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10.07.12

Links 7/10/2012: Linux 3.7, GIMP 3 Discussed

Posted in News Roundup at 10:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source equals software freedom, not free software
  • An Open Source Dyslexic Font

    Programmers seem to be prone to dyslexia, or is it that dyslexics are prone to programming? Whatever the cause, an open source dyslexic font is welcome news.

    Yes reader, I am dyslexic and I am a programmer – and yes it makes things difficult, especially when I get an attack in the middle of a published article, and variable names are often more variable than they are supposed to be.

  • Graduate students in Finland solve real problems beyond the classroom

    The School of Business and Information Management at Oulu University of Applied Sciences (OUAS) created an open source project management software named OpixProject. The objective was not to create something that would compete with the current project management software, but to place students in realistic problem-solving environments in order to reduce the gap between the concepts covered in the classroom and real-world experiences.

  • Copenhagen Suborbitals Release Snowmix, an Open Source Video Mixer
  • Juju Has Charms Included

    So how many of you ever thought of installing/configuring an application like WordPress/Drupal and compact Big Data mammoth like Hadoop in less than few clicks?

    I am sure everyone of you. A system admin loves automating his work and getting his/her most of the deployments done with some magic scripts. We all are living in the cloud world, its not a buzzword anymore, people are leveraging on it. So I will ask again how will you automate/autoscale/load-balance your entire application ?

  • Open source release for Google reranking technology

    Google has released a general purpose framework for reranking problems, ReFr (Reranker Framework), as open source. Reranking is a technique that is used when there is a model that can offer several scored hypothesised outputs; rerankers can reorder the ranked outputs based on information not available to the original model.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox Is Back on Top of Chrome

        Looks like we weren’t the only Internet users that got fed up with Chrome’s constant crashes, as the latest numbers show its popularity has been waning a smidge. The chart above shows worldwide mobile browser market share over the last 12 months. Back in May Chrome’s adoption numbers just about matched Firefox’s. And, at the end of last year, after a year of huge growth, different numbers found the Google made browser surpassed Firefox as the number two most popular browser, just behind Internet Explorer. But since then—perhaps because of the constant flash crashes, or that hip Internet Explorer campaign—Firefox has regained the No. 2 spot, according to numbers from Net Marketshare. Another way to spin the numbers is that Firefox’s sped up six-week new release schedule attracted more users.

      • Mozilla Firefox OS Features And Expectations

        Mozilla, the organization behind one of the most popular browsers in the world, is busy developing a new mobile operating system of its own. Competing head-on with biggies like Android and iOS, the fledgling smartphone OS attempts to create its own niche by seamlessly blending the power of the web and the mobility of smartphones together. Codenamed Boot to Gecko (or B2G), the open-source project will include applications that will be written in HTML5. These apps can then use the device’s API to run natively with the help of JavaScript.

      • Firefox 19: new tab strip design incoming

        Australis is the name of the new default Firefox theme that Mozilla has been working on for quite some time. The decision was made to release the update gradually, with some updates already in the browser, while others still waiting to be delivered to it. One of the next Australis-related updates comes in Firefox 19. You may have already seen how the new tab bar will look like in mock-ups that Mozilla designer Stephen Horlander released a while ago.

      • Firefox quit warning message bug

  • SaaS

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Open-source development: The history of OpenOffice shows why licensing matters

      The course of open-source software does not always run smoothly, especially when the development of software becomes entangled with broader corporate strategies.

    • NetBeans 7.3′s HTML5 App Dev features go into beta

      Java developers are not left out though, with improvements such as a new-style breadcrumb navigation bar, new member and hierarchy views, updated hints and refactorings, filtering for “Find Usages” and an “effective” POM editor tab for pom.xml files. Java EE developers will find a JPQL testing tool and enhancements to the REST service development features. FXML and the SceneBuilder are better supported in 7.3 Beta’s JavaFX handling, which is also compatible with JDK 7u6 on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

  • CMS

    • Open Source CMS MODX Launches Cloud Service

      Today open source content management company MODX is launching a hosted cloud service to commercialize the product, much as Acquia and WordPress.com have done for Drupal and WordPress.

  • BSD

    • An Easy Way To Try Out FreeBSD 10

      If you have been wanting to try out the FreeBSD 10-CURRENT operating system that’s presently under development, there’s now an easier way.

      Rather than needing to install a current FreeBSD release and then upgrade to the “-CURRENT” packages from there, a FreeBSD developer has finally started offering snapshot images of the FreeBSD 10-CURRENT and 9-STABLE versions. Yes, finally ISO snapshots to make it easier to try out the current development state from a clean install.

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Data

    • Open Access/Content

      • California passes groundbreaking open textbook legislation

        It’s official. In California, Governor Jerry Brown has signed two bills (SB 1052 and SB 1053) that will provide for the creation of free, openly licensed digital textbooks for the 50 most popular lower-division college courses offered by California colleges. The legislation was introduced by Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and passed by the California Senate and Assembly in late August.

    • Open Hardware

      • The Open Hardware Summit: The Future of Manufacturing is Sharing
      • HexBright, the Programmable Open Source Flashlight
      • Arduino Uno open-source prototyping board comes to market

        A starter kit for the Arduino Uno open-source prototyping board which can be used by professional embedded system engineers and students is available from RS Components, writes Richard Wilson.

        The kit contains the components required to start programming with the Arduino Uno board along with a guidebook featuring 15 different projects. There is a definite mechatronics flavour to the kit which includes a motor, servomotor and driver.

      • Open Hardware Summit open to hybrid models

        If there was an overarching message from the speakers at last week’s Open Hardware Summit, particularly those in the first morning block, it’s that openness isn’t that critical. It sounds strange coming from a conference whose name starts with “open,” but speaker after speaker talked about hybrids and doing whatever worked, not just doing what was open.

        That’s not to say they don’t believe in the power of openness. The first words of Wired magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson’s opening keynote were the very foundation of open source: “Everything I’ve learned as I built my own business is because people shared what they knew.”

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Superweeds, Superpests: The Legacy of Pesticides

      The rapid adoption of a single weed-killer for the vast majority of crops harvested in the United States has given rise to superweeds and greater pesticide use, a new study suggests. And while crops engineered to manufacture an insect-killing toxin have reduced the use of pesticides in those fields, the emergence of newly resistant insects now threatens to reverse that trend.

      Farmers spray the herbicide glyphosate, widely sold under the Monsanto brand Roundup, on fields planted with seeds that are genetically engineered to tolerate the chemical. Found in 1.37 billion acres of corn, soybeans, and cotton planted from 1996 through 2011, this “Roundup Ready” gene was supposed to reduce or eliminate the need to till fields or apply harsher chemicals, making weed control simple, flexible, cheap, and less environmentally taxing.

  • Finance

    • 2nd Circuit remakes MBS class action rules in Goldman ruling

      Now they tell us? More than four years after investors in mortgage-backed securities began filing class actions accusing MBS issuers of deceiving them in offering documents — and at least three years after federal judges began tossing class claims because name plaintiffs didn’t have the requisite standing — the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals has redefined standing in MBS class actions. In a 38-page opinion that revives a class action against Goldman Sachs, the appeals court rejected what had been conventional wisdom, finding that a union healthcare fund represented by Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd isn’t limited to claims based on specific offerings it invested in. Instead, wrote Judge Barrington Parker for a panel that also included judges Reena Raggi and Raymond Lohier, the union fund has standing to assert claims related to every certificate backed by mortgages originated by the same lenders that originated the loans backing the notes purchased by the fund.

    • The War Between Credit and Resources

      Such a policy, which received wider attention during Ben Bernanke’s Congressional questioning last year and was also highlighted this year in a paper delivered at the Jackson Hole conference (Woodford, opens to PDF), has not caught any visible traction with Washington policy makers possibly because it’s seen as either too radical, or simply too new.

10.06.12

Links 6/10/2012: Linux Increasingly Dominates in Tablet

Posted in News Roundup at 7:04 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Five Reasons to prove Linux is Secure than Windows

  • Desktop

    • The Chromebook 2012 Gallery
    • Will a Chromebook be your next PC?

      Sure, you could keep using Windows, although Windows 8 looks worse every time you look at it; or you could buy a Mac for big bucks; or you could buy a Samsung Series 5 550 Chromebook starting at $449 and have a great Linux-based desktop that you already know how to use.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux 3.6 Delivers Solid Progress

      Linux creator Linus Torvalds released the fifth new major Linux kernel release of 2012 late Sunday. The new kernel provides incremental improvements to multiple aspects of the open source operating system.

    • 30 Linux Kernel Developers in 30 Weeks: Ben Hutchings
    • Greg KH: 5 Open Source Projects That Need Developers
    • Attention CEO’s: You Are in the Software Business. Now What?

      Companies will spend $1.4 trillion this year on global R&D to design and build their core products. They don’t have the time or dollars to build the software from scratch that runs in those products. So, they’re turning to Linux and open development. Once upon a time just an operating system for servers, mobile devices and supercomputers, Linux is giving companies $10B in R&D that they can pull from and run with to build everything from cars to custom devices, and much more.

    • Top Five Tech Jobs Point to Opportunity for Linux Pro’s

      There is good news being reported today throughout online, print and broadcast newsrooms: The U.S. unemployment rate has dipped to a four-year low to 7.8 percent, and staffing and consulting firm Robert Half International released its 2013 Salary Guide showing technology jobs will see the highest salary increases of any sector in the year ahead.

    • Samsung Creates New File System F2FS For Linux, Good News For Android

      Greg KH, the lead Linux kernel developer applauded the file system on his Google+ page, “Sweet, a new Linux file system from Samsung that is faster than existing ones when running on flash storage devices, submitted in a clean, easy-to-apply manner. This will be great for Android-based systems.”

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • First Look: Elementary OS Window Manager Gala

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Introducing Intelligent Search For Gnome Shell

        Gnome Shell, a desktop environment based on top of Gnome 3, will soon have some intelligent search features integrated with it. Current search function in Gnome shell allows one to search for apps and files, however, in future, it may do more. Like a single search can fetch things from your empathy chat log, photos, documents and more.

      • Cinnamon 1.6.1 Released

        The Linux Mint team has announced an updated version of the Cinnamon desktop. This is the first update in Cinnamon 1.6 series. Along with bug fixes, this release also includes some stability enhancements and extension updates. Detailed updates have been given below:

      • Taste Gnome 3.6 By Live Booting
      • 7 Things About Gnome 3.6 That You Will Love
      • A Preview Of Upcoming Gnome Calender

        Gnome developers are working to make a Calender app integrated with the Gnome desktop. Note, the Evolution software suite also features a Calender app, but this software will be separate. This app will also allow you to integrate online calenders like Google, Facebook etc in your desktop. Some screenshots:

      • Gnome Software – A Software Center For Gnome

        The Gnome foundation had earlier announced plans to develop a Software Center like app for the desktop that will allow easier installation and updates of apps. While the PackageKit is pushed to the back, here are some design ideas put forward in Gnome Live.

      • Search, Manage, And Install Apps From PPAs Using PPA Software Center
      • Gnome Web Browser Now Even Better

        While Linux has tons of web browsers to choose from, little is heard from Gnome’s own web browser – Web. While Gnome 3.6 is going to be released soon and developers pledging to make it the best release ever, its not surprising that this web browser has got tons of changes and more integration with the overall desktop environment.

  • Distributions

    • From Noobs to Experts: Is There an ABC for Linux Distros?

      Do Linux bloggers enjoy extolling the virtues of their favorite distros? Let’s just say there aren’t superlatives superlative enough for some.

    • Thinking Small With Tiny Core Linux

      I recently had the need to build a virtual appliance, a small Linux server that did one thing, and required no interaction. And by small, I mean really small, tiny. After considering the options and searching around a bit, I found the Tiny Core Linux, and when they say tiny, they mean it. The Tiny Core download is only 12MB.

    • This Week in Linux: Mageia, openSUSE, Dreamlinux

    • New Releases

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Crash course: Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud

            You may be weary of all the cloud computing hype, but behind the hype is considerable substance. Cloud technologies are complex, versatile, and revolutionizing the data center. Canonical’s Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) revolutionizes setting up your own cloud infrastructure, bundling everything you need in a sleek integrated package for free.

          • Ubuntu Server 12.10: What to Expect

            From standard feature upgrades to controversial integration with Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), we’ve already surveyed the highlights of the desktop version of the upcoming Ubuntu 12.10 release. But what do Ubuntu server users have to look forward to Oct. 18? Read on for a round up of the new bells and whistles set to make their debut in the backroom version of one of the world’s most popular open source operating systems.

          • [Video] Evolution Of Ubuntu From 4.10 To 12.10

            Here is an interesting video which shows the evolution of Ubuntu operating system from version 4.10 to 12.10.

          • Ubuntu Accomplishments Helps You To Learn Ubuntu And Engage With The Community

            Linux is about people and communities. Much of the development is done by the community itself and most of the support we get is from forums and social sites where people thrive. After a point of using Linux, most of the users like to give something back to the community, though this is not mandatory. Unfortunately, people don’t know where to start and what to do to make themselves a part of this revolution.

          • Ubuntu Accomplishments 0.3 Released!

            It has been a little while since I last talked about Ubuntu Accomplishments, but there has been ferocious work going on in the project. The new release includes a number of important features and refinements.

            The goal of the 0.3 has been to focus on quality. Our intention here was to raise the reliability and quality of the core system and provide another good solid iteration towards a 1.0 release. As such many of the features in this release are not particularly visible, but you can really feel the improvement in quality.

          • Ubuntu Gnome 12.10 Beta Released, Impressive Gnome Flavour

            Jeremy Bicha announced the second beta of Ubuntu Gnome Remix 12.10 yesterday. This release is another step towards bringing the pure Gnome experience to Ubuntu. This beta will definitely please the long time Gnome-Ubuntu users who felt left out when Ubuntu switched to Unity. Now Gnome users have more choices, they can use Ubuntu, openSUSE or Fedora for pure Gnome experience; those who want a tweaked version of Gnome Shell can always try Cinnamon on Linux Mint.

          • Be a Good Person. Give Me Money.

            The other day I announced our 24-hour horsemen marathon. In a nutshell, we in the Canonical Community Team are going to work for a continuous 24-hour session on Thursday next week. Each of us has picked a charity that we are going to support and I wanted to share some words on why I picked mine…Homeless International.

          • Online Dash Search Update
          • Ubuntu’s New DNS: Unknown Host

            If you’re the type of person who installs Ubuntu’s server edition, you’re also likely the sort of person who knows how to configure network settings. For most distributions, especially those based on Debian, the process is a bit strange, but familiar.

          • The Canonical Community Team and 13.04
          • How fuzzy matching is transforming interfaces

            It is the grooviest thing. For example, I simply type in “fuzzy m”, and magically the first search result is Fuzzy matching – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Likewise, with the Sublime Text editor, I type Shift + Cmd + P and up pops the Command Palette, with the next command only a keystroke or two away. And ditto Ubuntu’s Unity desktop, with the Intent Driven Interface aka Heads-Up Display — now with added advertising.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Micromax Launches Funbook Infinity P275 For Indian Market At INR 6,699

      Micromax has launched yet another tablet to there existing lineup of Funbook family Infinity P275. Priced at INR 6,699 Infinity P275 features 7-inch display. The tablet is running on top of Android 4.0.4, and is powered by 1.2GHz Cortex A8 processor. Infinity P275 comes with a back up of 6hrs which is backed by 4000 mAh battery.

    • Meet BrewPi: A Raspberry Pi-based Fermentation Controller

      Now here’s a sudsy open source idea. You’ve heard all about the Raspberry Pi–the diminutive Linux-based $25/$35 computer that is being welcomed by hackers everywhere. The tiny devices have already drawn interest from educational system and technology industry leaders. But now there is BrewPi, an open source fermentation controller that runs on Arduino open source hardware and a Raspberry Pi. This device joins the Lego-based Raspberry Pi supercomputer as one of the best Pi devices yet.

    • Phones

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Is $99 Nexus 7 Coming?

        The $199 Google Nexus 7 might already be the most affordable and probably the best Android tablet available in the market currently. However, Google might try to take things one step further with a cheaper $99 Nexus tablet. According to DigiTimes and its industry sources, Google may launch a $99 Nexus Tablet by the end of 2012 along with a new model of the existing Nexus 7 tablet.

        Both the new models of the Nexus tablet shall use Twisted Nematic (TN) display panel manufactured by HannStar Display of Taiwan, which is the same company that is in the Apple’s portfolio of vendors.

      • Barnes & Noble Hits Amazon With Ads Free Nook Tablets, Challenges iPad
      • Google to launch the next Nexus device in 30 days?
      • Samsung says Galaxy Note II sales could top 20 million, launch set for October

        Samsung’s (005930) Galaxy Note “phablet” was a huge success, with cumulative sales having recently topped 10 million units. Though T-Mobile USA just got around to launching the supersized smartphone last month, the sequel has already been unveiled and Samsung has high hopes for it. Speaking with reporters on Friday, Samsung mobile boss JK Shin said sales of the upcoming Galaxy Note II could top 20 million units. ”Sales may grow more than two-fold (compared with the previous model),” Shin said according to Yonhap News Agency. The Samsung executive also reportedly said that the Galaxy Note II will launch some time in October.

      • Five great Android tablets you can buy today instead of waiting for the iPad Mini

        I like iPads. I own one and often use it. That said, I never cared for its size; Apple’s locked-in, proprietary software ecosystem; and lately Apple’s iOS updates have been including a lot of sloppy mistakes. So it is that more often than not I’ve been using a variety of 7″ Android-powered tablets instead of my iPad. And, you know what? Just because it seems almost certain there will soon be an iPad Mini, I don’t see any reason to be rushing out to buy one.

      • US data show slump in Apple tablet share

        It’s no great surprise, perhaps, that Google’s Android is taking tablet share from Apple, but new figures suggest the rate of catch-up has accelerated this year.

      • Tablet Powered By Ice Cream Sandwich For Kids

        Keeping kids in mind, Oregon Scientific has launched MEEP tablet running on top of Android Ice Cream Sandwich. Tablet features a 7 inch screen. Meep is powered by 1GHZ cortex A8 processor, 512MB RAM, 4GB internal storage, HDMI output, Wi-Fi, and a 0.3 MP front-facing camera.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Source Fear Mongering Is Ridiculous With The Advent Of Open APIs

    Open source fear mongering is still a reality. But in today’s world, it is nuanced with the belief that an open enterprise means open APIs.

    They are not the same and should not be confused.

    The issue surfaces more now that RESTful APIs have become the chosen way to exchange information through applications. They turn the enterprise metaphor on its head. It’s no longer a fortress surrounded by four walls. Instead, the enterprise walls are porous with data flowing in and out like never before.

  • Piwik, An Open Source Alternative To Google Analytics

    Piwik is a free and open source web analytics tool which is highly customizable. It is a great open source alternative to the widely used Google Analytics. Piwik provides users with full control of their data. Eliminating the risk of sharing unwanted information with advertising companies that is faced while using Google Analytics.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • OpenWorld 2012: What’s in store

      With each year, Oracle becomes a bigger company and in turn, so does its annual OpenWorld conference, which kicks off Sunday in San Francisco.

      In fact, Oracle’s long run of acquisitions, spanning from applications to middleware to hardware, has resulted in so many partner and customer constituencies that it’s now co-locating a number of additional shows, including MySQL Connect and JavaOne, along with the main OpenWorld program.

    • Oracle Cloud Partner Program and PaaS: No MySQL Plans

      Even as Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) launches a MySQL 5.6 Release Candidate, there are no plans to offer MySQL as a PaaS platform within the new Oracle Cloud Partner Program. But Channel Chief Judson Althoff, speaking at Oracle OpenWorld 2012, described numerous other ways that Oracle is enhancing and promoting MySQL to partners and customers.

    • The Fox in the FOSS Henhouse

      Oracle’s proprietary posture may have soiled the welcome mat and vilified its good standing in the FOSS community as CEO Larry Ellison has pushed the balance point between servicing his customers and nickel-and-diming them to turn a higher profit. Clearly, since Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems — and with it OpenOffice and Java — the company has not acted very neighborly with open source developers.

    • LibreOffice Updated to 3.6.2

      The Document Foundation today announced the latest stable release of popular free office suite, LibreOffice 3.6.2. This release bring lots of bug and regression fixes. Yeah, the changelog is long and boring, but it adds up to improved stability for LibreOfffice users – which is always a good thing.

    • The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.6.2

  • CMS

    • Drupal Special Edition

      As Linux Journal’s resident Drupal nerd, I could not be more pleased to bring you this special Drupal issue. Drupal really is everywhere these days, and it’s available in more “flavors” than most people in the Open Source community are aware of. So in the interest of spreading awareness about my favorite and ever-growing open-source project, we hope you’ll find this special issue both informative and inspiring.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Grub Customizer 3.0.1 Released

      If you often need to customize GRUB entries, the usual way we do this is to edit the configuration files by hand. With GRUB 2.00 arriving, this has become more complicated as GRUB entries do not reside on a single file. However, GRUB Customizer is a nice app that allows you to view, edit and manage GRUB entries in a simpler way.

    • Hampshire College distributes free software bundle to all incoming students

      Hampshire student and FSF campaigns organizer Kira shares the success of their ambitious project to help fellow students get started with free software. The achievements of Kira’s organization, LibrePlanet/Students for Free Culture, is exciting and replicable outside of Hampshire. Kira provides suggestions to help other students realize the same changes at their schools.

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

    • Over two hundred Belgian political candidates support free software

      A grass roots campaign has managed to get 278 candidates for the upcoming Belgian communal and provincial elections to pledge their support for free and open source software. “And, so-far, three political parties, the Socialist Party, Ecolo and Mouvement Réformateur, have promised me their general support”, says Nicolas Pettiaux, one of two volunteers contacting politicians.

    • City of Arles pleased by savings open source enterprise software

      The French city of Arles is content with the savings that it made by switching to free and open source enterprise applications. The city’s 2006 migration plan, however, proved too optimistic: the switch took not three but six years, and it resulted in savings worth 450,000 euro, instead of the estimated 780,000.

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • A new Apple iOS Wi-Fi problem has popped up while others remain unfixed

    Some Apple iPhone and iPad users are facing a major new problem with Wi-Fi/cellular data use while others are still dealing with earlier, unresolved iOS 6 Wi-Fi problems.

    The latest annoyance is a real pain-in-the-rump. It turns out that while some of you have been watching videos, playing a game, whatever, on what you thought was a Wi-Fi network, you were actually running up your giant 3G data bill. Apple hasn’t commented on this, but on September 30th, Apple quietly released a bug fix for the problem for its Verizon customers.

  • Microsoft Surface midnight release – Seriously?

    My sceptical mind has me thinking that people turning up to this midnight launch of Microsoft’s, will certainly be more than just “average consumers” but for the camera, I’m sure they will be hyperactive, happy, Microsoft consumers. Lets hope if Microsoft is making a PR stunt of sorts out of this that they fair far better than when they tried it with the “iPhone funeral” stunt.

  • MEPs must be ready to reject an ACTA-like Canada/EU Trade Agreement

    Ahead of the next round of negotiations of CETA, the Canada/EU Trade Agreement1, La Quadrature du Net publishes its dedicated web-dossier. The citizen organization urges the Members of the European Parliament to demand full transparency and be ready to reject CETA as they did with ACTA, if any of the anti-Internet, anti-citizens’ freedoms provisions remain in the final agreement.

  • Finance

  • Censorship

    • Google Rejects White House Censorship Request, Blocks Innocence Of Muslims In India, Indonesia

      The US government recently asked Google to remove the controversial YouTube movie which triggered the anti-US protest in the Middle East.

      Google has however restricted access to the movie in sensational areas such as India and Indonesia to avoid any communal conflict. Google maintained that the restriction has been imposed to comply with the local laws and not due to some political pressure.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Digital Martial Law: 10 scary things about the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012

      Cyberspace has become the platform of the best and worst things that people can come up with when they’re online. While it’s a hotbed of game-changing ideas and artistic expression, it has also turned into a breeding ground for trolls and cyberthugs. That being said, well-meaning Pinoy lawmakers thought it best to pass Republic Act No. 10175 or The Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012. But, wait! There’s a catch. This very same law that professes to protect us from those who would do us wrong via digital means also threatens to take away our freedom to say what we want.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • European Parliament Committee Calls For Creation Without Copyright To Become EU Policy

        The European Union’s governmental machine is a complicated beast, with its intertwining of supra-national, national and party-political levels (if you’re interested in understanding how it works, the digital rights organization EDRI has put together a useful introduction (pdf).) That makes it quite hard to tell what is going on behind the scenes with this new Opinion of the International Trade Committee on a Digital Freedom Strategy in EU Foreign Policy (pdf.)

      • Digital Economy Act: Costs Order debate pulled

        Open Rights Group has just learnt that the debate in the Lords scheduled for Monday, in the Moses Room, to discuss the DEA Costs Order has been pulled.

        We do not know the reasons why, but there are some very serious concerns with the order. The order had previously been withdrawn due to drafting errors.

        Firstly, Ofcom ran a consultation at the same time as DCMS laid the Order before Parliament. This seems pretty odd.

10.02.12

Links 2/10/2012: Linux Kernel 3.6, Debian 6.0.6

Posted in News Roundup at 10:23 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Advice the Government of Canada Gives About GNU/Linux

    I think this shows the Government of Canada is a little behind the curve in GNU/Linux and needs to open up to the standards of some European governments like Germany. Germany created their own GNU/Linux desktop for government use back in 2006. Germany isn’t spreading FUD about security of GNU/Linux. TFA from Canada was produced in 2010 using M$’s office suite and Adobe’s Distiller on that other OS.

  • We Invite You to Share the World’s Most Inspiring Linux Stories
  • How To DJ A Wedding With Linux: A Review Of Mixxx DJ Software

    First off, I had never planned to do a review of any DJ software. I’ve never been a DJ, nor have I ever had the desire to be a DJ. But you know what they say; Never say never. So, how did I come to learn about Mixx, and how did I end up with a real use for it? I’ll tell you.

    It all started when my wife’s co-worker decided to get married. There was a little drama surrounding the entire ordeal and long story short, the bride had lost a bridesmaid. Though the bride only knew my wife for a short time, she thought she would ask her to fulfill those needs and balance the wedding party. My wife graciously accepted.

  • Server

    • How Watson Won at Jeopardy

      While IBM’s Watson expert system isn’t ready to take over the world ala Skynet, it’s certainly “smart” enough to beat the world’s best two Jeopardy players. The company isn’t treating this as a trivial exercise; they’re also hard at work turning Watson technology into medical expert systems for cancer research and treatment, as they explained at LinuxCon 2012 in San Diego last month.

  • Kernel Space

    • A set of stable kernel updates
    • 30 Linux Kernel Developers in 30 Weeks: Martin Petersen

      This week is the annual migration of Linux kernel developers from all over the world to the Linux Kernel Summit, which is taking place in San Diego and is co-located with LinuxCon and CloudOpen. This group of developers are among the very best in the world, and we’re excited to bring you a profile this week that introduces you to another participant in and contributor to the world’s largest collaborative development project. Martin Petersen is profiled in this week’s 30 Linux Developers in 30 Weeks series.

    • 30 Linux Kernel Developers in 30 Weeks: Julia Lawall
    • Linux 3.6
    • Linux kernel 3.6 released

      Linus Torvalds has released version 3.6 of the Linux kernel. A major new feature for desktops and laptops is hybrid sleep, long supported by both Mac OS X and Windows. This involves writing the contents of the RAM to the hard drive prior to suspending to RAM, thus ensuring that the system is able to awake from suspend in the event of a power interruption.

    • 30 Linux Kernel Developers in 30 Weeks: Laurent Pinchart

      Laurent Pinchart, a.k.a. The Media Controller Guy, is a Linux kernel developer working on video capture and display. Here he tells us about the lucky introduction that got him involved in Linux and recalls the time a Taiwanese company tried to pay him $50,000 for the free software he developed. As are many of the developers we’ve profiled in our 30 Linux Kernel Developers in 30 Weeks series, Pinchart is motivated to work on Linux by more than money.

    • The Kernel Column with Jon Masters

      Jon Masters summarises the latest goings-on in the Linux kernel community, including the 2012 Kernel Summit and the closing of the 3.6 merge window

    • How Does Linux Inspire?
    • ARM64/AArch64 Support Going Into Linux 3.7 Kernel

      The Linux 3.7 kernel will feature support for the ARM 64-bit architecture (ARM64), which is officially known as AArch64.

      The Linux 3.6 kernel is one day old but there’s already lots of interesting ARM work happening for 3.7. ARM Xen virtualization support is going into the Linux 3.7 kernel, per the pull request this morning that Konrad has accepted as the Xen kernel maintainer, and now we have AArch64.

    • Graphics Stack

      • X Server 1.13 has better hybrid graphics support

        X Server 1.13 has been released by the X.Org project with improved support for hot-pluggable, hybrid graphics hardware. This includes DisplayLink hardware which is connected using USB, and hybrid graphics technologies such as NVIDIA’s Optimus, a feature that is primarily used in notebooks. Optimus enables the dedicated GeForce GPU on demand and works with the GPU in the CPU.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • Xfce 4.10, the Sane Linux Desktop

      Xfce 4.10 is the latest release of the excellent Xfce desktop, full of useful incremental improvements and no shocking surprises.

      Workflow and efficiency are everything. I want my Linux graphical environment to be the way I like it, and not an obese system hog. I have a lot of favorite Linux desktop environments (Fluxbox, KDE4, Ratpoison, E17, Razor-qt) and Xfce is always near the top.

    • Features vs. Benefits

      The other day, I received an announcement about a new distribution. That’s not unusual; I receive announcements about new software each week. But what struck me about this one was that, while the announcement mentioned a few new features, it gave no reason why I should care about them as either a reviewer or a user. As a result, it failed to interest me in the distribution, and the sender of the announcement might have saved his efforts.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Heartbroken app-maker Qt sneaks into Android’s bed

        The effort towards a Qt library for Android is progressing, with a fourth and final alpha release being sent out the door – despite confidence in the platform having steadily eroded since Nokia dumped it.

        Qt is a library of cross-platform APIs which enables even complicated apps, such as VLC’s VideoLAN, to run across operating systems. Nokia bought the owning company, Trolltech, back in 2008, then dumped the technology earlier this month. The move left Qt with an uncertain future, but seemingly a future which includes Android.

      • Android rules the roost in EU, U.S.
      • KDE KWin Now Handles OpenGL Over EGL

        With GLX set to be deprecated in the not too distant future and EGL being in use with OpenGL ES on mobile platforms, KDE’s KWin compositing window manager now has support for using desktop OpenGL over EGL instead of GLX.

      • Who needs GLX? KWin does not
      • Display Management in KDE

        As some of you might have noticed, display management in KDE is not really something we could be proud of. It does not work as expected, it lacks some features and it’s not really maintained. Time to change it, don’t you think? Smilie: :-)

    • GNOME Desktop

  • Distributions

    • In search of the best Linux distro of 2012: My Experiments

      I recall in 2009, I had only a desktop for all my computing needs – a desktop bought in 2003 and post SP3 update, struggled to run Windows XP, plagued with virus problems, slowness and often crashing. Every 2 months, I had to re-install Windows XP! I still persisted with XP, thinking Linux was for the geeks and not my cup of tea. Finally, in 2010 I gathered courage to try out Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and I was amazed by the speed and stability it rendered to my old computer. After that there was no looking back! I installed Ubuntu 11.04 “Natty” thereafter which performed amazingly well on it. Now all the four systems that I have, run on Linux only!

    • Quick Video Review: Hanthana Linux 17 LXDE

      Today I am doing a quick video review of Hanthana Linux 17 “LXDE”. Hanthana is a Linux based operating system and a Fedora remix suitable for desktop and laptop users. Hanthana comes to you in the form of a LiveDVD for regular PC (i686 & x86_64 architectures) systems. You can run Hanthana Operating System directly from the LiveDVD and check out each and every feature before installing it on your hard disk.

    • New Releases

      • Qubes 1.0 released
      • Absolute 14.0 released
      • QEMU 1.2.0 improves live migration

        Among the new features of version 1.2.0 of QEMU is support for passing through PCI devices to hardware-virtualised Xen guests. The open source system emulator is used in both the KVM and Xen virtualisation platforms, but can also be used independently. The new release can migrate active guest systems to different hosts (live migration) even if the guests use USB storage media and pass-through devices. In addition, live migration is said to be more reliable for guest systems that use large amounts of RAM.

      • QEMU 1.2 released

        Version 1.2 of the QEMU processor emulator has been released. “Even though this was the shortest release cycle in QEMU’s history, it contains an impressive 1400 changesets from 180 unique authors.”

      • Fuduntu Gets New Release

        Fuduntu, the distro with a pun for a name, has released its latest quarterly update. Version 2012.4 was released today with the usual “small incremental distribution improvements” including “several changes, new features, and improvements.”

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat adds BPM to JBoss with Polymita buy
      • JBoss changes coming soon

        As JavaOne 2012 gets started this week, Red Hat is using the occasion to announce some shake ups for its venerable Java-based JBoss product line.

        There’s a lot of yummy sauce, but it’s a little hard to find the actual meat of the news buried within the commercial Linux vendor’s announcement today. Here’s what we do know.

        Probably the biggest potential news is the intent to “increase access and availability to JBoss for developers,” according to Stephen Yi, Director, Strategy & Product Management at Red Hat. Specifically, Yi is referring to the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP), which currently is under the GNU Lesser GPL for development, but requires a Red Hat support subscription for production use.

      • Infor gets into bed with Red Hat

      • Fedora

    • Debian Family

      • Updated Debian 6.0: 6.0.6 released

        The Debian project is pleased to announce the sixth update of its stable distribution Debian 6.0 (codename “squeeze”). This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories were already published separately and are referenced where available.

      • OS4 OpenDesktop 13 released

        Today we are pleased to announce the arrival of the next generation of desktop operating systems, OS4 OpenDesktop 13. With this release we bring a lot of new functionality and bug fixes to the OS4 family. OS4 OpenDesktop 13 is the most capable Linux desktop featuring an easy to use interface and including a vast array of hardware support, wifi support along with all the multimedia codecs, Blu Ray and DVD Playback. OS4 OpenDesktop 13 is the premier Linux distribution for the home or business user. Our unprecedented commitment to cloud computing and internet technologies makes OS4 OpenDesktop 13 the best platform for consumption of cloud services.

      • Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda

        Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is very generous for help and hints. Chat help is crucial, together with the mailing list. Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well engineered platform and you don’t have to start to build up your PDC and your clients from GNU/scratch; I’ve already done this once and I can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much hassle.

      • Debian Project News – October 1st, 2012
      • Debian relicenses its logo

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Working Ubuntu 13.04 Release Date Announced

            A tentative launch date for Ubuntu 13.04 has already appeared on the “R” schedule, just weeks before Ubuntu 12.01 “Quantal Quetzal” becomes a proper release on October 18. Naturally dates are subject to change, and so far Ubuntu 13.04 has yet to be named.

          • Introducing Ubuntu Photo Lens for Unity
          • Ubuntu and Amazon Make Uneasy Bedfellows

            “Making money on the consumer desktop as an open source vendor is hard, as Canonical is finding out,” offered Chris Travers, a blogger who works on the LedgerSMB project. “This current approach is an attempt to monetize users by collecting Amazon affiliate revenue, making Ubuntu the second-largest adware OS after Android — and even Google has trouble monetizing Android.”

          • Ubuntu 13.04 unlikely in full until next spring

            A tentative launch date for Ubuntu 13.04 has already appeared on the “R” schedule, just weeks before Ubuntu 12.01 “Quantal Quetzal” becomes a proper release on October 18. Naturally dates are subject to change, and so far Ubuntu 13.04 has yet to be named.

          • Top Ubuntu Apps Of August – Muktware Ubuntu Manual In Top Ten Free Apps
          • HTTPS Support Arrives In Unity Shopping Lens
          • Fallout from Ubuntu’s New Shopping Lens

            Unless you’ve been living devoid of Internet access recently, chances are good that you’ve heard about the addition of Amazon affiliate links on the Unity Dash in Ubuntu 12.10 beta.

            When Mark Shuttleworth first made the announcement, his goal was clearly to inject new revenue into the Ubuntu project, in a non-intrusive manner. And at its core, the idea was sound: as the Unity Dash is used to search for stuff, the Amazon affiliate links will display with the native results presented.

          • Meet The Ubuntu Women – They’re More Involved Than You Think

            Take a quick look around the Ubuntu forums and IRC channels and you can miss the pattern: it’s mostly men. That is not to say that there is no diversity in the open source community, only that you need to look a little deeper to find it.

            According to a recent survey, only 12% of professionals in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) are women. So I felt especially lucky to “sit-down” with Ubuntu Women members Elizabeth “Lyz” Krumbach and Cheri Francis over a Google+ hangout to discuss the work they are doing with the organization.

          • Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) Beta 2 Released!
          • Ubuntu 12.10 Beta 2 Screenshots
          • Unity 6.6: Still Regressing On Performance?

            With the recent release of the Unity 6.6 desktop for Ubuntu 12.10 Beta 2, benchmarks were done to see how the OpenGL gaming performance compares to that of Unity 6.4 from the earlier beta state of the Quantal Quetzal, plus the respective Compiz versions. At least for Intel Ivy Bridge graphics under some workloads, it looks like the Unity/Compiz updates are slowing down the GL performance even further.

          • Ubuntu has a bigger problem than its Amazon blunder

            There are many things that comprise a successful Linux distribution, but there may be none more important than trust. Before you build a production Linux system, you have to trust that the distribution isn’t going to contain malicious code or back doors or any number of other potentially major problems. Since the advent of Linux, this really hasn’t been an issue.

          • Ubuntu 12.10: More to Um Bongo Linux than Amazon ads

            Ubuntu 12.10: More to Um Bongo Linux than Amazon ads
            A new Lens in the Unity Dash will poll Amazon to find results relevant to your search terms. And yes, if you click the link and buy the item Ubuntu-maker Canonical gets a small percentage of the income, much like Mozilla makes a bit of money for allowing you to search Google from Firefox. Here’s what the new Lens looks like:

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Fritzing, the Hot New Electronics Designer for Real People

      This is the best time to get into electronics because we have an abundance of high-quality hardware for cheap and great software for free. Arduino, Beagleboard, and Raspberry Pi give us hundreds of inexpensive hardware components to play with. On the software side check out the new Fritzing project. Fritzing lets inexperienced electronics noobs make great-looking schematics and circuit diagrams, and even design and build their own printed circuit boards.

    • Phones

      • The China-U.S. Smartphone Gap Grows Larger

        Smartphones are so popular here that it’s difficult to avoid seeing one, and in China, these devices are poised to become even more widespread.

        This year, China will account for 26.5 percent of all smartphone shipments, compared to 17.8 percent in the United States, according to a forecast by the International Data Corporation, a research firm.

        China has surpassed the United States in smartphone sales in the past. However, only in the first quarter of this year did it become clear that the smartphone gap between China and the United States would become a “long-lasting gulf that won’t be bridged,” said Kevin Restivo, a senior research analyst with IDC.

      • Verizon CEO: Samsung may be ‘dark horse’ with own mobile OS

        Verizon’s Lowell McAdam believes Samsung has the capability to create a successful third mobile operating system.

      • Android

        • Android better market share but iPhone apps preferred

          Today we have news for you of a really interesting insight about Android and iPhone apps that comes from a tech enthusiast and Android user. Despite the fact that Android smartphones have a bigger share of the market, with recent statistics showing Android at 52.2% and Apple’s iOS at 33.4%, this particular Android device owner is honest enough to say that he prefers iPhone apps. Taking in mind the usual Android vs. iOS debate and the fierce loyalty it evokes in many people, that’s quite an admission.

        • CyanogenMod OTA Updater Now Available

          When CyanogenMod team had announced that their new OTA update system would be available “soon”, they really meant it. The feature is already available in all the nightly builds since 30th September. The new option has been added in the settings menu as CM Updater. It will automatically check for updates and install them, similar to over the air updates that are received from carriers and manufacturers.

        • CyanogenMod is getting its own OTA update manager
        • CyanogenMod Drops ROM Manager, Will Offer OTA Update Solution

          There’s some great news for CyanogenMod fans. The CM team has decided to drop ROM manager which was the de facto standard of getting CyanogenMod updates. Now you must be wondering how CyanogenMod will be updated then. Fear not, the CM team is going to build its own updating method.

        • Samsung goes big with 5.8-inch Galaxy Player

          Ahead of the IFA show, the company upsizes its Android device for playing music, video, and games. It’s edging closer toward Nexus 7 mini-tablet territory.

        • Sony Upgrading Xperia To Android 4.0
        • X-Plane Is Now Available For Free

          X-Plane 9 is claimed to be the best flight simulator available on Android and now you can enjoy the experience for free, after it dropped the $2.99 price tag. The app is available on a freemium model, you will initially get 10 different types of aircraft with the free download but there are in-app purchases available for 43 more planes.

        • Samsung announces Drive Link, a car-friendly app with MirrorLink integration

          Until self-driving cars become mainstream, it’s best to keep eyes on roads and hands off phones. With this in mind, Samsung’s debuting Drive Link, an app that balances in-car essentials with driver safety, complete with approval from the no-nonsense Japanese Automotive Manufacturers Association. It’s all about the bare essentials — navigation, hands-free calling and audiotainment from your phone-based files or TuneIn.

        • NFC token for Android smartphones

          The YubiKey Neo hardware token represents an interesting new concept for one-time passwords on NFC-capable Android smartphones. Rather than typing them in, the token uses the near field communication (NFC) standard to send generated one-time passwords to a smartphone. To unlock items such as the password safe application LastPass, the YubiKey key fob token is simply brushed across the back of the phone after logging in.

        • The Nexus 7’s Single Biggest Advantage

          Google’s Nexus 7 tablet has a killer spec sheet, an enviable operating system, and cutthroat price. But all of those combined can’t do for the tiny champ what Google’s actions today will. And that might just be enough to help it beat back the rumored iPad Mini.

          Google takes great pride in maintaining the sanctity of its homepage. It’s a pristine white canvas, a zen garden of searching calm. Because of that cache—and the extraordinary number of visitors it draws—its value to advertisers is literally priceless. As in, Google has never sold it to an advertiser.

        • Sony Mobile Tries Open Path to Android Success
        • Huawei shows off early version of Emotion UI for Android, packs a ‘stock’ skin too (hands-on)
        • The Pocket TV: Makes any TV a Smart TV

          The Pocket TV is a thumb-size micro-computer that connects to the HDMI port of any TV and converts it into an Android Smart TV

        • AV test lab examines Android security programs

          The AV-Comparatives test lab has examinedPDF 13 security programs for Android smartphones. The study found that all of the test candidates offer reliable protection against 75 virus families; detection rates were always at least 93 per cent. In total, the experts unleashed more than 18,000 infected apps on the test devices. None of the security programs produced any false alarms; however, testing involved only 200 widely used benign apps.

        • Gingerbread still dominant with 57.5 percent Android ownership

          Ice Cream Sandwich is now running on 20.9 percent of all Android-based devices, according to new data from Google.

        • Kobo announces smallest eReader in Kobo Mini, Kobo Glo, and Kobo Arc 7 inch Android tablet

          I am a big fan of the Kobo eReader Touch and use it as my primary eInk device because the form factor is so compelling and I can read all of my EPUB content on it. With Amazon’s Kindle press event, I am not sure that Kobo’s announcedment today of several new devices was timed well. However, it is likely that I will preorder one of them. They announced the new Kobo Mini, Kobo Glo, and Kobo Arc with preorders available now.

        • Reasons Why Samsung Should NOT Produce Nexus This Year

          You must be wondering that Samsung has been at the forefront of Android smartphone market, with its highly successful devices which have even surpassed iPhone’s sales figure, then why am I going against Samsung Manufacturing the next Nexus device, like the last two years. Well here are my points:

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

Free Software/Open Source

  • Apache Wicket bounces to a 6

    With today’s announcement, the Apache Wicket project has jumped from version 1.5.8 to version 6.0 for the latest release of its web framework for Java. The version number change is due to a switch to semantic versioning and because there are changes to the Wicket API. One of the headline changes is that Wicket now requires Java 6 at a minimum, so updaters may have to look at upgrading their Java runtimes.

  • Disney and FOSS: Fun and FUD in the Magic Kingdom?

    “Did you use open source code to save time and the virus was hidden in it?” one character asked another on a recent episode of the Disney show “Shake It Up.” Was it the work of an uninformed children’s show screenwriter who simply tried to make up a line that would sound vaguely like high-level techno-talk? Or is Disney really anti-FOSS?

  • Microsoft will be saved by open-source

    There you go. You won’t find a more truthful article anywhere. Now, I am aware this lovely essay will be buried deep in the search annals because it is not politically correct or written to cater to pseudo-journalistic websites that have to mind what they say lest they lose sponsorships and suchlike. I cannot possibly change the world on my own, but at the very least, I can share truth with my users, and hope they will carry it around, so the truth is known.

    As much as I’m good with words, I am somewhat at loss in expressing my absolute disdain, loathing and dislike for the forced plastic cultural phenomena imposed on the world by those who shout the stupidest and loudest. Even if Microsoft products merit attention, and some definitely do, like EMET, the quality of technology is drowned in the diarrhea-like dross of marketing religion and exaggeration. I am most offended by the fact people silently accept this instead of going This Is Sparta against all this bullcrap.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS

    • ownCloud: The cloud sharing service you control

      ownCloud was launched at Camp KDE in January 2010 by its founder, Frank Karlitschek. (Mr. Karlitschek is now the CTO of ownCloud, Inc.) The goals of ownCloud, as laid out at the KDE conference, are ambitious: easy cloud setup and management, and ubiquitous access to your data from multiple devices wherever that data may be — on local storage, hosted storage, or even on social networks. ownCloud also wants to give us the ability to mash up and connect data from different providers, while maintaining privacy and security. While they’re at it, I’d like them to provide pink unicorns and rainbows too, which seem about as probable as everything else ownCloud is promising.

    • nginx’s rise within the cloud

      nginx is still neck-and-neck with Microsoft’s IIS on global surveys of web servers, but it’s racking up significant wins in the cloud along the way.

      Back in April, nginx looked ready to take the number two web-server spot in market share for top servers across all domains, according to the April Netcraft Web Server Survey. That was supposed to happen last month, actually. But that trend has apparently stalled, according to the latest Netcraft survey, as IIS remains in the number two spot with a recent climb in use that nginx was unable to pass.

  • Databases

    • Hipsters hacking on PostgreSQL

      With the rise of NoSQL, it’s easy to assume that old-school relational databases are simply living out their dinosaur dreams for legacy applications. But a funny thing happened on the way to the SQL cemetery: PostgreSQL became cool again. Yes, PostegreSQL.

    • MariaDB gets alpha of Galera clustering

      Monty Program’s MariaDB team has announced the first availability of MariaDB Galera, a clustering solution that is the result of a partnership between the MariaDB team and Codership. The alpha release, which should not be used for production systems, includes a merge of MariaDB 5.5.25 with Galera Cluster from Codership in a combination that is said to offer a read/write scalable system, synchronous multi-master replication and guaranteed data consistency.

    • Release candidate for MySQL 5.6 available

      At the MySQL Connect conference in San Francisco, Oracle has presented the release candidate for the next version of its open source relational database, MySQL. For MySQL 5.6, the developers have focused on adding features to InnoDB, for example, implementing full-text searches that were previously only available in the non-transactional MyISAM, and on improving server performance by improving database’s optimiser.

    • PostgreSQL 9.2 released

      The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces PostgreSQL 9.2, the latest release of the leader in open source databases. Since the beta release was announced in May, developers and vendors have praised it as a leap forward in performance, scalability and flexibility. Users are expected to switch to this version in record numbers.

    • MySQL Cluster plugs into Node.js

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

    • What’s holding back mainstream Drupal adoption?

      Word on the street is, Drupal is hiring. Well, Drupal shops to be exact. But the lack of experienced Drupal developers and themers is hurting the ecosystem.

      Chances are, you’ve recently visited a website running Drupal. (This is one of them.) How many projects out there want to be using Drupal but don’t have the in-house talent? Or they’ve contacted a Drupal shop and found out they’re all booked up with other projects for the next for weeks and even months!

    • Version 3.0 of Joomla CMS Makes Mobile Administration Easy

      The Joomla community has released version 3.0 of the popular Content Management System (CMS), and the big news is that Joomla now optimizes content created in it for mobile platforms. This represents the new frontier for all CMS systems, and there are many other new additions in Joomla 3.0.

    • Joomla 3.0 – What’s New

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Project Releases

    • FreedomBox 0.1 released

      The very first release of the FreedomBox software has been announced. “This 0.1 version is primarily a developer release, which means that it focuses on architecture and infrastructure rather than finish work. The exception to this is privoxy-freedombox, the web proxy discussed in previous updates, which people can begin using right now to make their web browsing more secure and private and which will very soon be available on non-FreedomBox systems.”

    • Codethink Releases Baserock 1.1

      Codethink announces version 1.1 (aka Secret Volcano) of its Baserock Embedded Linux software. Baserock is a Linux build system for the development of embedded, industrial or bare-metal, server-based Linux systems.

    • FFmpeg Reaches Version 1.0

      While we have been looking towards an FFmpeg 1.0 release for nearly one year, the version 1.0 release of the popular FFmpeg library was finally tagged after being in development for more than one decade.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • ProjectLibre: October 2012 Project of the Month
    • Python 3.3.0 released

      The latest version of the Python language, Python 3.3.0, has arrived. This is the first major version to have language changes since the language moratorium expired, and as such brings new syntax to the language in the form of “yield from” which allows developers to delegate work to a sub-generator (PEP 380). The changes also bring back the Python 2 style Unicode literal syntax for strings, which will make more code from Python 2 valid in Python 3 (PEP 393).

    • Eclipse Juno gets first service release

      The Eclipse Foundation has quietly made the first service release (SR1) for Eclipse 4.2 Juno available. The publication saw no apparent announcement or release notes from the Eclipse Foundation, although it was planned to ship at the end of September. The SR1 release is designed to fix serious problems with the June release of Eclipse 4.2. The J-Development blog noted that around 80 bugs had been fixed in the release.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Why HTML5 is in trouble on the mobile front

      HTML5 promises great things for smartphone developers, but is yet to deliver in full. That leaves developers with a tricky choice: to build for openness or go with what works now.

Leftovers

  • Security

    • White House confirms cyberattack

      The White House confirmed but sought to downplay a report by a conservative website on Sunday that it had been the victim of a cyberattack, volunteering to POLITICO that no harm had been done.

      The Washington Free Beacon reported that Chinese hackers had attacked a computer system in the White House Military Office.

  • Finance

    • Feast of fools

      The ritual performance of the legend of democracy in the autumn of 2012 promises the conspicuous consumption of $5.8 billion, enough money, thank God, to prove that our flag is still there. Forbidden the use of words apt to depress a Q Score or disturb a Gallup poll, the candidates stand as product placements meant to be seen instead of heard, their quality to be inferred from the cost of their manufacture. The sponsors of the event, generous to a fault but careful to remain anonymous, dress it up with the bursting in air of star-spangled photo ops, abundant assortments of multiflavoured sound bites, and the candidates so well-contrived that they can be played for jokes, presented as game-show contestants, or posed as noble knights-at-arms setting forth on vision quests, enduring the trials by klieg light, until on election night they come to judgment before the throne of cameras by whom and for whom they were produced.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • TPP Creates Legal Incentives For ISPs To Police The Internet. What Is At Risk? Your Rights.

      The draft chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement on Intellectual Property—as of its current leaked version [PDF], article 16—insists that signatories provide legal incentives for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to privately enforce copyright protection rules. The TPP wants service providers to undertake the financial and administrative burdens of becoming copyright cops, serving a copyright maximalist agenda while disregarding the consequences for Internet freedom and innovation.

    • Insecure WIFI – Not negligent – But it will be.

      I’ve often written in regards to the open-wifi defence. No more so when it pertains to allegations of filesharing when infringing material is being shared. I am fully expecting the UK to push through a law (“unthrottled” of course because the Government will give in to Hollywood et al and their pressure).

      I am awaiting the day when we see the creation of an offence “Failure to take reasonable steps to secure your WIFI”. We already have a semi-similar law in the UK that says if you leave your keys in the car with the engine running, you commit an offence, so legislating against WIFI and insecurity would not be such a surprising move. Of course it will be win-win for government who will scoure the streets locating connections and sending out penalty notices for “offenders”. I am convinced this is coming.

10.01.12

Links 1/10/2012: September News of Interest

Posted in News Roundup at 7:12 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • The State of Open Source Spectrometry

    For those of you that slept through chemistry in high school, spectrometry (also known as spectroscopy) is the process of measuring the spectrum of light that either passes through, or is reflected off, of an object. As different chemicals and compounds have different spectral emission patterns, the wavelength of the light entering the spectrometer can be used to determine the makeup of the substance being tested.

  • Learning from Diaspora

    As the remaining founders of Diaspora hand the project over to the community, Glyn Moody asks what lessons we can learn from the success and failure of a free software project and considers the importance of thinking about what happens next.

  • FXPAL open source’s DisplayCast
  • Building Blocks for the Modern Web Application

    Planning on building the next Twitter, Facebook, or Flickr? Forget what you know about the LAMP stack, SQL-based databases, and web hosting. The building blocks for the modern web app are independent, shared-nothing, infinitely scaleable, and cloud ready. This is no longer the way of the future, it’s the way of right now.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla Accelerates Firefox 18 with IonMonkey

        For better or for worse, the modern web relies on JavaScript. That’s why JavaScript engines are critically important in modern web browsers. For years, browser vendors have competed on JavaScript benchmarks (originally just SunSpider) and apparently they will for years to come.

      • Mozillux 12.09.1 Screenshots
      • Firefox OS Video Demo Released

        Firefox OS is put through its paces in this video showing off browsing the web and photos, as well as phone functionality and other features

      • Mozilla Lays Out Firefox Enterprise 17 Release Plans

        Enterprise users were never really fans of Mozilla’s insanely rapid release cycle for the open source Firefox web browser. So, in order to help out enterprise users, Mozilla launched the ESR (Extended Supported Release) with Firefox 10. That ESR is still maintained with security updates as Mozilla updates the mainline branch currently at Firefox 15.

        Mozilla developer Alex Keybl has now detailed the plans for how Firefox ESR 10 users will migrate (or not) to the next ESR release. The plan is for the next ESR to be based on Firefox 17 which should be out around November 20th.

      • Mozilla Firefox 15 Key Features | Download Firefox For Desktop And Mobile

        The final stable release of Mozilla desktop and Mobile browser version 15 is now available to download. Mozilla Firefox 15 brings several improvements for the desktop and mobile, which will allow you to have a better web browsing experience in desktop and mobile as well. Check the key features and installation instructions of Mozilla Firefox 15 down below.

      • Mozilla previews “command line” in Firefox 16 Beta

        Web developers will be able to drive Firefox from the command line thanks to one of the new features that has appeared in Firefox 16, which has just arrived in the Firefox Beta channel. The Developer Toolbar sits at the bottom of the browser’s window and provides quick, keyboard-driven access to many of the developer features in Firefox.

      • Mozilla Thunderbird 15 Officially Lands in Ubuntu
      • Firefox 15 Officially Lands in Ubuntu
      • Firefox 15 Goes on a Memory Diet

        Although Firefox has managed to stake out a sizable chunk of Web browser market share, it’s long been regarded by many users as something of a memory hog. Firefox aims to put those gluttonous ways behind it in the browser’s latest version. Firefox 15 includes a new memory management system, along with several other new features.

  • SaaS

  • Databases

    • PostgreSQL 9.2 works faster and smarter

      The new release of PostgreSQL, version 9.2, has arrived, four months after the appearance of the first beta version. The new release includes read and write performance boosts, index-only scanning, new web-oriented functionality, and support for range data types. As shown in the beta, the new version promises to be much faster than its predecessor primarily thanks to index-only scanning, which allows searches to avoid reading the underlying tables and instead search only indexes. This new feature is used automatically, though there are caveats as to how effective it can be all situations, but where the required data is already indexed, for example in “big data” scenarios, the boost in performance can be huge.

    • Commercial multi-master replication for PostgreSQL

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • VirtualBox Finds the Meaning of Open Source Life with Version 4.2

      In the spirit of full-disclosure, let me first tell you that I love VirtualBox. I use it every day and it is a core component of my workflow and my digital life.

      The new VirtualBox 4.2 release out today is now going to make my life, a bit easier. The new release enables the grouping of VMs, which is a simple, yet great idea. So now on my test box I can group multiple versions of a given Linux distro together for example, instead of scrolling through a (massive) list.

    • Journeying Itinerants Hijack Open Office For Profit
    • Openness is Alive and Well (and Living in Europe)

      The first quarter/half of 2013 will be the most exciting period for Linux Desktop – ever(!?) so far. This has to do mostly because many major distros are going to drop XServer for the shake of Wayland.

      While GTK3 port in Wayland is expected to be complete and stable by 3.8 around in March, some popular applications like Gimp, Libre Office, Firefox, VLC isn’t sure if they make it.

    • Whither now, OpenIndiana?

      Alasdair Lumsden, the project lead of OpenIndiana (OI), resigned from the project a few days ago. Following proper protocol, he announced his resignation in an email to the OI developer mailing list.

      If you do not know what OI is, it is a desktop-cum-server fork of OpenSolaris, which itself is an open source fork of Solaris. For a time, the guts of OpenIndiana was based on that of OpenSolaris, then it was recently changed to that of illumos. And, of course, illumos is a fork of OpenSolaris. Ok, this is the last use of the word fork in this paragraph, hopefully in this article.

  • CMS

    • Badgeville brings gamification to Drupal

      This week, Badgeville announced a partnership with Acquia, the enterprise Drupal integrator, to bring Badgeville gamification to Drupal installations.

      Badgeville uses gaming principles to drive positive user behavior. Peter Guagenti, vice president of products at Acquia, sees this as a logical partnership for his company. “Badgeville’s gamification platform is a natural extension of our Drupal Commons social business software, or any web experience built in Drupal,” he said.

  • Healthcare

    • Moorfields NHS trust deploys open source clinical modules

      ICT team at NHS trust roll out next phase of open source patient record system developed in-house

      Moorfields eye hospital NHS foundation trust has said that it has added three new modules for prescribing, operations notes and correspondence to OpenEyes, its open source (OS) e-patient record system.

      OpenEyes was developed by an in-house team, led by consultation surgeon and former medical director at Moorfields, Bill Aylward. He told Government Computing that the trust needed to replace its existing e-patient record system and decided to develop new software itself because of the lack of a suitable commercial system.

  • Funding

    • Google donates to an Eclipse performance test lab – update

      Google has contributed $20,000 to the Eclipse Foundation for hardware to assist in the task of performance testing the foundation’s integrated development environment (IDE). The extra contribution from Google’s Open Source Programs Office is over and above Google’s membership, and comes after the Eclipse community raised concerns about the faltering performance of Eclipse 4.2 especially when compared to Eclipse 3.8.

    • Google Donates $20,000 to Eclipse Foundation

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Project Releases

  • Licensing

    • Do We Need an Affero Cloud? Nah.

      Donnie Berkholz of RedMonk has argued that the “infrastructure stack” needs an Affero LGPL to prevent the dreaded fragmentation. Do we? I’m not convinced that it’s necessary, desirable, or likely to catch on at all.

      Donnie’s argument is that an Affero LGPL (as opposed to AGPL) would be workable because it would allow businesses add proprietary bits that link to the stack, but be forced to open up their changes to the actual infrastructure stack itself.

    • jQuery dropping GPL from licence
    • Addressing license and source code concerns

      I will not change the license of Mayan EDMS. I will also continue to work on the software as scheduled. There were never plans for Mayan to go closed source or to stop being released under the GPL. Still, I gave the benefit of the doubt regarding the license choice and the opinion of the community echoes mine. My only concerns were for those that were not following the terms of the GPL license and that were infringing on my copyrights. I was not insinuating any type of adverse action against those complying with the GPL license. I understand your concerns regarding Mayan EDMS, and appreciate the fervor with which you have defended it. Rest assured knowing that Mayan EDMS is and will continue to be released under the GPL.

    • Mayan GPL Dispute Examined

      It’s been an interesting few days for the Mayan Electronic Document Management System (EDMS). Mayan’s developer, Roberto Rosario, made quite a stir when he spoke out against forks of his software which he believed to be violating the GPL. Reactions over Roberto’s claims and his resulting actions have been varied, and give interesting insight on the application of the GPL in the real world.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Openness is Alive and Well (and Living in Europe)

      Last week I took something of a trip back through time. The transition began somewhere over the dark Atlantic, on my way to Brussels via Heathrow, when the person sitting next to me struck up a conversation. Improbably, I found myself discussing ODF – the OpenDocument Format – with a former Sun engineer who had followed the ODF–OOXML contest with great interest back in 2005 – 2007. I was sorry to tell him, and he was sorry to hear, that things had not gone so well in the years that followed, and that many of the bright hopes of those that had supported ODF remained to be realized.

    • Digital IPA: The QR-Packing Open Source Beer

      If you’re reading this site, we can safely assume you’re a supporter and user of open source software. If you’re a serious about it, you may even drive an open source car. But are you hardcore enough to drink open source beer?

  • Programming

    • Author Interview: Jan Erik Solem Programming Computer Vision with Python
    • Crack 0.7 Released

      After the release of version 0.6.1 early this year, we were hoping that our next release would be 1.0. Unfortunately, implementing compiled module caching (a featured we deemed critical for 1.0) proved to be more difficult than expected, and we’ve ended up doing several big coding sprints interspersed with lots of other smaller scale improvements without ever quite making it happen.

    • A Brief Tour of the Go Standard Library
    • Python 3.3.0 Released 130
    • Review: Manjaro Linux 0.8.0 Xfce

      I was busy at home for the last two weeks with many people coming and going; plus, I never had any other reason to post much else. Well, now I’m into the last few days of my break at home before getting back on campus and there haven’t been as many people coming and going, so I’ve gotten some time to do a review. On DistroWatch, I read of the release of Manjaro Linux 0.8.0, and while I initially didn’t think about it further, I saw quite a few articles reviewing it and other press about it, which convinced me that I should review it as well. That is what I’m doing now.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • HTML5 UI editor Maqetta gets a visual makeover

      The Maqetta HTML5 user interface (UI) designer has been given a visual styling makeover for the new Release 7. The Dojo Foundation-hosted project offers an IDE-styled environment for the creation of HTML5 UIs, whether for the desktop or for mobile devices. Release 7′s makeover also includes new collapsible palettes of elements on the left and right side of the in-work user interface design, a streamlined HTML file creation interface and redesigned toolbar. The update comes with a number of performance improvements in both the page editor and the preview-in-browser mode, which now incorporates Dojo’s Zazl for server-side rendering.

    • The Document Foundation joins OASIS standards organisation

      The Document Foundation (TDF) has announced that it has joined OASIS (Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), the international standards development consortium which focusses on ebusiness and web service standards, as a Contributor. According to Document Foundation director Italo Vignoli, TDF will primarily focus its efforts on the Technical Committees for the Open Document Format (ODF), representing the open source productivity suite LibreOffice which it sponsors and governs.

Leftovers

  • 60% of the apps on the Apple App Store have never been downloaded

    Looking at the Apple iPhone App Store, if I spend 30 seconds reading about each App to decide whether I wanted it or not, it would take me 150,000 minutes, or 2,500 hours or 104.17 days to go through them all.

  • Finance

    • A Rare Look at Why the Government Won’t Fight Wall Street

      The great mystery story in American politics these days is why, over the course of two presidential administrations (one from each party), there’s been no serious federal criminal investigation of Wall Street during a period of what appears to be epic corruption. People on the outside have speculated and come up with dozens of possible reasons, some plausible, some tending toward the conspiratorial – but there have been very few who’ve come at the issue from the inside.

  • Censorship

    • Apple Feels Reporting Drone Strikes ‘Objectionable And Crude’ And Rejects App

      It seems that today you can’t spit in the wind without hitting a story about some US drone killing a bunch of people in a country somewhere overseas. Every known drone strike is accompanied by news reports of the location and the number of people killed. Yet, even with all these stories about drone strikes, it can a daunting task for those interested in following them to keep up with them all. So what is a drone enthusiast, or someone just appalled by the frequency of the strikes, to do?

  • Copyrights

    • Former Copyright Boss: New Technology Should Be Presumed Illegal Until Congress Says Otherwise

      One of the reasons why we live in such an innovative society is that we’ve (for the most part) enabled a permissionless innovation society — one in which innovators no longer have to go through gatekeepers in order to bring innovation to market. This is a hugely valuable thing, and it’s why we get concerned about laws that further extend permission culture. However, according to the former Register of Copyrights, Ralph Oman, under copyright law, any new technology should have to apply to Congress for approval and a review to make sure they don’t upset the apple cart of copyright, before they’re allowed to exist. I’m not joking. Mr. Oman, who was the Register of Copyright from 1985 to 1993 and was heavily involved in a variety of copyright issues, has filed an amicus brief in the Aereo case (pdf).

    • Feds Charge Activist with 13 Felonies for Rogue Downloading of Academic Articles

      Federal prosectors added nine new felony counts against well-known coder and activist Aaron Swartz, who was charged last year for allegedly breaching hacking laws by downloading millions of academic articles from a subscription database via an open connection at MIT.

      Swartz, the 25-year-old executive director of Demand Progress, has a history of downloading massive data sets, both to use in research and to release public domain documents from behind paywalls. He surrendered in July 2011, remains free on bond and faces dozens of years in prison and a $1 million fine if convicted.

    • Letting the baby dance

      WHEN Stephanie Lenz in Pennsylvania put a video on YouTube of her 18-month-old son bopping to Prince’s song “Let’s Go Crazy” she did not expect a lawsuit. But four months and 28 views later, the musician’s recording company, Universal, howled that the 29-second “performance” infringed its copyright and demanded that YouTube take it down.

      That was in 2007. Since then computers, smartphones and the internet have made copyright law look even more obsolete. But the response so far has been not to update the laws but to widen their scope and stiffen the penalties. In January websites including Wikipedia briefly shut down in protest against tough anti-piracy laws promoted by the entertainment industry in America and elsewhere.

    • Why Johnny can’t stream: How video copyright went insane

      Suppose I could offer you a choice of two technologies for watching TV online. Behind Door Number One sits a free-to-watch service that uses off-the-shelf technology and that buffers just enough of each show to put the live stream on the Internet. Behind Door Number Two lies a subscription service that requires custom-designed hardware and makes dozens of copies of each show. Which sounds easier to build—and to use? More importantly, which is more likely to be legal?

09.30.12

Links 30/9/2012: Slackware 14.0 is Out

Posted in News Roundup at 11:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • 9 things to consider while migrating from Windows to Linux

    1. Linux is not windows

  • Linux Event TV: One-on-One with Open Source Visionaries

    Linux Foundation events are studded with Linux and open source community leaders, as well as some eccentric personalities. What better place than one of these events to sit down and talk to the people who are making innovation happen in software development and cloud computing?

    We took advantage of this unique opportunity at LinuxCon North America where we were able to talk to folks like Amir Michael of Facebook and the OpenCompute project; Josh Berkus with PostgreSQL; Sam Ramji, former Microsoft executive and today VP at Apigee; Erica Brescia, CEO at BitRock; and Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier of CloudStack, among others. We asked each of these insightful people what they’re working on, what inspires them about Linux and open source software, and to which technologies or trends they’re paying particular attention.

  • The Linux Setup – Emmanuel Revah, Systems Administrator/Web Developer
  • Poll: Which Linux board would you use to create your next project?

    Recently, we compared Raspberry Pi, Allwinner and CuBox Linux hardware boards. Then, some folks from our open source community shared with us their experiences with Raspberry Pi and Makey Makey. There is much enthusiasm over turning ordinary items into new inventions and doing mundane tasks in completely new ways.

  • $99 Parallella supercomputer appears on Kickstarter

    The launch of the Raspberry Pi has been a huge success story, and promises to get cheap computers into the hands of kids and hobbyists around the world. But it has also had another effect–it has inspired others to look into alternative methods of developing cheap computing platforms.

    One company taking inspiration from the Raspberry Pi Foundation is Adapteva, which focuses on semiconductor technology and has developed a very efficient multicore microprocessor architecture. Now they intend to use that architecture to offer up a $99 supercomputer with the help of Kickstarter.

  • Parallella, A $99 Supercomputer Running Ubuntu

    The Parallella is a new pocket sized computer based on the Epiphany multicore chips developed by semiconductor start-up Adapteva.

  • The automotive industry accelerates its Linux commitment

    The automotive industry took a major step forward in its commitment to open source yesterday, as announced by the Linux Foundation. The Automotive Grade Linux Workgroup (AGL) is a new group that will facilitate industry collaboration for Linux development.

    Major automotive companies like Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan and Toyota are some of the first carmakers to participate in AGL. Other members include Aisin AW, DENSO Corporation, Feuerlabs, Fujitsu, HARMAN, Intel, NEC, NVIDIA, Reaktor, Renesas, Samsung, Symbio, Texas Instruments Incorporated, and Tieto.

  • Linux Nonsense

    To sound this clever yourself, check out the aptly named nonsense. In essence, nonsense is a clever generator of, well, nonsense. Just extract the archive bundle into a directory of your choosing and you are ready to go. No compiling and no nonsense (pardon the circular reference). Nonsense is a Perl script that works with a collection of templates. If you look in the directory you just created, you’ll see an executable file called nonsense and a number of data files as well as a few HTML templates.

  • Desktop

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • I still need Xfce’s Gigolo, even in GNOME

      I get why they called it Gigolo. It’s the Xfce utility that “mounts anything without complaining.”

      The things it mounts include ftp and sftp over the network, WebDAV and Windows shares. I’d rather not use it at all, but in Xfce’s Thunar file manager, you still need Gigolo to access these remote filesystems.

    • GNOME Desktop

  • Distributions

    • Hanthana 17 Screenshots
    • blackPanther OS – A nice-looking distribution

      This distribution we chose to show you today sure is an interesting combination. According to their Distrowatch page, it’s a combination of features from Mandriva, on which is based, Fedora and Ubuntu, and can be used at school, work or home. Are these rather bold statements true? Stay tuned to find out. You don’t need to have any special knowledge, just 10 minutes of your time is all we’re asking. If you have questions on how to try blackPanther or you already tried it and have an opinion, please visit our linux forums and share!

    • Video Review: Voyager 12.04

      After reading a comprehensive review at dedoimedo.com on the latest release of Voyager 12.04 I decided to do a short video review of this Linux OS Distribution. I chose to install this distribution to my hard drive. I have always been a great fan of Xubuntu, so I was excited to see what Voyager would look like and compare it’s performance to Xubuntu.

    • Finnix Linux 105 Review – Command Line to the Rescue

      Finnix is a live CD rescue distro, and it’s one for the CLI-junkies because it doesn’t come equipped with a desktop.

    • 5 highly rated Linux OS distributions

      First released in 1991 by Linus Torvalds, Linux is an open-source operating system derived from the UNIX OS. The philosophy of such open-source operating systems is that they are community-driven; Linux evolves to meet the demands and wishes of its users. There are many great Linux distributions to choose from, each boasting their own advantages and niches. Some designed to be very user-friendly, others intended to give power users greater control over their systems. Here are five of the most highly rated Linux distributions on offer today.

    • Epidemic 4.0 Screenshots

    • New Releases

      • Slackware 14.0 is Finally Here

        Slackware 14.0 is has been released. A post on slackware.com said, “the long wait is finally over and a new stable release of Slackware has arrived!” The official announcement said, “We are sure you’ll enjoy the many improvements.”

      • Superb Mini Server 2.0.0 Is Based on Slackware 14

        The developers behind the Superb Mini Server (SMS) Linux server operating system proudly announced earlier today, September 18th, the immediate availability for download of the Superb Mini Server 2.0.0 release.

    • Gentoo Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • Multiseat computing can feed a multitude

          The ancient alchemists tried to turn iron into gold. While they didn’t succeed, they did leave us with a wonderful metaphor. Last week I experienced something akin to alchemy when I installed Fedora 17 onto a donated Dell Dimension 3000 tower computer.

          I then created two extra users for this computer, grabbed some spare USB keyboards and USB mice, and plugged an extra keyboard and mouse into each of two Plugable multiseat devices (which sell for $65 each). With bated breath, I plugged each Plugable device into a USB port on that free computer. Voila! Like magic, a computer that had no value to someone else suddenly turned into a fully-functioning three-seat computer.

        • Fedora 18 Alpha out now!

          Get your first taste of the Spherical Cow, and help test the new features expected to come to Fedora 18, such as a new Hot Spot feature and updated Samba

        • Fedora 18 Alpha KDE Live CD Screenshot Tour

          The Alpha release of the upcoming Fedora 18 (Spherical Cow) Linux operating system has been announced earlier today, September 18th, featuring KDE 4.9.

    • Debian Family

      • My Raspberry Pi experience with Debian-based Linux distribution Occidentalis

        It’s an ominous name for an ominous fruit: the black raspberry. As the owner of a new Raspberry Pi, I realized that I was going to have to, at some point, open the box and do something with it.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Open Week 2012: 24th – 26th October

            Canonical announced today, September 18th, that the Ubuntu Open Week for Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) will take place between 24th and 26th October, 2012, on the usual Ubuntu IRC channel, #ubuntu-classroom.

          • Canonical Ties Ubuntu Server Development to OpenStack

            Along with RedHat, Rackspace and many others, Canonical has been steadily marrying its cloud strategy to the open source OpenStack platform. In February of last year, we discussed how Canonical was deepening its relationship with OpenStack, and it has kept doing so. Now, in a new blog post, Canonical’s Mark Baker notes that Canonical has released the Cloud Archive for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Server, an online software repository from which administrators can download the latest versions of OpenStack, for use with the latest long-term support (LTS) release of Ubuntu.

          • Everpad Integrates Evernote With Ubuntu Unity (AppIndicator, Lens)
          • New Cinnamon 1.6 Release Adds 2D Session, New Applets And More Customization Options

            Cinnamon, the GNOME Shell fork used by default in Linux Mint 13 (Cinnamon Edition), has reached version 1.6, getting many new features: a new 2D session, workspace OSD, new applets and lots more!

          • Multi-Tasking in Ubuntu

            Ubuntu 12.04 includes a desktop interface that is a strong departure from previous versions. One of the most striking differences upon logging into the system is the launcher. The launcher is a vertical bar that, by default, resides along the left side of the screen. It is similar to the dock in Mac OS X and aims to make your user experience more efficient and intuitive.

          • Ubuntu 11.04 reaching end of life

            Canonical has reminded folks that Ubuntu 11.04 will no longer be supported after October 28th, 18 months after its launch

          • Goodbye Ubuntu 11.04

            Dear Ubuntu users, the time has come to say goodbye to the Natty Narwhal release of the popular Ubuntu operating system, Ubuntu 11.04, as on October 28th it will reach end of life.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Bodhi 2.1.0 Screenshots
            • Pear Linux 5 review

              Pear Linux is a desktop distribution based on Ubuntu, but unlike its parent distribution, which uses the Unity desktop interface, Pear Linux features a modified GNOME Shell called Pear Shell decked out to look like a MacOS X desktop. Not that it is a succeeded, but it is good attempt. Apple has nothing to worry about. The latest edition is Pear Linux 5. Code-named Sunsprite, it is based on Ubuntu 12.04, using (Linux) kernel 3.2.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Adapteva announces Raspberry Pi competitor

      Semiconductor start-up Adapteva has announced plans to create an open-source experimentation board with a massive amount of parallel processing power, and it’s found a novel way to raise the funds it needs: Kickstarter.

    • Phones

      • Open webOS 1.0 lands 28

        Following the roadmap laid out back in January, HP has delivered Open webOS 1.0 to the masses as planned. Last month saw the release of two betas, one for desktop Linux and the other for assorted devices thanks to OpenEmbedded integration, and today we’re seeing the finalized versions of each. Improving on the last go around, the OpenEmbedded version (Open webOS OE) now has a user interface to match the the Linux-style Open webOS Desktop, which itself has the same user interface as webOS 3.0 on the HP TouchPad.

      • Tizen 2.0 Alpha SDK With Source-Code Released

        An alpha release of the Tizen 2.0 SDK with source-code was released this week.

      • Android

        • 10 Best Android apps this week

          The flow of notable new Android apps quietened down a bit on the Google Play store this week, which is why this post has dropped down to a list of 10 rather than 20 – see the note at the bottom for a bit more on that.

        • Android control code issue affects almost all manufacturers

          An Android control code vulnerability originally reported as a Samsung problem in fact appears to affect most smartphones and UMTS tablets running Ice Cream Sandwich (version 4.0.x) or earlier versions of Android. Google updated the dialling software code in version 4.1.1 so that control codes are no longer executed automatically.

        • Hacking for Fun: Programming a Wearable Android Device

          A look at Recon Instruments’ MOD Live Heads-Up Display and the ease of creating and programming useful, on-person computing devices.

          If you had the chance to watch (or were even one of the lucky attendees at) the Google I/O 2012 opening keynote, you may recall the exciting moment when Sergey Brin proclaimed the arrival of the Google Glass prototypes to the attendees. Alas, Glass prototype pre-orders cost a cool $1,500 for some future delivery date. This led many developers, including me, to reassess their desire to build an Android-centric, HUD-based application.

        • Apple’s Wozniak Hopes IPhone Photos Beat His Samsung Galaxy’s
        • Android Powered Desktop Announced By Motorola Mobility

          Motorola Mobility has just launched a fairly interesting Android powered computer over in China that hosts a ton of different home entertainment options. The “HMC3260″ boasts of a 18.5 inch LED touchscreen that will be able to play TV shows, movies, games, browse the web, and with it being powered by Android, it will be able to run Android apps as well. Motorola had apparently partnered up with a cloud service provider called WASU to load the Android computer up with content.

Free Software/Open Source

  • The new software hygiene: Declare a license or risk losing participation

    I had the privilege of working with David Tilbrook almost 25 years ago. He was the first person with whom I ever worked that clearly articulated proper software construction discipline for collaborative endeavours and captured a summary of it under the title, Washing Behind Your Ears: Principles of Software Hygiene.

    David articulated these practices pre-World Wide Web. We weren’t yet living in a world where the Web had so completely removed the friction of time and space from sharing and collaborating on software that even the early Internet enabled.

  • FTL Debuts on Linux, Joins Diaspora In Top-Tier Space Sims

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox’s birthday present to us: Teaching tech titans about DIY upstarts

        As mainstream users came to equate Internet Explorer’s logo with the Web, Microsoft worked to lock in its advantage with increasingly proprietary technology like ActiveX. It surely would have done so, too, but for the seemingly futile Mozilla browser, née Firefox. Born in the ashes of Netscape’s failed browser business 10 years ago this month as Phoenix, Firefox 1.0 is arguably the most important technology developed in the last 50 years.

      • Introducing the 2012 Mozilla Festival: making, freedom and the web

        This year’s Mozilla Festival will gather more than 800 passionate people with diverse backgrounds and skill-sets. The goal: push the frontiers of the open web, learn together, and make things that can change the world.

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

    • Joomla 3.0: Major version jump for the open source CMS

      The Joomla developers have released version 3.0 of their open source CMS. The major version jump is justified as Joomla 3.0 offers many new features along with standard templates for the web site and administration interface that comply with the responsive web design guidelines, producing good results on large screens as well as on mobile devices. The basic Joomla platform was updated to version 12.2 and the web-based install has been reduced to three steps and is now simpler to use. It also includes several sets of sample data that are now available during installation.

  • Healthcare

  • Business

    • Semi-Open Source

      • 70,000 Transactions Per Second With NGINX

        It is good to have your architectural decisions validated by someone else, even better when that validation blows you out of the water. If you’ve chosen to go with NGINX for your load balancing needs, give yourself a pat on the back. WordPress.com made the same decision, and is now pushing 70,000 transactions per second and over 15 GBs through their NGINX load balancers, as explained by a guest post on High Scalability by Barry Abrahamson from Automattic.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry (September 2012)

      To get announcements of most new GNU releases, subscribe to the info-gnu mailing list: http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnu. Nearly all GNU software is available from http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/, or preferably one of its mirrors (http://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html). You can use the url http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/ to be automatically redirected to a (hopefully) nearby and up-to-date mirror.

  • Project Releases

    • PHPUnit 3.7 and related tools arrive

      Developer Sebastian Bergmann has released new versions of his PHPUnit utility and related tools. The open source unit testing framework for PHP has been updated to version 3.7.0, while the PHP_CodeCoverage, PHPUnit_MockObject and DbUnit components were made available as version 1.2.0.

    • Xen 4.2 Releases

  • Public Services/Government

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Tears of Steel: Fourth Official Blender Movie Released!

      Blender movies have always amazed us all with its interesting little stories and sophisticated visual graphics. While Elephants Dream was of sci-fi kind with mind-bending ideas and graphics, Bug Buck Bunny was a light-hearted comedy. The third one, Sintel, also had splendid graphics to back-up its unique storyline (watch all the official Blender movies till date). Tears of Steel is different though. It is not a full-fledged end-to-end animation movie per se like its predecessors. Tears of Steel is more like a normal movie with impressive visual effects.

    • Coding for good: Highlights from the open source humanitarian movement
    • World’s first Arduino flashlight ships soon

      Following a highly successful Kickstarter project and over a year of development, HexBright, billed by its creator as the “world’s first open source Arduino flashlight,” is now in production with initial shipments planned for December.

    • Using open source for disaster response planning

      Peak hurricane season is always a reminder that natural disasters are never easy to handle. If there’s anything we can take away from them it’s that planning and preparedness can save the lives of those risk. The World Bank and OpenGeo find themselves at the unique cross section of disaster management and enabling technology. OpenGeo’s software is built to share information on on the web, which is a critical component of any disaster management plan. Various implementations of our software have been used to facilitate strategic disaster management planning.

    • Creative Commons applied to government, business, and journalism

      For people wanting to learn about Creative Commons and its application in different sectors, there is a sea of materials available online. In particular, Creative Commons international affiliates create a huge number of educational resources that cross language and cultural boundaries.

      A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about my work sorting through some of these resources to identify some of the best, focusing on Creative Commons license use for public sector information, for publishing content on a variety of digital platforms, and for generating revenue. As promised, today I’ll highlight some of the resources I’ve discovered.

    • Free books and reports on open innovation, co-creation, and crowdsourcing
    • Coding for good: Highlights from the open source humanitarian movement

      HFOSS, Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software, is a movement inspired first by the December 2004 Asian tsunami, and then by other humanitarian needs in the health, civic, finance and academic sectors (especially for women and people of color).

    • Open Data

      • Open source music-making lab resonates in the Congo

        In July this year, two UNC-Chapel Hill professors trained 16 motivated Congolese students in the art of beat making. They called their group The Congo Beat Making Lab and collaborated with Yole!Africa to strengthen a larger goal they all share: to connect people (including musicians) around the world.

        Apple Juice Kid (professor, producer, DJ, and drummer) and Pierce Freelon (professor and MC), developed the Beat Making Lab curriculum at UNC-Chapel Hill to connect students with music and students with students. They took this curriculum to Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo and the results were remarkable—this short documentary features a full song and video the group produced using free, open source music-making software.

      • Open data: Is there a business case?

        It’s very easy to ascertain that ‘open is good’, but is there a clear business case for opening up your data? That’s been a key question at the Open Knowledge Festival in Helsinki, and not one with easy answers.

      • Humble Indie Bundle 6 Brings Torchlight To Linux, Ubuntu
      • Humble Indie Bundle 6 has been presented

    • Open Hardware

      • LinuxCon: Open hardware for open hardware

        Open hardware platforms like the Arduino have turned device development into a hobbyist enterprise in recent years, but the $20 price tag of a microcontroller board seems a lot less tantalizing when one adds in the costs of testing and debugging it. At LinuxCon 2012 in San Diego, David Anders addressed this issue and offered some guidance on finding and selecting tools for open hardware development, the majority of which are open hardware themselves.

  • Programming

    • Announcing My New Powered-by-Perl Projects

      While Onyx Neon still occupies a lot of my attention, I’ve been working with a local company called Big Blue Marble to develop small web-based businesses. This has taken me through a crash course in things like search engine optimization and statistics that I hadn’t figured I’d ever need to know.

      (Half the fun of small business is realizing that there’s something you should have started doing months ago, that no one available has any experience with it, and that one of you has a week to get to a basic level of competence with it before you move on to the next crisis. The other half is realizing that the next time you tackle a problem like this, you’ll be that much better at it.)

    • JSR 310′s Date and Time API added to JDK 8

      JSR 310, the long-running Java Specification Request for a date and time API to replace the existing complex and hard to work with date and time support, has been added to the feature list for OpenJDK 8 and Java 8. Expected to arrived in January 2013′s milestone 6 release, the inclusion of JSR310 in Java 8 is the result of work done over the summer to simplify and refine the API so that it could be included.

    • Slashdot, SourceForge, FreeCode sold to jobs site company

      Slashdot has been sold again. Dice Holdings, the company behind the Dice.com career site, announced today that it had purchased Slashdot, as well as the SourceForge and FreeCode websites, from Geeknet for $20 million in cash. According to a statement from Geeknet—the company formerly known as SourceForge, VA Software, and VA Linux—the sale price was approximately equal to what the three sites have brought in over the last year.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Five major stardards organizations speak out

      Earlier this month, the IEEE, Internet Architecture Board (IAB), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Internet Society, and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) signed a joint agreement to affirm and adhere to a set of principles that establish what they call The Modern Paradigm for Standards.

      For those who have lived in the technical standards world, you will find nothing overtly revolutionary in the Paradigm affirmed by these leading standards development organizations (SDOs). Indeed, the principles appear almost boilerplate from prior descriptions of voluntary, industry standards.

    • W3C presents draft of browser Web Cryptography API

      The W3C web standards consortium has presented a first Public Working Draft for integrating a Web Cryptography API into browsers. The JavaScript API will provide features such as hashing, key generation and verification, as well as encryption and decryption. For example, it will enable web applications to check a user’s identity in more secure ways than are currently possible between browsers and HTTP servers.

Leftovers

  • Buford Krispy Kreme to Celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day

    Shiver me timbers! If it be doughnuts ye be craving, head to yon Buford Krispy Kreme on Sept. 19 and jabber like a pirate.
    Krispy Kreme is celebrating the international Talk Like a Pirate Day by giving away a free doughnut to anyone who comes into the store and talks like a pirate. Anyone who dresses in full pirate regalia will get a dozen free doughnuts.

  • Finance

    • Still No Position Limits on Speculation for Goldman Sachs

      Two Associations (the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and the International Swaps and Derivatives Association) sued the CFTC stating that position limits on the number of contracts would damage their business. A federal judge ruled against the CFTC.

      It is passing strange that those who brought down the financial system in 2008 still cannot see why they should be regulated so that another crisis will be averted.

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Patdown Assault Trauma Syndrome: fear, shaking, sleeplessness, nightmares, and flashbacks

      As one reads the letters from victims of TSA patdowns released last week, strong patterns emerge. Nearly every letter uses one of these turns of phrase: demeaning, degrading, dehumanizing, humiliating, violated, traumatized, sexually assaulted.

    • Don’t Think Different: Apple Adds Straitjacket Mode to iOS

      Business iPad users beware. Your halcyon days of loading whatever the heck you want onto your tablet may be coming to an end.

      Apple is set to introduce a couple of new features that will give corporate IT new ways to lock down the iOS 6 operating system, which powers the iPad and the iPhone, according to Zenprise, a mobile device management company that was briefed on the features by Apple.

09.28.12

Links 28/9/2012: GeeXboX 3.0, Distros Screenshots

Posted in News Roundup at 6:28 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • The Open Source Technology Behind Every Tweet

    SAN DIEGO. Twitter has become one of the most pervasive forms of real time social media interactions in recent years and it’s largely powered by open source technology. That’s the message coming that Chris Aniszcyzyk, the open source manager at Twitter, delivered today at the LinuxCon conference.

    Twitter’s infrastructure runs on open source technology using the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) and the Scala programming language. Aniszcyzyk noted that Twitter was first built with the open source Ruby on Rails framework, but ended up moving away from Rails for performance reasons.

  • Diaspora’s move to community not the end

    Just over two years after their now-famous Kickstarter fundraiser that generated ten times the amount of funds they were seeking, the founders of Diaspora have announced they will shifting control of the project to the Diaspora community.

    Diaspora is one of the flashy success stories of the social media age. Conceived by four NYU students as an open source, distributed answer to Facebook, the project received a lot of media and hacker attention in 2010, just as the apex of concern for Facebook’s data privacy policies was being reached.

  • Diaspora Is Now Community Property: ‘It Was Never Supposed to Be a Startup’
  • Is Twitter open source-washing its image?

    Twitter seems to have a somewhat cynical approach on how to treat developers these days. The news that Twitter is joining the Linux Foundation comes just days after the microblogging company angered many in its development community with tighter restrictions on its APIs.

    The timing for joining the Linux Foundation seems rather suspect–observers have already called Twitter on trying to spin the negative response it received when the company announced the changes to version 1.1 of the Twitter API on August 16.

  • MapBox Aims For Open Source, Digital Map Revolution

    “What a crazy week,” said Eric Gundersen, CEO of MapBox, a cloud-based digital map publishing company, in an interview with TPM.

    Gundersen’s point is well taken, given his small 25-person startup, based in Washington, D.C., just won a $575,000 grant from the journalism innovation nonprofit the Knight Foundation.

  • Events

    • Open Source in Action: LinuxCon 2012

      I participated in a panel discussion at LinuxCon today with other journalists who cover Linux and open source goings-on, including our own Alex Williams. One of the questions that was asked was “What was the most important story for you this week?”

      The answers from my peer journalists were interesting, and reflect the diversity in interest (and beats) between us all. From Google’s admission to using — and paying for support for — Ubuntu on the desktop, to Linus’s revelation of a Linux 4.0 release within the next couple of years, the things that piqued our various interests covered the spectrum of what happened this week.

    • Linux Australia needs the LCA

      The Australian national Linux conference appears to be becoming a victim of its own success, with no team putting up a bid to host the event in 2014.

      But the sponsor, Linux Australia, has no choice but to keep finding an organising team – the conference serves as its main source of funds. Else, it would not be able to spread its wings as it has.

    • How Do You Define Open Source?

      It’s not as easy a question as you might think. For me, I used to (perhaps naively) believe that any license approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) is open source. Those licenses are all supposed to conform to the Open Source Definition.

      Speaking at the LinuxCon conference, Red Hat lawyer Richard Fontana led an awesome session that really illuminated by view of the whole discussion.

    • LinuxCon 2012: OpenStack and Open Clouds
    • LinuxCon and the Promise of CloudOpen

      The fourth annual LinuxCon conference is getting underway this week here in Sunny San Diego. Over the last four years, LinuxCon USA has emerged as one of the preeminent Linux events on Earth, bringing together the best and brightest in a weeklong Linux love-in.

      LinuxCon filled the gap that was left behind after the collapse of LinuxWorld (remember that show?) as a vastly superior, technology focused show. The 2012 event by all indications will be another epic bonanza for Linux aficionados. While there have always been co-located conferences at LinuxCon, this year the Linux Foundation is co-locating its newest conference CloudOpen with LinuxCon.

    • ApacheCon Europe 2012 details announced

      The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has announced the speaker lineup and program for Apache Con Europe 2012 which is taking place 5 – 8 November at the Rhein-Neckar Arena in Sinsheim, Germany. According to the ASF, the conference is mostly targeted at “technologists currently developing Apache-based solutions, as well as those interested in committing code to an Apache project, contributing to the Apache Incubator, or enhancing their Open Source products and community practices.”

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Chrome for Android Is More Sticky Than Slick

        Pitched as a browser for searching and browsing fast, with accelerated page loading, adjectives like “quick” and “speed” gave me the impression I was in for a Web-based speed record. That was not to be the case. I experienced sticky page scrolling at the image-heavy CNN website compared to scrolling on the stock browser.

    • Mozilla

      • Ubuntu One Added to Thunderbird 15 Filelink

        Mozilla officially released the Mozilla Thunderbird 15.0 email and RSS client to the world on August 28th, 2012, bringing a few interesting new features.

      • Mozilla Delivers Beta of Its Persona Streamlined Sign-In Project

        The Mozilla Foundation is out with a public beta of Persona, a browser-centric system for logging in to online sites that could do away with managing lots of usernames and passwords. Mozilla has been working with the idea of Personas online for a long time, ranging from schemes to customize browser skins and the like to streamlining online log-in processes. Mozilla claims that the new public beta can do a lot to simplify online identities.

      • Firefox 15 Accelerates Browsing for Desktop, Phones and Tablets

        Mozilla has been waging a multi-year battle against memory bloat in its open source Firefox web browser. With today’s Firefox 15 release, Mozilla is firing a major salvo in that battle, claiming a reduction in memory usage.

        The memory reduction comes by way of plugging memory links in the way that third party add-ons consume memory.

        In a blog post detailing the memory fix, Mozilla developers estimated that the memory improvement could be as much as a 4.8x improvement over the previous Firefox 14 release.

      • Mozilla and National Science Foundation seek developers to build “apps from the future”

        Today, Mozilla and the National Science Foundation announced eight winning ideas that offer a glimpse of what the internet of the future might look like. Next up: invite developers everywhere to make these and other big ideas a reality.

  • SaaS

  • Databases

    • Open source MongoDB gets richer query commands

      In an effort to improve how MongoDB supplies its data to external applications, MongoDB keeper 10gen has extended the open source data store’s query language, providing developers with more sophisticated ways to extract and transform data.

    • Updates for PostgreSQL 9.1 and 9.2 fix critical bugs

      The PostgreSQL Global Development Group has released updates to the 9.2.x and 9.1.x branches of its open source relational database. According to the project’s developers, these updates fix two critical bugs that could lead to potential data corruption and which were accidentally introduced “as a side effect of performance optimisations and new features, mainly Unlogged Tables”.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Oracle CIO: Linux is Fundamental

      Oracle CIO Mark Sunday has a lot of users he needs to support and he’s using Linux to do it. The tech leader took the stage at the LinuxCon conference this morning to discuss how Oracle uses and develops Linux.

      “Linux is our platform of choice across a wide variety of services,” Sunday said. “It is how we build products and how we provide services to our customers.”

      Oracle is a massive organization of over 125,000 employees spread across 49 countries and according to Sunday, they all depend on Linux. Linux is the core technology that powers Oracle’s core collaboration, including email and its primary systems.

    • Oracle woos open sourcers with free Java web framework
    • Oracle Claims MySQL IS Safe With Them

      If the accusation Oracle is incrementally withdrawing MySQL from open source is FUD, as an Oracle VP claimed this week, then it’s time for Oracle to take concrete steps to prove ‘open’ is their chosen path.

    • Larry couldn’t, but we can: Upstart Waratek touts cloudy Java love

      A startup has pledged to deliver for Java what the brains of Larry Ellison’s mighty Oracle and the entire Java community cannot: cloud scalability – now.

      It also hopes to spread the love to Java-hating sysadmins.

      Waratek is planning the general release of its Cloud VM for Java at JavaOne next week. The Cloud VM product is a virtualisation engine built by Waratek to deliver multi-tenancy and elasticity for Java apps. It will also release APIs that let you build for Cloud VM for Java at the event.

    • Oracle offers tiny tools for pint-sized Java devices

      Oracle has announced two new Java products for embedded systems, with the aim of getting the object-oriented language running on as wide a range of devices as possible, including ones with very limited resources.

      Tuesday’s new addition to the database giant’s Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) lineup, Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 shrinks Java’s footprint down to levels that are almost unthinkable in the modern PC era. Derived from the version of Java ME that runs on feature phones, it supports devices with ARM processors and as little as 130KB RAM and 350KB ROM.

  • CMS

    • Drupal at Warp Speed

      Doesn’t it give you a warm feeling when you’re asked to do a week’s work in twelve hours or less? It should. It should give you a warmer feeling when you can do it in far less time. Give your C-Level suitors this one in under an hour and they’ll think you’re as magical as Mr. Scott aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise. Mr. Scott often surprised the always demanding Captain Kirk with his ability to fix just about anything within the very tight time constraints placed on him. Instead of dilithium crystals and altered phaser electronics, you’ll have to work with Ubuntu and Drupal.

    • WordPress for Android updated with all-new stats

      Support for featured images and all-new stats are the most notable features in the recent 2.2 release of the WordPress for Android mobile application. This new version now lets users set Featured Images from directly within the app; previously this could only be done using the web interface. After adding an image to the post, users can enable this option by tapping on it and selecting “Use as featured image”; the developers note that this requires WordPress 3.4.1 or later.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GCC 4.5 Through 4.8 For AMD’s Bulldozer

      While the new AMD Trinity APUs are what’s exciting and being benchmarked at the moment, here are some updated compiler tests from earlier this month on an AMD FX-8150 Bulldozer system.

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

  • Openness/Sharing

    • A tour through open source creative tools
    • Keep calm and innersource on

      Winston Churchill was known as a charismatic leader and statesman, able to rally his country to great things when they needed it most. He was also fond of the occasional salty outburst when needed—I won’t repeat one of his more famous ones here, except to paraphrase it a bit…

    • Is open source democratic?

      In his recent post, Glyn Moody asks an important question: “Can open source be democratic?” He describes how free software emerged as a distributed, bottom-up system of writing code. The central defining aspects of that culture are a uniquely open process not just of programming but also of its organization, and a close relationship between programmers and users. Effectively, users and programmers together were both contributors, they collaborated on the project. Glyn goes on to explain how this community effort changed over time to become more institutionalized, more corporate and more dull—”becoming a ‘Firefox Affiliate’, hardly something that sets the pulse racing.” Ordinary users no longer play an important part in open source projects.

    • Open Hardware

      • Open source hardware answers the problem of mobile device obsolescence

        Perhaps you read my, “No iOS 6 for my original iPad? Now, I’m an Angry Bird” post that describes, in detail, my irritation with Apple for no longer supporting my iPad 1. If you haven’t, you should so that you’ll understand this post. Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you to finish before I continue.

        Now, that you’re back, I’ve come up with a solution to this overt obsolescence dilemma facing tens of millions of disappointed customers–not only from Apple but from other companies as well. Just read the comments from the original post and you’ll see that we all face this, “Buy our newest stuff” marketing ploy regardless of your device source.

  • Programming

    • Should we require that open source is developed openly?

      Of course I went out to re-read both the open source and free software definitions so I could prove him wrong…but I can’t. He is right, the definitions of both free software and open source software say nothing about being developed in the open, but as those of you who have attended one of my workshops (or read my book) know, I disagree.

    • Python Development on Linux and Why You Should Too
    • Open source Java projects: GitHub

      If you’ve been curious about GitHub then this short tutorial in the Open source Java projects series is for you. Get an overview of the source code repository that has changed the way that many developers work, both individually and collaboratively. Then try GitHub for yourself, using common Git commands to branch and commit your own open source project.

    • Open Source Programs Aim to Meet Global Demand for Developers

      I recently wrote that to master technology, you must master software. It is software that differentiates one device or computing experience from another. And since nearly all software today is built using open source projects and code, knowing how to collaborate and contribute to an open development community is a requirement for any developer or company regardless of industry.

    • Google launches its third junior Code-in event

      Stephanie Taylor from Google’s Open Source Programs Office has announced the launch of the company’s third Code-in contest for pre-university students. The annual event is open to students aged 13 to 17 from around the world and is designed to introduce them to open source software development.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • HTML5 to be completed by the end of 2014

      The chairs of the W3C’s HTML Working Group have presented a plan to approve a stable HTML5 specification before the end of 2014. The plan proposes to formally define a stable set of features as HTML 5.0, but when the HTML Working Group will approve this plan is as yet unknown. Features for which no stable specification is available by then could be moved to an extended “HTML 5.1″ set of features that could be completed by 2016.

Leftovers

Links 28/9/2012: NVIDIA 304.51 Linux Graphics Driver, ZaReason Tablet

Posted in News Roundup at 6:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux: It’s Where the Jobs Are

    The U.S. unemployment rate is slowly getting better, thank goodness. But with the unemployment rate at 8.3%, few people are saying the great recession is over.

  • PC-in-a-Keyboard Comes with Ubuntu Linux Preloaded

    The past six months or so have seen a veritable flurry of tiny, Linux-powered PCs descend upon the market, including not just the widely embraced Raspberry Pi but also the Mele A1000, the MK802, and the Oval Elephant, to name just a few.

  • Vandals break into congressman’s office, install Linux on PCs

    A US congressmen has been left incensed after miscreants installed Linux on computers at his campaign office, possibly thrashing some data in the process.

    Michael Grimm, a Republican who represents a district in New York covering Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, has slammed the weekend break-in to his offices on as a “politically motivated” crime against the democratic process.

  • How I Saved a Mac Using Ubuntu

    As a general rule, OS X is not really best buddies with its Linux distribution cousins.

    The reasons vary, depending on who you ask. But at the end of the day, the division is a solid one. Still, it is worth mentioning that since today’s Mac runs with an Intel CPU, most Linux distributions run great on it.

    As luck would have it, the Mac’s compatibility with Linux recently saved my bacon after my wife’s iMac went into a bit of a meltdown.

    This is a walk-through detailing how Ubuntu 12.04 saved my wife’s Mac (data).

  • Linux and the Samsung Series 9 NP900X3C
  • ‘Cotton Candy’ Linux PC-on-a-stick ships at last

    There’s been a seemingly endless parade of tiny, Linux-powered PCs entering the market in recent months, including most recently the $49 Cubieboard and the $89 UG802.

  • Linux Top 3: Linux 4.0, Leadership and Goobuntu

  • Desktop

    • Future of the Desktop

      Could Mozilla’s announcement of the Boot to Gecko roadmap, along with the continued development of other web-based operating systems, make which Linux distro you’re running less important than the desktop environment?

    • In a Retail Competition in Portugal for Notebooks, GNU/Linux Won 10% Share

      All this talk of GNU/Linux not making it on the desktop is hypothetical. Where GNU/Linux was tried it has done well. In Portugal, some locally-built PCs were produced in several models. One of them had GNU/Linux and because of that had a lower price for software and better hardware. The result? It earned a decent share of the market, 10%. So, the fools who proclaim GNU/Linux has only 1% share due to geeks miss the effect of barring GNU/Linux from retail shelves, something totally on the supply-side. Consumers will choose GNU/Linux if it is offered.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • Fragmentation Of The Ext4 File System In Ubuntu

      “Data in the computer is stored in files that are written on the hard disk which is like a giant closet with millions of drawers and each drawer has the same capacity (usually 512 bytes). If the data is stored in contiguous drawers, it can be accessed faster than if it was in a discontinuous (fragmented) order into the closet. So far, it is understood that “things” can be found faster in an ordered closet than in a messy one. The problem is to know how to keep the closet organized when it is frequently used.”

    • Graphics Stack

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KDE Needs You: Make Randa 2012 Happen

        KDE is one such project which is purely driven by a community which believes in free software, which believes in giving complete control of the system to its users.

        I recently switched to KDE and am really impressed with the work developers have done on it. These developers don’t have magic wand or heavy corporate backing to create what you and I use every day. These mortals work with each other to create one of the oldest desktop environments (KDE was founded in 1996, Gnome/Xfce in 1997), they mostly community through the web, but nothing can match face-to-face real world interaction where these developers meet with each other and discuss various aspects of KDE.

      • Can KDE’s Plasma Active Run On Android?

        Initially the idea was to get all the source code for the software running on one of the many tablets which are sold with Android. But the idea faced problems because only binary drivers are provided by the vendors which are useless for Mer.

        Even if enough source code

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Cinnamon 1.6 nearing feature freeze

        The next major update to the Cinnamon desktop environment is nearing its feature freeze and is well on its way to a release. In a blog post, Linux Mint founder and lead developer Clement “Clem” Lefebvre says that the development team is “extremely active” working towards the next 1.6.0 release of Cinnamon and he provides various details of the current state of development, including a list of planned features.

      • GNOME 3.6 Released – See What’s New

        The GNOME Project has released GNOME 3.6 today, the new version bringing many enhancements and new features, including a redesigned Message Tray, smarter notifications, improved Activity Overview layout, new design for Files (Nautilus) and a new lock screen. Let’s take a look at what’s new!

  • Distributions

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mageia Linux: A Delightful OS for Work or Play

        Mageia Linux is a distro brought to you by the same people who previously produced Mandriva Linux. The new distro, first released in September 2010, provides an easy to use environment for Linux newcomers or experts. It is particularly suited for game play and works well with various processors, sound and graphics cards.

      • Cotton Candy Tiny Linux PC Joins a Crowd of Them

        While the Raspberry Pi has grabbed the most headlines as a tiny, ultra-inexpensive, pocketable computer running an open source operating system, it’s actually only one of many tiny LInux computers being heralded as part of a new “Linux punk ethic.” As we’ve noted, there are various pocket-size Android devices selling online for under $100 (see the photo). For example, these thumbdrive-style mini PCs are available on AliExpress for $74, which includes shipping. Now, some of the most talked about Linux PCs-on-a-stick are shipping: the “Cotton Candy” devices.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Stock Down 3% After Earnings, Forecast Miss

        Shares of enterprise software maker Red Hat (RHT) dipped 3.3% in midday trading on Tuesday, after the company late Monday reported a mixed bag of financial results.

      • Red Hat Cloud Exec Scott Crenshaw Joins Acronis
      • Red Hat Price Target Raised to $58.00 at Goldman Sachs (RHT)

        Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) had its price target upped by Goldman Sachs to $58.00 in a research report sent to investors on Tuesday morning.

      • Infor open-source plan: Embrace Red Hat stack, MySQL

        Infor has certified some of its products for Red Hat’s Linux and JBoss middleware and added support for the MySQL and MariaDB databases, as part of a new push into open-source software, the companies announced Wednesday.

      • Fedora

        • Is Fedora Linux Becoming Business-Friendly?

          Fedora Linux has not typically been closely associated with the business world. That realm was instead the purview of Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), which sponsors Fedora as a community project and uses it as a proving ground for technologies that often later appear in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. But if the upcoming release of Fedora 18 is any indication, the open source operating system may be poised to become more business friendly in its own right.

        • Pimp up XFCE 4.10 in Fedora 17

          The default look of the XFCE desktop in Fedora 17, is a little boring, but this post, show how to pimp it up to look really great.

          I started with a standard XFCE 4.8 Fedora installation and upgraded to XFCE 4.10.

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Canonical loses Ubuntu marketing exec to Mozilla Firefox OS project

            John Bernard, the marketing manager for Canonical’s OEM unit, will be leaving his position at the end of this week in order to move across to Mozilla’s mobile Firefox OS unit.

            A Canonical spokeswoman confirmed Bernard’s decision to change roles in a statement on Tuesday.

          • Get Ready For The 24-Hour Horsemen Marathon

            See that motley crew above? That is my team, the Community Team at Canonical. I am blessed to have such a wonderful team; not only are they all fantastic community leaders, but they are just a fun bunch of guys in general to be around.

          • Ubuntu Unity Aims For More Affiliate Revenue
          • Canonical Ubuntu management tool gets hefty upgrade

            “We have really been cranking up the level of effort with Landscape over the past year or so,” said Federico Lucifredi, Canonical’s Landscape product manager. “Landscape is a very important piece of our enterprise strategy, and so Canonical’s commitment has increased dramatically.”

          • Canonical Debuts Ubuntu One Music Store for the Web
          • Ubuntu One Music Store comes to mobile and web, skips the plugins
          • Ubuntu One Music Store Goes Online: Free Access For 6 Months
          • Ubuntu 12.10 to Support Remote Desktop Login

            As an operating system that proclaims itself “cloud ready,” Ubuntu ought to make it as easy as possible to log in to remote PCs and servers from the Ubuntu desktop. And that’s just what users will be able to do in Ubuntu 12.10, which will feature a remote login feature in the greeter screen. Read on for a look.

          • Ubuntu 12.10 Beta 1: Preview
          • First beta of Ubuntu 12.10 released

            The first beta version of Ubuntu 12.10, code-named “Quantal Quetzal”, has been released for testing ahead of its October final release. The new version brings together a range of enhancements the developers have been working on, from reducing the number of install images, to making 3D accelerated desktops run on non-3D hardware, and switching to Python 3.0.

          • Edgy penguins test-fly Ubuntu’s Quantal Quetzal
          • Canonical Targets Corporate Desktops for Ubuntu

            You’ve probably heard the promises that desktop Linux is more secure, faster and cost-effective than proprietary platforms. But did you know it can also increase employee satisfaction? So says Canonical in its latest effort to promote Ubuntu in the workplace. Read on for a look at this and other talking points.

            Admittedly, the suggestion that installing Ubuntu on your business’s workstations “will actively improve the efficiency and job satisfaction of employees” is only one of the many reasons Canonical gives for switching to Ubuntu. And Canonical doesn’t discuss the claim in detail. That claim, by the way, came in an email announcing the availability of a white paper from Canonical titled, “Ubuntu Desktop for the Enterprise.”

          • Ubuntu Gnome Remix 12.10 Arrives For Testing 175
          • First alpha of Ubuntu GNOME Remix 12.10

            The developers of the GNOME desktop-based Ubuntu derivative have, under the name Ubuntu GNOME Remix, released their first alpha version of the distribution. Based on the upcoming Ubuntu 12.10 “Quantal Quetzal” release, the developers describe the Remix as a developer snapshot to “give a very early glance at the next version”.

          • Fans Create Ubuntu Gangnam Style Cover
          • Ubuntu 12.10 adds Photo Lens for searching photos stored locally and online
          • Canonical aligns Ubuntu Server with quick-change OpenStack

            Canonical, the distributor of the Ubuntu variant of Linux, wants to be on the cutting edge and be stable at the same time. And as anyone who has dated knows, that is a tough balancing act that few people can manage. But a new strategy from Canonical will line up the fast-changing OpenStack cloud control freak that is part of the latest Ubuntu Server distribution with the Long Term Support stable version of the company’s Linux.

          • Ubuntu offering 20GB cloud storage, 6 months music streaming for 70p
          • Pre-release Ubuntu 12.10 has partial support for manual LVM and disk encryption

            About three weeks ago, I published automated LVM and disk encryption in a pre-release version of what will become Ubuntu 12.10, aka Quantal Quetzal.

          • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 284
          • 12.04 Music Player Review – CPU Usage
          • 5 Best Free Apps For Ubuntu 12.04 – Part 1

            We have shared a wonderful post on few must have apps for Ubuntu 12.04 and I would like to extend that list the below post. Before I get into this post, best free apps for Ubuntu 12.04, I would like you check the previously linked post.

          • Desktop Dis-Unity: Ubuntu Adds Web-Search to the Desktop

            The Linux desktop has always been a balancing act between convenience on the one hand and security and privacy on the other. However, Ubuntu’s recent decision to add results from Amazon to desktop searches creates such an imbalance that I wonder just whose convenience is being considered — Ubuntu’s, or the users’?

          • I Feared Uncertain Doubt
          • Ubuntu, Dash and Amazon – Great news?

            I’ve been reading with interest the issues raised by some over the recent news that Dash search results in Ubuntu 12.10 are to include searches with Amazon. As with any new announcement (and in particular with a big name distro such as Ubuntu) feelings are strong. ”It’s the end of the world”, “Canonical have shot themselves in the foot” and a cacophony of cries proclaiming the end of the world. The reality is somewhat different, but then especially with the more vocal names on the net, why let reality ruin a good end of the world story?

          • [Full circle] issue 65
          • Canonical adds a ‘kill switch’ for Ubuntu’s Amazon search

            The new integration of Amazon search results in Ubuntu Linux 12.10 has stirred up quite a hornet’s nest of controversy over the past week or so among observers unimpressed by Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth’s calm assurances that users’ privacy would be maintained.

          • Ubuntu 12.10 Beta 2: Preview

            GNOME and Windows 8 developments have resulted in some controversial changes for Ubuntu 12.10 (codenamed Quantal Quetzal), which has now reached the Beta 2 stage. Fortunately, solutions now seem to be in place in time for the 18 October release to proceed as scheduled. Canonical has generated further controversy by introducing online scope results, specifically from Amazon, into the Dash search.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Linux Mint 13 Maya review

              With Ubuntu 12.04 LTS as its underpinnings, Linux Mint 13 (Maya) was recently released in three versions, KDE (new), Xfce, and Gnome-Cinnamon. We tested each version separately and while we still like Mint, we’re accumulating a nagging list of bugs – some of which are the fault of Ubuntu, and some are the twists that Linux Mint takes on its own.

            • Explaining Linux Mint 13

              Ubuntu’s reign on Linux desktop dominance may soon be under threat with two new releases from Mint, but far from simply being a different take on a user-friendly desktop, the new Mint 13 is important because it diverges dramatically from Ubuntu, upon which it’s based. And it does so because it’s challenging the very direction Ubuntu is taking.

            • Ubuntu Studio: A Distro for Recording
            • Peppermint OS Three: between the cloud and the desktop

              The cloud era is coming. Some people can argue whether this is good or bad. Maybe that’s only the fashion. Maybe not. Although more and more people think of the cloud as if it were the inevitable future.

            • What’s on tap in Zentyal 3?

              Zentyal is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu Server. The current stable edition is Zentyal 2.2, with Zentyal 3 as the next stable version. Unlike other distributions that release at least two versions per year, Zentyal takes a less rapid-fire development model, releasing only one stable version per year.

            • Introducing Ubuntu GNOME Remix 12.10

              We are proud to announce today, September 3rd, the immediate availability for download and testing of the Alpha release of the upcoming Ubuntu GNOME Remix 12.10 operating system.

            • Linux Mint 13 – Everybody’s best mate?

              I had Linux Mint 12 installed on my laptop for quite a while but I was never settled with it. The reason for this was the choice of desktop.
              The Samsung R20 laptop does not seem to handle the Cinnamon desktop at all well and the Gnome classic desktop was just a bit rigid.

              I therefore had wanted to use the Mate desktop. The trouble was that panels kept disappearing and once they had disappeared it was a real hassle to get them to come back again.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Linux-based Tizen mobile platform LIVES!

        The Linux Foundation has released the source code and SDKs for the first alpha version of Tizen 2.0, its Linux-based smartphone OS, further fueling speculation that Samsung might be close to releasing a handset based on the platform.

        You could be forgiven for assuming Tizen was dead in the water – if you’ve heard of it at all. It’s a combination of Nokia’s Maemo, Intel’s Moblin, and the two companies’ joint MeeGo project, none of which enjoyed any market success. We’ve heard nary a peep about it here at El Reg since the Linux Foundation announced it last September, and no phones running the OS are available commercially.

      • Software release suggests Samsung could soon launch a smartphone running Tizen

        Tizen 2.0, the open-source smartphone operating system, is now available as an alpha release with an accompanying Software Development Kit (SDK), the Tizen project announced on Tuesday. The release lends credence to rumors that project member Samsung Electronics is planning to launch a version of its Galaxy S3 smartphone running Tizen instead of Google’s Android.

      • Huawei sees smartphones leading growth in consumer devices

        Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, the world’s sixth-biggest maker of mobile phones, is looking to its smartphones to outpace global growth rates and drive a consumer gadgets business that will rival its flagship telecoms gear in revenue.

        [...]

        “Whatever consumers like, we’ll develop,” Wan Biao, CEO of Huawei Device, said in an interview on Monday at the company’s headquarters. “We’re also devoting resources into coming up with a phone operating system based on our current platform in case other companies won’t let us use their system one day.”

      • Ballnux

      • Android

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • KDE Tablet Vivaldi Launch Delayed

        The launch of the KDE tablet Vivaldi has been postponed for now, following major setback. The project received a severe blow after the manufacturer of originally chosen Zenithink C71 tablet modified the system board of the device. This means that the numerous adjustments that were made to the Linux kernel to support the previous board have all gone waste and the developers now have to start the development work from scratch.

      • ZaTab: ZaReason’s Open Tablet

        Quite a few options exist as far as Android tablets go. Some of them are great choices for personal entertainment and media consumption. Google’s new Nexus 7 is a powerful little beast designed to serve up media from Google Play. Amazon’s Kindle Fire is a great device for tapping Amazon’s extensive content offerings. Undoubtedly, these tablets were designed to direct more of your money to the tablet-maker’s on-line content marketplaces. The glaring lack of SD card expansion on these devices confirms this. The ZaReason team designed a tablet that can be what the user wants it to be—one that supports users’ own content, that is not necessarily tied to a particular content store and that can be used as far more than a simple consumption device. Have they succeeded in creating the world’s first open tablet? Let’s find out.

      • Acer introduces 7-inch Iconia Tab A110

Free Software/Open Source

  • Diaspora slowly becoming a community-run project, but is it too late?

    We’ve followed Diaspora for a while now, since its beginning when it was the largest project Kickstarter had seen and was being called “the Facebook killer.” Two years later, the “open source social network” is becoming more open by turning into a community-run project, and the Diaspora team is launching a new project, Makr.io

  • By the numbers: India saves and grows with free and open source software

    Free and open source software (FOSS) plays an indispensable role in developing countries. As it is often a substitute for more expensive proprietary software, it can impact the economy and progress of a country, like India, in a very positive way.

  • Marketing open source is made for geeks

    Up until about ten years ago, it was extremely unfashionable to be a geek. Geeks were considered the black swans of the social world: they were perceived as having limited social skills, little interest in non-programming activities, and few friends.

    Fast forward to today, and things have changed significantly for the geek. Geeks today run the coolest companies, create the most cutting-edge trends, and are popular guests on the social circuit. And as the geek has evolved, so too has his or her skills: today’s geeks are not just clever programmers, but they also know how to finance and market their products.

  • Open Sourcer miffed by Raspberry Pi

    There are moments when Open Source religion gets in the way of a jolly good thing. Raspberry released a cut price computer with Linux on board to help kids learn programming. What could be wrong with that?

    Everything, according to Peter Zotov, who is a noted Open Source developer. Writing in White Quark, Zotov damns the Pi for not obeying the rules of true Open Source and therefore ruling it out for education purposes.

    He said that kids will not understand the reality of computing because the Pi is “a black box tightly sealed with patents and protected by corporations. It isn’t even remotely an open platform,” he wails. Apparently kids can only learn programming if everything is completely open source, true and pure as God, or Richard Stallman, intended.

  • GNU Octave: An interview with John W. Eaton and Jordi Gutiérrez

    [John] I’m the original author of GNU Octave and have been it’s maintainer from the beginning, in 1992. When I first started working on Octave I was post-doctoral researcher and systems administrator at the University of Texas. Then from 1995 until 2008 I was a researcher at the University of Wisconsin. But most of my time from 1992 until 2008 was spent working on Octave. Now I have my own software support company focused on supporting Octave.

  • Gotye’s YouTube Orchestra Remix: The Sweetness Of The Open Source Pop Star

    In 2009, an artist named Kutiman launched a project called Thru-YOU (a play on YouTube) that aimed to show what open collaboration could be on the internet. He played the “YouTube Orchestra” for a series of video remixes that made the network effects of music video on the web powerfully clear.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Experience Movi.Kati.Revo, A New Chrome Experiment

        At Google I/O earlier this year, developers were given a glimpse of Movi.Kanti.revo, a new sensory Chrome experiment designed by Cirque du Soleil and developed by Subatomic Systems. For people who are not acquainted with Cirque du Soleil, it is a Canadian entertainment company, whose performances are described as a dramatic mix of circus arts and street entertainment.

      • Chrome 22 Out In Stable Version, Includes Gaming Enhancements

        Google has released Chrome 22 in a final, stable version as the browser continues to grab substantial global market share. The release includes improvements for gamers, JavaScript performance enhancements, support for new, high-definition screens and more. Also this week, Google released a new version of Chrome for iOS that supports the iPhone 5. Here is more on what to expect in Chrome 22.

        Chrome 22 is available now as a download for Windows, the Mac and Linux. As noted on eWeek:

      • Google Releases Chrome 22 Stable for Linux

        On September 25th, Google has unleashed the stable and final release of the Google Chrome 22 web browser, supporting the Linux, Mac OS X, Windows and Chrome Frame platforms.

      • Microsoft dismisses Google’s open source browser benchmark

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla measures interest in their open source projects using site metrics

        David Boswell has a couple of interesting posts (here and here) about how he is using metrics to measure how effective Mozilla is at attracting and engaging people who express an interest in helping contribute to the Mozilla mission.

      • Mozilla and National Science Foundation Honor Eight “Ignite” Concepts

        Back in June, the Obama administration along with The National Science Foundation and Mozilla unveiled Ignite, “an initiative to promote US leadership in developing applications and services for ultra-fast broadband and software-defined networks.” The initiative was described as an incubator ecosystem that will hook people up with novel technology ideas with fast networks, advanced infrastructure and more. Mozilla said the program would identify developers who can “build apps for the future.”

        Now Mozilla and The National Science Foundation have announced eight winners in the program, with ideas that “offer a glimpse of what the Internet of the future might look like.”

        You can find out more about the winning projects here. They include an innovative open source web conferencing app and a 3D interactive telepresence application. The competition features $485,000 in prize money, and here are the initial eight winning concepts:

      • Mozilla shares an in-depth look at the design philosophy behind Firefox OS

        Additionally, Mozilla showed off its homescreen, app grid, and lock screen, which feels like a nice mashup of WebOS and Android, while some of its built-in apps share a small bit of iOS’ skeuomorphic tendencies while being much more elegant and less gaudy. Overall, it’s a handsome-looking OS that appears to have had a lot of thought put into it long before a phone would be available in consumers hands — we imagine that it won’t need to go through the same major visual revisions that Android did over the years.

      • MOZILLA Y U HATE RSS?!?
      • Mozilla Fails to Bring Firefox Home on iOS

        Back in 2010, Mozilla’s was all over the place promoting the open source browser vendor effort to sync Firefox on Apple iOS devices.

        I first wrote about Firefox Home in May of 2010, then again in July 2010 when the App officially debuted.

        Now, two years later, Mozilla is throwing in the towel, giving up on Firefox Home.

      • 3 Hidden Features In Firefox 15 You May Want To Enable

        Firefox 15, which has been released a few days ago, comes with some cool features disabled by default: native PDF viewer, preferences in tab and click-to-play plugins.

        These features have been in testing for quite a while, but they are not 100% ready so they aren’t enabled by default and there are no options in the Firefox preferences to enable them. But, if you don’t mind an occasional glitch, you can enable them using the about:config tool.

      • SolusOS 1.2 Legacy Features Firefox 15

        Ikey Doherty proudly announced yesterday, September 2nd, the immediate availability for download of Legacy Edition of his SolusOS 1.2 Linux operating system.

  • SaaS

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice Community announces broad program for its Berlin conference

      Tracks on development, marketing, migration and community success
      The Document Foundation to host official ODF Plugfest and ODF Plugtesting

    • New Document Foundation Committee Members Chosen

      The Document Foundation Membership Committee administers membership applications and renewals. This is an important job because without them, LibreOffice wouldn’t get new contributers. The Document Foundation recently announced the results of the Membership Committee election.

    • The Document Foundation Turns Two

      Has it been two years already? Apparently so, because today Italo Vignoli posted to The Document Foundation mailing list, “The Document Foundation celebrates its second anniversary and starts fundraising campaign to reach the next stage.” They’ve come a long way in just two short years.

    • Review: VMware Workstation 9 vs. VirtualBox 4.2

      When it comes to virtualization on the desktop, two products stand front and center: VMware Workstation and VirtualBox. The former is the long-standing original keeper of the flame, from the company that gave us PC-centric virtualization technology as we know it. The latter is an open source project now under the stewardship of Oracle, with its own strongly competitive set of features.

    • The Document Foundation celebrates its second anniversary and starts fundraising campaign to reach the next stage

      Berlin, September 28, 2012 – The Document Foundation celebrates its second anniversary since the announcement of the project on September 28, 2010. During the last 12 months, the foundation was legally established in Berlin, the Board of Directors and the Membership Committee were elected by TDF members, where membership is based on meritocracy and not on invitation, Intel became a supporter, and LibreOffice 3.5 and 3.6 families were announced. In addition, TDF has shown the prototypes of a cloud and a tablet version of LibreOffice, which will be available sometime in late 2013 or early 2014.

  • CMS

  • Funding

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Project Releases

    • ACE Code Editor Version 1.0 Released

      ACE is an open source embeddable code editor. The developers have just launched version 1.0 of ACE along with their new website. ACE is written in Javascript, its features and performance is claimed to match that of native editors such as Sublime, Vim and TextMate. It can be easily embedded in a webpage or Javascript application. It supports syntax highlighting for more than 40 languages and can handle documents with up to 4 million lines of code.

    • GStreamer 1.0 out now

      Upgrade to the latest version of GStreamer now for bug fixes and plenty of new optimization tweaks

    • W3C Announces Plan to Make HTML5 Standard By 2014
    • GStreamer 1.0 out now

      Upgrade to the latest version of GStreamer now for bug fixes and plenty of new optimization tweaks

  • Public Services/Government

    • French Government Urged to Adopt Open Source

      French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has issued a missive to French ministers, including a complete action plan urging government usage of LibreOffice and PostgreSQL. But the action plan calls for more. As noted on Slashdot: “He also wants them to reinvest between 5 percent and 10 percent of the money they save through not paying for proprietary software licenses, spending it instead on contributing to the development of the free software. The administration already submits patches and bug fixes for the applications it uses, but Ayrault wants to go beyond that, contributing to or paying for the addition of new functionality to the software.” This is just the latest example of strong pushes in the direction of open source going on in Europe.

    • French government to use PostgreSQL and LibreOffice in free software adoption push

      French government agencies could become more active participants in free software projects, under an action plan sent by Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault in a letter to ministers, while software giants Microsoft and Oracle might lose out as the government pushes free software such as LibreOffice or PostgreSQL in some areas.

    • A time for change: Citizens empowered by open government

      Do you see government as an institution without much room for growth and change? The open source way is creating a path for citizens to become empowered and help their community make improvements where traditional methods have failed—through active participation, gained knowledge, and a two-way conversation with city officials.

    • Can citizens use open source to create legislation?
    • French Government Outlines Plans for Free Software Adoption

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Access/Content

      • California Passes Nation’s First Open Source Textbook Legislation

        Only a signature away, Governor Jerry Brown will have an opportunity to lower the cost of college textbooks by creating the nation’s first free open source digital library for college students and faculty.

        Friday, the California State Senate unanimously passed the first of its kind open educational resource digital library, or (OER), offering students free access to textbooks in the most commonly taken lower-division courses at public postsecondary institutions.

    • Open Hardware

  • Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

  • Finance

    • Wall Street Rolling Back Another Key Piece of Financial Reform

      Wall Street lobbyists are awesome. I’m beginning to develop a begrudging respect not just for their body of work as a whole, but also for their sense of humor. They always go right to the edge of outrageous, and then wittily take one baby-step beyond it. And they did so again last night, with the passage of a new House bill (HR 2827), which rolls back a portion of Dodd-Frank designed to protect cities and towns from the next Jefferson County disaster.

    • SEC Charges Goldman Sachs, Former Banker With ‘Pay-to-Play’ Violations

      The SEC announced today that it has filed a “pay-to-play” case against Goldman, Sachs & Co. and one of its former investment bankers. The SEC alleges that Goldman and Neil M.M. Morrison, a former vice president in the firm’s Boston office, made undisclosed campaign contributions to then-Massachusetts state treasurer Timothy P. Cahill while he was a candidate for governor.

  • Censorship

    • Brazil judge orders arrest of Google president

      A Brazilian judge ordered the arrest of the head of Google’s operations in Brazil for failure to remove YouTube videos that attacked a mayoral candidate, which runs counter to the South American nation’s strict pre-vote electoral laws.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • US calls Assange ‘enemy of state’

      THE US military has designated Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as enemies of the United States – the same legal category as the al-Qaeda terrorist network and the Taliban insurgency.

      Declassified US Air Force counter-intelligence documents, released under US freedom-of-information laws, reveal that military personnel who contact WikiLeaks or WikiLeaks supporters may be at risk of being charged with “communicating with the enemy”, a military crime that carries a maximum sentence of death.

09.26.12

Links 26/9/2012: 1.3 Million Android Activations a Day

Posted in News Roundup at 2:16 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • 10 things the “Average Joe” won’t know about Linux

    Last night my son was trying to install something called Tekkit which has something to do with Minecraft.
    I am not really savvy when it comes to Minecraft and I had no idea what Tekkit was. My son asked whether he could download and run the Tekkit Launcher and if so could I help him install it.
    The first thing I noticed when visiting the site is that there is a download button on the right hand side for both a launcher and a server. What is lacking however is any real information about what Tekkit is, how to install it and how it works.

  • Why Linux Will Never Suffer From Viruses Like Windows

    In the Linux world, there are dozens of companies and security researchers that constantly run scans over the entire ecosystem of software in their repositories – not just the software they’ve developed themselves.

    Open source code also tends to lend itself to re-use. In the Linux world, devs are not even going to be tempted to go implementing a security-centric feature like SSL libraries themselves, when there are perfectly working ones available for their open source apps to use for free. Having that code open, such that they can step their debugger into and fix any underlying bugs themselves, is a great asset.

  • Linux Jobs Are On The Rise And In High Demand– Report

    Dice and The Linux Foundation have published an infographic which shows the state of Linux jobs in current market. The report looks interesting, and hopefully will encourage more people to choose Linux as their career. The infographic is posted below:

  • Using GNU/Linux is cooler than using Windows: Laura Lucas Alday

    This is the last interview of the trinity series and in this interview we spoke with Laura Lucas Alday the woman power behind the latest release of Cheese. She was responsible for enhancing cheese to support svg overlays. Laura finds GNU/Linux better than Windows.

  • US Congressman Office Vandalized, Linux Installed

    The campaign office in Staten Island of the Republican Congressman Michael Grimm has been vandalized, the computer hard drives were erased, and a Linux operating system was installed.

  • Celebrating GNU/Linux

    GNU/Linux has come a long way and continues to grow. It is one of the great operating systems and a great cooperative project of the world. It is something to celebrate, to use, to enjoy and to be thankful for all the good people who contribute their time and resources to produce.

  • Desktop

    • The challenges of Desktop Linux
    • Apple v GNU/Linux

      No. GNU/Linux on the desktop is thriving. MacOS is catching up if anything. GNU/Linux is used everywhere from US military to Hollywood on desktops and servers. MacOS? Not so much. The main reason? Cost.

    • Lenovo Acquires PC Maker in Brazil

      This should allow Lenovo a bigger share of Brazil and perhaps South America where PCs are a growth industry and GNU/Linux is popular.

    • Evolution of IT in Estonian Schools

      In 2004, it was reported that 47% of servers in schools were GNU/Linux but only 3% of PCs were running GNU/Linux.

    • Linux on the Desktop: New Opportunities

      Lately we’ve been treated to (or bombarded by) a slew of articles and blog posts proclaiming the failure and/or the death of Linux on the desktop. I could describe what I really think of these articles but my language would be a bit more colorful than would be appropriate. Suffice it to say it’s all bunk as far as I am concerned.

      I have written about why I believe Linux remains under 10% of the desktop market: the lack of preloaded systems available in stores and the slow uptake of Linux on the enterprise desktop. The enterprise desktop is critical if Linux is to make progress on the consumer desktop without a presence in big box stores. People use what they know and like. If they use and like Linux at work they may well want to use it at home as well.

    • Caitlyn Martin Points Out The Obvious, GNU/Linux on the Desktop Works for People
    • Unbiased Web Stats For Germany

      Here’s a promising site. It’s in German but it seems to be about sports and has good volume with 64K unique visitors and so on. There are thousands of visits per day and hundreds of thousands of hits per day. According to Netcraft it runs on GNU/Linux, from 2004 to 2011 with Suse and then with CentOS. The result?

      * 81% That Other OS,
      * 8.1% */Linux, and
      * 7.6% MacOS

    • Correlation of IE Usage and GNU/Linux Usage
    • Who helped you get started with Linux?

      That’s the question of a poll I found on a German site, Pro-Linux.de. The answer they found?

    • World’s first Linux Ultrabook laptop costs as much as a Windows version

      Everyone is excited for the new slate of Windows 8 Ultrabooks to arrive in a few weeks — everyone, that is, except for Linux devotees. With the new ZaReason UltraLap 430, they finally get an Ultrabook of their own.

      The UltraLap is the first laptop that ships with Linux and could fall under Intel’s Ultrabook platform specs. The base model features a 14.1-inch, 1,366×768 LED-backlit screen, Intel Core i3-3217U processor, Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics, 4GB of RAM, 32GB solid state drive, and your choice of Linux flavor: Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint, or Fedora (or no OS pre-installed at all). If the base model isn’t powerful enough for you, you can upgrade to a Core i5-3317U CPU for $49, 8GB or 16GB of RAM, a larger SSD and/or a hard drive, and additional warranty protection beyond the standard one year.

    • But what happened to the desktop?

      Only one of well over 150 technical sessions is directly related to the desktop, a polished version of which SUSE releases under the name SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED).

      This session, Use Cases for SUSE Linux Desktop, was held yesterday by Stefan Behlert, senior project manager, and Jan Weber, product manager (both pictured above).

      Additionally, there is one session devoted to LibreOffice, the office suite that is part and parcel of most Linux distributions, and an additional session on openSUSE, the upstream of the enterprise distributions, which could be considered to be revolving around the desktop as well.

    • Two Solitudes: Desktop GNU/Linux and Server GNU/Linux

      In fact, RedHat which is doing very well on the server has lots of clients using GNU/Linux and OEMs are shipping millions of units.

    • Side by Side Comparisons of PCs with and without That Other OS

      In all other respects, these three models of Acer’s Veriton N are identical. The logical conclusion is that other OS costs $50 or $100 depending on the level of lock-in you desire…

  • Server

    • Where Competition Thrives, M$ Dives

      In 1995 M$ was just beginning to have a presence on the web. When Lose ’95 was inflicted on the world, M$ bundled its browser with the OS and did anti-competitive actions to boost its presence. It’s web server, IIS, rapidly grew to ~22% by 1998, when US Department of Justice went after them for their illegal war on Netscape. After the complaint in 1998, IIS levelled off and except for a few bumps where they bribed large customers to use IIS for periods of time, and reached 36% at most, IIS has declined gradually ever since.

  • Kernel Space

    • Automotive Grade Linux Workgroup Brings Open Source To Automobiles

      You can easily notice that many in-car infotainment systems are custom-built by their manufacturers, and locked down completely. The Linux Foundation is trying to change this concept and wants our cars to take up the open source route that we would find in an Ubuntu box.

    • Graphics Stack

      • NVIDIA’s Driver May Support Wayland Eventually

        If Wayland’s adoption takes off and that it indeed is being widely used by tier-one Linux desktop distributions and the future direction of Linux is clearly with Wayland over X11/X.Org, the necessary pieces will fall into place within the NVIDIA binary graphics driver for supporting Wayland. That was heard while having dinner with a certain individual last week in Germany.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KDE 4.8.5 Now Available For Ubuntu Users

        Users using the KDE desktop in Ubuntu, or using the Kubuntu distro, will now be able to update to KDE Plasma Workspaces, Applications and Platform 4.8.5. This is the last release in KDE 4.8 series. This release mostly consists of bugfixes and stability enhancements.

      • Community News: Stabilizing Kolab 3

        The past weeks the Kolab Community has been busy working on the upcoming release of Kolab 3. We had people trying out fresh Kolab installs, or upgrading their existing installs to Kolab 3 alpha following the growing documentation. Also community members Michael Kiefer and Paul Klos worked on Debian packaging while Johannes Graumann is still testing their work. Jeroen van Meeuwen was working on making our awesome PHP LDAP capabilities generally available and wrote about why your system should have a proper FQDN. He also wrote a little script that assists users with migrating their Kolab 2.3 LDAP data to Kolab 3. This script still needs some feedback. So if you have a Kolab 2.3 server running, please check it out!

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Gnome Shell 3.6 Out

        The Gnome Foundation have announced the release of Gnome Shell desktop environment version 3.6. This is a test version not suitable for enterprise and business environments. Install it on your own risk.

      • Gnome 3.7 May Release On October 24, Gnome 3.8 On March 27th

        A release candidate of Gnome 3.7 is already out and Gnome 3.6 stable release is scheduled on September 26. However, development never stops in Linux world, and the developers are already making plans for the next releases. Currently, you can suggest some features for future Gnome releases as we announced earlier, and Gnome 3.8 feature freeze is on October 22nd this year.

      • GNOME 3.5.92 Release Candidate Is Now Available

  • Distributions

    • CrunchBang ‘Waldorf’ R20120806 – What a Shame
    • Manjaro Linux 0.8.1 XFCE Review: Fast, complete and looks awesome!

      Last time when I reviewed Manjaro 0.8.0 XFCE, I really liked it. I didn’t feel it wasted too much of RAM while using it, but there were criticisms from some corner. Possibly, I haven’t really used it that much as Manjaro was never my primary distro. But, it is good that the developer, Roland Singer, came up with another version 0.8.1 XFCE, which LXDM instead of LightDM and built up a really good looking theme over LXDM. Once I read the release note at Distrowatch, I was quick to download it. I download the 32-bit version and there is a 64-bit version available as well.

    • New Releases

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Increases Sales but Misses Estimates on Earnings

        For the quarter ended Aug. 31 (Q2), Red Hat met expectations on revenues and missed estimates on earnings per share.

      • FactSet Net Soars, Red Hat Net Declines
      • Red Hat: We’re Not Just About Linux Anymore

        Red Hat reported second quarter fiscal 2013 results late Monday that continues to show revenue growth.

        Growth isn’t just coming from Red Hat’s core Linux business, it’s also being fueled by the company’s expanding portfolio, which includes middleware, cloud and storage technologies.

        For the quarter, Red Hat reported revenue of $323 million — up by 15 percent year-over-year. Net Income came in at $35 million or $0.18 per share, which is a decline from the $40 million reported for the second quarter of 2012. Moving forward, Red Hat provided third quarter guidance for revenue in the range of $336 million to $339 million.

      • Fedora

        • Fedora gamers rejoice…with Mumble!

          As Fedora is one of the “pure Gnome” distributions, it is very possible that it concerns a large part of our readers so here are some good gaming news for you!

          Mumble RPMs can help you with the popular Humble Indie Bundle game collections that don’t include an rpm package, thus not integrating well under your distribution (not taking care of dependencies, not offering easy install/uninstall option etc).

        • Root Account To Be Disabled By Default In Fedora 18
        • Fedora Project Officially Turns 9 Today

          Red Hat’s testing ground and all around number 2 Linux distribution Fedora, turns 9 today. A post by Fabian Affolter reveals on planet.fedora the historic day in which the project’s homepage was first registered.

        • The Fedora Project Turns 9

          Red Hat sponsored and community maintained Fedora Project has turned 9 years. This was just a few days after the upcoming Fedora 18′s alpha was released with some major changes and desktop overhaul.

    • Debian Family

      • Demand for Debian GNU/Linux Spreads

        In short, APT is absolutely fabulous and alone is reason enough to use Debian GNU/Linux for all your IT. For those unsatisfied with the speed of the web an organisation can keep a local repository mirror or cache to transfer software to computers at the speed of a LAN. That’s awesome.

      • AMD64 Now Debian’s Most Popular Architecture

        Bill Allombert announced today via the Debian-devel mailing list that the X86_64 version of Debian has now surpassed all of the other supported architectures by a narrow margin. The most surprising part of this announcement however, and accompanying info-graphics provided on the Debian Popularity Contest page, is that this was not already true.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • More Information About Online Dash Search Privacy

            Recently there has been some concerns about the privacy of the new feature we recently added to the dash in which it can query external resources to provide related results. I just wanted to follow up with some further details about how these searches are performed, the privacy protections that are put in place, and further work going on.

          • On The Recent Dash Improvements
          • Developer Of Ubuntu’s Amazon Search Lens Talks About Privacy Issues
          • Mark Shuttleworth Explains About Inclusion Of Amazon Search Results In Unity Dash
          • Gwibber To Become Faster And More Stable In Ubuntu 13.04

            Gwibber is a powerful and full-featured social client for Ubuntu, and though it supports a wide range of social services, its slow, buggy and also has occasional crashes. The good news is that developers have taken a note of users’ mishaps and the backend is being completely rewritten. So hopefully we will see a faster, sleeker and robust Gwibber in Ubuntu 13.04.

          • Ubuntu Help Lenses Makes It Easy For New Users To Use Ubuntu

            Unity already has a hell lot of lenses that makes the Unity desktop just wow. But one of the lens that is most helpful for new Ubuntu users is definitely the help lenses.

            The lens searches your query from both online (AskUbuntu, AskLibreoffice) and offline(man pages) sources. A set of results are displayed in the dash itself and clicking on one opens up the relevant help document or web page.

          • Getting Started with Ubuntu for Windows Users

            The New York Times has an interesting post up that caters to Windows users who have no Linux experience but would like to dip their toes in the water. It’s a short “Linux on a Stick” post that discusses how to use a Flash drive to begin using Ubuntu. We’ve covered the topic before at length, and if you happen to be a Windows user who wants to give Ubuntu a spin, here is a complete set of resources for doing it quickly–and you don’t have to ditch Windows to do it.

          • Ubuntu 13.04 Release Schedule

            Now that we’re all waiting for the final version of the Ubuntu 12.10 (Qantal Quetzal) operating system, due for release on October 18th, we can take a look at the release schedule for the next major iteration of the OS, Ubuntu 13.04.

          • 20 Must Have Ubuntu Apps for Productivity

            For me, the ability to jump from one Linux desktop to another depends on whether the applications I depend on will be available to me. Luckily for me, the applications I rely on for productivity are readily available from the Ubuntu Software Center.

            In this article, I’ll share my top twenty productivity picks with you, and explain how they lend themselves to a more productive workstation environment.

          • In Spain, Hundreds of Thousand of Students Get Ubuntu Access

            Canonical has been very busy raising the profile of Ubuntu internationally for a couple of years now. As we’ve reported, Dell Computer has been a significant partner in this effort, helping get PCs pre-loaded with Ubuntu into the hands of users in India and China. Jane Silber, Canonical CEO, has discussed the companies’ plans to bring Ubuntu systems to 850 retail outlets in India. Now, Canonical is making a big push into the educational system in, of all places, Spain. There, 220,000 Ubuntu-based systems are being deployed for students.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Ubuntu Christian Edition 12.04 Is Based on Ubuntu 12.04.1
            • Linux Mint founder calls Nautilus 3.6 “a catastrophe”

              Linux Mint founder and lead developer Clement “Clem” Lefebvre has provided further insight into his team’s decision to create Nemo, a fork of GNOME’s Nautilus file manager, and their plans for the new project. In a new blog post, Lefebvre says that he and his fellow developers chose to fork Nautilus because of the recent controversial design changes in version 3.6 of Nautilus, calling it “a catastrophe” as it “removes features we consider requirements”.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Open webOS – Promise and Delivery

        It was pretty exciting stuff when HP introduced WebOS a while back. Quickly they abandoned WebOS for unknown reasons but promised to open the source code. Now they have delivered:

      • The dead reanimates as HP ships Open webOS beta

        As promised, HP has shipped the beta release of Open webOS, the open source version of the web standards–based webOS mobile platform that was the last hurrah of the former Palm before HP absorbed it in 2010. More surprisingly, however, HP actually seems to be staffing up its webOS development team – an odd reversal of recent trends.

      • Android

        • Got an Old *TX PC Kicking Around? Newegg Can Help You Turn It Into An Android Desktop for $64.99
        • Google: 1.3 million Android devices activated every day

          Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said that his company now sees approximately 1.3 million Android devices activated per day, up from 1 million in June. Schmidt was speaking at Motorola’s press event in New York City yesterday where the Google subsidiary was launching three new Android-based smartphones. Looking back to the end of 2010, Google was activating just 300,000 Android-based devices each day; in May of last year that number rose to 400,000. Of those 1.3 million daily activations, Schmidt said that around 70,000 were for Android tablets, and he put the installed base of Android devices at around 500 million devices.

        • Android developers: Go all-in with the Kindle Fire HD

          The Android landscape is vast with 1.3 million device activations per day. The target audience is big enough to obtain success with good app development, but only if apps get noticed by customers. Given the difficulty in getting an app noticed in the huge Google Play Store, a good alternative is writing apps for the Kindle Fire and releasing it first in the Amazon Appstore.

          More: Amazon’s gadget as a service theme: Hardware becomes irrelevant soon | Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD family: The highs and lows you need to know | Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD will give Apple’s iPad fits | Amazon just put Android tablets on notice with the Kindle Fire product line | Amazon changes the game in tablet market with Kindle Fire HD pricing | CNET: Amazon’s new Kindles: Everything you need to know | First take | Full coverage | Amazon statement

        • 7 Great Android Apps You Can’t Get on the Kindle Fire

          So, Amazon doesn’t exactly highlight this, but all of its Kindle Fires are Androids on the inside. Amazon slaps a heavy skin on top, so it’s not at all recognizable, but it’s Android all the same. Great, so you get access to all of the Android apps, right? Not exactly.

        • Can Android Replace Windows?

          The growing popularity of tablets within the pantheon of end-user computing devices has helped drive BYOD and cloud projects within the enterprise, made cell-phone networks a common remote-access option and brought relief to laptop-lugging road warriors worldwide. They’ve also made an even more fundamental change in the mix of devices for which corporate networking gurus are responsible, and, with Android, have given Microsoft the first really credible competitor to a major new version of Windows in more than a decade.

        • Hold On Microsoft, Quickoffice Pro HD Coming To Nexus 7

          Quickoffice is a very important tool for hundreds of thousands of Android users that allows them to open, edit and save to Microsoft’s Office files compatible with many Android devices. Some would even say it’s currently the best in its class. It provides a plethora of useful features from the ability to create new documents to the ability to sync to many popular cloud storage options and many more options in between.

        • New Tech From Walmart.com

          Interestingly of the 88 items, 15 are reported to have an operating system:
          “Operating System

          * Google Android (14)
          * Windows OS (1)

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Tablets keep UK IT’s head above water

        Retail sales were up 2.8 per cent in volume and 11 per cent in value in comparison to July 2011, pointing to a big fall in sales through other channels, which benefit less than shops do from shiny new items like tablets and e-book readers.

      • Archos 101 XS 10.1in Android tablet review

        Archos has built a decent business making budget Android tablets, so I suspect the word ‘merde’ echoed loudly around the Igny HQ when Google pulled the rug asunder with its low Nexus 7 pricing. Archos hasn’t given up though and has now released a new device pitched as a budget alternative to the Asus Transformer Pad.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Adobe Releases Open Source Monospace Font

    Following the release of Source Sans Pro Last month, Adobe has released another font as free in SourceForge named Source Code Pro. This is mainly because of high response of last font which was downloaded over 68 thousand times and appreciated by the community, mainly Linux users and free software lovers.

  • 7 Questions to Ask Open Source Vendors
  • LSI CTO touts promise of flash, open source
  • Leaving on an (open source) jet plane

    We’ve seen open source hardware architecture grow significantly within the last eighteen months as well as open technology development even touching areas like car design.

    No surprise then that the sky is the limit (ouch! sorry for that!) and that open source should also extend to planes.

    MakerPlane says that its mission is to create innovative and game-changing aircraft, avionics and related systems and the transformational manufacturing processes to build them.

  • Apache OpenMeetings Moodle Plugin 1.4 Incubating released!
  • Central control is the big enemy of software freedom

    Quick: name one big difference between Linux and Android. And no, penguins and robots don’t count.

    The truth is, there are lots of differences between the two platforms, despite their common connection to the Linux kernel. But the one that’s most on my mind today?

  • Apache and RESTful Web Services
  • 3 open-source Javascript libraries for developers
  • Netflix open sources Eureka mid-tier load balancer

    With Netflix running so many services on Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) cloud, it needs to be able to find those services easily so that it can balance loads and manage failover. The video-streaming specialists have now open sourced Eureka, the software they use to meet that challenge. Eureka includes a REST-based server that allows servers to register with it when they come up and detects when they are down, and a client which talks to that service and does basic round-robin load balancing. Netflix has more sophisticated balancers in-house designed for their own needs.

  • To Master Tech You Must Master Software — And Open Source — Even If You’re Apple

    During my keynote at LinuxCon, I showed a picture of five smart phones from five different manufacturers with their screens blacked out. Think you could tell them apart? Without a UI they are all virtually indistinguishable from each other. When their screens are enabled, it’s easy to tell the difference between Blackberry’s and iPhone’s, Samsung’s Android devices and Nokia’s Windows based machine. My point? Software is where the heart of differentiation lies.

  • Spanish region of Extremadura confirms commitment to open source

    The government of the Spanish autonomous region of Extremadura considers the use of open source as strategic and as a requirement for technological sustainability. The region will continue to overhaul its IT environment, switching to open source software where possible.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Chromium 20 Finally Arrives In Ubuntu Precise

        After a long delay and a rumor that Chromium browser is being unmaintained, Canonical pushed an update of the browser silently today. Previously, Ubuntu 12.10 users had the old Chromium 18 browser running on their machines.

      • Why Chrome Hasn’t Killed Mozilla Firefox

        Four years ago, Google launched Chrome. At the time, I wrote a commentary piece that it wasn’t likely that Chrome would kill IE.

        As it turns out, I was (mostly) right. IE still exists, though it has its lowest share in years, thanks in no small part to Chrome’s growing share.

        Chrome however isn’t just growing entirely at IE’s expense. It has also had an impact on Mozilla’s Firefox too.

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla Plans More Non-Invasive Health Reporting in Firefox

        Mozilla has always been respectful of user privacy. But they also have to somehow get information from user’s browser to improve the product.

        Since at least Firefox 7 with something called Telemetry, Mozilla has had an opt-in mechanism for monitoring the performance of the open source browser on user machines. Telemetry is opt-in.

      • Canonical Marketing Guru Leaves Ubuntu For Firefox OS

        Canonical’s global marketing expert, John Bernard has left Ubuntu to join Firefox. The news was reported by marketingmagazine.co.uk. Benard is among top ten marketers in UK and has a track record of working with big companies like Sony Ericsson and LG.

  • SaaS

    • OpenStack Foundation Nears Launch

      The OpenStack Foundation is almost officially alive. The open source group that will have oversight over the OpenStack cloud platform project was first announced nearly a year ago and is now ready to launch.

      The Board of the new Foundation had its first full meeting at the CloudOpen Summit in San Diego last week. In an interview with Datamation, Jonathan Bryce one of the founders of the OpenStack effort at Rackspace detailed the road ahead.

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • On-line Poll: 33% Use LibreOffice in Finland

      Tietokone IT magazing did a poll which shows that LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org combined have a bigger share than M$’s office suite and LibreOffice has 33% share. Not too shabby… Did they poll readers about GNU/Linux? Nope, but they did ask about FLOSS in government.

  • CMS

    • Google Tries to Compete with Moodle. Good Luck!

      Google has decided that building course websites is something they can help the world do. They have developed a method that requires knowledge of HTML and JavaScript… That cuts out about 90% of teachers, likely.

  • Education

    • Google open source code-in contest for school students

      Google has announced its Code-in contest will begin this November, introducing pre-university students to the world of open source development.

      From late November to mid January, students will be able to work with 10 open source projects on a variety of tasks, says Google. The contest starts November 26, 2012.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Results: Free Software voice & video testing

      The 25 sets of results were recorded, and can be browsed, sorted, and searched below.

      Six audio tests succesfully passed (24%), as did five video tests (20%). Mumble was the most successful client, passing 100% of tests (audio only, video is not yet supported). XMPP passed four out of 14 audio tests, whereas SIP passed only one out of ten (both vide and audio). Of nine apps tested, only Mumble, Pidgin, Jitsi, and Google Talk’s we client achieved passes.

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

    • French guideline favours the use of free and open source

      France’s Prime Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, signed a guideline favouring the use of free and open source software by the country’s public administrations, last Wednesday. Switching to this type of software lowers costs, increases flexibility and increases competition in the IT market, the Prime Minister writes in his introduction to the policy.

    • Italy making way for open source

      On 7 August, a law was passed by the Italian Parliament that requires the use of open source software by public administrations where possible. Article 68Italian language link of the Italian Digital Administration Code (Codice dell’amministrazione digitale) states that, from 12 August, public administrations looking for a new software solution must either use an application which they have already developed in-house, develop their own new program, use open source software, or any combination of these.

    • Report shows meagre rise in use of open source by parliaments

      Parliaments around the world are only slowly increasing their use of free and open source solutions, according to the World e-Parliament Report 2012, published last week. Most parliaments (80 %) now use at least one open source application. In most cases this type of software is used to run servers (50 %), for webpublishing (36 %), databases (31 %) and email (31 %).

    • My government is software-stupid

      I just checked, and my State government’s website here in Australia has 43 pages with the message that Adobe Acrobat Reader is needed if I want to view the page’s downloadable PDFs.

    • Kenyan gov’t embraces open source

      According to a report in Business Daily, the migration away from proprietary systems will see related costs go down by 20% initially but by as much as 80% within three years of the move having taken place.

    • Malaysian Government Marches Onward to FLOSS

      A workshop promoting self-reliance and increased comfort with FLOSS took place on 4-5 September 2012 at the Multipurpose Hall of the Ministry of Rural and Regional Development, Putrajaya.

    • Costs Drive Adoption of FLOSS by Government of Kenya

      Yes, she can do the maths. Migration to GNU/Linux is a little short term pain for long term gain. For databases on servers etc. there is always a way to migrate the data and the computers can do most of the work. When it’s done, you are running FLOSS and never have to pay another round of licences. The same advantages apply to the client systems. Good news from Kenya.

    • FLOSS Preference – non-Free Software To Be The Exception in Malta

      The document is rife with references to things I like in IT like re-use and efficiency. Lock-in to monopoly is not associated with either of thse things. The result will be better IT for the money with all the good benefits of FLOSS: interoperability, openness, performance and freedom to use IT the best way possible. Having restrictions placed by EULA or lack of interoperability is going the way of the dinosaur. It’s about time. More governments should adopt such policies.

    • French Prime Minister recommends Free Software in public administrations

      This happened after Italy’s new law on software procurement clearly stipulating that the use of Free Software is to be prefered upon other alternatives.

      This text is mainly based on a report from the cross-ministry IT services. Its main idea rests on their consideration of Free Software as an “educated choice” that must be spread among all the ministries.

      The introduction acknowledges Free Software’s advantages for public administrations such as: “costs, flexibility or the balance of power with software editors”.

  • Openness/Sharing

Leftovers

  • Security

    • 3 years later, hackers who hit Google continue string of potent attacks

      The hackers who breached the defenses of Google and at least 34 other big companies three years ago have unleashed a barrage of new attacks since then, many that exploit previously undocumented vulnerabilities in software from Microsoft and Adobe, a new report has found.

    • See? IE is Spaghetti Code

      This is characteristic of spaghetti-code. The stuff is running every which-way and off the plate… That the application does something for no reason/illogically/for no benefit, and that action causes the application to melt shows that the code was hidden under the spaghetti somehow.

    • Microsoft offers workarounds for IE bug

      Microsoft has detailed a method users of Internet Explorer can use to secure their computers from the recently discovered exploit allowing malicious code to run on a PC.

  • Finance

    • ‘Why Wall Street Always Wins:’ Post-Crisis Banking
    • ‘The Payoff’: Wall Street Wins, Again

      If you feel like justice was thwarted during the financial crisis, if you feel like the market’s been rigged for the insiders and there’s no check on it, you’ve got an ally in Jeff Connaughton.

    • How Goldman Sachs And Its Henchmen Are Starving The World

      For today I had intended to write another installment on what happens when the Republicans get their way and the so called “free market” is left to regulate itself. Then, a picture on Facebook caught my attention (the picture to the left) and it reminded me of a much more immediate problem. I was planning to discuss the South Seas Company founded in England in 1711. I’ll come back to it in a later article.

    • Woody Brock: Capitalism is Great, but Our Corrupted, Bastardized, Crony Capitalist System Stinks; It’s Rigged
    • Goldman Sachs Analysts Say Bank Slowdown Isn’t Temporary

      New bank regulations and capital requirements are “structural” changes to the industry that are more to blame for declining profits than the U.S. economic slump, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) analysts said.

      “The operating environment is unlikely to change any time soon, and we see shareholders of challenged banks becoming more demanding in asking management teams to lay out a path to unlocking value in the near term,” analysts led by Richard Ramsden in New York wrote in a report published today.

    • FDIC Sues Banks and Depositors Over MBS Fraud
    • Too Big To Jail: Wall Street Executives Unlikely To Face Criminal Charges, Source Says

      A last-ditch effort by federal and state law enforcement authorities to hold Wall Street accountable for nearly bringing down the U.S. economy is unlikely to lead to any criminal charges against big bank executives, according to a source close to the investigation.

    • Goldman at last gets a conflicts comeuppance

      Goldman Sachs is at last getting its comeuppance over conflicts of interest. The bank is forfeiting a $20 million fee after playing both sides of Kinder Morgan’s $21 billion El Paso deal. It’s peanuts compared with Goldman’s other profits from the transaction. But on the heels of a similar outcome for Barclays, Wall Street is getting an education about skewed incentives in terms it can understand.

    • Dan Kervick: Shamanistic Economics

      The Fed did something on Wednesday: it announced a new program of open-ended quantitative easing, and it announced that it likely won’t pull back on the new round of monthly asset purchases once the economy begins to recover more strongly, but will keep the purchases going for some indefinite period of time afterward. After what exactly was left unsaid. The Fed apparently has a target it intends to overshoot, but hasn’t said exactly what the target is. But whatever it is, we have been given forward guidance that the reaching of that unspecified target won’t stop the asset purchases – at least not right away.

    • Matt Taibbi: The People Vs. Goldman Sachs
    • Fiat Justitia? Breuer fires blanks on elite financial frauds
    • Goldman CEO sees tougher regulation as necessary

      Tougher regulation of financial institutions and higher capital ratios at banks are necessary in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the head of Goldman Sachs on Wednesday, even as he acknowledged that such safeguards carried some costs.

      Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and chief executive of the largest U.S. investment bank, said he sees financial regulation evolving now just as it did in the aftermath of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

    • AT&T Presents: Your Congressional Representative™ Brought to You by Goldman Sachs

      The roar of the crowd, the flashbulbs, the excitement, the spirit of competition the… corporate logo-addled uniforms?

      One might be describing a NASCAR event, or perhaps even an NBA game in the near future if NBA commissioner David Stern gets his way. Or, one could be describing a political campaign rally, if Congress was as willing as the NBA and NASCAR to proudly display the logos of the big corporations that finance them.

      We recently launched the Suits for Sale campaign (suitsforsale.org) to bring attention to the dominance of big money in politics. It’s no secret that in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, super PACs have flooded campaigns with more money than ever before. So what better way to inform voters of who they are really voting for then to adorn our elected officials with the very corporate logos that brought them to power?

    • NASSIM TALEB: Former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin Represents Everything That’s Bad In America

      In the piece, he interviews Nassim Taleb, who has some choice words for Rubin, President Clinton’s former Treasury Secretary and former Citigroup executive.

    • Richman v. Goldman Sachs Group: CDOs and Wells Notices

      Plaintiffs are purchasers of Goldman’s common stock between February 5, 2007 and June 10, 2010 (“Plaintiffs”). Defendants are Goldman Sachs & Co (“Goldman”), Goldman Chairman and CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman CFO David Viniar and Goldman COO Gary D. Cohn (“Individual Defendants.”) Plaintiffs claimed that Defendants made misstatements and omissions about Wells Notices the company received from the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), and about the conflicts of interest arising out of Goldman’s role in structuring the CDOs known as Abacus, Hudson Mezzanine Funding (“Hudson”), Anderson Mezzanine Funding (“Anderson”) and Timberwolf I.

  • Censorship

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