• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Desktop

• Google: Chromebooks will succeed where Linux netbooks failed

  Pichai says that Chromebooks are ideal for anyone who doesn’t want to deal with the complications that come with more traditional operating systems.

  [...]

  “We have 160 million users of the Chrome browser and for them, buying a Chromebook would be the most seamless transition ever. If you’re already using Chrome sync, and you log in to a Chromebook and first time, it’s all there.

• Hey, Where Are All The Clueless Newbs Who Can’t Use A Phone?

  Why is a “command line” on a microwave OK, but not on a computer?

  Why are dashboard indicators OK on a car, but not on a computer?

  Why is it OK to have three remotes with a total of 200 buttons just to watch TV, but if a computer interface has more than two steps to do anything, that’s unacceptable?

  [...]

  Everybody’s too embarrassed to admit that they don’t know how to use a phone, so they MAKE SURE THEY KNOW HOW TO USE A PHONE. Being computer illiterate, however, is trendy and fashionable. It’s considered cute in our society to giggle tee-hee-hee, “I’m a computer-dummy!” But to be a phone dummy? Now you’re ostracized from society, handicapped, crippled, can’t even get a job or a date!

• Aroint thee, Linux Penguin! Thou Hast Made Me Look like a Fool!

  The moral I learned after my pride was shattered: You don’t have to be a genius anymore to use Linux. Any plain, regular individual may use it provided that he or she remembers it is something different and thus wants to learn about it.

Server

• Toshiba Launches Linux-Based IP Media Server for Business Applications

Audiocasts/Shows

• Podcast Season 3 Episode 12

Applications

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Ripping DVDs in Linux with OGMRip

  • Add Your Windows, Mac, and Linux PCs to Your ‘Personal Cloud’ with Pogoplug Software

  • Q&A: Using a Mac to Turn a Windows Laptop Into a Linux Machine

  • Quick and Dirty SSH Tunneling

  • Task Management from the CLI to Android with Todo.txt

• Games

  • PC Gaming: Doomed? or zDoomed?

    Some of the most rewarding PC games out there were built by indie developers using open source code.

  • Digitanks to Get a Linux Port

    Fun tank fight and strategy game Digitanks will be soon ported to Linux. The developers of the game have launched a new exciting 5 for $5 gaming bundle but 4 out 5 games are for Windows, the only one for Linux being Steel Storm : Burning Retribution. In the same announcement post, they have said that a Linux port for Digitanks is on the way.

Distributions

• The Stomach-Churning Prospect of Installing Linux

  Ninety percent of today’s Linux distributions “can be easily used by just about anyone when properly configured and presented with a couple minutes of explanation to the new user,” wrote Thoughts on Technology blogger and Bodhi Linux lead developer Jeff Hoogland in his post on the site.

• Gentoo Family

  • Press Release: Sabayon Linux 6 GNOME and KDE

    We’re once again here to announce the immediate availability of Sabayon 6, one of the biggest milestone in our project.
    Letting bleeding edge and reliability to coexist is the most outstanding challenge our users, our team, is faced every day.
    There you have it, shining at full bright, for your home computer, your laptop and your home servers.
    Because we do care about our community, we do listen to our users, we consider them part of the game, we decided to leave GNOME3 out for another, last, release cycle, in order let things to settle down: providing a broken user experience has never been in our plans.

  • Sabayon Linux 6 Released, Looks Better Than Ever

    · Linux kernel 2.6.39.1;
    · X.Org Server 1.10;
    · GNOME 2.32.2;
    · KDE SC 4.6.4;
    · Chromium as default web browser;
    · Native support for Btrfs filesystems;
    · Support for 16:9 and 16:10 widescreen LCD monitors;
    · Brand new and amazing artwork and boot music intro;
    · Improved boot speed;
    · LibreOffice 3.3.3;
    · Entropy 1.0 RC10;

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat Profit Jumps 35%

    Red Hat Inc. (RHT: News ), the world’s largest seller of Linux software, said Wednesday after the markets closed that its first quarter profit rose 35% from last year, as revenue surged 27% amid strong demand for its products and services.

  • Red Hat Sales to Triple to $3 Billion in Five Years, CEO Whitehurst Says

    Red Hat Inc. (RHT), the largest seller of Linux software, aims to triple sales to $3 billion in five years, helped by the rising popularity of cloud computing, Chief Executive Officer Jim Whitehurst said.

  • Red Hat shows robust growth

    Red Hat shares are likely to rise this morning after its latest quarterly results exceeded expectations and the Linux software company upped its guidance for the year.

    Meanwhile, the Raleigh-based company has narrowed its search for a new headquarters site to “two or three” and expects to make a decision by the end of the summer, Chief Financial Officer Charlie Peters said in an interview.

  • Red Hat: ‘Yes, we’ll break $1 billion this year’

    Red Hat’s top brass talks a good game about being concerned with the global macroeconomic situation, but the truth of the matter is that what Red Hat has is selling despite the economy, or maybe because of it. And all that the world’s largest beneficiary of the open source community needs to do is not screw it up and it will break the $1bn mark this fiscal year.

  • Convirture Joins Open Source Virtualization Alliance

  • Red Hat Enterprise MRG 2.0 Now Available with Expanded Performance, Scalability and Cloud Readiness

    Red Hat Enterprise MRG delivers high-speed/low latency, open-standard application messaging; a deterministic low-latency realtime kernel; and a high-performance computing grid scheduler for distributed workloads and cloud computing. Today’s release of Red Hat Enterprise MRG 2.0 expands upon the Enterprise MRG functionality with the following enhancements…

• Debian Family

  • If you’re running Iceweasel 4.0.1 from mozilla.debian.net, change your sources to Iceweasel 5.0

  • LibreOffice is now in Debian Squeeze Backports

    But what about Debian Squeeze, the project’s Stable release? Stable Debian releases traditionally don’t get new packages in their core repositories. That means LibreOffice will be included in the next Stable release, the current Testing release (Wheezy). Wheezy will be declared stable sometime in the future. I’d say a year from now.

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Verdasys Extends Digital Guardian Linux Support to Ubuntu 10

      • Has Unity Knocked Ubuntu Off Its Pedestal?

        Ubuntu, meanwhile, has now slipped down to third position for the month, marking the first time in a very long time the distribution has held anything but the No. 1 crown.

      • Ubuntu 11.04 explored: a new dawn for Linux?

        …wait till you experience Unity – and there’s a lot more to it than glitter.

      • New Tutorial for Unity Desktop Customization–Worth Looking Into

        Some would argue that Unity doesn’t make things easy, though. At least in terms of desktop customization, Softpedia’s tutorial is worth looking into for this reason. The tutorial walks you through cleaning your desktop, installing the Cairo dock, installing a new GTK2 theme, and making final touch-ups.

        Community outcry against Unity will continue for the next couple of years, but easy-to-follow documentation for it is appearing, and, in the end, it will probably make Ubuntu friendlier for many potential new Linux users. If you are brand new to Ubuntu itself, also check out our guide to free Linux resources.

      • Ubuntu 11.10 Development Update

        *

        Oneiric development is in full swing and with Feature Freeze still 7 weeks away, most of the intrusive changes are landing in the development release as we speak. Alpha 2 will be released in two weeks which should be a great time to check out what’s currently happening. As always: the status overview might give you an idea how each feature is progressing.

        [...]

        In 2004 I had been using Debian for a couple of years already as my exclusive computing experience and enjoyed it very much. Looking back it’s a bit hard to say why I never got involved in Debian immediately.

      • [Ubuntu 11.10 Updates] Synaptic Gone, Welcome Aboard Deja Dup

        Synaptic Package Manager will be no longer shipped as default application as an update today removed it from CD. However, it will be easily installable from repositories.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • The Bodhi Guide to Enlightenment

          We’ve created a faux desktop that acts as a graphical index. Just click are the area that you want more info on!

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Android

    • 15 Best Android Apps for Travelers Among You

      Google is activating some 400,000 new Android devices every single day now(source) and Android is already the fastest growing and most popular smartphone OS in many parts of the world. In tune with its rising popularity, Android’s applications base is also showing stupendous growth. We have already featured a bunch of must have open source Android applications and now here is a collection of Android apps dedicated to travelers among you.

    • New Xperia phones include fitness model with Ant+ networking

      Sony Ericsson announced two compact Android 2.3 phones, including a 1GHz, 3.0-inch Xperia Active, which offers features such as water resistance and Ant+ wireless networking — aimed at personal fitness and health monitoring.

    • Android market share grows 400%

    • Five Reasons Why Android Can’t Fail!

      I have great respect for SJVN, and I am also a big fan of his for writing sensational headlines. The latest being “Five reasons Android can fail”.

    • US Patent Office Rejects Oracle’s 17 Out Of 21 Android Claims

      Groklaw reports, “In the reexamination of U.S. Patent 6192476 the USPTO has issued an office action in which it rejects 17 of the patent’s 21 claims.”

      The site further writes, “While Oracle has asserted seven different patents in its claims against Google, if this reexamination is exemplary of what Oracle can expect in each of the other reexaminations, Oracle will have a hard time finding claims that it can successfully assert against Google, and there lies Oracles conundrum. Oracle either has to agree with the court’s directive to limit the number of claims it will assert at trial, or it is likely the court will simply stay the trial until the reexaminations are complete.”

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Amazon to launch tablet PCs in August-September, say Taiwan component makers

    Amazon adopts processors developed by Texas Instruments, with Taiwan-based Wintek to supply touch panels, ILI Technology to supply LCD driver ICs and Quanta Computer responsible for assembly, the sources indicated. Monthly shipments are expected to be 700,000-800,000 units.

Open source isn’t an innovation killer

While open standards give customers options, execs from Dell, VMware and Facebook at GigaOM’s Structure conference in San Francisco Wednesday said that open source wouldn’t be the death of innovation or revenues in cloud software and hardware development. However, businesses that wish to survive will need to provide value over and above the commoditized aspects of open computing platforms.

[...]

Unlike proprietary solutions, open source offerings let developers use computing platforms without the fear of being locked in. For them, the advantage isn’t about being free so much as being flexible. “Everyone wants to be in the public cloud, but there are few that want to walk into the deep end and just jump in,” said Derek Collison, CTO and Chief Archictect of VMware’s Cloud Division.

The Big Open Source Winner May Be Rackspace

OpenStack is based on a software project originally begun by NASA, designed to manage its computing needs. Since the project was first announced last July, in order to reduce government expenses and keep the software growing, 77 companies have joined it.

Why? Ever since Amazon (AMZN) made a success of its EC2 cloud, software companies and hosting providers have been searching for a way to match it.

Ridiculous Assertion: Righthaven Ruling Threatens Open Source

With the recent Righthaven ruling effectively declaring Righthaven’s legal strategy a sham, someone going by the somewhat uncreative name “Plessy Ferguson” sent us the following essay claiming that the ruling is a disaster for open source development.

Echo Nest launches open source audio fingerprinting tool

“Our platform becomes even more powerful for developers with this new addition.”

Events

• Upcoming Open Source Webinars: Linux Foundation, OpenStack, Sangoma

Web Browsers

• Chrome

  • Google launches an open source Chrome security tool

    INTERNET GIANT Google has launched an open source Chrome extension that can help with identifying client-side security holes.

• Mozilla

  • Brendan Eich hands over responsibility for Mozilla’s JavaScript engine

    In the announcement, Eich describes how he wrote the first prototype for the script language in just 10 days, 16 years ago; at the time, he was practically the only person handling the development. He also discusses some early milestones, including standardisation by Ecma (European Computer Manufacturers Association).

  • Mozilla Firefox, From Darling to Enemy in One Release

    Complaints pretty much have one thing in common: They claim there isn’t enough ‘new and shiny’ things inside FF5 to warrant a major version. This is illogical thinking because major version means NOTHING when it comes to usability of software. I’ve noticed that I can browse and use FF5 just as easily as I could FF4 and FF3 before it…I still type in URL’s and websites display. My plugins all still work. It starts up a bit faster and websites seem to load just a bit faster…which is good. So why all the whining and complaining?

Healthcare

• How open will open-source be?

  Of keen interest regarding the VA’s open-source project is: Will the remodeled VistA remain as open as the current VistA is, or will it become more proprietary, subjecting users to an increasing number of software license fees? To look for answers, I’ve asked the VA to send me a copy of Tiag’s winning bid, but some clues can be found in a 72-page document linked to the contract award notice posted June 20 on the FedBizOps website.

Project Releases

• Eclipse BIRT 3.7 released, now talks Hadoop

  The latest release of Eclipse BIRT, Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools, has been made available by the Eclipse Foundation project as part of the Eclipse Indigo release train. The latest version includes a reworked POJO runtime which is easier to integrate into Java EE applications; previously, as BIRT was an Eclipse-based project it relied on OSGi to deploy the report designer and the runtime, but the latter was difficult to configure under Java EE because of OSGi’s classpath handling.

• Blender 2.5 series update improves stability

  After two months of development, the Blender Foundation and its associated online developer community have announced the arrival of the second stable release of the Blender 2.5 series. According to the project’s roadmap, the next stable update to the open source 3D content creation suite, Blender 2.59, is expected to arrive in August, after which development on the 2.6x cycle will begin, targeting new updates every 2 months.

Public Services/Government

• Bristol’s voyage to open source software hits choppy waters

  Sirius’ managing director, Mark Taylor, said his company had been engaged by the council 12 months ago to undertake strategic work prior to the roll out of an open source pilot. However, he says Computacenter unilaterally changed a joint report made by the two companies at the last moment and “we were kicked off the project”.

• Bristol City Council open source project in turmoil

  Councillor Mark Wright, who pushed through the project in September 2010, was voted out of his post as ICT portfolio holder a month ago, after a private vote of Liberal Democrat members.

  [...]

  The ICT portfolio was passed to Council leader Barbara Janke, who has said she is still committed to Bristol’s open source strategy, which she had backed when Wright put it before the Cabinet as an instrument of economic regeneration and part of Bristol’s “Digital City” campaign.

• S. Korea pushing to open integrated information center on N. Korea

  South Korea is pushing to build an open source-based center that will consolidate information on North Korea next year, an official said Thursday.

  The envisioned center will collect scattered information made public by media reports, press releases and announcements by international organizations, said the official at the Unification Ministry handling inter-Korean affairs.

Licensing

• Embedded GPL – An Important Case from Germany

  Law suits involving the interpretation of the GNU General Public License actually tend to be pretty far and few between . . . except in Germany. And that’s where we find the most recent case of interest involving Cybits, a company that makes products for protecting children on line, AVM, the maker of the Fritz!Box router, and well known GPL enforcer, Harald Welte, who in this instance is intervening on behalf of Cybits. This suit involves the actions of Cybits which downloads the Fritz!Box software/firmware onto a user’s computer, modifies that software, and then reloads it onto the Fritz!Box router. AVM brought an action for copyright infringement, trademark infringement and violation of competition law.

Openness/Sharing

• Open Source Institutions vs. the Corporate State

• Open Source Comes to Academic Publishing

  When we talk about the upheaval in educational publishing, we often focus on what students read, via digital textbooks, apps, and e-readers and tablets. But there’s another side to all this, and that’s the production of the scholarly works.

Programming

• Eclipse Indigo released with WindowBuilder GUI tool and EGit 1.0

  The Eclipse Foundation has announced the release of Eclipse 3.7, codenamed Indigo. The latest version of the popular open source integrated development environment (IDE) introduces some new components and improved functionality.

  Eclipse’s modular design and emphasis on extensibility have helped attract a large ecosystem around the software. It is built and maintained like a tooling platform rather than just a standalone application. A great deal of specialized functionality is implemented in plug-ins, allowing the IDE integrate with a lot of external tools and support a wide range of programming languages and development toolkits.

Standards/Consortia

• The importance of standards

  Mankind has always struggled to agree on the best way to do certain key tasks. This is the origin of society itself – every culture that has ever existed has at its heart a shared set of standards by which it lives and through which it interacts with the world around it.

  These standards define what is and what isn’t acceptable, and they give the members of that society a shared frame of reference by which they can understand each other. Language, commerce and even religion have all been expressions of that shared set of standards.

  Financial messaging standards are a continuation of this trend. Sitting at the heart of virtually all economic activity, from executing the smallest retail transactions to managing massive global institutional businesses, they play a key role in enabling modern society to function effectively.

  Nowhere is the cause of standards in financial messaging championed more enthusiastically than at SWIFT. Since its genesis in the 1970s, SWIFT has worked at removing ambiguity and incompatibility in how banks and financial institutions interact with each other, while simultaneously championing security and higher levels of automation.

• UK open standards commitment cut back

  Bill McCcluggage, deputy government CIO and Cabinet Office director of ICT policy, has sharply curtailed the government’s previous plans to mandate royalty-free open standards. According to reports, McCluggage was speaking to the Guardian Computing Conference in London when he said that the government only intends to implement a handful of open standards.

  Referring to government ICT policy, McCluggage said “It doesn’t say we will mandate all open standard, it says we will decide upon a series of open standards and then we will decide which ones to almost fixate upon in terms of delivery.”

  Although the policy described by McCluggage may have a better chance of success, it is a step back from the previous policy declaration of open standards mandated across government. That policy had already drawn criticism from standards organisations who objected to the royalty-free element of the UK Government policy.

Civil Rights

• EFF Urges Supreme Court to Hear Vernor v. AutoDesk First Sale Case

  EFF has filed an amicus brief [PDF], urging the US Supreme Court to grant certiorari to Timothy Vernor in Vernor v. AutoDesk. This is a first sale case, so I know many of you are interested in this latest development.

  Here’s Groklaw’s coverage of the decision by the appeals court last year, and here’s our coverage of the ruling at the district court in 2009, which had ruled in favor of Vernor, only to be reversed by the appeals court. Some background and resources on first sale cases may help you to follow along. Here’s a list of important first sale cases on Groklaw’s Legal Research page. If you recall, Michael A. Jacobs of Morrison & Foerster, who represented Novell against SCO successfully, represents AutoDesk.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • Axe the Act

    The Pirate Party is constantly working hard to protect the rights of citizens across the country. From the outset we have been vocal critics of the Digital Economy Act. The Act was forced through in the dying days of a discredited parliament and survived a judicial review. It has seen popular opposition and objection from business, it has been rejected by those who it will have an impact on as well as those who must enforce it.

  • ACTA

    • ACTA Ratification Underway, Must be Rejected

      With the EU Commission’s announcement of the upcoming release of a memo regarding the signature and ratification of ACTA by the European Union, La Quadrature has sent a letter to Christine Lagarde, French Minister of Economic Affairs. The citizen advocacy group solemnly asks France not to sign this dangerous and illegitimate agreement and encourages citizens from all the negotiating countries to do the same.

Anti-Trust

• FTC Approves Microsoft Takeover of Skype.

  The FTC again demonstrates it is a servant of big business, not citizens of the US much less the rest of the world. The Slashdot comment is:

  users will be able to turn to Microsoft when asking questions of Skype’s sometimes-spotty service

• Eight Skype executives were fired when Microsoft took over and they were as deprived of buyout money the same as anyone else in the company who only had a tiny share to begin with.

  There’s a kind of employee stock purchase agreement loophole which permits company owners to buy back stock from non-executive employees at a low fixed price before a merger or acquisition. All the appreciation in company value moves back from employees to investors.

  If Silver Lake was funded by Microsoft to begin with, the takeover is a self deal and the $8.5 billion price tag is another Microsoft sham.

• Microsoft Boosters describe forced Skype updates as a fix.

  The service worked well before Microsoft came around, why would they need to fix it? The forced upgrades have outraged Apple users.

  [Mac] Users with v2.8 are being pushed an update to v5 regardless of update preferences. I even restored v2.8 from TimeMachine only to have it update itself again within minutes, offering only an option to relaunch the app.

  Non free software is an injustice, the extent of which is only a thought experiment or one owner away.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • Someone asks Slashdot how to automaticaly discover unauthorized copies of music.

    The question makes no sense because there is no difference between an authorized copy and one that is not. It is rumored that publishers once polluted public networks with watermarked files, but each of those should be considered an authorized copy because the publisher shared it.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

PS3 Hacker Resigned to Prison Sentence after Money Dries Up

PS3 Hacker Resigned to Prison Sentence after Money Dries UpAmerican hacker George Hotz got all the headlines for his exploits trying to bring Linux back to the PS3, but he was only one of many working towards the same goal. And while Hotz today walks free, not everybody is so lucky.

Windows Newlines Will Kill Your Linux Scripts

What’s going on is that you really do have a fatal error in your code, and it’s an error that you can’t see. In fact, it’s invisible. The error is that you have uploaded a file that you created on a Windows machine.

Desktop

• Several vendors plan to offer ARM-architecture notebooks

  The sources pointed out that ARM-based systems using Android were already launched under the smartbook name two years ago with Toshiba and Lenovo both launching products in the retail channel. However, due to weaker than expected demand, the related products were soon phased out of the market.

• Five Ubuntu-powered Netbooks & Laptops That Don’t Cost The Earth

  So you’re in the market for a new computer, preferably a netbook or ultra-thin portable, but you want a device with Ubuntu pre-installed.

Audiocasts/Shows

• FLOSS Weekly 171: Software Freedom Conservancy

Kernel Space

• Linux 3.0-rc4

  Some filesystem fixes (btrfs, cifs, afs, xfs, nfsd).

• Linux 3, LibreOffice and Firefox Advance as Adobe Falls Behind

• Will Linus Like Your Video?

• The Linux Kernel Power Problems On Older Desktop Hardware

  As mentioned last week, a plethora of Linux power tests are on the way now that we have found an AC power meter with USB interface that works under Linux and we’ve been able to integrate nicely into the Phoronix Test Suite and its sensor monitoring framework. In this article is one of the first tests that have been completed using this power-measuring device as we monitored the Linux kernel power consumption for an old Intel Pentium 4 and ATI Radeon 9200 system for the past several kernel releases. Even this very old desktop system looks to be affected by the kernel power problems.

• XFS Is Becoming Leaner While Btrfs & EXT4 Gain Weight

  Red Hat’s Eric Sandeen has written an interesting blog post concerning the size of popular Linux file-systems and their kernel modules. It turns out that the XFS file-system is losing lines of code, while maintaining the same feature-set and robustness, but the EXT4 and Btrfs file-systems continue to have a net increase in lines of code.

• Graphics Stack

  • Harnessing GP-GPU Power The Easy Way

    The remarkable computation power of General Purpose Graphical Processing Units (GP-GPUs) has led them to steadily gain traction in High Performance Computing (HPC). But creating GP-GPU programs can require new programming methods that often introduce additional work and code revisions, or even re-writes, and frequently become an obstacle to the adoption of GP-GPU technology.

  • Intel Continues Work On Ivy Bridge Linux Graphics Support

    Intel’s current-generation “Sandy Bridge” processors continue to sell incredibly well and perform phenomenally relative to AMD’s current offerings and Intel’s previous-generation hardware. Under Linux, the Sandy Bridge support is now excellent if pulling in the latest components (namely the Linux kernel, xf86-video-intel, and Mesa) and only continues to be improved over time with advancements like their new driver acceleration architecture. By year’s end, Intel is expected to launch their “Ivy Bridge” processors as the successor to Sandy Bridge. Intel is already preparing the Ivy Bridge Linux support code.

Applications

• Osmo PIM: The Strong, Silent and Incredibly Capable Type

  Although it doesn’t sync with other computers or a Web-based calendar, it does much of what you would expect from a solid PIM. As long as you’re on the same machine, it’s constantly available. I dislike apps that force me to keep an open window or minimize it to avoid constantly closing and opening them. If you are like me in that regard, you will take very quickly to Osmo’s background feature.

• Proprietary

  • The Days Of Skype Are Over? WebRTC Is The Future?

    According to a Google Group post by Henrik Andreasson, “We would like to announce that a new open source project is about to land in src/third_party/webrtc.

    All details about WebRTC in general can be found at http://www.webrtc.org/. Our goal is to enable Chrome with Real-Time Communications (RTC) capabilities via simple Javascript APIs. We are working hard to provide full RTC support in Chrome all the way from WebKit down to the native audio and video parts. When we are done, any web developer shall be able to create RTC applications, like the Google Talk client in Gmail, without using any plugins but only WebRTC components that runs in the sandbox.”

    The team is implementing WebRTC into its Chrome browser, which will enable users to chat in real time without having to run clients like Skype. Since its runs in Sandbox, your system remains secure and safe.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • 5 Tips for Managing RPMs

  • Postfix/Dovecot Authentication Against Active Directory On CentOS 5.x

  • Installing Lighttpd With PHP5 And MySQL Support On Ubuntu 11.04

  • Configure Linux Clients to Connect to OpenVPN Server

  • Adding CentOS 5.6 to a local YUM Repository

  • How to install tweetdeck on debian

  • Build Your Own Linux Test Server, Setting Up Storage

  • Auto-configure IPv6 for your Network

• Games

  • Open Source Game 0 A.D. Making Leaps and Bounds

    It’s been a while since we last checked in with 0 A.D., the open source project which, as I’ve said before and will say again, could have huge implications for the open source channel. Sadly, the game is not yet complete, but it’s made some major leaps in recent months, which the team recently shared with me. Here are the highlights.

  • 3D Fantasy MMORPG ‘PlaneShift’ Updated to Version 0.5.7 with Many New Features

    PlaneShift is a free and open source MMORPG for Linux featuring a 3D virtual fantasy world. Unlike many other MMORPG’s, there are no surprises of premium content in PlaneShift which will limit your gameplay or unbalance the game. There are no limitations in skills, ranks, abilities, items you can gain with your free account. There are no time limits or additional constraints.

Desktop Environments

• Keynote Interview: Claire Rowland

  Claire Rowland, user experience guru, will be a featured keynote speaker at this summer’s Desktop Summit 2011 in Berlin.

  Claire is Head of Research for Fjord London, an international digital service design agency and has worked extensively in user experience research and design. Recently her focus has been on a shift in user experience from the desktop toward services delivered through multiple platforms of widely differing form factors and the cloud. Her research and recommendations relate to what this shift means for what users expect from their devices, and what effective design, across platforms and the cloud, looks like. It also addresses what users increasingly care about the most, and what this might mean for Operating System design.

• Meet Claire Rowland, Desktop Summit Keynote Speaker

• Xfce Design SIG launches

  I’m looking forward to working with Xfce directly and more closely after working years with Xubuntu. It’s both easier for us and assures that all Xfce users can enjoy the improvements, not just those who use Xubuntu.

• GNOME Desktop

  • GNOME Shell Extensions To Get A Website With One-Click Install Support

    A new project called “SweetTooth” aims to help improve the GNOME3 extension infrastructure, making it easy for the users to find and install approved extensions.

  • GNOME3 and openSUSE 12.1 – A conspiracy theory!

    This text is based on a personal interpretation of several events, and as such it reflects one of several potential interpretations, MINE!

    On the last GNOME Team meeting there was a small topic to check if it would be interesting to have a GNOME2 spin for the upcoming 12.1 release of openSUSE. It was decided not to provide a GNOME2 spin and somehow this suggests that GNOME2 is dead for openSUSE (unless someone takes the job in).

  • What to do if you can’t do 60fps?

Distributions

• The 2011 Linux Distro Scorecard

  You can find hundreds of Linux distributions, depending on what your needs are. For this scorecard, we’re focusing on desktop distributions that are fairly popular, well-supported, and have a reliable release history, and strong community. In last year’s scorecard, we started with seven distros — this year, we’ve narrowed the field to six distributions:

  * Debian
  * Fedora
  * Linux Mint
  * openSUSE
  * Slackware
  * Ubuntu

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • Install Mageia 1 on an encrypted btrfs file system

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat Setting for a Break Out?

    New York, June 22nd (TradersHuddle.com) – Shares of Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) closed the trading session at $43.75 near its 50 day and 200 day moving averages currently set at $44.64 and $43.31 respectively. Red Hat’s price action is above the 200 day moving average but below its 50 day moving average, signaling a possible break out.

  • Red Hat to Host Cloud Technology Update Webcast on June 23

  • Amazon EC2 now runs Red Hat Linux

    EC2 has many different operating systems available, including Windows Server and several different Linux versions including SUSE, Oracle and OpenSolaris. (On the horizon are support for Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu and Gentoo.)

  • Oracle support of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in question

    A recent Oracle Support note has some Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) customers wondering about Oracle’s future support of Red Hat. But one expert says it’s more a statement of Oracle’s plans for its own database storage management features.

    The note, released this spring and updated earlier this month, has to do with ASMLib, a support library for the Automatic Storage Management (ASM) feature of Oracle Database. According to the note, the support library “allows an Oracle Database using ASM more efficient and capable access to the disk groups it is using.”

  • Scientific Linux 5.6 released

    The developers of Scientific Linux (SL) have released version 5.6 of their Linux distribution. As with the project’s previous versions, this one is a free remodeling of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) with the same version number – SL 5.6 therefore also includes all of the improvements that Red Hat added to RHEL 5.6.

    In the release email, the developers emphasise the Atom Shine graphical theme as being one of the main innovations, followed by a list of packages that the SL developers have included which are not in RHEL 5.6. Versions of SL prior to 6.0 contain a lot of such packages; in SL 6.0, the developers added only a few additional packages, referring users instead to repositories such as ATrpms, EPEL and RPMforge for additional software.

  • 3 Hot Stocks Lighting Up Trading Screens After-Hours

    Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) shares have spiked 4.07% after closing bell today with a the report of a fiscal first-quarter profit of $32.5 million, or 17 cents a share, up from $24 million and 12 cents a share from the same period last year.

  • Red Hat Inc. Offers Potential Plays for Both Bulls and Bears

  • Red Hat Reports First Quarter Results

    Total revenue for the quarter was $264.7 million, an increase of 27% from the year ago quarter. Subscription revenue for the quarter was $225.5 million, up 26% year-over-year.

  • The Linux Week in Review June 22, 2011

    Red Hat Corporation is a great Linux company: the first company to earn a billion dollars on free software.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • The Unity Report – Carving away the Stone

      • Linux vs. Windows: Should Your Office Make the Switch?

        The surprise, for me, was that I could get the majority of my work done on an old, “slow” PC that I’d written off as useless. That’s definitely one of Linux’s charms: it has very modest system requirements.

        I also found it very comforting to work without the threat of malware, which is more or less non-existent in Linux. (Of course, there’s always phishing, which is OS-agnostic.)

        For my work situation (which, again, is largely Web-based), Ubuntu made a fine substitute for Windows. In fact, I’m still using it, even though my HP has been repaired and returned. I can’t abandon Windows altogether just yet, but that day may come.

        Something else to keep in mind: every time you buy a new PC, you’re paying upwards of $100 just for the Windows license. If you buy 10 machines, opting for Linux could save you $1,000. (The trick is finding a vendor that offers the option. I know Dell does.) Ubuntu, like all Linux distributions, is free.

        And pretty awesome. If you haven’t tried it, you owe it to yourself to do so. Hit the Download page and check out the “Try it from a CD or USB stick” option.

      • Firefox 5 Officially Available on Ubuntu 11.04

      • Firefox 5.0 Update Arrives in Official Ubuntu Repositories

      • Ubuntu Pushes Firefox 5 Through Update

Devices/Embedded

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Is There Anyone NOT Making Tablets This Fall?

    * Google,
    * HTC,
    * LG,
    * TI,
    * Toshiba,
    * Dell,
    * HP,
    * Apple,
    * Archos,
    * Amazon,
    * Acer
    * Sharp,
    * Asus,
    * Lenovo, and
    * millions of “white box” tablets.

    Even the few who are producing tablets running that other OS are producing Android/Linux versions. B

Should you give a rats ring about Open or Closed Source?

Web Browsers

• 85% of Firefox users use add-ons; Chrome users, just 33%

  At long last, Mozilla has managed to calculate how many Firefox users have at least one add-on installed: 85%. It gets better, though: the average Firefox user has no less than 5 add-ons installed — but considering over 2.5 billion add-ons have been downloaded in the last 5 years, that’s not all that surprising. In total, 580 million add-ons are used every day by the Firefox user base.

• 85% Of Firefox Users Install Add-ons

  We all know that add-ons are one of the best things about Firefox and Firefox users love their add-ons. However there was never any clear data on the add-ons installed untill Firefox 4. In Firefox 4, a new feature was introduces which allows Mozilla to keep track of an aggregate of add-on usage in Firefox.

• HTML5 in Sugar

  It seems like now is the time to revisit the notion of integ­rat­ing HTML5 into Sugar itself. I feel that this can achieve a far more power­ful out­come than just swap­ping Browse with Surf. The primary weak­nesses of HTML5, its imma­tur­ity and dearth of good devel­op­ment tools, are being addressed. Microsoft and Adobe are con­tinue to move towards HTML5, which can only be a good thing.

• Chrome

  • [Quick Tip] Try out the redesigned New Tab interface in Chrome

    Google has been trying out a redesign of Chrome’s famous New Tab page. The new interface is more organized than the previous one as it cleverly categorizes apps and bookmarks into separate screens. The user can slide between the screens by simply grabbing and pushing the mouse in the required direction. Here’s how to enable it on your browser.

• Mozilla

  • Mozilla Launches Firefox 5 Browser: 10 Things You Should Know About It

  • Firefox does silent major version update!?

  • Firefox 5 goes live. But is it any better than Firefox 4?

  • Mozilla retires Firefox 4 from security support

    Unnoticed in the Tuesday release of Firefox 5 was Mozilla’s decision to retire Firefox 4, the browser it shipped just three months ago.

    As part of Tuesday’s Firefox 5 release, Mozilla spelled out vulnerabilities it had patched in that edition and in 2010′s Firefox 3.6, but it made no mention of any bugs fixed in Firefox 4.

  • Do We Really Need a New Browser Every Six Weeks?

    I am a software geek and I love new software. As a businessperson, I also want to be as productive as possible when using my software. New software can cause things to stop working and become a productivity killer.

    Today I got news about a new version of Firefox. It is my browser of choice and I couldn’t stop myself from installing it. Of course this version comes only a few weeks after the last version was released. The explanation for the quick update cycle was to keep up with the update cycle of Google Chrome. After reading the explanation, it got me to thinking if rapid updates were truly a good thing?

    We definitely need browser updates on a regular basis to patch security issues. Yet those updates don’t have to come as a new version with new features (and new problems).

  • Is Google’s App Engine Too Restrictive, Given Increasing Open Competition?

    If you demand total extension compatibility it may be worth waiting a few days for incremental fixes to appear for Firefox 5. However, it appears to be much faster than other versions and other browsers, and mostly reliable upon release. That’s yet another reason to expect heated market share competition between Firefox and Google Chrome throughout this year.

  • Firefox 5 Should have been Firefox 4.02!

    Mozilla has officially released Firefox 5, only 3 months after the releases of Firefox 4 following the rapid release strategy of Google Chrome. The idea behind is to bring about changes in the browser as soon as possible and keep the browser up-to-date by creating different development channels.

  • The Speed of Firefox 5.0

    I’m a Google Chromium (right now version 12.0.742.91) user because of the speed. I found previous versions of Firefox to be just a little too slow. Especially when starting the browser. Through the grapevine I heard people discussing the better speeds of Firefox 5.0, which was released this week. This makes me re-consider using Firefox as my default browser. I took a look at the speed and several of the new features. Here are the results.

SaaS

• Alfresco Team Provides Hosted Multi-Platform Collaboration

• Is Google’s App Engine Too Restrictive, Given Increasing Open Competition?

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Oracle’s Android claims slashed by US patent authorities

  Oracle’s broad legal front against Google has been whittled back further, this time by the US patent and trademark authorities, according to Groklaw.

  The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has rejected 17 of 21 claims associated with one of the patents in Java that Oracle asserted Google had violated with Android. The patent in question is number 6192476, one of six Oracle says Google has stepped on.

• Google Replaces Oracle As The World’s Largest Open Source Company

  The leading open source projects were forked and Oracle distanced itself from them. OpenOffice is dead (only to be scavenged by IBM), OpenSolaris is gone, Hudson is gone, Java has become a ‘closed’ technology owned by Oracle/IBM. Java developers may never forgive Oracle for the way it took a U-Turn from its own stand on Java. Now, MySQL is the only major open source project which is being run by Oracle – forks are already in place in case Oracle pulls plugs off MySQL.

CMS

• Open Source CMS Kajona V3.4.0 “berlin” is ready

  The development of the new Kajona version 3.4.0 took nearly ten months, but it was worth waiting. The Kajona team used the time to refactor many aspects of the system, providing both, visible changes at the user-interface and invisible changes under the hood. Like the release name “berlin” hints at, most of the feedback from this year’s LinuxTag in Berlin was already implemented in Kajona 3.4.0.

• Google Alerting Webmasters about outdated WordPress Installs

Business

• Semi-Open Source

  • Pentaho targets new BI suite beyond IT, to business users

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• German court case could imperil GPL licensing

  In a case that could threaten open source GPL licensing in Germany, a Berlin court yesterday began hearing a lawsuit from German DSL router vendor AVM against web-filtering software firm Cybits. AVM charges that by modifying Linux kernel code in router firmware, Cybits is infringing on copyright, while Cybits’ defense claims GPL licensing permits it to alter the code.

Project Releases

• Blender 2.58

  The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.58. This is the second stable release of the Blender 2.5 series, representing the culmination of many years of redesign, development and stabilizing work.

  We name this version “Stable” not only because it’s mostly feature complete, but especially thanks to the 1000s of fixes and feature updates we did since the 2.5 beta versions were published.

• Mozilla releases SeaMonkey 2.2 Beta 1

• Tornado Web Server 2.0 released

  The Tornado project developers have announced the release of version 2.0 of their open source web server. The Python-based, non-blocking web server framework was first released as open source in September 2009 by Facebook, following its acquisition of FriendFeed.

Openness/Sharing

• Open Data

  • Can the U.S. ‘win the future’ without open data?

    “Winning the Future through Open Innovation,” is a progress report recently released by Aneesh Chopra, US Chief Technology Officer, to the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) on the Administration’s Open Government Initiative.The report highlights a number of programs at different agencies that represent a wide variety of open innovation techniques, from opening datasets and APIs to creating incentives for competition or testing and certifying open standards.

    Less than a week after the report’s release, the Administration launched the Campaign to Cut Waste through the newly-formed Government Accountability and Transparency Board (GATB), an 11-member group which will review and cut about 50% of Federal websites to reduce spending and prevent duplication of efforts.

• Open Hardware

  • Tilera throws gauntlet at Intel’s feet

    Upstart mega-multicore chip maker Tilera has not yet started sampling its future Tile-Gx 3000 series of server processors, and companies have already locked in orders for the chips.

    That is how eagerly hyperscale data center operators are anticipating some alternative to power-hungry Xeon processors from Intel and Opteron processors from Advanced Micro Devices.

Programming

• Perl 5.14.1 and 5.12.4 arrive

  Perl version 5.12.4 is a recommended update for all users of Perl 5.12.

Standards/Consortia

• HU: Government planning to use vendor-independent document format

  The Hungarian government wants to use the Open Document Format, a vendor independent format for electronic documents, as a default for its documents. Zsolt Nyitrai, Minister of State for ICT, earlier this month explained to the parliament that legislation to use ODF by default is being prepared.

  The ODF plans were announced on 1 June, during a conference in the Hungarian Parliament “The Parliament of Information Society”.

F.B.I. Seizes Web Servers, Knocking Sites Offline

The F.B.I. seized Web servers in a raid on a data center early Tuesday, causing several Web sites, including those run by the New York publisher Curbed Network, to go offline.

The raid happened at 1:15 a.m. at a hosting facility in Reston, Va., used by DigitalOne, which is based in Switzerland, the company said. The F.B.I. did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the raid.

Security

• Dropbox security glitch allowed anyone to access user accounts

Finance

• Apple, Google, Microsoft seek gargantuan tax break

  Apple, Google, Microsoft, Cisco, and a host of US megacorps are lobbying hard for a massive tax break – and they’re gaining powerful friends in business, government, and labor in support of that effort.

• “This Is The Most GUTLESS Institution!” Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur

• Guest Post: Goldman’s Disinformation Campaign: Drilling Down Into The Documents

  In other words, the answer shall remain secret. Only those deemed worthy by Goldman may see its data, which purportedly refutes the Levin report. The rest of us are kept in the dark. We cannot challenge Goldman’s claims, because we cannot see what they see. They know what they are talking about; we do not. Instead, we must rely on Andrew Ross Sorkin, Holman Jenkins, Dick Bove, and others to reveal the truth.

• Wall Street Gets Eyed in Metal Squeeze

  Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and other owners of large metals warehouses are being scrutinized by the London Metal Exchange after being accused by users like Coca-Cola Co. of restricting the amount of metal they release to customers, inflating prices.

  The board of the LME met on Thursday to discuss complaints from aluminum users and market traders, who say operators of warehouses, which also include J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Glencore International PLC, should be forced to allow the metal out more quickly to meet demand.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Weiner doll creates ‘mad rush’ at Oxford company

  While former U.S. Rep. Anthony’s Weiner’s scandalous “sexting” has had a slew of negative consequences for him, it has meant big business for a local company that started making an action figure in his likeness.

  There has been a “mad rush” of interest in the latest offering from HeroBuilders.com, a company at 198 Goodhill Road known for controversial figures it makes and sells online, President Emil Vicale said Monday.

• Rick Scott cares! He really does care!

  For a guy who claims not read newspapers — or care what the polls say or the public thinks — Rick Scott sure is putting a lot of effort into trying to score some good publicity.

  In fact, if regular old rank-and-file Floridians won’t write nice things about him in letters to the editor, Scott has decided to write the words for them.

• Brave New Films Exposes the Koch Echo Chamber

  Over and over, cable TV and Sunday news show pundits have been telling us that Social Security is going bankrupt, and we have to raise the retirement age or the economy will collapse. These two axioms have practically become common knowledge. The only problem is, there isn’t a shred of evidence that either statement is accurate.

  So how did it happen that these erroneous statements have become mainstream American group-think? It’s the result of a sophisticated corporate echo chamber propaganda strategy funded primarily by the Koch brothers for the purpose of turning business-friendly, fringe right-wing ideas into mainstream policy arguments. The echo chamber strategy is very real, and has been perfected by corporate interests over the last several decades. It involves carefully selecting and fine-tuning a message that resonates with the populace, and then arranging to get that message repeated over and over through a variety of credible media sources.

Censorship

• Rights holders’ proposed voluntary website blocking scheme

  From these links you can access what looks like the proposals for a voluntary website blocking scheme, apparently put forward by the Rightsholder Group engaged in Minister Ed Vaizey’s roundtable discussions with ISPs and others.

  The documents, sent to James Firth’s blog, set out a dangerous voluntary scheme that would involve ‘expedited court procedures’ and a ‘balance’ between evidence and speed of action. Definitions of what content is to be judged blockable is scarce. References to exactly how such blocking would work, and the consequences, are non-existent. The case for blocking is left unmade, with no analysis about the effects of such measures. There is cursory reference to the rule of law and proper oversight. The proposal, if it is the genuine proposal, adds up to a dangerous revocation of the rule of law where lobby groups would decide what you are allowed to see and read.

• Secret website blocking proposals presented to Ed Vaizey

  It is unacceptable for trade groups and government to conduct policy in this way. Censorship proposals must be made and discussed in public. Many of us will oppose any censorship that impacts directly and widely on free expression. Governments would be wise to assess the strength of our arguments, rather than waiting for trade bodies to find their narrow, commercial arguments unravel once their proposals reach the light of day.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• Is Internet Access A Human Right?: The Implications for the Rules of Access

  Given the critical role it plays in communication, culture, and commerce, most people now recognize the importance of Internet access. My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes a new report for the United Nations Human Rights Council takes Internet access a step further, however, characterizing it as a human right.

• Dutch Lawmakers Adopt Net Neutrality Law

  The Netherlands on Wednesday became the first country in Europe, and only the second in the world, to enshrine the concept of network neutrality into national law by banning its mobile telephone operators from blocking or charging consumers extra for using Internet-based communications services like Skype or WhatsApp, a free text service.

• Netherlands launches internet freedom legislation

  A broad majority in the Dutch parliament voted for crucial legislative proposals to safeguard an open and secure internet in The Netherlands. The Netherlands is the first country in Europe to introduce a net neutrality law. In addition, provisions were launched protecting users against disconnection and wiretapping by providers. Digital rights movement Bits of Freedom calls upon other countries to follow the Dutch example.

  The net neutrality proposal (Dutch) prohibits internetproviders from interfering with the traffic of their users. Dutch telecom incumbent KPN recently received world-wide media-attention because it planned to charge Internet users for the use of innovative and competitive services such as Internet telephony. The legislative proposal aims to prevent this, while still allowing for measures in case of congestion and for network security, as long as these measures serve the interests of the internet user. A small technical error in the amendment was introduced last minute and will in all likelihood be corrected next week.

• A great moment for the free flow of information

• Dutch Require Consumer Consent to Put Cookies on PC

DRM

• Exclusive: Top ISPs poised to adopt graduated response to piracy

  After years of negotiations, a group of bandwidth providers that includes AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon are closer than ever to striking a deal with media and entertainment companies that would call for them to establish new and tougher punishments for customers who refuse to stop using their networks to pirate films, music and other intellectual property, multiple sources told CNET.

  The sources cautioned that a final agreement has yet to be signed and that the partnership could still unravel but added that at this point a deal is within reach and is on track to be unveiled sometime next month.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • ACTA

    • Mexican Congress Says No To ACTA

      Earlier, we mentioned that a bill from the Mexican Congress opposing ACTA was going to the full Congress today, and apparently the bill was approved. Now, the question is whether or not the Mexican executive branch will try to ignore the will of Congress on this issue and sign ACTA anyway.

Health/Nutrition

• Healthcare IT people should check out this book on Meaningful use in US medicine and give some feedback to the authors.

• VistA contract goes to Open Source Novice

• VA awards TIAG $5 million open source contract

  The Veterans Affairs Department has awarded The Informatics Applications Group Inc. of Reston, Va., a $5 million contract to be the custodial agent to manage VA’s open source community to modernize its VistA electronic health record.

  The vendor, TIAG, is a management and technology services company, which has performed business process and clinical applications work for the Defense Department.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• An index of political foot dragging over two decades of attempted formaldehyde regulation.

  No matter how good the science, making laws is difficult in the US.

• The US Supreme Court says you can’t sue coal plants for global warming because regulation is someone else’s job. The same polluters also blatantly violated the Clean Air Act long enough to buy changes to the law which also allow them to spew other nasty pollutants like mercury and radio active heavy metals.

Censorship

• Absurdly prudish and cruel US laws are investigated.

  Right now, laws designed to protect children are being used to punish them.

  Not mentioned is the fact that the evidence is stored and published by the state, which is terrible hypocrisy. Child porn is often used as an excuse for arbitrary censorship and surveillance.

Intellectual Monopolies

• BitTorrent is sued by a patent troll which claims big publisher affiliation.

  Bittorrent is not the only defendant; Tranz-Send has also asserted the ’944 patent against Kontiki, Inc. in this same suit. Tranz-Send is not your stereotypical patent troll. It is a start-up company in the Bay Area focused on “developing the BlockBuster of the Internet, by electronic transfer to computers which are conected to the TV, for the same cost of rental plus a dime.”

  Techrights has more on this issue

• Copyrights

  • Glyn Moody worries about a non commercial clause in a joint British Library, Google digitization of out of copyright books.

    these are materials that are in the public domain; public domain means that anyone can do anything with them – including commercial applications. So this condition of “non-commercial purposes” means one thing, and one thing only: although the texts themselves are public domain, the digitised texts are not

    This is not really a problem if others are also allowed to digitize and publish the same works or if the copyright assigned to the digital works expires in a reasonable time as all copyright should.

  • A copyright troll defender plagiarizes another defense article.

    Frederick doesn’t address the details of Righthaven’s setbacks, but says that “unthinking bloggers” are simply “mischaracterizing reality.” … [also] nearly his entire post is one big quote. It is odd behavior for a man who’s gone out of his way to fight online content theft, and even sued bloggers for using excerpts of R-J content.

    It is possible that both of these bloggers cut and paste their arguments from the same PR source which hoped there were not enough people interested in both newspapers and games to notice the duplication.