. That system is all powered at the back-end by an OpenStack cloud.
-
While startups, developers, and small businesses flock to behemoth public clouds like Amazon Web Services and Google Compute Engine that give them a profoundly efficient bang for their buck, bigger enterprises largely stick to paying the high cost for private clouds. They are wary of potential availability and security issues that, rightfully, could hamper (or cripple) their business. The perceived risk-reward of saving money by turning IT operations over to a public cloud hasn’t yet permeated through to big businesses.
-
Steve Mills, the SVP and group executive of software and systems for IBM, discussed his company’s plan to invest$1 billion in flash storage with Wikibon’s Dave Vellante at a media event held this week in New York.
Vellante starts the interview by pointing out that this is not the first time Big Blue decided to throw a billion at a major trend. A decade ago the company pumped $1 billion into Linux, and a few years after that it pledged to invest the same amount in analytics.
-
Since we have been looking at FreeBSD, OpenVZ, and ProxMox, it seems only right to mention the other open source player in this market: OpenNode. OpenNode, like ProxMox, is a management layer built on top of OpenVZ containers and KVM virtual machines. Unlike ProxMox, which is built on Debian, OpenNode is similar to CentOS and Scientific Linux in that it is built off of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. A good fit, since the stable OpenVZ kernel is also released for RHEL.
-
The NSA (America’s super secret intelligence agency) is no stranger to open source software and apparently they aren’t strangers to OpenStack either.
NSA developer Nathaniel Burton was speaking at the OpenStack summit today, though he joked that he couldn’t reveal how many servers they had running OpenStack or what they are running on those OpenStack servers.
-
NSA’s goal is to unify data and use it to do analysis, said Nathanael Burton, a computer scientist with the security agency in a keynote address today at the OpenStack Summit in Portland. But with its old infrastructure, the data was spread across different systems that did not work together.
-
-
This week, the OpenStack Summit is going on, and in conjunction with the conference there are lots of signs that the open source cloud computing platform is going to start heading into high gear for the remainder of 2013. Red Hat advanced its enterprise Red Hat OpenStack offering into an Early Adopter Program and announced the availability of RDO, a community-supported distribution of OpenStack that runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora and their derivatives. Meanwhile, there are reports that some enterprises are ditching Amazon Web Services (AWS) for OpenStack, in a push to gain more control over their cloud-based futures.
-
Databases
-
I’m pleased to tell you that I have a new role that I’ve already started within the scope of Meshed Insights. It’s a new and exciting departure for me.
I’ve remained in touch with Monty Widenius ever since we were both at Sun together. At the start of the year, he asked if I would consider helping him move the MariaDB Foundation forward as an independent steward of the MariaDB database project. I agreed, and recently accepted his request to join the board of directors for the new Foundation, along with several others. To allow Monty to focus on the technical aspects of MariaDB, I also agreed to the new Board’s request to take on a part-time role as the interim chief executive of the Foundation, at least until a member-elected Board is seated.
-
The MariaDB foundation has announced the appointment of a new Board of Directors and a new interim chief executive. The board members include Rasmus Johansson, Andrew Katz, Simon Phipps, Michael “Monty” Widenius, and Jeremy Zawodny. The interim board has appointed Johansson as Chair and Phipps as Secretary and Chief Executive Officer.
-
Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
-
Education
-
Business
-
Funding
-
The FreeBSD Foundation has announced that it and the Google Open Source Programs Office are jointly funding developer Pawel Jakub Dawidek to improve the Capsicum framework. Capsicum was originally developed by Robert Watson of the University of Cambridge and Ben Laurie from Google Research to extend the POSIX API and provide object-capability security to Unix-like operating systems. The goal of the framework is to give thin-client operating systems like Google’s Chrome OS a robust security model that is relatively lightweight. Capsicum has been available in FreeBSD since version 9.0 and Google is working on a Linux version.
-
FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
-
We want to commend Google for doing the right thing.
-
Red Hat’s Carlos O’Donell provided an update this week on the GNU C Library along with some recent and upcoming features for glibc.
The GNU C Library (glibc) faces increasing competition from other C library implementations like Google Android’s Bionic, uClibc on embedded systems, EGLIBC, and dietlibc, among others. With glibc losing some of its appeal even on modern Linux desktop distributions, Carlos O’Donell spoke this week at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit about the state of this GNU project along with a look ahead at the glibc 2.18 release.
-
Public Services/Government
-
Much has been written about the use of Open Source in government over the last few years. Yet, despite a strong directive from Francis Maude, and the Cabinet Office, many central government workers in IT decision making positions still appear to be hesitant about implementing alternative software solutions into their existing technology stack. So, just what is holding back Open Source innovation in government?
-
Programming
-
That’s according to Aaron Williamson, senior staff counsel at the Software Freedom Law Center, who presented some of his findings on the matter at the Linux Collaboration Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday.
-
There’s a discussion on the LLVM development mailing list about making the compiler become energy-aware to provide an optimization level that would provide the most power-efficient binaries. However, it isn’t clear whether this would make sense over simply trying to assemble the fastest binary.
-
Developing are reaching a point where the mainline LLVM/Clang compiler in an “out of the box” configuration can compile the mainline Linux kernel with only a few patches against the kernel’s source tree. This summer’s release of LLVM/Clang 3.3 should be a big milestone.
Aside from Intel MKL and the state of glibc, another interesting topic at this week’s Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit was in regards to LLVM/Clang for building the Linux kernel rather than GCC. Building the Linux kernel with LLVM/Clang has long been pursued by developers and something we have been talking about on Phoronix quite a bit in the past two years or so.
-
This is notable for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that that John Burns gets to write news articles for the New York Times assessing the legacy of Margaret Thatcher. He’s made up his mind, obviously, and he tries to work that into his reporting for the paper.
-
Rarely has a legislator expressed what he thinks of the public with such eloquence and and brevity as Republican Tommy Tucker, Chairman of the North Carolina Senate’s State and Local Government Committee.
-
Science
-
Often called a living fossil, the coelacanth (pronounced SEE-luh-canth) was long believed to have fallen extinct 70 million years ago, until a specimen was recognized in a fish market in South Africa in 1938. The coelacanth has fleshy, lobed fins that look somewhat like limbs, as does the lungfish, an air-breathing freshwater fish. The coelacanth and the lungfish have long been battling for the honor of which is closer to the ancestral fish that first used fins to walk on land and give rise to the tetrapods, meaning all the original vertebrates and their descendants, from reptiles and birds to mammals.
-
Hardware
-
Intel has acquired Mashery, a company that develops management tools for web and on-premise APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). The tools are offered as a cloud service as well as locally (“Mashery Local”), and third parties can use them to access their own APIs. Components include caching features, security tools, dashboards, and options for generating API usage reports.
-
Poison/Gas/Health/Nutrition
-
Rescue teams searched the charred rubble of homes in a small Texas city on Thursday for survivors of a fiery explosion at a nearby fertilizer plant that killed as many as 15 people, injured more than 160 and destroyed dozens of buildings.
-
-
-
Bhopal: The social organisations fighting for justice to the surviving victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy have demanded a fresh probe into the tragedy and the delay in their settlement of claims based on a recent Wikileaks revelations here on Wednesday.
-
-
-
A BOARD of doctors now responsible for spending Islington’s £302million NHS budget will be summoned to the Town Hall to explain how they will avoid potential conflicts of interest.
-
Security
-
Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
-
The news that the Boston Marathon bombs used conventional pressure cookers led to a flurry of coverage suggesting that this was perhaps a link to Al-Qaeda inspired jihadists.
-
Nigeria shows much greater wisdom than the standard Western government line that the state can do no wrong and that all terrorist movements must be crushed by military force – something that often leads into an unending revenge cycle. Insurgency movements are indeed always caused – no matter how psychotic or vicious individual terrorists may be and no matter how evil some of their acts. For any terrorist or insurgency activity to have sufficient support in a host population to have a resilient existence, that population must believe itself to have a legitimate grievance. Ultimately the only way to overcome terrorism is to talk to the terrorists. Which is not to say I think this initiative will succeed; but it is certainly the right thing to try.
-
Theo started calling Washington-area lawyers asking them to defend Torres. He told criminal defense attorneys David Dischley and Michael Robinson that he worked for the CIA’s national resources division, which recruits citizens and foreigners to assist the U.S. abroad. He explained that Torres had been arrested during a government training operation gone bad. Torres, he said, was being tested for an eventual mission in El Salvador to infiltrate the criminal gang MS-13. Theo offered Dischley and Robinson $45,000 in cash to take the case.
-
In 1961 Cuba was ruled by a leftist administration dominated by Prime Minister Fidel Castro.
With the Cold War in full swing the United States didn’t take kindly to the idea of a communist satellite state just 90 miles away from the Florida Keys.
-
-
“Wimps,” sneers Michael Moore in his book Downsize This, referring to men (and boys, some as young as 16) who 52 years ago this week hit a Cuban beach now known as the Bay of Pigs. “Really just a bunch of wimps. That’s right, wimps– and crybabies too,” sneers Moore. “Ex-Cubans with a yellow stripe down their backs.”
-
-
Escalating his investigation of the deadly terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi last year, Rep. Darrell Issa warned CIA and other government officials Wednesday to lawyer-up in preparation for a massive probe.
-
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is pushing ahead with his investigation of last year’s fatal attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, by preparing federal agencies to allow employees to lawyer up.
-
Stone, who actually dabbled in horror early in his career via films like The Hand and Seizure, told a panel of filmmakers April 17 that he won’t be revisiting the genre.
-
ONE balmy evening, Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, was relaxing with his family on his father-in-law’s rooftop in the village of Zanghara, south Waziristan.
Two miles above, a Predator drone trained an infrared camera on him as he lay on his back and was joined by his wife and uncle. The images were so clear that it could be seen that the ailing Mehsud was receiving an intravenous drip.
-
-
Venezuela’s post-election crisis is growing deeper, with at least seven people killed during clashes between the opposition and police. President-elect Nicolas Maduro says he has proof that the US embassy is financing the ongoing protests.
-
-
-
-
Watching Senator John McCain foam at the mouth with his calls for war against Syria reminds one that President Barack Obama has done well to resist strident demands from congress and the media to use the U.S. armed forces in a direct role to remove President Bashar al-Assad. Which is not intended to suggest that nothing is going on. Washington has long been fighting a secret war seeking to bring about regime change in Syria in the mistaken belief that the fall of Damascus will inevitably produce a similar result in Iran. The White House humanitarian interventionists and friends of Israel have only been stalled in their effort to bring down al-Assad by stealth due to legitimate and belated concerns that empowering the rebels might produce far worse results than a continuation of Baathist rule. One would have thought that a lesson had been learned from the disastrous intervention in Libya, but apparently Washington operates on a principle of never looking back. That coupled with an attention span that appears to encompass something like 48 hours means that the White House will be continuously refighting the last war with predictable results.
-
-
Cablegate
-
US embassy cables allegedly detailing UK plan to stop return to Indian Ocean islands used by US military is ruled inadmissible
-
The Sydney Support Assange and WikiLeaks Coalition (SAWC) interviewed former Australian attorney-general, Kep Enderby QC, about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
Enderby first contacted SAWC to offer his support for our campaign last year. In July, he wrote a statement read out at a rally for Assange and WikiLeaks in Sydney.
Enderby became involved in civil liberties and human rights activism while working as a lawyer in London in the 1950s. He championed the cause of African-American singer and radical, Paul Robeson, who was being denied his passport by the US government.
-
Analysis: Despite revealing support for military junta within Catholic Church, cables don’t change defense of human rights by Chilean clergy.
-
A US military court of appeals on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by journalists and a rights group seeking greater openness in the upcoming trial of WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning.
-
-
The late President Corazon “Cory” Aquino had doubted the political charisma of her only son, incumbent President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, according to former US Ambassador to the Philippines Kristie Kenney in a secret cable published on WikiLeaks.
According to Kenney’s cable, the Aquino family had to bank on the popularity of Noynoy’s sister, TV personality Kris Aquino, and her former husband, basketball star James Yap, to propel him to national politics in 2007.
-
Environment/Energy/Wildlife
-
California lawmakers are considering an “ag-gag” bill today that not only criminalizes undercover investigators and whistleblowers, but carves out special exemptions if the industry accidentally documents its own abuses.
As background: Ag-gag bills are facing massive public opposition across the country, and the industry is shifting how it talks about these bills. Factory farmers are moving away from attempts to outright criminalize anyone who photographs animal cruelty; instead, they’re introducing “mandatory reporting” requirements. Take California, for example. AB 343 says anyone who documents animal cruelty at farms and slaughterhouses has to notify the police. That sounds pretty reasonable, right?
-
Finance
-
She didn’t save Britain or turn the economy round.
-
Goldman Sachs cannot dismiss Prudential’s claims that it falsely represented more than $375 million in residential mortgage-backed securities in its offering materials, a federal judge ruled in New Jersey.
In September 2007, New Jersey-based Prudential Insurance and five investment subsidiaries held about $13.5 billion in residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) and $241.1 billion in total investments.
-
In 2010, Governor Scott Walker ran for office on a simple message, that he would turn Wisconsin’s economy around and create 250,000 jobs. There was good news for Walker in the Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs numbers released April 2013. Although Wisconsin still ranked 44th in the country in terms of job creation, the staggering economy had created 64,500 more jobs since Walker took office than previously known. There was a large upward correction in the BLS jobs data stretching back more than a year that not only impacted Wisconsin, but many states.
-
A team of economists at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at UMass Amherst broke a huge story this week that was promptly picked up by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, and newspapers around the globe. The economists proved that the essential underpinning “of the intellectual edifice of austerity economics,” as Paul Krugman put it, is based on sloppy methodology and spreadsheet coding errors.
-
Ars Technica points out that Estonia is doing the same. This might lead to demands for houses to be blurred, as can be requested in Germany. But the Boston Globe article notes that it’s not just Street View that tax authorities are mining for clues about people not paying all their taxes:
In the United States, the Internal Revenue Service has said it would be cross-referencing information from taxpayers’ Facebook and Twitter accounts if their returns threw up any red flags.
In Britain, tax officials have revealed they are using Web crawling software to trawl auction websites for undeclared sales.
Authorities in Greece have been using satellite imagery to locate undeclared swimming pools in wealthy neighborhoods.
The ability to draw on the massive stores of data that are now publicly available means that even seemingly trivial information, when cross-referenced with more of the same, can allow governments and others to create surprisingly detailed profiles of people that may have far from trivial consequences.
-
PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
-
Privacy
-
It would appear that Rep. Mike Rogers, the main person in Congress pushing for CISPA, has kept rather quiet about a very direct conflict of interest that calls into serious question the entire bill. It would appear that Rogers’ wife stands to benefit quite a lot from the passage of CISPA, and has helped in the push to get the bill passed. It’s somewhat amazing that no one has really covered this part of the story, but it highlights, yet again, the kind of activities by folks in Congress that make the public trust Congress less and less.
-
The US House of Representatives has passed the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protect Act (CISPA).
Lawmakers in the House voted 288-to-127 Thursday afternoon to accept the bill. Next it will move to the Senate and could then end up on the desk of US President Barack Obama for him to potentially sign the bill into law. Earlier this week, though, senior White House advisers said they would recommend the president veto the bill.
-
This is not wholly surprising, but after some debate and some half-hearted attempts at pretending they care about the public’s privacy rights, the House has passed CISPA, 288 votes against 127.
-
After facing defeat with Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) – thanks in part to the late Aaron Swartz – the State and Big Business have regrouped and re-branded their bill Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). Relying on a lazy press to leave out the details and hoping that a dimwitted public will cower in the face of “cyberterrorism” threats. Somehow cyberterrorism translates into shutting down the internet for Hollywood. They don’t really have an explanation either.
-
-
Who would not want to see the future? Millions of people around the world spend a great deal of money paying for services of prophets and magicians. Whether the predictions come true is another matter, but there is certainly a steady demand. The official science is also not standing still and is trying all sorts of ways to look into events that await us in the years to come. Will the humanity learn to predict the future?
-
-
-
The US House of Representatives have passed the dangerous Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protect Act (CISPA) just few hours ago. The bill won by 288-to-127, and will now move to Democrate-controlled Senate which is not as desperate to pass this draconian bill as was the House.
The House passed the bill ignoring the veto threat from the While House. The House also ignored the ‘mandate’ given by the people as over 1.5 million people signed petitions against it.
-
-
Civil Rights
-
My hat is off to Keane Bhatt, NACLA blogger and occasional Extra! contributor, for his tireless efforts to prod one of the United States’ most prestigious media outlets to live up to their professed standards of accuracy. The outlet is the New Yorker, a magazine whose name is practically synonymous with factchecking. It’s a tradition there; they brag about how seriously they take checking the facts.
Which makes you wonder how Keane was able to find the glaring, major errors in the New Yorker’s recent coverage of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, all perpetrated by longtime contributor Jon Lee Anderson.
-
Here at Mozilla, we believe the Internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible. We believe in the importance of balancing the commercial goals of the Internet against those for the public benefit. Brazil’s Internet Bill of Rights, the Marco Civil da Internet, seeks to maintain this balance by guaranteeing basic rights for Internet users. We support this kind of effort to create a comprehensive, pro-Internet policy framework. If adopted, it could well serve as a reference model for future legislation.
The legislation is groundbreaking in its intent. It secures important rights to Internet users through a civil framework rather than a criminal code. These rights include the right to privacy, freedom of speech, and access to information. It defends communications over the Internet, protects the sanctity of the Internet connection itself, requires comprehensive information in service contracts (particularly with respect to the protection of personal data), and limits third party access to connection logs and Internet applications.
-
…executive branch to detain US citizens indefintely and without due process.
-
…haven’t done anything to prepare the United States to cut off its ties.
-
The process of dying is never easy or painless. Death by starvation is particularly grueling: the body cannibalizes fat and tissue, wasting to skin and bones, leading to dehydration, incoherence and, ultimately, heart failure. It is a slow and agonizing ordeal, even for the most committed hunger striker. It took IRA member and British MP Bobby Sands more than two months to die in Maze prison when he starved himself to death in 1981. And for those who are force-fed, the process is even more excruciating; they may endure as food is pumped up their noses and into their stomachs like a veal calf, but eventually they will die as well. [...] prison has already claimed the lives of nine men [...]
-
In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Boston that claimed three lives and wounded more than 170 others, the calls for a response will be loud — and inevitable. Yet, we still don’t know who the responsible parties are — and the trail has sadly gone cold. While it’s time to put politics aside, support for tougher pieces of legislation to combat terrorism will probably arise in the near future. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which gives the federal government vast new powers, has come under scrutiny from civil liberties groups, and rightfully so. It gives government the extraordinary power of detaining U.S. citizens indefinitely. After Monday’s events, I’ll guess that most Americans would support such a measure, but it’s times like these that we must not endorse actions that shred the Constitution.
-
We’ve seen several times before the reticence (a fancy $20 word for “antipathy”) many law enforcement officers have towards being recorded while on the job. They don’t seem to mind cameras they control (even though those too have proven problematic — but fixable), but if the average citizen starts “taping” an encounter, much ado is made about the impropriety (or illegal-ness) of the citizen’s actions.
We’ve seen all of this before. But this one tops those stories. This is one of those has-to-be-seen-to-be-believed events. Fortunately, it involves a functioning camera installed in a surprisingly dangerous cell phone.
San Diegan Adam Pringle was minding his own business illegally smoking a cigarette in a public area (I know — this falls under the “California Is Ridiculous” heading) when he was approached by Officer Reinhold, who then proceeded to cite him for outdoor smoking.
-
Intellectual Monopolies
-
Quieter is better. That seems to be the motto driving the negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The trade deal was initially called the P2, and it was a two-way affair between New Zealand and Singapore. Chile and Brunei joined the negotiations, which were renamed the P4. Then the US joined, and the deal was re-branded as the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPP). Today, negotiating countries are splayed across the globe like a constellation only a highly trained astronomer could recognize. In addition to the first five, the TPP now includes Australia, Malaysia, Peru, and Vietnam. Canada and Mexico recently joined the talks and Japan is vying to participate in the negotiations
-
-
Copyrights
Permalink
Send this to a friend
« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »