• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Desktop

• HCL Bags Rs 278 Crore Order From ELCOT

  These 200,000 laptops will be running on both Linux and Micrsosoft’s proprietary Windows OS. ELCOT will be working on offering some educational applications with these laptops.

• The Linux Setup – Amelia Andersdotter, EU Parliament

  Amelia Andersdotter, 24, is the youngest member of the current European Parliament. She’s a member of the Swedish Pirate Party, a political party centered around copyright and patent reform. Given her political interests, it’s probably not a surprise that Amelia is a Linux user.

Kernel Space

• x32 Support For Linux Kernel Called In For Review

  The x32 effort, an undertaking to provide a native 32-bit ABI for x86_64 on Linux, is finally moving closer to fruition. Peter Anvin has published the set of x32 patches for the Linux kernel that are now up for review and comments.

  Peter Anvin and others have long been working towards Linux x32: a native 32-bit ABI for Intel/AMD 64-bit systems so that applications not needing 64-bit pointers can benefit from 64-bit performance while using the memory foot-print of a 32-bit ABI. The Linux x32 ABI support necessitates changes to GNU binutils, the Linux kernel, Glibc, and the compiler (GCC). On Sunday the set of 30 patches touching around 1,000 lines of code was sent off to the kernel mailing list by Anvin.

• The Btrfs File-System Repair Tool Is Available

  After writing about Btrfs LZ4 compression support and that the Btrfs FSCK tool wasn’t available, it turns out that there is the new Btrfs repair tool, but it’s not widely known and it’s not recommended to ever use it — at least at this stage.

  As pointed out by Phoronix readers, from the btrfs-progs Git tree on Kernel.org is a new branch that was pushed a little more than one week ago. This new branch is called “dangerdonteveruse” (expanded: don’t ever use [it]) and contains the ability to fix Btrfs file-systems.

• Slow boot? Blame systemd!

• Graphics Stack

  • DisplayLink KMS Driver Arrives, Supports Hot-Unplug

    There’s a new KMS/DRM driver to introduce to the world: UDL. UDL is a DRM kernel mode-setting driver for the USB-based DisplayLink graphics adapters.

    It was back in 2009 that DisplayLink decided to provide Linux GPU support and be open-source friendly for their interesting USB-based graphics adapters and since then the support has only become more compelling. At first DisplayLink provided a simple Linux library, documentation, and then a frame-buffer and X.Org driver for the hardware.

  • Proposals To Split KMS & GPU Drivers, 2D Kernel API

Applications

• Conky in CruchBang

• Fade In Pro

  A new solution now is available. Fade In Professional Screenwriting Software is a powerful application for writing screenplays, and it includes tools for organizing and navigating the script, as well as tools for managing revisions and rewrites.

• Proprietary

  • 3 Windows Programs That Desperately Need To Be Ported To Linux

    Last year, I decided I would start solely using Ubuntu as the primary OS on my laptop. But the lack of printer support, and hiccups here and there in Ubuntu unfortunately catapulted me back to Windows 7. As my classes right now are requiring students to SSH into university servers to submit homework, I thought I might as well start getting used to bash and Linux again.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • How to Manually Install New Cinnamon Themes (Linux Mint/Ubuntu)

  • How to transform Archbang into Arch Linux with Xmonad

  • Package Management in Emacs: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

  • Nmap

  • RAW Processing in a Rush with GTKRawGallery

• Games

  • Tomes of Mephistopheles Alpha Released

    For those where this is the first time hearing about this new Kot In Action title, the developers describe the game as “a first-person action-RPG dungeon crawler. With its fast-paced fluid combat, a multitude of medieval and magical weapons, an in-depth custom spell system, and randomly generated persistent worlds, ToM is a pinnacle of the genre.”

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • The Costs of Supporting Legacy Hardware

  • KWin May Drop Support For Catalyst, Vintage GPUs

    The KWin compositing window manager for KDE may drop its older OpenGL renderer, which would remove support for vintage GPUs/drivers, but this would also include eliminating — at least temporarily — support for the AMD Catalyst graphics driver.

  • Frameworks 5 community day

    On Saturday, we held the first Frameworks 5 community day on IRC. It was organized by Kevin Ottens and he did a great job of making it happen. David Faure, myself and others showed up to help people get up to speed with Frameworks 5 hacking.

  • The KDE Death Watch

Distributions

• Taming Clonezilla: Free open source disk imaging and backups

  Among the many tools out there for cloning drives and performing full-system backups, one came to my attention for being both free (and open source) and powerful: Clonezilla, a product of the Free Software Labs of the National Center for High-Performance Computing in Taiwan.

  Clonezilla’s power, however, is matched by complexity. You can get a lot out of it, but at the cost of paying close attention to what you’re doing. Here’s a guide to getting just what you need from Clonezilla — without wreaking havoc on your system or being swallowed by the monster.

• New Releases

  • Lightweight Portable Security (LPS) 1.3.2

  • New package format in Tiny Core Linux 4.3

    The Core Project’s “Team Tiny Core” has released version 4.3 of Tiny Core Linux, the lightweight modular Linux system. The new version introduces a “Self Contained Mountable applications” (SCM) package format for adding additional applications. Mountable applications take the file extension .scm and can be dynamically mounted and unmounted at runtime. They are managed using scmbrowser, a new graphical application.

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • Mageia at FOSDEM 2012

    This FOSDEM thing could turn into a habit! Mageia was at FOSDEM 2012 in Brussels – and this year, we had quite a noticeable presence.

• Gentoo Family

  • Inspecting the Gentoo 12.0 Live DVD

    Following a recent request I downloaded the Gentoo 12.0 Live DVD for a test drive. I tried Gentoo many years ago but gave up after a few hours due to the time involved, and my knowledge back then was a lot more rudimentary than today. Gentoo is a source distribution that is supposed to be configured and compiled from stage 2 or stage 3 tarballs, although some base images are available that allow you to cheat and skip the early part of kernel compilation etc. with minimal install images.

• Debian Family

  • Tails 0.10.1 Screenshots

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Users Want AIM Client for Ubuntu… AOL Says No!

      • The New Face of Ubuntu

        Canonical is designing a new heads-up display interface for the next version of Ubuntu. Its last interface tweak, Unity, was somewhat controversial. Now it looks like Ubuntu will double down on that departure and bring users even further from the typical desktop OS experience. Is this something that will make the OS easier for users to operate, or will it scare away users who think it’s too difficult to learn?

      • Ubuntu: you’re doing it wrong

      • Ubuntu’s Business Desktop Remix: Taking a Closer Look

      • A full Ubuntu desktop, on your docked Android phone

      • Ubuntu for Android arrives: In pictures

      • Ubuntu for Android: Linux desktop on a smartphone

      • Ubuntu Linux Unveiled for Android Phones

        For years, tech pundits have speculated about the merging of phones and desktop computers, with Motorola’s line of Webtop accessories only the latest in a series of products. Now Canonical has stepped in with what could be the most comprehensive attempt yet: Ubuntu for Android, which the company says launches a full desktop OS experience whenever you connect your phone to a computer screen and keyboard.

        In this mode, Ubuntu works exactly as it does on a regular PC, with the same Unity UI and access to certified applications including Chrome and Firefox—except that your phone is now standing in for a bulky CPU tower. Otherwise, Ubuntu for Android stays invisible; when you’re out and about, your phone works just like a normal Android phone. Canonical says that all data and services stay consistent between the Ubuntu and Android environments, including contacts, SMS, and voice calls.

      • Ubuntu for Android: Penguins peck at Nokia’s core problem

        But Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Linux distro Ubuntu, isn’t cutting Nokia’s man any slack. Shuttleworth reckons Elop is “short sighted” – and Canonical is today due to unveil Ubuntu for Android, a version of Shuttleworth’s Ubuntu juiced by multi-core on smartphones.

      • Ubuntu for Android: Canonical brings Ubuntu desktop to docked smartphones

      • Ubuntu For Android: The Complete Story

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Linux Mint – the taste of success

          Linux User sits down with Mint creator Clement Lefebvre to get a measure of the past, present and future of one of the biggest success stories in Linux distro history…

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Android

    • Android 5.0 May Lock Horns With Windows 8, Desktop Mode Rumored

      The mystery around Android 5.0 aka Jelly Beans is deepening. The rumors are rife which indicate that Android may pose threat to Microsoft’s Windows 8, also expected to hit the market later this year.

      A Russian blogger Eldar Murtazin is claiming that Google may introduce a new mode with Android 5.0 which will enable users to run Android on their desktops which will automatically optimize to the desktop.

    • LG To Redefine Android Phones With New Design

    • ZTE announces its all Nvidia Mimosa X smartphone

    • Samsung announces its Galaxy Ace 2 and Galaxy Mini 2

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Firefox To Get A New Default Theme, Other Enhancements

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• LibreOffice Foundation Symbolises Maturity

• Dotzler: LibreOffice update

• Document Foundation gets corporate “Inc” status

Semi-Open Source

• Kitware Launches Visomics, an Open-Source Bioinformatics Application

Project Releases

• Apache 2.4 Delivers More Performance

  A key focus in the 2.4 release is improved performance which is delivered by way of multiple innovations.

  “What we have done is checked 2.4 against itself and other web-servers; in general, we find 2.4 to be the fastest version of Apache by far,” Jim Jagielski, ASF President and Apache HTTP Server Project Management Committee, told InternetNews.com.

• Apache releases first major new version of popular Web server in six years

  The Apache Software Foundation has just announced the release version 2.4 of its award-winning Apache HTTP Server. This is the first major release of the Apache Web server in more than six years. Long before the release of Apache 2.2 in December 1st, 2005 though, Apache was already the most popular Web server in the world. Today Apache powers almost 400 million Web sites.

Public Services/Government

• United Kingdom seeking advice on open standards definition

  The UK cabinet office is seeking advice on the definition of open standards in the context of government IT. It posted its consultation documents online last week Wednesday. The consultation follows the withdrawing in November of a IT procurement policy in effect since in January 2011.

  The consultation should also help to make clear what effects compulsory standards may have on government departments, on delivery partners and on supply chains. A third aim is to gain knowledge on international alignment and cross-border interoperability.

  In a statement, Minister for Cabinet Office Francis Maude said: “We are committed to implementing open standards and want to create a level playing field for open source and proprietary software. Open standards for software and systems will reduce costs and enable us to provide better public services. We want to get this right; so we want to make sure everyone has the opportunity to have their say on this matter.”

Openness/Sharing

• How to Kickstart an Open Source Music Revolution with CASH Music

  On February 10, 2012, CASH Music launched a Kickstarter campaign and raised more than 70% of their $30,000 goal in about 24 hours. What is CASH Music? And why does it already have vocal support from musicians, Firefox, and even Neil Gaiman? Jesse von Doom, Co-Executive Director of CASH Music, explains the inspiration behind the project and the big role Linux plays in it.

• Booktype makes book collaboration web-based and simple

  If you’ve ever tried to collaborate with other authors and editors and the many other people who work to make a book successful, you know it’s not easy. Even if your experience stops at trying to incorporate three comments with changes tracked in word processing software, you get the idea. Last week at the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference, a new platform called Booktype was announced. It was created to help you collaborate on editing content and getting it ready for publishing.

• Open Hardware

  • Like to tinker? Two new devices are fully hackable

    “Open source” is a term most often applied to software, and it’s become increasingly common in both the business and consumer worlds.

    What some may not realize, however, is that hardware can be open source too, with design specifications, schematics, source code, and other data about the device’s inner workings available for inspection and customization by the user.

    I’ve already written a few times about the new, Linux-based Spark tablet that’s on the way with unlocked hardware, but recently I came across two other open devices launched in the last few weeks that can be freely hacked and modified. Both the Openmoko GTA04 phone and the Auraslate Lifepad tablet promise a veritable playground for tinkerers and anyone who values complete openness and customizability.

Standards/Consortia

• Open Season on Open Standards

  The increasingly heated debates about the traditionally dull area of computer standards is testimony to the rise of open source. For the latter absolutely requires standards to be truly open – that is, freely implementable, without any restrictions – whereas in the past standards were pretty much anything that enough powerful companies agreed upon, regardless of how restrictive they were.

VA could give Microsoft Office the boot

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• On Anniversary of Prank Call the Real David Koch Wants to “Stop Union Power” in Wisconsin

  One year ago this week, blogger Ian Murphy of the Buffalo Beast pranked Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker by posing as billionaire David Koch on a phone call. As the crowds at the Capitol protesting Walker’s bill to end collective bargaining were increasing in size and volume, the fake Koch inquired how Walker’s efforts to “crush that union” were going. Walker’s fawning response helped rocket the Wisconsin protests into the national media limelight.

Civil Rights

• From encryption to darknets: As governments snoop, activists fight back

  As the Arab Spring hits its first anniversary, tech activists around the globe are continuing their efforts to enable secure communications—especially in areas of the world that are in conflict or transition. After all, it’s become an open secret that governments ranging from Assad’s Syria to local American law enforcement to the newly created government of South Sudan are actively trying to find out what is being said and transmitted over their airwaves and networks.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Trademarks

  • Jeremy Lin Joins The Linsanity Trademark Scrum, Files His Own Application

• Copyrights

  • Canada’s C-11 Bill and the Hazards of Digital Locks Provisions

    While copyright owners claim that they need anti-circumvention laws to address copyright infringement, twelve years’ experience with the U.S. DMCA provisions demonstrates that overbroad digital locks laws can wreak havoc on lawful, non copyright-infringing activities, stifle free speech and scientific research, and harm innovation and competition. The issue is that overbroad anti-circumvention bans can override exceptions and limitations in national copyright laws, restricting or eliminating perfectly lawful non-copyright infringing uses of copyrighted works.

  • ACTA

    • How To Fight ACTA

      Now that the US bills SOPA and PIPA have been put on ice, attention has returned to their parent, an international treaty called ACTA. I’ve written extensively about ACTA before, but in summary it is an international treaty that has been secretly negotiated to ensure as little input as possible from the citizens of any country.

      While superficially about stemming the flow of counterfeit physical goods (ACTA stands for “Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement“), the copyright and patent industries (music, movies, software, pharmaceuticals and more) have successfully infested it and the result is a trade agreement that substantially reduces the scope for discretion over new approaches to business on the internet.

    • MEP Phil Prendergast has a few questions on ACTA

      Members of the European Parliament could submit as many written parliament questions to the Council and the Commission as they like and force these institutions to make official statements. If you have a technical question about specific ACTA provisions or procedural oddities feel free to suggest your Member of Parliament to table them. Most MEPs are not as industrious in tabling parliament questions as Phil Prendergast (S&D, Labour Party Ireland) recently, and they limit their tabling to the “priority questions”/”oral questions”, where they have limitations but the institutions have to answer in a faster pace. In the past most of the numerous questions on ACTA were posed to the Commission, not the Council. However, only the Council is competent to answer the procedural specifics of the strange criminal sanctions parts.

    • Economy Minister blocks ratification of ACTA

      The Economy Minister Daniels Pavluts has decided to block the ratification of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which has caused wide protests in the society.

      On Wednesday, February 8, the Minister announced that he made the decision taking into account the mood of various groups of the society, as well as worries of several experts about the possibility of ACTA implementation in Latvia.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Thoughts on Hiring Linux Hackers (in 2012)

I have interviewed hundreds of candidates and had the delight of hiring dozens of Linux and open source developers, engineers, and interns over the last 10 years — at IBM, Canonical, and now Gazzang. The most recent one signed his contract this morning, in fact! It’s quite a rush to bring new talent into a small team.

Some things you may have heard about Secure Boot which aren’t entirely true

Talking about Secure Boot again, I’m afraid. One of the things that’s made discussion of this difficult is that, while the specification isn’t overly complicated, some of the outcomes aren’t obvious at all until you spend a long time thinking about it. So here’s some clarification on a few points.

Desktop

• Top 5 Ubuntu pre-installed Laptop companies

  While Canonical has a well established business desktop scenario with Ubuntu, finding laptops with preinstalled laptops is sometimes a challenge. Laptops are usually available in two formats. First is the ODM (Original Design Manufacturers) who make the laptops. Second, is OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturers) who purchase from ODM but install their own brand of CPU, hard drive as well as the software. Some of these OEM

Kernel Space

• Graphics Stack

  • OpenChrome VIA KMS Has A Goal For This Summer

  • Nouveau 2D Still Has Room For Improvement

    The Nouveau 2D driver performance used to be very good against the proprietary/binary NVIDIA Linux driver. After running the new Intel SNA benchmarks earlier this month, I ran some quick 2D benchmarks of the latest Nouveau driver and NVIDIA binary driver.

  • Merging feature work to Mesa master

    Over the last six months a lot of feature work has happened in Mesa, and the load has been carried by a lot of different people / organization. In the process, we discovered a number of development process issues that made things more difficult than they needed to be.

  • First Release Of The New Mode-Setting Driver

    David Airlie officially released the first version of the xf86-video-modesetting DDX driver this week. The xf86-video-modesetting driver is a generic KMS X.Org driver that will work with any kernel mode-setting DRM driver in Linux, but only provides shadow frame-buffer support.

  • There’s Hope For DMA-BUF With Non-GPL Drivers

    There’s some resurrected hope for the kernel symbols of the DMA-BUF buffer sharing mechanism to be not restricted to only GPL drivers, which started off as a request by NVIDIA. This could lead to better NVIDIA Optimus support under Linux, among other benefits.

Applications

• Proprietary

  • Bricsys Releases Bricscad V12 for Linux

    Bricsys NV, the developer of Bricscad for design professionals, today announced the release of Bricscad V12 for the Linux operating system. All three editions – Classic, Pro, and Platinum – bring to the Linux world powerful 3D modeling and CAD API programming equal to the Bricsys product line running on Windows.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Puppet And Common Errors

    Installing Puppet can be a nightmare at times especially if you are doing it for the first time. Error messages are not always obvious and would require some experience to understand. So this is my attempt to explain the errors and suggest the solutions.

  • How to mount ISO images in Linux

  • AVG Antivirus For Linux/FreeBSD Plus Sendmail Mail Server

  • Install VLC 2.0 In Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot

  • Install Ubuntu 11.10 on external hard drive, with an ntfs partition at the end

  • Uses for ~/.ssh/config

  • Weekend Project: Get Started with Tahoe-LAFS Storage Grids

• Games

  • Starfarer, An Open World Space Combat and Role Playing Game for Linux

  • Humble Bundle Mojam: Games Made In One Weekend

    The latest Humble Indie Bundle ended earlier this week without much fanfare and less than $1M USD in sales, but there’s a new special weekend bundle that’s a bit different from the rest… This new bundle lasts for only the weekend (28 hours left) as three teams compete to each make a brand new game in the span of this weekend.

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • KDE Commit-Digest for 12th February 2012

• GNOME Desktop

  • Cinnamon 1.3 released

Distributions

• First look at Asturix 4 and On desktop

  About once a year I try a new Asturix release and every time it’s something very different from the previous trial. The developers appear to be casting around, experimenting with this or that, and it always makes for an interesting ride. This time around I found the distribution to be a mixed bag and not in the way I had expected. When I heard they’d put out a release based on Ubuntu with a new, custom desktop I expected a solid base with functioning applications under a buggy interface. For the most part my experience was the opposite. The On interface is pretty good, mixing the mobile-like interfaces we’re seeing cropping up everywhere with enough traditional pieces to make it usable on a full-sized desktop screen. The developers surpassed my expectation there and I found only a few issues with the new interface. On the other hand I found some bugs which shouldn’t have made it through QA testing. For instance, the update manager that pops up and the Software Centre don’t launch with administrator’s privileges and don’t prompt for it. On the live CD there is a log out button in the corner of the screen where I would expect it, but the log out button doesn’t appear post-install, requiring the user to hunt for the proper icon. When trying to launch the backup utility it appears the software wasn’t actually installed, there’s just a useless icon in its place.

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • PCLinuxOS Phoenix Edition 2012-02 Maintenance Release

    PCLinuxOS Phoenix Edition 2012-02 is now available for download, featuring the following updates.

• Red Hat Family

  • JBoss Enterprise Application Platform Achieves Highest-Level Security Certification

  • What’s an “Open Cloud,” Anyway? Red Hat Says It’s Not VMware

    When open source started gaining in popularity, a lot of vendors started trying to co-opt the open source label without actually being open source. You don’t see quite as much of that today, but now we’re seeing vendors trying to affix the “open” label to cloud solutions that really aren’t. Scott Crenshaw, vice president of Red Hat’s cloud business unit, says the idea is “to lure customers in with open and then lock them in.” Bad move, says Crenshaw, because the decisions companies make today about cloud will last into the next decade.

  • Fedora

    • Using LLVM As The Compiler Within Fedora?

      For those wanting to see another polarized discussion taking place within the Fedora camp, similar to the Fedora rolling-release discussion, drop by the mailing list.

    • Apple will use LLVM

      It will be great to know if llvm is ready to do same for several important linux package.

• Debian Family

  • Debian Project News – February 20th, 2012

    * Goodbye Lenny!
    * Debian GNU/Hurd on the rails
    * DPL and legal work
    * Multiarch-ready dpkg
    * GPL in Debian: a study
    * Interviews
    * Other news
    * Upcoming events
    * New Debian Contributors
    * Release-Critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release
    * Important Debian Security Advisories
    * New and noteworthy packages
    * Work-needing packages
    * Want to continue reading DPN?

  • The newsletter for the Debian community

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • What does Ubuntu want to be when it grows up?

        Once upon a time I knew exactly what Ubuntu was. Built on top of Debian Linux, it was the most popular Linux desktop around. Today, Ubuntu is in the clouds, on servers, tablets and smartphones, and, oh yes, it’s still on the desktop. By spreading its energy in so many directions it’s hard to see what Canonical, Ubuntu’s parent company, really wants from Ubuntu. So what exactly is Ubuntu today? Well, here’s my overview of Ubuntu 2012.

      • Ubuntu Command Center: Gnome Control Center

        Ubuntu 12.04 is all about pixel perfecting everything and focusing on the quality of the overall release. This is important since it is a LTS release which would be used by companies and users all over the world for a long time. From the view point of a user and sys-admins, it is important to have all the customizable options in one place. Gnome Control Center is meant for just that. There have been quite some updates on the gnome control center which are worth mentioning.

      • Ubuntu One Available on Vodafone AppSelect

        Ubuntu One team announced today, February 20th, that the Vodafone company has recently added the Ubuntu One Files app on their Vodafone AppSelect app store for the Android platform.

        Vodafone offers the Ubuntu One Files app in the following countries: United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Russia, Portugal, and Greece.

      • ARM On Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Battling Intel x86?

        In recent weeks I have shown how Ubuntu 12.04 is ARM-ing up for better performance on the ARMv7 architecture by enabling hard-float builds and how the TI OMAP4 support has come together resulting in significant performance gains. Nevertheless, how is modern ARM hardware now comparing to the low-end Intel x86 competition? In this article are some results from Ubuntu 12.04 comparing the ARM performance to some Intel Core, Pentium, and Atom hardware.

      • Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Will Try For Intel RC6 By Default

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Linux Mint 12: Why it’s the best desktop OS

          Over the years, I’ve tried every shade of desktop — from the ridiculously complex to the overly simple, from the barely usable to the extremely useful. Recently, the push seems towards touchscreen technology, with little success. Nevertheless, some operating systems — such as Ubuntu Unity, GNOME 3 and Windows 8 — are persisting with touchscreen-friendly features. The problem is these desktops aren’t particularly user friendly.

          Then along comes Linux Mint 12. In terms of user friendliness, it offers something special. Here are the reasons why I think it’s the best desktop operating system available.

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Intel Ships A MeeGo Update For Cedar Trail

    Cedar Trail represents the latest-generation 32nm Intel Atom processors. Unfortunately its graphics though aren’t developed in-house, but at least that’s changing to avoid such situations in the future.

  • Android

    • ZTE bringing two scoops of Ice Cream Sandwich to Mobile World Congress

      Chinese smartphone manufacturer ZTE today announced that it will be brining a pair of new Android smartphones to Mobile World Congress next week, both of them running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

      The ZTE PF200 sports a 4.3-inch display at qHD (540×960) resolution, with an 8-megapixel rear camera and a front-facing camera for video calling. It’ll have LTE, UMTS and GSM radios, as well as NFC, and DLNA and MHL high-def outputs.

    • Huawei Honor (U8860) Review

    • Sony Xperia U shows up next to big brother Xperia S

      Exciting news if you’re a fan of Sony’s Xperia designs, but not the huge displays that seem to permeate the mobile world these days: the Sony Xperia U (also known as the Kumquat/st25i) has been spotted in its first set of leaked photos. It’s getting comfy with Sony’s new international flagship, the Xperia S, in a series of shots found by Android HD Blog (Italian). Both phones share a lot of design DNA, but it looks like the Xperia U is much smaller, with a screen somewhere in the ballpark of 3.2 inches. Like the S, the Xperia U is still running Gingerbread.

    • Huawei Ascend D1 Q press photos leak

      We’ve known that Huawei had something special planned for Mobile World Congress, and this would appear to be it. The first entry in Huawei’s Diamond line is the Ascend D1 Q, and TechOrz.com got their hands on some leaked press shots prior to Huawei’s conference. The renders show a typical high-end Android phone that’s clearly of the large screen variety – probably with a 4.3-inch or larger display. The device’s red-on-black color scheme is reminiscent of the HTC Rezound, though the shape looks more like a Galaxy-class smartphone.

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Is Tablet-Creep in Operating Systems a Bad Thing and Must we Accept it?

    Like it or not, it would appear that the tablet-ification of our desktop operating systems is inevitable. Setting aside the new Metro interface that will take the main focus of Windows 8, Apple are slowly creeping more tablet features into OS X and even Canonical are getting in on the act with their Unity interface for Ubuntu and their removal of drop-down menus. So is tablet-creep a bad thing, and need we accept it?

  • on the economics of Spark

    A question about Spark that we’re hearing fairly often is how the economics behind it will work. This question has come in a few different forms such as requests to explain the price point we settled on or how much of the proceeds will go where. I thought since it has come up a few times instead of answering it in blog comments repeatedly I’d answer it here in a proper blog entry.

    The economics around Spark have, as you might expect, been a focus point for us from the very start of project planning. To state the obvious: if the economics weren’t workable then the project wouldn’t be viable. So that was where we started.

  • Auraslate Is An Open Source Android Tablet For Hackers

    If you’re sick of firmware lockdowns and failed reflashings on your other Android tablets, the Auraslate may be for you. It’s basically an Ice Cream Sandwich-compatible tablet built from the ground up for hax0rz and programmers alike.

  • HP releases source code for its internal TouchPad Android kernel to CyanogenMod

  • HP releases Android on TouchPad code to happy hackers

From open source to sourcing openly

Glyn Moody looks at calls to open up the source code of medical implants and finds they logically lead to recreating, in the image of open source, how we create new digitally controlled devices.

NGINX Open Source Web Server Partners With Parallels Hosting

Open source web server developer, NGINX, has partnered with Parallels, a hosting and cloud services provider to enhance Parallels’ web hosting products with NGINX web server capabilities. Recently ranked as the second most popular web server for active sites, NGINX has just passed the 60,000,000 mark of enabled Internet domains.

MythTV Is Now Forked As Torc

HijackThis Goes Open Source

Trend Micro makes HijackThis open source

Trend Micro open sources spyware tool

The company said it would “maintain the original source code and … update the base code on SourceForge as developers make modifications”.

Open-source software adoption on the rise, report shows

Companies are increasingly turning to open-source software at the expense of proprietary software as they move to cut costs, according to a recent report.

Open-source software is software whose source code is available to the public and is often developed in a public manner.

On the other hand, private entities develop and hold sole legal rights over proprietary software.

Apache embraces cloud with Deltacloud approval

Extending its range of open-source projects to cloud computing, the Apache Software Foundation has approved the Deltacloud as a top-level project, the organization announced Thursday.

Apache Deltacloud Emerges as Top-Level Project

The Apache Software Foundation’s Deltacloud cloud interoperability toolkit has emerged from incubator status to become a top-level project.

The Apache Software Foundation’s (ASF) Deltacloud interoperability toolkit has graduated from the Apache Incubator to become a Top-Level Project (TLP).

Hortonworks University Opens for Hadoop Training, Certification

ICEsoft Launches ICEmobile Open Source Project for Development of Mobile RIAs

Weapons of mass open source destruction

Open source is almost always viewed as a positive force for the onward development of software code, even if the community contribution model still garners criticism relating to quality, compliance and support from time to time.

Citadel banking virus adopts ‘open source’ development

A computer Trojan that targets online banking users is evolving and spreading rapidly because its creators have adopted an ‘open-source’ development model, according to researchers from cyberthreat management firm Seculert.

RIM commits to open source SDK

ICEsoft Launches ICEmobile Open Source Project for Development of Mobile RIAs

‘Google, Facebook wouldn’t have been possible without open source’

JetBrains open-sources Kotlin language

Events

• LibrePlanet 2012 registration opens

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Firefox 10 Relieves Add-On Updating Pain

    Mozilla today patched eight vulnerabilities in Firefox as it shipped the latest iteration in its rapid release schedule.

    Firefox 10, sixth in the line of updates that have been rolling off the development line every six weeks since mid-2011, fixed half a dozen flaws rated “critical,” Mozilla’s highest threat ranking, and another two labeled “high.”

  • Mozilla to reveal open-source mobile OS partners this month

    Open-source software development initiative Mozilla is poised to announce partners for its forthcoming web-based mobile operating system, dubbed Boot to Gecko. “B2G is partnering up,” Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich revealed via Twitter. “More at [Mobile World Congress],” the annual industry event kicking off Feb. 27 in Barcelona. Additional details are unknown.

  • Mozilla outlines Firefox roadmap for 2012

    OPEN SOURCE software outfit Mozilla has outlined its Firefox roadmap for 2012 by saying in effect that it wants to catch up with Google’s Chrome.

SaaS

• Big data and open source software

  The challenge to open source software for handling big data is that it is difficult to use.

  You can either hire a Stanford PhD. . .or, get some knowledge from companies like Cloudera.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• The Document Foundation Incorporated in Germany

  Florian Effenberger today posted the news that The Document Foundation has officially been incorporated in Germany. He said, “With this legal act, the entity officially came to life and is legally recognized.”

• The Document Foundation finally incorporated – Update

  The legal process of incorporating The Document Foundation as a German Stiftung (foundation) has been completed in Berlin, Germany. The creation of a legally based foundation was part of the founding plan of the organisation when it forked from OpenOffice in September 2010. The foundation, which will be the legal entity managing the development of LibreOffice, now has a set of legally binding statutesPDFGerman language link that define the foundation’s objectives, the use of its assets and its management structure.

• A better Office

  THE exciting news last week was the release of LibreOffice 3.5, the latest version of the free and open source office productivity suite.

  Like the OpenOffice project from which it sprang, LibreOffice is a completely free suite of applications for creating documents, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics and databases. Versions are available for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X and Linux. On Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora and openSUSE, LibreOffice is automatically installed.

  Compatible with MS Office, LibreOffice enables users to read and write Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations. Unlike the commercial suite from Microsoft, LibreOffice comes with no licensing fees, so you can download and use it free of charge from The Document Foundation Web site (http://www.libreoffice.org). If you’re a LibreOffice user, you’re in good company. Since its launch in January 2011, the program has been downloaded about 7.5 million times.

Business

• Q&A: Roy Rubin, General Manager of the Magento E-Commerce Platform

• ORDINA : finalist in European Software Excellence Awards with Open Source project

• Semi-Open Source

  • From Russia With Tech Support: Open Source NGINX Remakes Web Servers

  • Open source based workflow management systems

    At Mediology, we thrive on Open Source platforms and the corresponding stacks. We leverage LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) for a lot of the platforms and web based applications we develop.

Project Releases

• Nexus 2.0 Released

  Today, Sonatype released Nexus 2.0, a significant upgrade to their namesake repository software and the engine behind the Central.

  New in 2.0 is the ability to store .NET packages so that builds from different languages can use the same repository store, health and reporting to provide real-time feedback of the state of the repository’s assets, and blocks in place to restrict access to undesirable assets. In addition, the proxy support has been greatly improved for performance, so that large repository clouds can be provided with a single master for the source.

• Version 3.1 of OTRS Help Desk released

  OTRS Inc. has released version 3.1 of OTRS (Open source Ticket Request System), the company’s open source help desk system, and its ITIL-compliant IT Service Management (ITSM) solution. The first stable 3.1.x release of the help desk software includes a “Generic Interface” framework for connecting OTRS to third-party applications via SOAP and HTTP. With the bundled OTRS Ticket connector, users can create, update and search for tickets in other applications such as the SAP Solution Manager.

Public Services/Government

• NASA Powers Down Final Mainframe in Open Modernization Move

  NASA’s CIO announced that the space agency has powered down its last mainframe as it moves into a new distributed environment with systems serving new needs, including mobile apps and open source.

• Blender 2.62

Openness/Sharing

• Save your brains: Get the open source guide to the zombie apocalypse

  The modern zeitgeist is obsessed with zombies. In the past decade, 439 zombie-themed films were made, as compared to only 65 in the previous decade. In 2010, The Walking Dead TV show, based on a successful comic book series by the same name, premiered to 5.3 million people. Its second season premiered to 7 million. Some of our most beloved comic book heroes fell in to the 2005 Marvel Zombies series and its sequels. And even our classic literature isn’t safe. As if Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy hadn’t been through enough, in 2009, along came Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

• Open Source May be the Answer for Pharma and Biotech

  In his State of the Union Speech President Obama called for support for ‘the same kind of research that led to the computer chip and the Internet.’ He rightfully implies that for several decades now the innovation story has been primarily focused on computers, software and communication. As the power of science, technology, and free flow information have pushed modernism to new heights we are witnessing a new wave of innovation in other sectors, especially biotechnology and drug discovery. Yet in order to truly achieve critical mass, the innovation model must evolve from its current form.

• Researchers track mobile phone locations with cheap hardware and open-source software

• uFlavor: Open Source Beverage Startup

• Support Open-Source Kenyan Wind Turbine Project (TODAY)

• Open Access/Content

  • Open-Source Textbooks Most Affordable for Community College Students: ‘Open’ learning resources are more economical than e-textbooks, education advocates say.

• Open Hardware

  • Springwise: Open Source Box Connects Household Objects To The Cloud

    Ninja Blocks are small, open source hardware devices backed by a web service called Ninja Cloud that allows each Ninja Block to talk to the user’s favorite web apps. Without having to write any code, users can configure a Ninja Block to take a picture of their front yard and save it to Dropbox when movement is detected, for example, or to turn on a lamp in the hallway when the baby cries.

Programming

• Google’s student stipends: we want you to flip bits not burgers

  Many of the big IT players today have student developer competitions and events. Microsoft has its Imagine Cup, Yahoo! holds its Open Hack Days (not strictly “student-level” but often attended by many) and Google hosts its Summer of Code.

  Google’s annual “get ‘em while they’re young” initiative is now in its eighth year.

  Actually, that’s a very cheap jibe, Google and the other vendors alike are mostly quite open about the way they give help and advice to student developers and these events mainly represent free tuition — Google’s is an open source project after all.

Standards/Consortia

• UK govt calls for open standards

Security

• Security biz scoffs at Apple’s anti-Trojan Gatekeeper

  Security watchers are expressing reservations about whitelisting security that Apple plans to integrate with OS X Mountain Lion this summer.

  The security feature, dubbed Gatekeeper, restricts the installation of downloaded applications based on their source. Users can choose to accept apps from anywhere (as now) but by default Gatekeeper only lets users install programs downloaded from the Mac App Store or those digitally signed by a registered developer. More cautious users can decide to accept only applications downloaded from the Mac App Store.

Finance

• Why Toxic Debt Looks a Lot Less Toxic

  Some of the same investors who made big profits betting against mortgage bonds before the 2007 housing bust have started snapping up the toxic assets. Hedge fund manager Kyle Bass, who made $500 million when subprime debt cratered, is raising a fund to buy them. He’s joining John Paulson, who made $15 billion in 2007 thanks to the housing bust. Goldman Sachs Group has bought the bonds this year. Remarkably, so has American International Group —the insurer that had to be rescued by the U.S. government in 2008 after its wagers on risky mortgages went bad.

• Emerging Asia Demand for Gold

• Vulture Capitalism Gets a Makeover

  The candidacy of Mitt Romney for President of the United States has drawn scrutiny to the practices of the “private equity” industry. Tired of being bashed as greedy “vulture capitalists,” the industry has launched an effort to polish its image.

  The Private Equity Growth Capital Council (PEGCC), a trade group representing many of the most powerful firms in the venture capital and private equity industry, recently announced its intention to begin a new media initiative called “Private Equity At Work” to correct what it views as “a real lack of understanding about private equity.”

  Private equity firms use the funds of their investors to buy up struggling companies. These companies are then retooled to enhance their perceived potential for profitability and are subsequently resold for a profit. Critics argue that private equity firms often force their corporate clients to cut jobs, increase their debt load or shut down solely to benefit the private equity firm’s bottom line.

Censorship

• Twitter Suspends Four Accounts Critical of Sarkozy: Is This What He Meant By ‘Civilizing’ The Net?

  We don’t know at this stage exactly who asked for these four accounts to be removed, only that according to Twitter’s rules it must have been done “by Sarkozy, or someone acting on his authority”. We asked Twitter about this and it refused to provide specifics on why the accounts were closed or the timing, other than to say that just because the accounts were suspended in the same general time frame, it wasn’t necessarily for the same reason.

  Be that as it may, the near-simultaneous closure of four accounts all critical of a powerful national politician inevitably reminds us that for many countries, “civilizing” the Internet often comes down to censoring it. It’s worrying to see France apparently starting to go down that route — and for Twitter to be helping it.

• MegaBust’s MegaQuestions Cloud the Net’s Future

  On Saturday, January 14th the White House issued a policy statement in response to an online petition against pending anti-piracy legislation signed by more than 100,000 individuals. While supporting efforts to curb infringement of U.S. intellectual property by foreign websites, it outlined that to be acceptable to the Obama Administration any such legislation must guard against online censorship, be narrowly targeted at websites currently beyond the reach of U.S. law, have strong due process protections, be targeted at criminal activity, and not inhibit innovation. The statement was interpreted as indicating that current versions of the Protect IP Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) were not acceptable to the President — although no explicit veto threat was made.

• Wikileaks Denied A Speaking Opportunity At UN Conference About Wikileaks?

  UNESCO, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, is hosting a conference about The Media World after Wikileaks and News of the World. Sounds like it could be an interesting event, but one organization not happy about it… is Wikileaks. Seeing as it was a conference that touched on Wikileaks’ interests directly, Wikileaks asked to take part, and was instead denied a chance to speak at the event. When asked about this, UNESCO actually claimed that choosing to not allow Wikileaks attendees was an exercise in “freedom of expression,” which seems like a poor choice of words.

• No Indian government shall ever censor social media, says minister

  India made headlines last week when Minister of State for Communications & IT, Sachin Pilot, said that online companies like Facebook and Google must comply with the country’s laws. His statement came one day after Google and Facebook revealed that they had in fact already removed content at an Indian court’s request.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Trademarks

  • Linsanity… At The Trademark Office

    Perhaps you’ve been following the “Linsanity” story over the last week or so. Even if you’re not a sports fan, it’s a pretty incredible story. The short summary for the six or seven of you who are sharing a rock to live under is that Jeremy Lin, who excelled at basketball as a high schooler in Palo Alto, was all but written off as having a real future in basketball. No college would give him a scholarship, and many thought that he should sign with a lower ranked college where he could play for fun, but not have any future. Even Stanford, which has a great basketball program and is literally across the street from where Lin played in high school, had little interest in getting Lin to play for them. He ended up going to Harvard (who did want him, but doesn’t do academic scholarships and isn’t known for its basketball program) and then wasn’t drafted by any NBA team. He did eventually sign with the Golden State Warriors (making him the first Taiwanese American NBA player) who played him sparingly last year and then cut him. He was with the Rockets in the pre-season, but they cut him before the season started. Then he signed on with the Knicks who had sent him down to the D-League and were rumored to be getting ready to cut him… before “Linsanity” began about 10 days ago.

  • 97 Las Vegas Karaoke Locations Sued By ‘Righthaven Of Trademarks’ Demanding $500 Million

    Steve Green, who was the absolute best reporter covering the Righthaven saga, recently wrote about the fact that 97 Las Vegas karaoke providers were recently sued by a company called Slep-Tone Entertainment Corp., which apparently mainly does business as “Sound Choice,” selling various karaoke content — music and videos. Green notes that someone familiar with Slep-Tone has called it the “Righthaven of trademark

• Copyrights

  • UMG Artist Tyga’s Album Gets Pulled For Unauthorized MLK Speech?

    After several delays YMCM artist Tyga is set to finally release his album, Careless World, on Feb. 21st. Well he was supposed to – apparently retailers like Best Buy have thrown a wrench into the plan by yanking the album and returning it to the label. It also appears to have been removed from Itunes Pre-Order. According to reports the title track “Careless World” contains portions of a Martin Luther King speech and it’s use on the project is unauthorized. Kings estate has apparently sent notices to retailers asking them to halt the sale of the album and return the copies to Universal Music Group.

  • When We Copy, We Justify It; When Others Copy, We Vilify Them

  • MPAA: Ripping DVDs Shouldn’t Be Allowed Because It Takes Away Our Ability To Charge You Multiple Times For The Same Content

    It’s that time again when the Librarian of Congress is considering special exemptions to the DMCA’s anti-cicrumvention provisions. One of the key proposals, which we discussed earlier, was Public Knowledge’s request to allow people to rip DVDs for personal use — just as we are all currently able to rip CDs for personal use (such as for moving music to a portable device). The MPAA (along with the RIAA and others) have responded to the exemption requests (pdf) with all sorts of crazy claims, but let’s focus in on the DVD ripping question, because it’s there that the insanity of Hollywood logic becomes clear.

  • Hadopi Sends Info On Those Accused (Not Convicted) Of Repeat Infringement On To Prosecutors

    You may remember last fall’s numbers concerning how many first, second and third strikes Hadopi, the French agency in charge of kicking people off the internet for possible copyright infringement, was sending out. Now come reports that France is finally moving beyond just the strikes, and has passed along info on those accused (not convicted) of infringement to “prosecutors” for the next stage, which could result in them losing internet access.

  • MPAA Hires Four Ex-Federal Government Employees, Including One From ICE & Another From The White House

    Two of these aren’t huge surprises. The Pastarnack hire hit the news a few months ago, when people noticed that she jumped from being a point person on PIPA to working directly for the MPAA. Swartsel’s name may also be familiar. We tangled with her last summer, when she bizarrely took to the MPAA’s blog to attack reporter Janko Roettger for accurately predicting that bad economic news might lead people to seek out unauthorized sources of movies, rather than paying through the nose for authorized versions. Now, the MPAA’s former boss had said the exact same thing, but according to Swartsel it’s somehow “intellectually dishonest” to point out what might happen. Swartsel also was the one who flat out mocked the concerns of tech entrepreneurs concerning SOPA and PIPA. Turns out she did all this as a “consultant” to the MPAA — and they thought she did such a bang up job that they’ve hired her full time as “director of global policy.”

  • ACTA

    • IFPI accuses: “protests silence democratic process”

      A lobbying letter, attributed to the IFPI, the international arm of of the recorded music industry, and circulated by a coalition of rights-holders, attempts to wear the mantle of the moral high-ground in Europe’s political battle over ACTA. This wolf in sheep’s clothing also appears to have access to documents which have been denied to civil society.

    • EU Member Bulgaria Halts ACTA, Minister Of Economy Offers Resignation

    • “Green Week”: Ask MEPs to Reject ACTA Back in Their Home Districts!

      This week, Members of the EU Parliament will be back in their home districts to meet with their constituency. This is an important opportunity for EU citizens to get in touch with their elected representatives, and make sure that they understand how dangerous and illegitimate ACTA is. Next week in Brussels, many decisive meetings will take place in the committees of the EU Parliament regarding ACTA.

    • Shining Light On ACTA’s Lack Of Transparency

    • ACTA is a Bad Way to Develop Internet Policy

      ACTA (“Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement”) is a proposed new international law establishing international enforcement standards against counterfeit goods and pirated intellectual property items. ACTA was negotiated as a “trade agreement” which means that it was negotiated in private without open involvement of all the stakeholders. There has been no formal opportunity for input from people other than those who were lucky enough to be invited into the private discussions.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

The Super Dorky Way Programmers Are Trying To Get People Interested In Linux

It’s Friday. That’s the perfect day to have uncovered this weird gem: This week, Rebecca Black got her own version of Linux, RebeccaBlackOS.

She’s not the first teenybopper to get her own open source operating system either. RebeccaBlackOS follows Hannah Montana Linux and Justin Bieber Linux.

Baidu zooms in on mobile

According to Reuters, Li said Baidu was looking to work with more smartphone vendors to expand the reach of its Linux-based Yi mobile platform.

Is Windows 8 a Linux Copycat?

Desktop

• GNU/LInux Sold Retail in Brazil

  They don’t seem to have alphabetical order in mind but they certainly do give space to GNU/Linux. So much for the FUD that GNU/Linux is somehow not ready for consumers. Look at all computers sorted by “Best Sellers”…

• Another Windows XP to Fedora 16 Linux migration

  My thoughts on why businesses and individuals need to start thinking about switching away from proprietary (and high maintenance) software like Windows, and look at open source and free software inste… Read more »ad like GNU/Linux. All articles are based on real world and everyday experiences with Windows and GNU/Linux, for both business and personal use.
  Recently I’ve had the pleasure of replacing yet another Windows XP computer with Fedora Linux (version 16). The user is a relative of mine, and finally became tired of dealing with malware every month or so by simply browsing the web. So at his request I put Fedora Linux on the PC and wiped XP away from it for good. He had already used GNU/Linux on other PCs.

  As stated in a previous post, I came across some issues with Fedora 16 and Gnome 3 with a previous deployment, but this time I knew what to expect. After installing Fedora 16 which took about 25 minutes or so from start to finish, I immediately changed Gnome to Fallback Mode to keep the desktop environment familiar to Gnome 2. My personal thought is that the Gnome 2 look and feel is much better suited for a desktop PC.

Server

• ‘Linux for cloud’ floats anti-Amazon cloud taster

• John Hancock Signs $25m Annuity Admin ITO Contract Extension with CSC

  CSC reports that the new contract authorizes a transition from the current mainframe environment to a new z Linux platform, which the vendor claims will: lower costs through enhanced operational and energy efficiency; improve service through a simplified, integrated environment; and augment risk management via strengthened resiliency and security features.

• SGI’s Opteron-Based ICE System Is Tops in MPI Benchmark

  The SGI ICE 8400 platform with AMD processors is a completely open platform optimized for HPC workloads and runs an off-the-shelf Linux operating system for application compatibility. Although the ICE platform is able to comfortably support multi-petaflop sized installations, design considerations allow cost effective solutions down to a half rack. Single- or dual-plane integrated InfiniBand can be cabled into four different topologies, including hypercube, enhanced hypercube, all to all, and fat-tree, allowing flexible network customization for a variety of workloads.

Kernel Space

• LZ4 For Btrfs Arrives While Its FSCK Remains M.I.A.

  The proper fsck utility for the Btrfs file-system remains M.I.A. while a contribution from an independent developer introduces LZ4 compression support to this next-generation Linux file-system.

  Last month at SCALE 10x the lead developer of Btrfs, Chris Mason, told the crowd that an error-fixing Btrfs.fsck tool was imminent since the file-system is going production-ready in Oracle Linux (Mason is an Oracle engineer) and had a deadline of 14 February.

• Download Linux Kernel 3.3 RC4 Now

• [announce] Gujin GPL bootloader version 2.8.5

• [ANNOUNCEMENT] The Barbershop Load Distribution algorithm for Linux kernel scheduler.

  Here, I’m going to introduce an alternative load distribution algorithm for Linux kernel scheduler. This technique is named as “The Barbershop Load Distribution Algorigthm” or BLD for short and will be refered as BLD from here on. As it’s name implies, it only tries to distribute the load properly by tracking lowest and
  highest loaded rq of the system. This technique never tries to balance the system load at idle context, which is done by the current scheduler. The motivation behind this technique is to distribute load properly amonst the CPUs in a way as if load balancer isn’t needed and to make load distribution easier.

• Linux 3.3-rc4

• World Clamors for Linux Experts, Says Linux Foundation

• Why being a Linux geek could make you more employable

• Linux skills in demand, wages up

• Report: Linux job openings on the rise

  This was the conclusion of the 2012 Linux Jobs Report released yesterday, which surveyed more than 2,000 hiring managers. The survey was conducted by IT job specialist Dice together with The Linux Foundation. The latter is a non-profit foundation set up to promote, protect and advance Linux.

• Kernel Log: Apple streamlines CUPS

  CUPS 1.6, which is currently in development, will no longer include some features used in many Linux distributions. An Intel developer has presented patches that may allow the kernel to use an efficient power management feature by default.

• Graphics Stack

  • Intel Hardware Context Support Patches Arrive

  • Open-Source ARM Mali Code Published

    The initial code push has taken place for the Lima Project, which is the open-source ARM Mali graphics driver that’s under development.

    The Lima stack development is sponsored by Codethink and its lead developer is veteran X.Org developer Luc Verhaegen. Phoronix was the first to break the news on the project last month.

  • OpenChrome Picks Up New VIA Support, But Still Lags

    The xf86-video-openchrome driver has seen its first proper release in quite a while. The xf86-video-openchrome 0.2.905 release has support for new hardware and features.

    The OpenChrome driver is rarely worked on today by the small open-source VIA community, but the new 0.2.905 release that’s now available introduces VX900 support, VX855 X-Video support, X.Org Server 1.12 compatibility, and assorted bug-fixes/tweaks.

  • VMware Virtual GPU Driver Gets Fake Page-Flipping

  • VA-API Video Decoding Support For Wayland

  • Intel Tries To Fix RC6 Support Once Again

    After several attempts that ultimately failed, this weekend Eugeni Dodonov published a patch-set as “Another chapter in RC6 saga…” where he hopes the Sandy Bridge RC6 power-savings (and performance boosting) support is finally reliable to enable by default.

    For those that aren’t familiar with Intel RC6 at this stage, you must read more Phoronix articles as it’s been routinely covered in past months. To get up to speed, read SNB RC6 On Linux 3.1 Is Both Good & Bad where it outlines the power-savings abilities of this hardware feature, which allows the Intel graphics processor to be dropped into a lower-power state. At the same time as conserving precious energy, RC6 can also boost graphics performance as Phoronix benchmarks have shown in other articles.

  • The Technical Plans For Making Wayland 1.0

    After laying out plans earlier this month at FOSDEM for releasing Wayland 1.0 this year, Kristian Høgsberg has now written a more detailed message to the Wayland developers that outlines some of the TODO list and other plans for making Wayland 1.0.

  • Image Quality Comparison: Radeon Gallium3D vs. Catalyst

  • NVIDIA Releases 295.20 Linux Drivers

  • Morphological Anti-Aliasing With Mesa 8.0

    One of the less talked about features of Mesa 8.0 is its ability to handle MLAA, which is short for Morphological Anti-Aliasing. But how does MLAA on the open-source graphics drivers affect the OpenGL performance and is it worth it for boosting the image quality through this anti-aliasing technique? In this article are some benchmarks of MLAA under Mesa 8.0.

    Morphological Anti-Aliasing support for Mesa was worked on last summer as part of the 2011 Google Summer of Code with X.Org. Lauri Kasanen was the student developer responsible for bringing MLAA to Mesa. Unlike many GSoC projects, he was successful in his summer project. In fact, he had MLAA Mesa code ready for testing in July well before the August deadline. In August the support was ready for merging, which also included the Gallium3D post-processing support and ROUND support for the various drivers.

  • Radeon HyperZ In Open-Source On Older Hardware

Applications

• Malicious backdoor in open-source messaging apps not spotted for 3 months

  VLC Media Player 2.0 is a major upgrade to the extremely popular video player, which comes with the ability to open more formats, experimental Blu-Ray support, faster decoding on multi-core CPUs and mobile hardware, and professional High-Definition and 10-bits codecs.

• BVE 2012: Facilis Technology Debuts TerraBlock 5.5 with Support for Linux

  At Broadcast Video Expo (BVE) 2012 Facilis Technology , a leader in advanced shared storage solutions for post-production and content creation, will debut version 5.5 of its TerraBlock Shared Storage System featuring the Facilis Shared File System for Linux. Delivering improved compatibility, value, scalability and performance, the new software release also includes integrated server spanning and mirroring, Adobe Premiere Pro project sharing and a new capacity expansion product called TX16.

• The Best News Reader Application for Linux

  Linux has a few solid RSS readers, but there is one app that stands out from the pack: the feature-filled, customizable RSSOwl.

• 6 Best Free Linux Boot Utilities

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Put Linux on a USB Drive, Bypass Windows Updates

  • How To Install VLC 2.0 In Ubuntu, Linux Mint

  • Find time zones using the command line

  • Printing in GNU/Linux

  • Create a bootable Linux flash drive in three easy steps

  • Howto- Install Cinnamon on Fedora, LinuxMint, Ubuntu(ppa) and opensuse

  • Installing Nginx With PHP5 (And PHP-FPM) And MySQL Support On Fedora 16

  • Move The Navigation Buttons Back To The Left In Nautilus 3+ Linux

  • Truncate KVM/QEMU Raw Disk Image

  • Fun With Video In Linux Using MPlayer

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • Matthias Ettrich: Creator Of KDE

    The KDE 4.0, the latest version of KDE desktop environment, was released recently. On this occasion, we reached out to the founder of KDE project, Matthias Ettrich who started the KDE project back in 1996. Almost 12 years down the line, he’s now working at Trolltech, hacking Qt. Here is what the KDE-Man had to say…[The interview was conducted in 2008. KDE is gaining popularity so we wanted to refresh the memories.]

  • More About the Acer Aspire One 522

    I have switched Linux Mint 12 KDE to the Netbook desktop, and as always it looks nice and is a pleasure to use

Distributions

• Linux Distributions Described In Terms Of Beer

  After trying the openSUSE beer at FOSDEM, which is specially brewed at a small Bavarian brewery near the Nürnberg SUSE office and where many of their developers reside, I began wondering if other Linux distributions were represented by beer, what beers would they be? Continue on for this enjoyable weekend article where the leading Linux distributions are described in terms of beer.

• Sabayon 8 XFCE Review

  Sabayon 8 XFCE is a Gentoo based distribution that comes with XFCE desktop version 4.8 and makes Gentoo a whole lot easier. Gentoo Linux is a more advanced based distribution that has been around a long time which is focused more on advanced users with compiling your own packages (programs) in order to run.

  Sabayon, takes a different approach and takes the hard part out of Gentoo and makes it easy with the latest version in Sabayon 8.Sabayon comes as an installable LiveDVD and is available in 32 bit and 64 bit flavours. Installation did not take that long and was not complicated. The configuration was pretty easy and had you setup your keyboard, select your timezone and so forth.

• Happy Birthday, SimplyMEPIS

  Like a lot of stories, there is more to it than meets the eye. And while on the surface, this is a story about a Linux distribution, there are some life lessons that can be found in it.

  As with many other people, my life saw a lot of dramatic changes in the year 2001. For me, it started in January 2001. I should have been keeping in mind the words of wisdom from the world champion athlete Dan Millman. He wrote The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, and other books. One of his statements is all accidents can be attributed to one of three reasons:

• New Releases

  • Parted Magic 2012_2_19

  • Softpedia Linux Weekly, Issue 187

    · Announced Distro: Finnix 104
    · Announced Distro: Scientific Linux 6.2
    · Announced Distro: Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • PC Linux OS 2012.02: nice and stable

    There are not so many distributions in the Linux galaxy which have names directly showing the purpose of the distribution’s creation. I honestly do not think that Bodhi is going to enlighten anybody or Fedora can stay on your head. As opposed to these, PCLinuxOS directly says that it is a Linux operating system intended to be used on PCs.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat pushes cloud computing interoperability

    Red Hat has announced key steps towards more open and interoperable cloud computing with the promotion of its Deltacloud API to a top-level Apache project and an extension of its partnership with Amazon Web Services that enables hybrid cloud operation of Red Hat Enterprise MRG Grid.

    The moves were announced as part of a Red Hat webcast where the company hammered home the need for an open approach to cloud computing that allows customers to expand easily, enables portability between clouds, and avoids a lock-in to proprietary architectures.

  • CloudLinux Releases Industry’s Only Virtualized File System for Shared Hosters

  • CloudLinux Releases CafeFS

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Unity 5.4 Review

        It is always exciting when new versions of Unity are released since they bring along bug fixes and new features. Well Unity 5.4 was released on Friday. Let’s go through some the features and bug fixes it comes with.

Devices/Embedded

• Like to Tinker? Two New Devices Are Fully Hackable

  “Open source” is a term most often applied to software, and it’s become increasingly common in both the business and consumer worlds.

• Companies to demo ‘world’s most energy friendly’ Linux for Cortex-M3 at Embedded World

  Energy Micro and Pengutronix will be demonstrating µClinux for Cortex-M3, embedded Linux running on the energy friendly EFM32 Gecko range of microcontrollers at this year’s Embedded World Show. This new port of µClinux features the latest version 3.2 Linux kernel, and gives embedded designers all of the cost and time-to-market benefits of using an open source embedded operating system, while maintaining low current consumption of just 1.6mA when in idle mode. Energy Micro, the energy friendly microcontroller and radio company, assisted and supported Pengutronix to complete the port to the Giant Gecko MCU range, the industry’s leading family of low-energy microcontrollers.

• Phones

  • HP: Stop the FUD and show us the real webOS source.

  • Android

    • Motorola Droid XYBOARD/XOOM 2 Root Method By Dan Rosenberg Now Available

    • Ice Cream Sandwich the best Android ever

      Google’s Latest release of Android version 4.0 typically referred to as Ice Cream Sandwich has definitely changed the way in which people visualize smartphone. Essentially the most spectacular thing concerning the Android 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich is it provides almost as good consumer experience in smartphones as in tablets.

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Demo Of The Lima Driver On The KDE Spark Tablet

    The recently announced KDE Spark Tablet has an ARM Mali 400 as its graphics processor, which right now is backed by a closed-source user-space driver but that’s changing thanks to the Lima driver that’s providing a reverse-engineered open-source ARM Mali driver. Here’s a demo of the Lima driver’s Limare stack running on the KDE Spark Tablet hardware.

  • My Experiences with the Nook Color Tablet Running Android OS on a MicroSD Card Prepared Using Linux.

    Conclusion: The Nook Color hardware makes a nice tablet with a really sharp screen at a reasonable price. There seems to be a catch about the version of the Nook Color that you get. Apparently some will NOT boot from the SD card. Research this before tryin it. My Nook Color has Model# BNRV200 and Software 1.2.0. More here. Apparently, you want a Nook Color with a ROM (Software) version prior to 1.4.

  • Spark Linux Tablet Up for Pre-Order, Dev Discusses Economics of Project

Your Language! Your Freedom! preserve it for the next generation!!

I just want to show how you could join the 2012 International Mother Language Day by celebrations by contributing to a FOSS project with your friends and relatives.
In this century ICT plays manor role in various fields including education sector. There are many tools have been localized but most of them not let you in to the project to contribute as a localizer. So where you could contrinute to a softwrae on behalf of your own language or community?

Web Browsers

• Chrome

  • Google’s New ‘Dart’ Language to Get a Starring Role in Chrome

    Google has released an experimental version of the Chromium web browser with support for the company’s new Dart programming language. Dart, which is Google’s attempt to improve on JavaScript, has thus far not enjoyed much support outside of Google, but the company continues to push forward with its own efforts.

    The new development preview version of the Chromium browser, the open source version of Google’s Chrome browser, contains the Dart Virtual Machine. This release, which Google is calling “Dartium,” can be downloaded from the Dart language website. At the moment it’s available only for Mac OS X and Linux. Google says a Windows version is “coming soon.” Keep in mind that this is a preview release and intended for developer testing, not everyday use.

  • Google’s Dart lands in Chromium tech preview

  • Google’s Dart programming language integrated into new version of Chromium browser

• Mozilla

  • The pros and cons of Mozilla’s super-open Boot to Gecko mobile OS

    Mozilla, the folks behind the Firefox web browser, launched a project last year to create a totally open mobile operating system, and now that dream is nearly a reality. Boot to Gecko (B2G) is built entirely with standards-compliant web technologies like HTML and JavaScript. It gets its name from the Gecko rendering engine in Firefox, which is also the platform that will run B2G. Android has a number of things in common with B2G, for instance it is open source, and uses some of the same underlying technology. Designing the entirety of a mobile operating system on web standards is a risky proposition, but B2G does have some advantages over Android.

Project Releases

• VLC 2.0 Released, Support For WebM

  The VLC team has announced the release of VLC 2.0, code named, Twoflower. VLC 2.0 is a major upgrade for VLC. The latest version of VLC offers faster decoding on multi-core, GPU, and mobile hardware and the ability to open more formats, notably professional, HD and 10bits codecs.

• VLC 2.0 available now, includes faster decoding and experimental Blu-ray support

• VLC Player 2.0 released

  Just weeks after the first release candidate, the VideoLAN developers have officially released version 2.0 of the VLC media player for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. VLC media player 2.0, code-named “Twoflower”, is a major reworking of the VLC application, bringing playback improvements and experimental support for playing Blu-ray discs, albeit without menus.

• VLC 2.0 “Twoflower” has been released! PPA Ubuntu11.10 and LinuxMint12

• Linux Mint developer releases Cinnamon 1.3

  The lead developer of Linux Mint, Clement Lefebvre, has released version 1.3 of the Cinnamon desktop environment. This is the first major update of the user interface based on code from the GNOME shell and which was first considered “stable” with version 1.2. In Cinnamon 1.3, all panel components are applets which means, for example, that users can remove a menu or window list and replace it with alternative third-party applets. All applets can also be moved using drag & drop so that users have even more control over where to position them.

Public Services/Government

• New EU-level spat over open standards

  The European parliament is currently consulting on a wide-ranging draft European Commission regulation on European standardisation. Voting in the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee, which is spearheading the legislation, is set to take place in March. The initiative is intended to create a comprehensive, effective, broadly applicable standardisation system. The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) has criticised the proposal as paving the way for standards which are poorly compatible with open source software.

  A reform of the existing piecemeal European standardisation framework is, according to an FFII paper on the Commission’s proposal, long overdue. Their analysis claims that current regulations are not designed for specifications for software interfaces or data formats. According to the FFII, the proposal would mean accepting standards from international consortia licensed under FRAND (Fair Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory) terms and conditions.

Standards/Consortia

• Google is being sued by some idiot using Safari on a Mac. US Congress critters investigate.

  There’s a big stink going on right now. Someone found out that Google was setting “third party cookies” (for their advertising servers) in Apple’s Safari browser, which defaults to not loading third party cookies (which I’ll get to in a moment).
  Now it appears that someone using Safari on a Mac that expected privacy somehow, is suing Google. (The PC World article on the first link has a more accurate technical description of what’s going on)
  In short, someone found a bug in Safari, and now Google is being sued and is under investigation by Congress. We know how much Congress can be expected to know about the internet based on their hilarious to horrifying attempts to regulate it as many of them uttered things like “I don’t know how this here internet thing works, but they tell me….” or the late Senator Ted Steven’s infamous “series of tubes” comment. To say nothing of the fact that Congress flip flops between mandatory tracking for all and bullshit “consumer privacy concerns” such as this one. (For those concerned with the former, the bill is called HR 1981, but a more fitting name would be HR 1984)
  If this was a bug in Firefox, it would be fixed. If it was a bug in Chrome, it would be fixed.
  Somehow, Microsoft and Apple users seem to think they can use proprietary secret software when they’re not allowed to know how it works. Software, which has a history of many bugs, with vendors that typically take weeks/months/years to patch them once they’re made public. These companies also slip back doors into the software for various government agencies.
  Apple was recently caught with a back door that they put into iTunes, it remained there for 3 years, undetected, which facilitated man in the middle attacks. (A government could use this to run a counterfeit iTunes server and load malicious software onto the victim’s computer. The article calls it a flaw, but we know what was really going on, and that it was likely just moved.).

Security

• Malicious backdoor in open-source messaging apps not spotted for 3 months

Finance

• NJ programmer freed as NY court orders acquittal

  A smiling former Goldman Sachs computer programmer was freed from prison Friday after a surprise ruling from a federal appeals court reversed his conviction on charges he stole computer code.

  “Justice occasionally works,” declared the beaming programmer, Sergey Aleynikov.

  He said he “just jumped all over the place” at 6 a.m., the moment he read and repeatedly reread an email from his lawyer informing him that the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan had reversed his conviction. The words were, he said, “‘We won!’”

• Goldman Sachs caught in a Sharia Catch-22

  According to an article in the Arab News, Shariah-committed imams declined to issue its religious approval (fatwa) for the Goldman Bond derivative because the “use of proceeds” to fund Goldman’s non-Islamic business is forbidden, according to Shariah finance laws.