08.20.11

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• IBM’s Irving Wladawsky-Berger sings the praises of Linux

• Linux Hardening – Quick Wins

  The best way to ensure that your Linux server is secure is to build it from scratch with a minimum amount of code that can be exploited by a hacker — a custom compiled kernel and the bare minimum of packages needed for the server to do its intended job.

• Kernel Space

  • LinuxCon North America 2011

    As most are already aware, LinuxCon North America 2011 is taking place this week in Vancouver, Canada. What makes this year’s Linux Foundation conference special is that it’s celebrating the 20th anniversary of the creation of the Linux kernel by Linus Torvalds. Here are some photos from the special event.

  • LinuxCon wishes happy 20th to Linux

    The LinuxCon conference that ended Aug. 19 in Vancouver featured a 20th Anniversary Gala for Linux and plenty of discussions on a fast changing industry. Highlights included a call for a long-term Linux kernel, keynotes from Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurstand IBM Linux guru Irving Wladawsky-Berger, and fork-loving Linus Torvalds taking a mellow approach to the code rift with Android.

  • LinuxCon: the present and future of Linux

    This year’s LinuxCon North America 2011 is celebrating the imminent 20th anniversary of Linux – an opportunity to reflect on the current significance and future development of Linux. Linus Torvalds and Greg Kroah-Hartman talked about the Linux kernel, the new version scheme, the challenges and successes of the development process, and the increasing importance of the ARM platform.

• Applications

  • InstallJammer Development Discontinued

    After more than 10 years of (mostly) active development, I am discontinuing development of InstallJammer. I’ve wrestled with this decision for more than a year now, and in my heart I always thought that I would come back and continue the work. As time went on and other projects started bubbling to the surface, I realized that I no longer had the heart to continue with InstallJammer.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How to Install Linux Kernel 3.0 on Ubuntu 11.04

    • Xtables-Addons On Centos 6 & Iptables GeoIP Filtering

    • How To Take Screenshots Of Your Android Smartphone

    • Information about Power of Linux Data Recovery Tool to directly Recover Linux Files

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • IPFire 2.9 – Core Update 51 released

    • BackTrack 5 R1 Is Available for Download

      Offensive Security, leaders in Online information security training, proudly announced on August 18th, the immediate availability for download of the first point release of the very popular BackTrack 5 operating system.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Joyent debuts SmartOS with KVM, an open source operating system

  • Debian Family

    • Icedove 5.0 available for Debian Squeeze

    • Derivatives

      • Puppy Linux update the “fastest and friendliest” yet

        The Puppy Linux development team has released version 5.2.8 of its minimal Linux distribution. According to project coordinator Larry Short, the latest release of Lucid Puppy is “the fastest and friendliest Lucid yet” thanks to several under-the-hood changes.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Choosing sides in the cloud game

          Canonical has softly announced it would be offering the Cloud Foundry Platform as a Service (PaaS) tool in Ubuntu 11.10, a move that marks a noted preference away from a similar offering from Red Hat.

        • Ubuntu tweaks Unity UI, adds ARM for servers

          Ubuntu’s controversial UI Unity is set for a few tweaks in the next version of the open-source operating system, as well as ARM support for the server edition.

          Mark Shuttleworth, founder of developer Canonical, unveiled a screenshot of the “Dash” in the next version, Ubuntu 11.10 – nicknamed Oneiric Ocelot.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Wind River Linux 4 gains new graphics stack

    Embedded specialist Wind River has announced the release of Update Pack 2 for version 4 of Wind River Linux. According to the Intel subsidiary, the update to its commercial embedded Linux runtime and development platform provides a fully integrated graphics software stack.

    The pre-integrated graphics stack in Update Pack 2 includes the Wind River Tilcon Graphics Suite, GTK, Qt, and X.Org, and works with the latest Intel and Texas Instruments’ processors. The release also offers a Web 2.0 Cross Web Development Toolkit, a Qt Development Toolkit, and new security features like the open source strongSwan VPN solution, which improves IP security, and the SEEdit policy editor.

  • Phones

    • What HP Should Do With WebOS?

      HP has announced that it is considering the spin-off or sale of its PC business unit. The announcement was made yesterday, part of the company’s Q3 2011 Earnings results. HP’s PC unit includes the WebOS-based smartphone and tablet computer business.

      If you recall, HP inherited WebOS, a Linux distribution originally designed for smartphones, but that can scale to larger computing devices, including tablet computers and desktops.

    • Should Google Buy HP’s PC Business?

    • Android

      • GridOS a new Android based OS

        A new Android based operating system is developed, with a complete new graphical user interface, called GridOS

      • HTC Unlocks Phone To Upset Google, May Join Microsoft?

        Android is under attack by Microsoft and Apple (who instead of competing by better products are trying to use messy patent system to kill competition) and it needed a patent portfolio to defend its partners like HTC and Samsung.

        Google chairman recently said that they will not let HTC lose. It must be noted that there were no direct cases on Google. Trolls like Microsoft were attacking HTC and Samsung. So, the deal was needed to offer Android playes with the much needed ammunition to ward off trolls. This was the reason why Google bought Motorola. Every other theory is just an attempt to divert our attention.

        Kevin also mentions the statement by Nokia CEO who was president of Microsoft Business Division before joining Nokia only to turn the company into a mistress of Microsoft. Elop’s statement holds no credibility as he has a clear bias here. Microsoft is known for sinking companies they sign exclusive deals with — Nortel, Novell and now Nokia. Nokia should have continued work on MeeGo and created yet another competitor to Microsoft and Apple. But, with Microsoft’s ex-president in-charge nothing else was expected.

  • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

    • Lenova’s IdeaPad K1 doesn’t measure up to iPad, Galaxy Tab

      Two months before Steve Jobs revealed the original iPad in 2010, Lenovo arrived at CES with a product called the IdeaPad U1. The U1 was a tablet with an innovative keyboard dock — the tablet itself ran a custom Linux interface (called Skylight) and when inserted into the dock it booted Windows 7. It was one of the most captivating products revealed that year, but like many gadgets shown at the mega tradeshow, it morphed into an entirely different go-to-market device. Before the year was up, the U1 had turned into the Lenovo LePad in China; the dock was sadly scrapped and the Skylight OS replaced with Android 2.2.

Free Software/Open Source

• Lustre file system set for spit ‘n’ polish

  Whamcloud, the startup created in July 2010 to continue development of the open source Lustre supercomputer file system, has secured a $2.1m contract from OpenSFS to spruce it up with new features and functions.

  Luster – used on about 60 per cent of the largest supercomputers in the world – is a parallel clustered file system designed for both supporting petabytes of files and giving high-speed access to the data stored on the file system. Lustre was created by Peter Braam when he was a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, and was commercialized when he created Cluster File Systems in 2001.

• Whamcloud Expanding Lustre

  The OpenSFS Lustre community group has contracted Lustre services firm Whamcloud in a multi-year deal to add new functionality. Lustre is an open source storage filesystem that has its origins at Sun and migrated to Oracle after the acquisition. Whamcloud and OpenSFS have not disclosed the financial terms of the deal.

  Startup Whamcloud has been pushing Lustre forward where it can since last year in an effort to help expand capabilities. Lustre is a highly scalable open source storage system used in HPC computing.

• Working group on community metrics

  Are you one of us few, lucky people who attempt to keep track of the health of one or more communities?

• SGI Acquires OpenCFD Ltd., the Leader in Open Source Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Software

• Twitter launches Bootstrap, open-source tools for making web apps

  Bootstrap is an open source set of files written in CSS (or Cascading Style Sheets, a programming language used to dictate how a website or web app looks and works) that covers some of the building blocks of most web apps, such as buttons, tables and forms, page templates, app navigation and even stylistic matters such as typography and color gradients.

• Sirius Open Source Support now Open all hours!

  Most myths about Open Source have gone down in flames over the past few years as more and more serious enterprises, financial institutions, Governments and technology startups have moved to it. Perhaps the last remaining, and most persistent, is that “you can’t get support for it”…

  Britain’s most-respected and best-established Open Source business, Sirius, is celebrating six months uninterrupted 24/7 support operation by opening it’s doors and making the service available to all. Plus, until the end of August, the company is giving away round-the-clock support for the cost of business hours to the first twenty organisations taking it up.

• Open source Initiative provides free JTAG/Boundary Scan Software and a number of hardware Kits

  GOEPEL electronics Ltd. recently announced the accession to the open source initiative goJTAG™ (gojtag.com). The networking founded and joined by various universities and several Companies pursues the goal to provide JTAG/Boundary Scan tools and knowledge based on an independent and non-commercial platform, sustainably accelerating the wide adoption of standardized IEEE 1194.x test methods. GOEPEL electronics engages in providing 20 hardware kits free of charge and according reference designs for interested parties in the UK.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla Considers Burying Firefox Version Numbers

      Quite a debate has arisen after a discussion on a Mozilla forum about how upcoming versions of the Firefox browser should not carry a version number in the familiar “About” box. As Computeworld has noted, on the online discussion, Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler, a director of Firefox, wrote: “We’re moving to a more Web-like convention where it’s simply not important what version you’re using as long as it’s the latest version. We have a goal to make version numbers irrelevant to our consumer audience.” While the backlash against this has become a little overblown, it is definitely not a good idea.

• SaaS

  • Evolving Roles, Welcome Stefano Maffulli to the Community

    The explosion of OpenStack over the past year has once again highlighted the significant impact that an open source community can have on an industry. Within a single year, over 100 participating companies and 1,300 community members have joined together to create the de-facto open source cloud computing standard.

  • Data Integrity and Availability in Apache Hadoop HDFS

    Data integrity and availability are important for Apache Hadoop, especially for enterprises that use Apache Hadoop to store critical data. This blog will focus on a few important questions about Apache Hadoop’s track record for data integrity and availability and provide a glimpse into what is coming in terms of automatic failover for HDFS NameNode.

  • Cloud Foundry Platform as a Service (PaaS) in Ubuntu 11.10

  • Marten Mickos Says: Keep the Cloud Open

    Marten Mickos CEO of Eucalyptus Systems, formerly CEO of MySQL AB, echoed a common concern in his keynote at LinuxCon North America 2011. While celebrating the 20th anniversary of Linux and the past decade of accomplishments of open source, Mickos cautioned the audience gathered in Vancouver, BC that they need to be worried about protecting the “share and share alike” nature of open source in the cloud.

• Databases

  • SkySQL Partners With Sphinx Search to Offer Customers Commercial Support for the Sphinx Search Server

• Public Services/Government

  • Bristol website launch highlights limitations of government SME policy

    The launch of Bristol City Council’s open source website this week has exposed the limitations of government SME procurement policy, with the authority relying on a contract with IT services giant Capgemini to do work it had promised to small local firms.

    The launch was the first substantial achievement of the council’s sometimes problematic September 2010 ICT policy, which aimed to use open source software as a platform for local economic regeneration as well as modernisation of its own systems.

    After unveiling the plans to 70 local firms last year and declaring its intention to break its website overhaul into smaller chunks of work that could be shared among a wider variety of suppliers, the council was seen as at the vanguard of coalition government IT policy that promised an end to all-encompassing outsourcing contracts with large suppliers.

• Licensing

  • Linux Foundation eases open source licensing woes

    The Linux Foundation has a truly altruistic stance and openly states that its remit is to serve as a neutral spokesperson for Linux and to “generate original research and content” that advances the understanding of the Linux platform.

    As such, the foundation sponsors a number of working groups who are each tasked with specific goals and directives.

  • Mozilla Public License 2.0 Release Candidate 1 and Draft FAQs Released

  • If Only They’d Actually Help Enforce GPL

• Openness/Sharing

  • Open Hardware

    • Open-Source Architecture: WikiHouse Puts Housing Design in Your Hands

      Prefab housing has been around since the 1940s. The entire point of prefab was not to have to worry about the construction–all that happened somewhere off-site. It was anonymous and standardized, and led to perfectly serviceable homes that lacked even a breath of personality. After decades in which prefab was relegated to postmodernist architects, the modern DIY movement got to it, resulting in WikiHouse: a mix of Wiki software, computer-aided design programming, and CNC machining techniques that puts building design straight into the hands of the end users.

• Programming

  • The Cilk plus language goes open source

    Cilk Plus is an extension to C/C++ designed to make parallel programming easier. Intel owns it but it has now made it open source as part of the GCC compiler project.

Leftovers

• Security

  • Researchers identify first flaws in the Advanced Encryption Standard

  • New module for Metasploit Framework

    The new module, called “page_collector,” takes a range of hosts in the typical RHOSTS fashion and checks a user-definable list of ports for web services using both HTTP and HTTPS. Each successfully identified web server then gets a corresponding iFrame in an output file.

• Defence/Police/Aggression

  • Police got the wrong man: Salford teen charged with Miss Selfridge arson during Manchester riots is cleared

    Dane Williamson has spoken of his ‘hell’ after spending nine days behind bars for a crime he did not commit.

    Dane, 18, was arrested just hours after the Manchester riots and accused of setting fire to the Miss Selfridge store on Market Street. Despite denying being involved in the attack, which caused almost £500,000 worth of damage, he was later charged with criminal damage and recklessly endangering life and remanded in custody in Forest Bank prison.

    While behind bars, his flat in Salford was damaged by fire and he lost all of his possessions.
    But the case against him has been sensationally dropped.

    A 50-year-old man has now been arrested in connection with the incident but Greater Manchester Police are still hunting the suspect who started the Miss Selfridge blaze.