04.09.11

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers
• Clip of the Day

GNU/Linux

• Linux high availability group working on critical enterprise application stack

  The Linux Foundation has formed a new working group to speed development within the Linux ecosystem that would make the operating system kernel more suitable for building high availability (HA) systems, the Foundation announced Wednesday.

  [...]

  So, not surprisingly, the Linux HA stack will include a lot of components that should aid in the clustering of servers. In addition to Linux, the software stack may include technologies such as the Corosync cluster engine, the Open Clustering Framework, the Linux Virtual Server, the Pacemaker resource manager, the Oracle Cluster File System (OCFS), the Global File System (GFS) and others.

• That Other OS Re-re-reboots, Again

  Why is this OS still around? Who needs this aggravation? There is a better way to do IT: Debian GNU/Linux.

  Debian GNU/Linux is not perfect but it is a lot less work to keep it running. In the five years I have been using it I have only had much angst three times: a flub of openSSH, lots of display problems in the display on the beta of Squeeze and just yesterday, my wife found OpenOffice.org would not open files from Office that it previously had opened. Libre Office fixed that and a problem every couple of years compared to a monthly curse is heavenly.

• The Battle for the Last Desktop

  Acer expects component shortages for tablet PCs and smartphones

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • The Linux Link Tech Show Episode 397

• Kernel Space

  • From The Dorm Room To Your Smartphone: The Incredible 20-Year Story of Linux

    Whether you use it every day or you’ve never even heard of it, Linux is undeniably important to computing history. It’s been around in one form or another since the early 90s and continues to be a relevant player in the world of computing.

  • Graphics Stack

    • AMD Puts Out A Catalyst Hot-Fix For Linux

      AMD has just released a Catalyst hot-fix driver for Linux users on this binary blob. This is the “AMD Catalyst 11.4b” driver.

• Applications

  • Synapse 0.2.6 Released, Brings New Theme and Drag ‘n’ Drop Features

    A new version for semantic launcher Synapse has been released today that brings many new features most notable of which are a new theme similar to Gnome-Do and ability to drag and drop files from results on windows.

  • Proprietary

    • Skype for Linux gets an update after almost 15 months

      Proving how much it cares about those people who use its app on Linux, Skype has released version 2.2 for Linux. Don’t run towards the champagne though, as this is still a beta version, and, as its minor revision number implies, isn’t the much-awaited big new version that achieves feature parity with its Windows and Mac brethren.

    • NetSupport Assist now available for Mac, Linux

      NetSupport has announced that its classroom instruction and monitoring software is now available for the Mac OS and Linux platforms.

      Previously only available for Windows, NetSupport Assist lets teachers control lessons from their terminals by providing them with a live thumbnail of each student’s desktop.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Installing Apache2 With PHP5 And MySQL Support On OpenSUSE 11.4 (LAMP)

    • How To Save Traffic With Lighttpd’s mod_compress (Debian Squeeze)

    • The Ultimate Guide to Getting Support on Linux

    • Change Default Terminal Size in Ubuntu

    • Batch image resize using linux command line

    • Connect remotely from Linux with Terminal Server Client

    • How To Create A Gnome 3 Live USB Stick [Fedora, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu]

    • Install Linux Onto A Notebook Without A CD Drive

    • Commands to check hardware

    • Squish, Bang, Zip… So You Want to Archive and Compress/Decompress Files?

    • Convert the charset of file names from iso-8859-15 to utf8

    • systemd for Administrators, Part VI

    • Opera 11.10 Speed Dial too big fix

    • Apache Error: Fully Qualified Domain Name

    • Convert Text To Base-64 By Hand

    • Music Production in Linux 4

    • Ubuntu 11.04 Is Coming — And Here’s How to Preview the Beta

    • Detecting Vulnerable Software Versions Using SCAP/OVAL

    • Understanding The While Loop

    • Azulejo – User friendly window tiling

    • How To Save Traffic With Lighttpd’s mod_compress (Debian Squeeze)

    • Scribus: Importing Images

    • Testing Writer documents rendering

      Checking whether documents are looking the same when they are loaded in Writer has been a problem and needs a lot of manual verifications. When discussing with Florian Reuter more than a year ago, I discovered that he wrote a patch to dump the writer layout as an XML file. This patch helped him to debug layout problems, but Thorsten quickly had the idea to use it to test documents rendering. I finally found some time to improve that layout dumping patch and create a filter for it: it has been pushed yesterday to the master branch (see commits 16431d9, 2ef2ae4 in writer repo and 51398ba in filters repo).

  • Games

    • Surreal Gaming in ‘Machinarium’ Creator’s Latest, ‘Osada’

      If you’ve played either of Amanita Design’s previous works — the ‘Samorost’ series or ‘Machinarium’ — you know to expect a visually thrilling spectacle. Amanita’s latest game, ‘Osada,’ leans more towards the surreal insanity of their ‘Samorost’ games than the more puzzle-oriented ‘Machinarium,’ with a stream-of-consciousness flow of nonsensical visuals and simple point-and-click puzzles. Oozing with irreverence and insanity, ‘Osada’ is an invigorating time-waster that’s sure to delight anyone with a taste for the strange.

• Desktop Environments

  • Sanity

  • GNOME Desktop

    • Gnome3 is a YES

      I wanted to check out Gnome3 on my own, in spite of the wide range of reviews [or because of them!] I especially appreciated this review: https://piecesoflint.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/10-things-i-love-about-gnome-3/. I don’t wish to repeat the findings, but add my own reactions.

    • New GNOME cuts the clutter

      Five years in the making, the newly released version 3 of the GNOME Linux desktop interface has been radically redesigned.

      The development team endeavored to develop a simpler interface for the shell, noted Jon McCann, one of GNOME Shell’s designers, in a Thursday announcement.

      For this release, the boxy look and feel has been replaced with a more aerodynamic, clutter-free visage. All the icons were redesigned, and new default font Cantarell was adopted. Applications can be called up by simply typing the first few letters of a program name. Frequently used applications can be pinned to a desktop dashboard.

    • Gnome 3 Review

      The long, loooong awaited Gnome 3. Probably the most popular linux desktop environment out there has finally gotten its well deserved and a needed major overhaul. Often times I hear people complaining about the lack of features in Gnome 2.x when compared to, say, KDE. Others, on the other hand, like its simplicity, ease of use, and the fact that no big changes have been made for quite some time. In fact, I myself can’t recall any significant changes to Gnome since I first started using it 5 years ago. Gnome 3 was written from scratch and the team was hoping to reinvent some things, but innovate at the same time, while making the new Gnome the best desktop environment out there. But, did they succeed? More after the break!

    • GNOME 3 Heroes

      GNOME 3 is an incredible achievement. Looking back to that first announcement in 2008, I don’t think any of us would have quite imagined how much the project would accomplish with a new dot oh release. Everyone can feel very proud indeed.

    • GNOME 3

• Distributions

  • 4 Recommended Linux Distros To Help You Choose The Right One For You

    Just imagine if you tried out a distro that wasn’t meant for you?

  • Have You Heard of AUSTRUMI Linux?

    I haven’t thought of AUSTRUMI in quite a while. My memories of it are tiny, tiny, fast, fast, yet up-to-date able work on modern hardware (modern at the time). Then it fell off my radar around version 1.5.0 released in 2007. But 2.3.3 was just released a few days ago, so it was time to see its latest incarnation.

    AUSTRUMI is Slackware-based distribution that hails from Latvia. Yes, that’s a country; in the general vicinity of Lithuania, Sweden, and the western Russian border. It ships as an installable live CD (to HDD or USB) with support for several languages. It was once about a 30 MB download, but these days it is 199 MB. It comes with Linux 2.6.38.2, Xorg X Server 1.10.0, GIMP 2.6.11, Opera 11.10, LibreOffice 3.3.2, and lots (relatively speaking) of other handy applications. It includes several server applications as well as system tools and utilities. AUSTRUMI also ships with NVIDIA and ATI/AMD proprietary drivers, although the choice of using Open Source drivers is available to boot. Another boot time option is whether to run it completely in RAM or not as well as your preferred language and several other options.

    It comes with a very attractive FVWM desktop with transparency and a nice titlebar, clock, and quicklauncher on the side as well as a pretty theme and wallpaper. They’ve also used Conky to display some machine statistics across the top of the screen.

  • 3-in-1: How 3 Old Friends Can Be Found In Same Place

    Post about SLAX was soon followed by post about Puppy. I felt in love with Puppy from the first sight. It’s a pity I had to remove it from my HDD to replace with Debian Squeeze.
    SLAX is based on Slackware.

  • New Releases

    • SystemRescueCd 2.1.0 updates Xfce desktop

      Version 2.1.0 of the SystemRescueCd Linux distribution has been released, the first major point update to SystemRescueCd 2.0.0 from early January. Based on the Gentoo LiveCD and using Xfce as its default desktop, the SystemRescueCd is configured as a tool kit for administering or repairing an operating system and recovering data after a system crash. Supported file systems include Ext2, Ext3 and Ext4, ReiserFS, XFS, JFS, VFAT, NTFS, ISO9660 and Btrfs.

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Smile becomes Mandriva partner

      Mandriva Pulse 2 is the Open Source solution to manage business IT infrastructure whether it is homogenous, unisite, multisite, and
      comprising a handfull of machines or several thousand.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat Near the 50 Day

    • Fedora

      • Fusion Linux 14 review

        Fusion Linux is a (desktop) Linux distribution derived from Fedora,

  • Debian Family

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • I Don’t Like Unity; Should I Ditch Ubuntu?

        In my opinion most Ubuntu users who think the way my friend thinks are going to be upset about it. So, what to do? Should such users ditch Ubuntu and move to derivatives like Linux Mint (which is fast becoming my favorite)?

        Linux Mint has a very strong user-base and it doesn’t need Ubuntu’s failure to get new users. However, I can see quite a lot of users migrating to Linux Mint if they did not like Unity. While I have no issue whether you use Ubuntu or Linux Mint, I do have a suggestion to those who are not comfortable with Unity yet don’t want to ditch Ubuntu.

      • Ubuntu 11.04 May Default To Classic GNOME Desktop

        When Mark Shuttleworth and co announced last year that Ubuntu 11.04 would deploy a Canonical-developed Unity desktop environment instead of the GNOME 3.0 Shell or the classic GNOME2 desktop, many users were concerned by this move with Unity on Ubuntu Netbook not even being in great shape, etc. Concerns over Unity by default in Ubuntu 11.04 have only grown with the Unity interface in Ubuntu 11.04 Beta still being sluggish and broken in areas. Now it looks like Canonical may default Ubuntu 11.04 to using the classic desktop.

      • Test drive the whole Ubuntu archive with WebLive

        In my last blog post about WebLive I announced the availability on WebLive of the top-50 apps from the new Ratings & Review service.

        Today I’m happy to announce that this feature is no longer necessary as you can now test drive anything that’s available in the Ubuntu archive.

      • The Spiel About The Default Ubuntu 11.04 Desktop

        Earlier today Phoronix was the first publication to widely report that Ubuntu 11.04 may default to the GNOME classic desktop rather than the Unity desktop that Canonical has been developing viciously over the past few months. There’s just too many bugs outstanding and issues with Unity, but here’s the whole spiel about what their evaluation is coming down to in deciding whether to stick with Unity by default or instead use the classic GNOME desktop until presumably Ubuntu 11.10.

        A more elaborate email from Canonical’s Rick Spencer has now hit the Ubuntu development mailing list that further analyzes the situation and discussion that came out of the Ubuntu Technical Board meeting.

      • Ubuntu Expels One Of Its Developers

        Besides the MPlayer fighting that’s now going on, the battles within the Ubuntu community isn’t limited to GNOME vs. Unity on the desktop, but in fact the Ubuntu Developer Membership board and Community Council have jointly decided to expel one of the Ubuntu developers.

        The two Ubuntu groups have decided to kick Artur Rona out of the Ubuntu development community for at least two years, according to this mailing list post. This Polish developer had been responsible within the Ubuntu community for handling merges, syncs, and security updates for some packages.

      • Mark Shuttleworth talks Narwhals

        Natty Narwhal (Ubuntu 11.04) removes GNOME, adds new kernel, and offers a major patch for scheduling processes. Mark Shuttleworth talks to Linux User about all this, Debian relations and the future of Ubuntu…

      • Knowledge-Sharing on Agenda During Ubuntu App Developer Week

        Have an idea for a great Linux application that’s missing from the 30,000+ downloads in the Ubuntu repositories? Or just interested in learning some programming pointers? If you answered yes, the latest and greatest Ubuntu App Developer Week, which starts Monday, April 11, 2011, is for you. Keep reading for details…

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Elementary OS Review: Delight to Use, Few Issues Persist

        • Linux Mint Debian 201101 – Really, really nice

          There were two tiny wrongs with LMD – one, the lack of Compiz; two, the one-time boot glitch. Other than that, Linux Mint Debian was surprisingly good-looking and good-working, with none of the pessimistic predictions about its stability and usability.

          I’m thoroughly pleased with the distro. It’s a near perfect 10! The Mint dev team has scored two tremendous releases, one after another, not an easy feat by any means or standards. This is really amazing. What more, LMD is a beacon of hope for all those frightened Ubuntu users and Unity haters. If you don’t like the direction Ubuntu is going, there’s Linux Mint and its Debian edition waiting for you. Stable, fast, beautiful, the sum of all good.

          Let’s not forget – this is a rolling release, so install once and enjoy forever. It’s also probably going to be supported for eons. And this is just the first edition. Think how this thing will look like in a year or two, given more time to buff and polish.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Eurocom Launches Dual Processor Phantom 4.0 Server-on-the-Go Solution

    Eurocom Corporation (www.eurocom.com), the world’s leading developer of highly personalized, high-performance notebook PCs and energy efficient All-in-Ones has been developing a dual CPU notebook solution for years. Eurocom technicians have been testing and verifying the systems performance and quality since the beginning of 2011 and now the system is ready for shipping.

  • The WINDspeed Pocket Hotspot: great for Linux users but piss-poor documentation.

    I must admit that I haven’t found a suitable use case for a MiFi device until now — where I find myself tasked with procuring a no-fuss Internet connection for visiting family. Each of the big carriers in Canada sells a personal WiFi hotspot of some sort, but being a fan of the little guy I went instead with WIND Mobile’s Huawei E583C — aka, the WINDspeed Pocket Hotspot.

  • The MosKeyto’s Buzz

    A review of a USB drive might seem like a silly notion, but when the USB drive is barely bigger than the USB port itself, it seems worth mentioning. I recently was sent a LaCie MosKeyto USB drive, and I must admit, it’s even smaller than I expected it would be. In fact, the cover to the Flash drive is actually bigger than the drive itself!

  • Phones

    • Nokia/MeeGo/Maemo

      • Nokia offering new SDK for Qt

        Developers who want to take advantage of Nokia’s cross-platform application and user interface framework can now access the latest release candidate.

        Qt is designed to let developers write and deploy applications across desktop, mobile and embedded OSes without rewriting source code. The Qt SDK 1.1 Release Candidate is now available for download, Nokia said in a blog post on Thursday.

  • Tablets

    • Google begins tablet version of Chrome OS

      Details in Google’s source code reveal that company programmers have begun building a tablet version of Chrome OS, its browser-based operating system.

    • Acer expects component shortages for tablet PCs and smartphones

      Commenting about the tablet PC market, Acer Taiwan president Scott Lin pointed out that the company is currently working aggressively over its tablet PCs and is doing a marvelous job; however, Japan’s earthquake may affect component supplies for its smartphone and tablet PC lines.

Free Software/Open Source

• Why Facebook open-sourced its datacenters

  Facebook has opened up a whole new front in its war with Google over top technical talent and ad dollars. Instead of simply hiring away Google engineers, the social networking service is now aiming to do for its datacenters what Google is doing with Android—that is, it’s taking an open-source approach that will let the company harness the energy and know-how of a larger ecosystem of programmers and engineers to make its ad business that much more profitable. Facebook has framed the announcement as part of its commitment to openness, but there are much larger forces at work here. Specifically, despite what most people think, Facebook and Google are hardware companies, and the former’s open-source datacenter will potentially help it compete in the datacenter arena with its much larger and deeper-pocketed rival.

• Facebook’s Open-Source Servers Will Change the Industry. Right?

  Facebook’s bid to open-source its server architecture sounds like a technology with broad applications. But it remains unclear how the Open Compute Initiative will affect the traditional server market.

  Facebook said Thursday that it is making the design documents and specifications of the servers used at its Prineville, Ore. data center public at OpenCompute.org. The company claims that the design of the new servers is 38 percent more power efficient than its older models, and costs 24 percent less to make.

• Facebook open sources its server, data center designs: Hardware fallout to follow

  Facebook on Thursday launched an initiative it calls the Open Compute Project, an effort to share the specs and designs of the custom servers in its data center in Prineville, Ore. In other words, Facebook is going to open source its hardware designs just like the software industry largely has.

• FLOSS Weekly 160: Open Source Software At The Department Of Defense

  Hosts: Randal Schwartz and Simon Phipps

  Download or subscribe to this show at twit.tv/floss.

  We invite you to read, add to, and amend our show notes.

• Project Harmony Launches Today

  “Project Harmony is like Creative Commons for contributor agreements. We’ve set out to capture the best practices of free and open source software contributions, across a diverse array of project cultures, communities, and values.” said Allison Randal, a community participant in Project Harmony. “The public review process for the Alpha versions of the documents launches today, and runs through May 6th. After a year of hard work by the original ~100 drafting volunteers, we’re really looking forward to broader participation in this public review.”

• Web Browsers

  • Chrome

    • Google Chrome 12 Protects Against Malware

      Google is updating its Chrome web browser, Chrome 12, with new performance and security features. Chrome 12 is now available in Google’s dev-channel, providing users with a sneak peak of what Google has in store . Chrome 12 includes a new version of the V8 JavaScript engine as well as an overall code cleanup.

  • Mozilla

    • Firefox 4

      But it’s rock solid, fast, and dependable. I no longer feel like I need to apologise for using Firefox as my browser.

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Judge in Oracle-Google case gets a lesson in Java

    Lawyers for Oracle and Google gave the judge overseeing their Java patent dispute a tutorial on Wednesday that underscored the complexity of the case between the two companies.

• Education

  • Moodle 2.0 Science: Monitoring Your Students’ Progress

    By the end of this article, you will be able to do the following:

    * Check that your learners are looking at the resources that you add to your course
    * Track completion of activities
    * Plan what your learners need to achieve for the completion of your course
    * Evaluate the effectiveness of your quizzes by using result analysis
    * Identify gaps in learner’s understanding by using quiz grade analysis
    * Use assignment reports to identify learners who need extra help
    * Gain a valuable overview of your learners’ progress by effectively using the gradebook

• Project Releases

  • [llvm-announce] LLVM 2.9 Release!

    LLVM 2.9 is out, get it while it is fresh and steaming!

• Programming

  • Review: Making Software, Edited by Andy Oram and Greg Wilson

    I found the book fascinating largely because of my background in science, and my interest in the philosophical problems in the first few chapters on how to ask the questions in a quantifiable and objective way.

Leftovers

• The Bizarre Cathedral – 96

• Alcatel-Lucent Launches Wired Networking Mesh

• Cablegate

  • Dear Queen Beatrix,

    It is with anger and disbelief that I now read that the current interior minister of your government is willing to give up the freedom of Rop Gonggrijp to please the United States. As you can read here, Uri Rosenthal has no problem to extradite Rop Gonggrijp to the United States should they so desire.

    And why? Because he helped Wikileaks to publish the truth. Because he helped the truth to be put in the spotlight of public scrutiny. A truth that is tough to accept, but true to his nature, Rop Gonggrijp defended the freedom to tell the truth.

• Internet/Net Neutrality/UBB

  • Pensioner in Georgia cuts Armenia off from internet

    An elderly woman in Georgia is facing a prison sentence after reportedly causing internet services in neighbouring Armenia to crash.

    The country found itself offline for hours on 28 March after cables linking Georgia to Armenia were damaged.

  • BT escapes prosecution over web snooping

    BT will not be prosecuted for snooping on the web browsing habits of its customers.

    The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has dropped a request bring charges against BT and Phorm – the firm that supplied the monitoring system.

    The Webwise software used cookies to track people online and then tailored adverts to the sites they visited.