08.28.14

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Considering Legacy UNIX/Linux Issues

  Gah, so frustrating! Ten years ago I wrote a rather popular book called Wicked Cool Shell Scripts, and I’m working on a new edition—a Tenth Anniversary release. There are lots of new scripts, entirely new chapters and updates to the older stuff. Fortunately, Bash hasn’t evolved that much in the last decade, so just about everything still works fine (although there are some scripts I’m now realizing can’t handle spaces in filenames—something I talked about years ago in this very column).

• It’s All Linux Under the Hood

  The user friendly distros have done a great job of accommodating this new set of Linux users. It’s now entirely possible for a new Linux user running something like Ubuntu or one of its derivatives to never once open a terminal and still have a pretty decent experience. Some of these new users, who might have initially come to Linux only to breath new life into an old computer until they can afford a new Windows box, might be curious enough to delve under the hood enough to discover that what they’re using isn’t merely a free OS that works on obsolete hardware, but a powerful and highly configurable operating system that puts Windows to shame on almost every level.

• OS Battle: Linux Takes 1.7% Desktop Marketshare

  We have another metric in showing a 1.7% Linux desktop market-share, which isn’t far off from other figures we’ve seen in the past indicating Linux desktop usage at under 2%.

• China Promotes Linux-Based Operating System Against Windows, Android

• Desktop

  • Why Linux Isn’t a Desktop Alternative

    The year of the Linux desktop has become a joke, referred to ironically when mentioned at all. Under the circumstances Linus Torvalds showed either courage or naivete when he admitted last week at Linuxcon that he still wants to see Linux become popular on the desktop.

    However, neither Torvalds nor anyone else should stay up nights waiting for the event. Most users have no awareness of the possibility, or set impossible standards for it, even though, for a minority, the year of the Linux desktop happened years ago.

  • Linux Doesn’t Need to Own the Desktop

    The simple fact is that Linux has changed the world and been a tremendous success outside the desktop, and there is nothing wrong with that. Android is hardly the only Linux-based platform that has made a big mark. Linux is huge on servers, in embedded technology, and is a constant prompt for innovation on emerging platforms. Ubuntu is the most popular platform for building OpenStack deployments on. Supercomputers all over the world run Linux, and Chrome OS is based on it.

  • Five big names that use Linux on the desktop

    It’s not just Munich city council that uses Linux on the desktop. A number of household names have also opted for open source.

  • Six Advantages of Choosing Linux over Windows

    Linux is multi-functional and efficient. Everyone shells out money for a computer. On top if it spending more on an operating system is not a feasible option for many if there are alternatives. Windows requires users to pay licensing fees and other extended fees, whereas Linux is free. It is charged a minimal fee when bought from other distribution companies. Hardware requirements are not a problem for Linux whereas Windows requires a higher set of specifications for hardware if it has to run, and be compatible on the users’ computer systems. The poor efficiency of Windows consumes a large space and the processing speed slows down drastically. With Windows users can not use old computers if they are aiming at good back up.

  • Linux on the desktop isn’t dead

    At LinuxCon this year, the creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds, was asked what he wanted for Linux. His response? “The desktop.” For years, the call to Linux action was “World Domination.” In certain markets, this has happened (think Linux helping to power Android and Chrome OS). On the desktop, however, Linux still has a long, long way to go.

    Wait… that came out wrong. I don’t mean “Linux has a long, long way to go before it’s ready for the desktop.” What I meant to say is something more akin to “Linux is, in fact, desktop ready… it just hasn’t found an inroad to the average consumer desktop.”

• Server

  • IBM doubles down on Linux

    Less than a year after their announcement that they planned to invest a billion dollars in the Linux platform, IBM continues to ramp up their Linux play by rolling out Linux on Power System servers across 54 of the IBM Innovation and Client Centers worldwide. This comes almost two years after IBM announced that they had ported Linux to the Power Server platform.

  • Popularity (or lack of it) Of That Other OS on Servers

    According to Netcraft, it’s been many years since M$’s OS was so unpopular on servers…

• Kernel Space

  • Appliance maker Electrolux joins IoT-focused AllSeen Alliance

    The group is one of the more diverse consortiums, with members ranging from consumer electronics and chipset manufacturers to retailers and service providers. Primarily, work revolves around the AllJoyn open-source framework, which AllSeen said acts as a universal translator for objects and devices to interact.

  • Linux hits 23 – the Time Machine that changed the world!

    Linux reached the entirely respectable age of 23 this week, more or less.

  • 2014 Kernel Internship Report (OPW)

    For the past year and a half, the Linux kernel has participated as a project under the FOSS Outreach Program for Women (OPW). OPW provides a three month paid internship for women (cis and trans) and genderqueer or genderfluid people. After a month-long application process, the selected OPW interns are paired with an open source mentor to work on a project. As of August 2014, there are eleven Linux kernel OPW alumni, and five interns that are just finishing up their internships.

  • Another Intel Linux Power Regression Is Being Investigated

    Power regressions are still easy to come by with the Linux kernel and other areas of the open-source stack… Multiple users have been reporting of a recent power increase on newer versions of the Linux kernel, which seem to track down to the Intel i915 DRM driver.

  • Graphics Stack

    • Re-Clocking Your NVIDIA GPU With Nouveau On Linux 3.17

      If you are trying to re-clock your NVIDIA GPU with the Nouveau driver when using the Linux 3.17 kernel, there’s an extra step involved, but still your mileage may vary and the re-clocking is still mostly for Kepler GPUs.

      With the Nouveau driver changes for Linux 3.17 there are no magic breakthroughs when it comes to re-clocking — allowing the GPU’s core and memory clocks to run at their rated frequencies and voltages rather than any (often much lower) values programmed by the video BIOS at boot time. With Linux 3.17 came re-clocking for Kepler GPUs and now it works, but generally not all performance levels/states properly function. If you are running a GeForce 400/500 “Fermi” GPU or other generations of NVIDIA hardware aside from the few integrated mobile chipsets, chances are you’re out of luck in being able to tap the full potential of the GPU when using this open-source, reverse-engineered NVIDIA GPU.

    • 20-Way Radeon Comparison With Open-Source Graphics For Steam On Linux Gaming

      When it comes to Linux gamers wanting a discrete graphics card backed by open-source drivers, the only solution right now to truly recommend for those serious about performance and making use of the hardware is really AMD Radeon graphics. While Nouveau has been making much progress, until re-clocking and other issues are worked out the performance can be unbearably slow depending upon the particular graphics processor or run into other problems. (Of course, when talking about proprietary graphics drivers on Linux, the story is entirely different, or if considering integrated Intel HD Graphics.) For those pursuing a AMD Radeon GPU for their own Steam Box/Machine build and hope to use the open-source Gallium3D drivers, here’s some Steam on Linux gaming benchmarks from almost two dozen different GPUs.

    • Nouveau On Oibaf PPA Is Back To Running Well

      Upstream Nouveau was unaware of this issue that was affecting my entire assortment of NVIDIA GeForce hardware so it was then quickly assumed to be an issue with the Oibaf PPA that constantly is packaging the latest open-source Linux GPU drivers. On top of mainline Mesa Git, recently there’s been the the Gallium3D Direct3D 9 patches (Gallium-Nine). While none of my testing was relying upon the Gallium-Nine D3D9 support, it was wreaking havoc on the system anyhow.

    • Radeon DRM Queues More Changes, RV6xx UVD For Linux 3.18

      With the DRM merge window for drm-next now closing earlier going forward than in past kernel releases, another Radeon DRM-Next pull request was already submitted for Linux 3.18.

      Alex Deucher of AMD had already sent in a pull request to add Radeon userptr support for Linux 3.18 after it just missed the Linux 3.17 merge window due to the user-space support not being tried and tested. In Alex’s latest pull request to DRM subsystem maintainer David Airlie, there’s more changes than the first.

    • Mesa Has A New Release Manager

      Mesa has a new release manager to allow the two existing managers from Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center to get back to more driver wrangling rather than release wrangling.

• Applications

  • DontWaitUp: Run Commands When Windows Are Closed, Resized Or On Title Change

  • Proprietary

    • Storix® System Backup Administrator Announces Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7

      Storix, Inc., providers of disaster recovery solutions for Linux and Unix systems, today announced the general availability of System Backup Administrator (SBAdmin) version 8.2.1.0, which includes support for the latest release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 7.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • LightDM: How To Disable The User List Or Guest Session

    • Beginner’s Guide to Mastering the Netstat Command on Linux

    • How to recover data from an encrypted harddisk on boot failure with Ubuntu 14.04

    • How to use on-screen virtual keyboard on Linux

    • How To Gimp 2.8.14 On Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 And Derivative Systems

    • How To Install Plex Media Server 0.9.9 On Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Fedora 21, Fedora 20, CentOS 7, CentOS 6 And Derivatives

    • How to install Tomcat on CentOS 7

    • How to Install Drupal 7.x with Apache2 + MySQl 5.5 + PHP 5.5 on Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTSs

  • Games

    • Company of Heroes 2 Might Be Coming Out For Linux

      While last year developers on the Company of Heroes 2 game said a Linux port was unlikely, recent Steam activity indicates that a Linux port is likely in the works.

      Company of Heroes 2 is a World War II set real-time strategy game developed by Relic Entertainment and sequel to the original Company of Heroes game. The Company of Heroes 2 title is powered by the Essence 3.0 Game Engine, which is proprietary to Relic Entertainment, uses a DirectX renderer, and designed around Windows. Company of Heroes 2 was released last summer for Microsoft Windows and is available on Steam.

    • Metro 2033 Redux Will Hopefully Hit Linux Real Soon

    • Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth for Linux No Longer Has a Release Date

      Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth, the next game in the Civilization series developed by Firaxis, no longer has a Linux launch date.

      When 2K Games and Firaxis announced that the upcoming Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth launch will also include a Linux version, gamers were ecstatic. This was supposed to be the silver bullet for the Linux platform, but it looks like we’re going to be skipped.

    • Civilization: Beyond Earth for Mac has been postponed indefinitely

    • SteamOS Beta 133 Released

      Besides the normal security fixes, this release features a newer Linux kernel (no specifics) that boasts more network drivers and better Intel graphics performance. On top of that this release also features the Nvidia 340.32 drivers which fixes some of the white screen bugs when switching between modes.

    • SteamOS Update 133 Has Better Intel Performance, VA-API

      Valve released this morning the 133 update to the SteamOS Alchemist Beta. With this update comes new packages and other updates.

    • Crystal Picnic, A Colourful 2D RPG Released

      Crystal Picnic is a lighthearted and colourful tribute to the classic era of action RPGs! Join a sarcastic gardener and a wannabe knight as they journey across the kingdom chasing after ants who stole magic crystals from the castle. Oh, and did we mention the ants have gone mad because they’re EATING those crystals? Yeah, that makes things much more unpredictable! Hours of exploration, mesmerizing platform-style combat, plenty of new friends to meet and loads of wacky enemies to encounter. When you fight chubby birds and ants carrying bazookas, you know you’re in for a good time!

    • Metro 2033 Redux Shows Up in the Steam for Linux Database

      Metro 2033 Redux, a remake of the original Metro 2033 FPS released back in 2010, will be getting a Linux release on Steam for Linux.

      The developers from 4A Games have reworked the original title and they have introduced high resolution textures and new effects. In addition to that, they have reworked a number of gameplay aspects too.

      All of these have been done to get the game ready for Xbox One and PlayStation 4. They didn’t ignored the PC, and Steam users will also be able to enjoy the game in a new coat.

    • Team Fortress 2 Receives Update with Important Balancing Changes

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Release notes for the Genode OS Framework 14.08

    The overall theme of version 14.08 is the introduction of a new scalable GUI architecture that takes security as the most fundamental premise. It is unique in the way that the security of graphical applications and thereby the privacy of the user depends on only a few components of very little complexity. We strive for low complexity to reduce the likelihood for bugs and thereby the attack surface of the system. When using a secure microkernel such as NOVA, Genode’s trusted computing base for graphical applications is orders of magnitude less complex compared to contemporary operating systems. To illustrate the rigidity of this claim, the security-sensitive parts of the GUI stack do not even depend on a C runtime. With the current release, we maintain our focus on security while taking the scalability of the GUI architecture to a level that meets the expectations of general-purpose OSes. Thanks to its component-based design, the new GUI stack provides a great deal of flexibility with respect to its behaviour and style. Section New GUI architecture provides the rationale behind the development, the big picture of the architecture, and details about the current implementation.

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • PLASMA ACTIVE PORTED TO KF5

      The GSoC might have come to an end, but I am very happy with the progress that we have made porting the Plasma Active to KF5. In my previous blogposts i have describe some of the stuff which they have been ported. So at the moment a lot of the basic features have come back to the Plasma Active, so yes it is at a usable state Smile One of the big changes is that Nepomuk has been replaced with Baloo. Despite the fact that a lot of the Nepomuk stuff has been ported, there are still some things left, for example the timeline and tag support on the active-filebrowser.

    • Meet Cornelius Schumacher – Akademy Keynote Speaker

      At Akademy 2014, outgoing KDE e.V. Board President Cornelius Schumacher will give the community keynote. He has attended every Akademy and has been amazed and inspired at every one of them. If you want more of what KDE can bring to your life, Cornelius’s talk is the perfect elixir.

      Here are glimpses of Cornelius that most of us have never seen. They give a sense of what has made him a successful leader of KDE for several years.

    • GSoC: Thumping the Malaria and voyaging in cosmos with KStars

      Let’s talk about my project now. KStars is desktop planetarium application under KDE Education Projects. I developed QML based cool interface to enable users to browse through image database of community of astrophotographers (i.e. astrobin.com) which contains more than 1,20,000 (number is increasing everyday) real time and very high resolution images along with various information related to them (i.e. Date on which image was captured, Bortle Dark-Sky Scale, RA Centre, DEC Centre, Telescope or Camera used, Description added by astrophotographer etc). I am sure that this browser will enthrall school children by showing them real time images of stars and galaxies located at hundreds of light year far from earth.

    • Akademy 2014: What I Plan To See

    • KDevelop master is now frameworkified

    • What’s new in porting script ? clean-includes.sh

    • New class in kcoreaddons: Kdelibs4ConfigMigrator

    • The KDE Randa 2014 meeting, in easy-digestible video format!

      In case you were wondering what was going on in Randa, here are some first hand impressions. The video was produced by Françoise Wybrecht (alias Morgane Marquis) and Lucie Robin, and the people in it are the actual participants of the event. It was also created using KDenlive, one of the awesome Free Software tools a team has been working on at the Randa meeting itself. The video introduces the faces and personalities of the contributors and their different backgrounds and origins. Many thanks to our brand new ad-hoc media team for producing this video!

    • Plasma Active Is Mostly Ported To KDE Frameworks 5

      With this year’s Google Summer of Code over, Antonis Tsiapaliokas shared a status update concerning the state of KDE’s Plasma Active being ported to KF5.

      Much progress was made this summer in porting Plasma Active to KDE Frameworks 5 and it’s now in a usable state. All basic functionality of Plasma Active should work in a KF5 world but parts of Nepomuk and other components are still being ported over.

      Antonis Tsiapaliokas says he continues to continue on with this work around the end of September after his university exams. More details can be found in Tsiapaliokas’ blog post and the KF5 Plasma Active porting video that’s embedded below.

    • KDE Mover-Sizer brings handy Linux desktop tricks to the PC

      Resizing and repositioning windows on the PC desktop is such a fundamental task that you’ll almost do it without thinking. Move the mouse to the title bar/ border, click, drag, release. Very basic, very simple — but there might still be room for improvement.

      KDE Mover-Sizer is an open source, portable tool which brings a common Linux desktop trick to Windows. Instead of having to move your mouse cursor to the title bar or border, you just hold down the Alt key, then left-click anywhere inside a window and drag to move it, right-click and drag to resize it.

• Distributions

  • The Linux Desktop-a-week Review: elementary OS’s Pantheon

    First of all, I get why so many people say it is a “Mac clone.” I do. It has the same standard layout that Mac OS X has been using for several years: a dock on the bottom, menu bar up top. But that’s really about where the similarities end. My guess is that people who call this a Mac clone haven’t actually had the chance to use the system extensively and were going on screenshots alone.

  • New Releases

    • Alpine Linux 3.0.4 Is an OS for Command Line Aficionados

    • Absolute 14.10 released

      It’s been a long road back, but here it is. Everythibng has caught up to Slackware (x86), up to and including a recompile with patch for the latest glibc security patch of 20140826. Even have pulseaudio working to keep the Skypers happy

  • Slackware Family

    • Absolute Linux Is a Lightweight Distro Based on Slackware 14.10

      Absolute, an x86 Linux distribution based upon Slackware that concentrates on making sure that Internet, multimedia, document, and general home use works out of the box, is now at version 14.10 and is available for download.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat CTO unexpectedly quits, amid rumors of executive ‘friction’

      No-one among the rank and file at Red Hat seem to have seen this coming. In a move the Linux giant’s staffers said was “shocking” and a “punch in the gut,” long-time Red Hat chief technology officer Brian Stevens has resigned.

      In a short press release, the company announced: “Brian Stevens will step down as CTO.”

      In the same release, Red Hat’s president and chief executive Jim Whitehurst said, “We want to thank Brian for his years of service and numerous contributions to Red Hat’s business. We wish him well in his future endeavors.”

    • Brian Stevens to Step Down as CTO of Red Hat

    • Red Hat Shake-up, Desktop Users, and Outta Time

    • Red Hat eyes up the cloud with CloudForms 3.1

      Red Hat Inc., might already be a superpower where Linux is concerned, but it has no intention of resting on its laurels. It has ambitions to become a major player in the cloud as well, and to that end it’s launched an open hybrid cloud management solution called Red Hat CloudForms 3.1, unveiled yesterday at the VMworld 2014 event in San Francisco.

    • Fedora

      • Fedora 21 Will Try To Release Before Thanksgiving

        Today was another FESCo meeting but fortunately no further Fedora 21 delay was announced today, but it could happen with the F21 alpha change deadline being today and the developers trying to get an approved build.

      • DNF Makes It A Step Closer To Replacing Yum On Fedora

        DNF 0.6.1 was released today and this updated open-source package manager picked up a few more features as it’s still in pursuit of replacing Yum on Fedora systems.

        The DNF 0.6.1 release adds full support for the history redo command with integration for the repository-packages commands. DNF 0.6.1 also adds new configuration options pertaining to GPG keys/checking and there’s many bug-fixes.

  • Debian Family

    • $99 Parallella Supercomputer has Successful Launch After 18 Months

      There is also an unofficial Debian 7.0 image and it should be possible to run just about any distro that has an armhf architecture build. Provided that is that the aforementioned kernel and device tree are located in the BOOT filesystem on the SD card, along with an FPGA configuration bitstream.

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu 14.10 Beta 1 (Utopic Unicorn) to Arrive in a Couple of Days

          “So Beta 1 is this week and I’ll be taking care of the builds and paperwork. Could participating flavours please get in touch here or on IRC? In the mean time, I’m going to assume a participation similar to Alpha-2 and configure cron, propose-migration and the tracker accordingly, then build a first candidate for each of your flavours,” wrote Canonical’s Stéphane Graber.

        • Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn), Beta 1 preview: No big changes

          Despite optimistic 2011 predictions of a fully converged cross-platform OS running Mir and UnityNext (8) by 2014, Ubuntu 14.10 is set to retain X Windows and Unity 7. Based on this beta, it seems there will be no big changes in 14.10, although upgrading is always worthwhile.

        • Ubuntu Next with Unity 8 and Mir on the Desktop – Screen Tour

          Canonical is planning to bring the Unity 8 to the desktop, but it will take a while until this task is accomplished. Until then, users can test the new Ubuntu Next images, which incorporate Unity 8 and the Mir display server.

          Ubuntu developers have been working very hard on the new Unity 8 desktop environment, but their progress has been limited so far on the mobile phones. With the work that’s being done for Ubuntu Touch RTM and Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn), the implementation of the new desktop is now on a back burner.

        • Squid 3 Exploit Closed in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

          Canonical has published details in a security notice about a Squid 3 vulnerability in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS operating systems that has been found and fixed.

          The Ubuntu developers have closed a small problem with Squid, which could have been made to crash, if it received specially crafted network traffic.

        • Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) beta-1 released!

          The first beta of the Utopic Unicorn (to become 14.10) has now been released!

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Future Linux Mint Releases to Have Other Colors Besides Green

            Linux Mint developers are looking to shed that green look for their operating system and they are working on providing more colors for the users of their operating system.

          • Deepin 2014.1, One of the Most Beautiful Distros in the World, Has Been Released – Gallery

            Deepin developers have been hard at work on their new operating system and it looks like they managed to get a lot of fans. This system is one of the most interesting ones that have surfaced in the last couple of years. One of the reasons for its success is the implementation of a new desktop environment that is somewhat different from what other operating systems provide.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Imagination Launches MIPS-Based “Creator CI20” Development Board For Linux And Android, Free For Developers

    Today, Imagination is announcing the launch of a MIPS development board called the MIPS Creator CI20, with support for Linux (running Debian 7 currently, but other distro images are supported) and Android 4.4 KitKat (coming soon).

    According to Imagination, this MIPS developer board is merely the first step in the company’s campaign to get more people to build cool stuff on top of the MIPS CPU architecture. The dev board is targeting open source communities, schools, hobbyists or anyone who might want to try out the MIPS platform. It’s basically a direct competitor to the likes of the ARM-based Raspberry Pi and Texas Instruments’ BeagleBone development boards.

  • Device Tree Overlay Support Lands Upstream

    This means that we should soon have Capemgr support in newer kernels and we are trying to get a jump on that now.

  • New MIPS Creator CI20 development board for Linux and Android debuts

  • Phones

    • Samsung’s Tizen Mobile OS Failing to Impress Device Makers, Pundits

      Samsung’s Tizen mobile operating system is under fire. Some industry pundits have called the operating system, which is open-source and designed to take on Android, a failure, even though it has reached the market in only a few minor mobile products and really hasn’t had a chance to show its worth. Just recently, in fact, Huawei, a top China-based device and telecommunications equipment maker, said that it researched the possibility of using Tizen but found that it couldn’t serve its needs. The company said that it sees Tizen failing eventually with no chance of competing against the likes of Android and others. Samsung, the company behind Tizen, has been silent on the complaints about its operating system. While the company has acknowledged that it has faced some challenges in design, it’s still saying publicly that it can make Tizen a mainstream option in the mobile space. Samsung has even said Tizen could be an ideal choice for wearables, where the company has already brought the operating system to some of its devices. The truth, however, is not as simple as Samsung would have the market believe. This eWEEK slide show looks at the reasons why Tizen may have a hard time proving itself as a viable alternative to Android or any other mobile operating system.

    • Tizen Samsung Smart Camera NX1 with a new UI coming next month?

      Samsung Electronics has been making steady headway in the world of cameras, and possibly leading the pack when it comes to Smart Cameras with its features that it offers. We heard a while ago that samsung where going to be releasing another flagship Smart Camera following the release of the Samsung NX30 camera.

    • Android

      • New Google Nexus Leak Confirms 192-Core, 64-bit Apple Rival

        Last September Apple AAPL +0.16% caused a stir when it announced iOS 7 and the accompanying iPhone 5S would support 64-bit operation. The move to this much faster architecture gave it the jump on 32-bit rivals Android and Windows Phone and brought Apple’s products in-line with desktop and laptop-class computing. But now Android has caught up and may well go speeding past.

      • HTC announces the Desire 510 Android phone but doesn’t mention its 64-bit processor

        Apple stole a march on Android when it released the iPhone 5S with a 64-bit processor, and Android manufacturers have put the pedal to the metal in a race to catch up and make their products 64-bit. AnandTech reports that HTC has announced the Desire 510, its first 64-bit Android phone.

      • HTC Announces Desire 510: First 64-bit Android Phone

        While normally one might expect high end phones to get the latest and greatest features first, this time we see a bit of a surprising reversal. The Desire 510 is HTC’s first 64-bit phone, and the first announced device with Snapdragon 410. For those that aren’t familiar with Snapdragon 410, it has four Cortex A53 CPU cores running at 1.2 GHz, along with an Adreno 306 GPU which suggests that it is a mild modification of the current Adreno 305 GPU that we see in the Snapdragon 400. Overall, this should make for a quite fast SoC compared to Snapdragon 400, as Anand has covered in the Snapdragon 410 launch announcement.

      • Free Android Apps August 2014: Google Play Store Titles for This Week

        There are actually good new Android apps in the Google Play Store that seemed to slide off under the radar. In this news, we’re going to mention some of the best, often ignored, Free Android Apps that you might want to check out. Perfect for those who are actually bored or disappointed with their present apps.

Free Software/Open Source

• SelekTOR 3 now Open Source.

  If you have been following my blog or the SelekTOR news posts here at Dazzleships you will know that I intended to take SelekTOR open source under the GPL 2 license and also discontinue the Windows version well I can now report that this has come to pass.

  SelekTOR for Linux V3.06 and all its source code including the Netbeans build forms are now available for download on the SelekTOR page.

• Kano’s Alejandro Simon: If This, Then Do That

  The OS has been available since February. It is open source. We tried to release a new version of it every two or three weeks. Anybody who runs Rasperry Pi can use it. So we already have users. They share content and discuss features and exchange idea on our forums. So far, we have sold 18,000 kits since last year, through the Kickstarter campaign via preorder. We are now in production and have most of the different pieces in place. We will start shipping by the beginning of September, hopefully. We do the materials and the hardware and the components and the packages ourselves. Finally, it is all coming together.

• Netflix Open Sources More of its Useful Utilities

• Netflix open sources internal threat monitoring tools

• Chef engineer leaves the company after receiving death threats from its open source community

  A release engineer from Chef, the company providing commercial support for the open-source Chef configuration management tool, said in a blog post Wednesday that he is leaving the company after being harassed by members of the Chef community for his contributions to the open source project.

  Seth Vargo (pictured above) wrote that because he has “received numerous abusive emails and two death threats” in addition to other offensive behavior regarding his open-source contributions to the Chef community that were outside of his official work for Chef, he will not only be leaving Chef but will be taking a sabbatical from software engineering.

• Chef pledges to better police open source community after engineer resigns following death threats

• Events

  • New Vault Conference to Promote Open Source Cloud Storage

    The Linux Foundation, a non-profit consortium that promotes Linux and open source software, announced Vault on Thursday. The purpose of the conference, according to the group, is to help guide the direction of open source storage development as organizations increasingly move data to the cloud, creating new types of security and privacy challenges.

• Web Browsers

  • Chrome

    • Google Chrome 64-Bit Now Available for Windows, Mac, Linux

    • Google Chrome 37 Brings Many Security Fixes

      Google released Chrome 37 as stable on Tuesday and with this update comes more fixes and other improvements.

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla Unveils $33 Intex Cloud FX Smartphone

      Mozilla is targeting first time smartphone buyers who haven’t yet upgraded their basic feature phones because of high prices or technology specifications.

      In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Jane Hsu, director of product marketing at Mozilla based in Taiwan, explains how the company was able to bring down the cost of smartphones and discusses Mozilla’s future plans.

    • Mozilla Discloses Another Security Breach Exposing User Data

• SaaS/Big Data

  • Mid-cycle meetups for OpenStack developers and users

    Taking place twice a year, OpenStack’s summits provide a great deal of the face-to-face interaction between developers, vendors, and users. But what about the rest of the year? Many projects opt to host mid-cycle meetups to bridge the gap to collaborate, make plans for the future, and knock out major tasks.

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • LibreOffice 4.3.1 Is Available For Download!!

    The Document Foundation has announced LibreOffice 4.3.1, the first minor release of LibreOffice 4.3 “fresh” family, with over 100 fixes.

• CMS

  • Automattic Improves WordPress Security With BruteProtect Acquisition

    The lead sponsor of the open-source WordPress content management system makes plug-in security free.

• Education

  • Kids aren’t the only ones learning to share

    This one is fundamental. If we look at the four software freedoms we can see very clearly how important the concept of sharing is. To clarify, obviously these four freedoms are not a part of all open source, but they do hold value as a reference when thinking through the concept of sharing.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • New GCC 5.0 Changes, Command-Line Options That Landed So Far

    While we’re just a few months into the GCC 4.10 release cycle that’s going to be released as GCC 5, there’s already some release notes forming for this 2015 open-source compiler update.

  • Watch: “JavaScript: If you love it, set it free”

    FSF executive director John Sullivan spoke at this year’s FOSDEM, a volunteer-organized conference held in Belgium that highlights the development of free software.

• Openness/Sharing

  • 4 things you didn’t know about civic crowdfunding

    Crowdfunding is everywhere. People are using it to fund watches, comic books, even famous film directors are doing it. In what is now a $6 billion industry globally, I think the most interesting, disruptive, and exciting work that’s happening is in donation-based crowdfunding.

    That’s worth, very roughly, $1.2 billion a year worldwide per year. Within that subset, I’ve been looking at civic projects, people who are producing shared goods for a community or broader public. These projects build on histories of community fundraising and resource pooling that long predate the Internet; what’s changed is that we’ve created a scalable, portable platform model to carry out these existing practices.

  • Open Data

    • penStreetMap: the Next Truly Indispensable Open Project

      Last year, I described OpenStreetMap (OSM) as the “open source of maps”. On the occasion of the project’s tenth anniversary, I’d like to explore this important example of open collaboration in a little more detail, and explain why I think it is destined to become the next absolutely key open project.

      First, some history. To celebrate OSM’s anniversary, TechCrunch has an excellent interview with the project’s founder, Steve Coast.

• Programming

  • PHP 5.6 Major Update Officially Released

    PHP 5.6, an HTML-embedded scripting language with syntax borrowed from C, Java, and Perl, with a couple of unique PHP-specific features thrown in, is now available for download.

    The PHP 5.x branch includes a new OOP model based on the Zend Engine, a new extension for improved MySQL support, built-in native support for SQLite, and many more features. This branch of PHP has been in the works for quite some time and it’s nice to see that the stable version is now out.

Leftovers

• MenuetOS Updated With SMP Threads & Onscreen Keyboard

  MenuetOS, the operating system written in Assembly and now primarily focused on 64-bit x86 systems and fits on a 1.5MB floppy disk image, is out with a new release.

• Security

  • Security advisories for Wednesday

  • Feds warn first responders of dangerous hacking tool: Google Search

    In a restricted intelligence document distributed to police, public safety, and security organizations in July, the Department of Homeland Security warned of a “malicious activity” that could expose secrets and security vulnerabilities in organizations’ information systems. The name of that activity: “Google dorking.”

    “Malicious cyber actors are using advanced search techniques, referred to as ‘Google dorking,’ to locate information that organizations may not have intended to be discoverable by the public or to find website vulnerabilities for use in subsequent cyber attacks,” the for-official-use-only Roll Call Release warned. “By searching for specific file types and keywords, malicious cyber actors can locate information such as usernames and passwords, e-mail lists, sensitive documents, bank account details, and website vulnerabilities.”

  • Security updates for Thursday

• Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • The danger of retaliation

    Like Al-Qaida, the Islamic State is a monster partly of our own making.

  • Op-Ed: Tripoli bombed for third night by unidentified aircraft

    For a third night unidentified aircraft struck targets in Tripoli. The attacks came just hours after the Misrata militia claim they have finally gained control of the Tripoli International AIrport from the rival Zintan brigades.

  • How to Provoke a Crisis

    There is no one more capable at provoking a crisis than the U.S. national-security establishment. They are absolute experts at doing so. They have to be. Their survival and ever-increasing tax-funded bounty depends on it.

    Consider, for example, a recent altercation between a U.S. surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter jet near the coast of Japan.

  • ‘The Congress Shall Have Power … to Declare War’

    President Obama is compelled to get permission before striking Syria, but if he violates the law by unilaterally ordering a strike it won’t be the first time.

  • BT alleged to have supplied high-speed fibre-optic cable to aid US drone strikes

    The government has been asked to investigate whether BT is aiding drone strikes with a specially built military internet cable connecting US air force facilities in Northamptonshire to a base for unmanned craft in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa.

    Evidence is mounting that the $23m (£13m) fibre-optic circuit built by BT in 2012 was installed to facilitate air strikes in Yemen and Somalia by US air force drones, according to a complaint filed by the human rights group Reprieve.

    The circuit runs from RAF Croughton, a base where US air force personnel staff a command, control, communications and computer support hub for global operations organised by the US military.

• Finance

  • Colonization by Bankruptcy: The High-Stakes Chess Match for Argentina

    Argentina is playing hardball with the vulture funds, which have been trying to force it into an involuntary bankruptcy. The vultures are demanding what amounts to a 600% return on bonds bought for pennies on the dollar, defeating a 2005 settlement in which 92% of creditors agreed to accept a 70% haircut on their bonds. A US court has backed the vulture funds; but last week, Argentina sidestepped its jurisdiction by transferring the trustee for payment from Bank of New York Mellon to its own central bank. That play, if approved by the Argentine Congress, will allow the country to continue making payments under its 2005 settlement, avoiding default on the majority of its bonds.

  • Detroit water shut-offs for overdue bills to begin once more

    More than a month after Detroit was criticized for turning off water to people who had not paid their bills, the water shut-offs are beginning again.

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Ralph Nader: How Corporate Espionage on Nonprofit Watchdogs Goes Unpunished

• Privacy

  • Spy on enemies, not Senate

    Revealing too much about the Central Intelligence Agency’s activities would undermine national security. But that doesn’t mean the CIA shouldn’t have to answer to Congress.

    And it certainly doesn’t mean the CIA should spy on Congress.

    Legislative oversight of the CIA is a legal, logical and necessary way for federal lawmakers to assure that the agency operates within proper limits. That’s how the American public, through our elected representatives, keeps track of what the CIA is doing in our name.

  • Former CIA Director Michael Hayden Trying To Pretend CIA Torture Report Is Just A ‘Democrat’ Political Ploy

    We’ve been covering the pending release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s CIA torture report, which is currently undergoing a fight over what should or should not be redacted. We also covered the NY Times report about how former CIA boss George Tenet (who helped mentor current CIA boss John Brennan) is both implicated by the report… and has been leading the campaign to discredit the report.

• Civil Rights

  • CIA acted to shape Portugal’s post-revolutionary political scene

    The US State Department approved its first clandestine operational plan for Portugal on 27th September 1974 with the stated aim of “avoiding the communists taking power” according to documents publicly released on their 40th anniversary.

  • Congressman Guns for High-Performance Body Armor Ban

    A California congressman wants to ban everyday Americans from owning high-performance body armor.

    Rep. Mike Honda, a Democrat, tells U.S. News law enforcement officers need an edge over criminals and rampaging madmen, whom he says can “wreck havoc with impunity” wearing the gear.

    Honda’s “Responsible Body Armor Possession Act,” introduced July 31, would prohibit civilians from buying or owning armor – including vests, shields, helmets and other items – rated Type III or higher on the National Institute of Justice’s penetration resistance scale.

• Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Net Neutrality Is ‘Marxist,’ According to This Koch-Backed Astroturf Group

    A mysterious conservative group with strong ties to the Koch brothers has been bombarding inboxes with emails filled with disinformation and fearmongering in an attempt to start a “grassroots” campaign to kill net neutrality—at one point suggesting that “Marxists” think that preserving net neutrality is a good idea.

    The emails, which come with subject lines like “Stop Obama’s federal Internet takeover,” come from American Commitment, an organization that is nonprofit in name only and has been called out time and time again by journalists and transparency organizations for obscuring where it gets its funding.

    In an email I received, American Commitment president Phil Kerpen suggests that reclassifying the internet as a public utility is the “first step in the fight to destroy American capitalism altogether” and says that the FCC is plotting a “federal Internet takeover,” a move that “sounds more like a story coming out of China or Russia.”

• DRM

  • GOG Looking To Extend It’s DRM-Free Message To Movies/TV

    If you like PC games, chances are you already know all about GOG, or Good Old Games. The GOG website has done more to extend the life of gently-aged games by building a platform for old games that will work on new machines while having one singular principal dominate their products: there shall be no DRM.

  • GOG To Start Selling Movies And TV Shows

    Well this is interesting: GOG.com, the digital retailer best known for selling old games without DRM, is branching out into film and TV.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Kim Dotcom Battles to Keep Cash Sources Private

      With Hollywood hovering in the background looking for cash, last month the High Court ordered Kim Dotcom to reveal in detail where he’s getting all his money from. The Mega founder isn’t ready to give in though, and is putting up a fight ahead of an appeal hearing in October.

    • LA Police: Online Piracy Funds Drug Dealers and Terrorists

      The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department sees piracy as one of its top priorities. In a highly tainted news report the Assistant Sheriff claims a direct link between piracy, organized crime and terrorism. But are the alleged pirates who inspired the report really hardcore criminals? Let’s find out.