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Links 27/5/2011: GNU/Linux in North Korea, Bodhi Linux 1.1.0 Released



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • Is North Korea really making its own PCs?
    Whatever, it's running Linux.


  • North Korea Fakes Manufacture of $80 American/German Netbook for Re-Education and Business
    As far as the operating system, all of the home-grown computers will run Red Star, North Korea's own Linux distro. Hardware-wise, though, the report is vague: the educational machines have no USB ports, while the business machine have two, and both netbooks have a battery that last two and a half hours.


  • Awesomium Windowless Web Browser Framework Ported to Linux
    Awesomium windowless web framework and engine has been ported to Linux. Awesomium can be used for web page capture, site scrapping, in-app advertising, in-app browsing, web automation, rendering custom in-game web browser and creating HTML UIs for 3D games.


  • Desktop

    • Where in the World Is the Linux Desktop Thriving?
      "Measuring market share of open source software is extremely difficult," Chris Travers, a Slashdot blogger who works on the LedgerSMB project, told LinuxInsider.

      "The basic problem is that one can use sales data as a close proxy for market share when one is selling a tangible and restricted resource, but for something like Linux, actual product sales probably account for a very small portion of installed systems," Travers explained. "In the end, it is reasonably impossible to estimate market share in this area with any accuracy. I don't think anyone has a solid idea of what the actual Linux desktop market share is."






  • Kernel Space

    • Linux 2.6.39: XFS Speeds-Up, EXT4 & Btrfs Unchanged
      While we have already delivered a number of benchmarks from the Linux 2.6.39 kernel, surprisingly we have not yet published any new file-system benchmarks from this latest stable Linux kernel release. Fortunately, that has changed today with a fresh round of Btrfs, EXT4, and XFS file-system benchmarks on the Linux 2.6.39 kernel and compared to the preceding 2.6.38 and 2.6.37 kernel releases.



    • Protecting the foundations of Linux – an interview with Jim Zemlin
      Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, and Linux User’s 100th issue special guest editor chats about the 20th anniversary of Linux, the future of embedded Linux devices, and the current state of the kernel among other things…




  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments



    • GNOME Desktop

      • GNOME 3.0.2 Bug-Fix Release Arrives
        Just a day after the KDE camp pushed out KDE SC 4.7 Beta 1, the GNOME camp has come to the desktop with their stable 3.0.2 release. The GNOME 3.0.2 release, like is usual for GNOME point releases, just brings bug-fixes and translation updates.






  • Distributions

    • Tiny Core Linux 3.6 adds GUI installer
      With the release of version 3.6, the Tiny Core crew have added a GUI method for hard disk installation. As I have, on previous occasions, banged on about this omission, I thought I'd take a look.

      In the past, I've had a love/hate relationship TinyCore Linux distribution. On the one hand, it sports some amazing technology. It's a lightweight distribution based on a custom core. By default, it gives you a basic desktop with a dock along the bottom and enough GUI tools to begin adding applications and making other customizations. See our overview of Tiny Core circa 3.3 for more details.

      [...]

      On the whole, I think that Tiny Core has now reached the stage where an experienced computer user with little or no Linux experience, could be trained to deploy it. I always thought that Tiny Core had the potential to fill a useful niche, and the addition of a GUI installer now makes it accessible to a broader range of users.


    • Red Hat Family



      • Fedora

        • Fedora 15 released| Now its time for the war of the DE's
          Whenever an anti-Unity discussion happened on the web, users had only one statement “Let's see what Fedora 15 packs in”! Finally it is here. We had always convinced people to learn to use Unity. Though we are not reluctant towards publishing stories featuring Fedora and other competant distros. (Not a disclaimer! No way! )Now onto some Fedora love. Yesterday, the Fedora community announced their release of new version named Deadlock.


        • Fedora 15 – Bringing You The Latest In Linux


        • Fedora 15 KDE – First Impressions
          A long time Mandriva user, I was distro-hopping for the past 6 months. I tried openSUSE 11.3, 11.4 and Fedora 14 – all in their KDE avatars. I couldn’t wait to try Fedora 15, which was released this week. I downloaded the KDE Live CD and copied it onto a USB stick using Unetbootin (I hate booting from a CD/DVD since it is terribly slow). Fedora booted up in less than a minute on my 4-year-old laptop and presented me a clean, pretty and solid desktop. After playing around a while, I decided on replacing openSUSE 11.4 KDE with Fedora 15 KDE.






    • Debian Family



      • Derivatives



        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software


          • Flavours and Variants

            • Bodhi Linux 1.1.0
              We are pleased to announce the release of Bodhi Linux 1.1.0. This is the first of our quarterly scheduled update releases to keep the software on the Bodhi live CD current.


            • Linux Mint 11 - Vital Service or Prolonging Agony?
              This will undoubtedly echo many user opinions, but they will fall on deaf ears just as those leveled against early KDE 4. Determined developers with a vision trump public dissent and soon most dissent disappears. [...] they will have to bite the bullet and upgrade at some point.












  • Devices/Embedded



    • Phones



      • Android

        • Are Arima's $100 Android Phones Game Over for Apple, Nokia and Everyone Else?
          Many have called sub-$100 Android smartphones Google's doomsday weapon. Some have also noticed that the onslaught of inexpensive Android devices is killing competition as we speak, resulting in the Android/iOS duopoly. One can buy inexpensive Android phones today the vast majority being white-label Chinese knock-offs. There are a few exceptions, like the affordable Android handsets Huawei's been shipping to the UK and US.


        • LG Revolution ships with first-ever Android Netflix app


        • Droid X2 ships -- but stutters in review
          The Motorola Droid X2 went on sale today in Verizon Wireless stores for $200 plus contract. Although the Android 2.2 smartphone adds an improved 4.3-inch qHD display and a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 to the original Droid X design, that's not enough to cut it considering today's high-end, 4G competition, especially when the performance boost appears to be surprisingly negligible, says this review.










Free Software/Open Source



Leftovers





  • Finance

    • NY Fed probing Goldman mortgage servicing unit
      The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is investigating whether Goldman Sachs' (GS.N) mortgage servicing arm did not conduct proper reviews before denying borrowers the option to lower their payments under a government loan modification programme.

      In its quarterly filing with the SEC earlier this month, Goldman said regulators had sought information on the foreclosure and servicing protocols and activities of its mortgage servicing unit Litton Loan Servicing.


    • New York Fed Investigates Goldman Loan Division
      The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has begun an investigation into the mortgage-servicing arm of Goldman Sachs, looking at whether it systematically rejected borrowers’ efforts to lower their loan payments through government programs.

      The inquiry by the New York Fed arose from a letter sent by an anonymous employee, who accused the Goldman unit, Litton Loan, of denying loans without properly reviewing applications.




  • Privacy

    • Almost entire EU now violating Brussels cookie privacy law
      The deadline for the implementation of a European privacy law on cookies passed with a whimper at midnight last night, after just two Member States issued a full notification to Brussels.

      Meanwhile, 19 of the 27-bloc countries that make up the European Union ignored the 25 May deadline on implementing the full, or indeed partial, set of measures laid out in the revised legislation for the e-Privacy Directive.




  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Shaw Shakes Up Broadband Market With Bigger Data Caps
      Shaw has announced new broadband plans that offer far more data, faster speeds, and better pricing than comparable plans at competitors such as Rogers, Bell, and Telus. Shaw says the plans will be rolled out over the coming months and offer far bigger caps (including some unlimited plans). While the company says the move is linked to a shift away from analog channels, it seems more likely that Shaw is the first of the large ISPs to respond to mounting public and political pressure over the uncompetitive pricing in the Canadian broadband market. Consumer regulation from the CRTC is not likely in the short term, but government officials have made it clear that they are concerned with the current competitive environment.




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights

      • The Economics Behind Access Copyright
        Yesterday's post highlighted the recent Access Copyright decision to refuse pay-per-use transactional digital licences (late in the day I received a note that AC appears to have had a change of heart). As I noted in the conclusion, the copyright collective faces an increasingly problematic balance sheet. According to its 2010 annual report, it spent more on itself in the form of administrative costs (including legal fees and board compensation) that it actually dispensed to Canadian authors. Admittedly, these numbers are not easy to find. Indeed, for an organization devoted to collecting licensing revenue and distributing it collective members, the annual report is incredibly vague in providing clear numbers about precisely what gets distributed to Canadian authors.








Will's Picks





Clip of the Day



New Winamp for Android - Greatest Music App



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