• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Softpedia Linux Weekly, Issue 162

Linux and the financial crisis

The financial industry is out-innovating regulators, experts and common investors. For years, the financial industry hired the best hackers it could find. They have a sizable share of the most creative and smart engineers on the planet. And Linux is one of their favorite tools. It is not difficult to understand: you can literally rewrite, or help rewrite, the Linux kernel. Today, Wall Street runs on Linux and it thrives thanks to its elite programmers.

Virtualization With KVM On A CentOS 6.0 Server

Jailbreak Only: Linux – Coming Soon To Your iPhone, iPad

A team of jailbreak developers has recently managed to install the Linux desktop operating system on Apple’s A4 equipped iOS devices. The news comes as the image of an iPad running Linux was tweeted by one of the team’s developers.

Linux spotted running on an iPad

Server

• UNIX Special 4: Linux vs. UNIX

  Although many still consider UNIX the best option for high-demand applications, the technical differences between Linux and UNIX are “going to be pretty minimal” going forward, argued Gartner analyst George Weiss in a recent report.
  Things going in favour of Linux were – better hardware features, internal multitasking and multiprocessing, less expensive resource requirements, stronger application independence and other such bullets.

  Gabriel Consulting Group takes the same vein.

• In pursuit of affordable shared-storage options

  The breaking of ties between Unix flavours and specific RISC processors was the stand-out example, and Linux OSes on commodity x86 servers were the agent of change to bring this about in the early part of the last decade.

Kernel Space

• Linux 3.1-rc4

  Or how about the wiimote driver changes? Or the iscsi target changes?

• Stable kernels 3.0.4, 2.6.32.46, and 2.6.33.19

• Graphics Stack

  • Nouveau Fan Management Code Published

    At long last, if your computer has previously sounded like a jet engine when using the open-source Nouveau driver with your NVIDIA GeForce/Quadro graphics card, there is a solution. Fan management code has now been published by the Nouveau developers to support controlling the graphics card’s fan speed when using this in-kernel Linux driver.

    Martin Peres writes to the Nouveau mailing list this morning, “Just saw the bitching on Phoronix about lack of fan management in nouveau (no offence Michael, it was justified ;)). Since it has been working flawlessly for more than a week on my desktop, I decided to let you guys know about it and ask for testing.”

  • A 40-Way Gallium3D Graphics Card Comparison

Applications

• Kiwix: An Offline Reader for Wikipedia!

• Music Composition and Audio Editing in Linux

  Music composition and audio editing software can be quite expensive. There are professional open source alternatives to expensive commercial applications. Open source applications do not get the exposure as commercial applications and may not have the same features or operate in the same way. Deciding if open source software is appropriate is the same as deciding what commercial software to buy, the features of the software need to meet the needs of the user.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Run Linux on Windows without Virtualization using andLinux

  • Virtualization With KVM On A CentOS 6.0 Server

  • Run a local DNS resolver with OpenWRT

  • A crash course in PostgreSQL, Part 1

  • How to… re-energise your Android smartphone’s OS

  • Installing PowerDNS (With MySQL Backend) And Poweradmin On Debian Squeeze

• Games

  • Music Composition and Audio Editing in Linux

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • chinese language blogs on planet kde

    On my recent visit to Taipei, I worked with some of the local KDE community members to identify ways in which we could help support both the various Chinese-speaking KDE communities as well as the local KDE community in Taiwan. One of the things we identified was getting the same level of support and exposure for Chinese language community content, such as blogs, as we do for other language groups.

  • system tray icon hiding

  • collect.kde.org is live!

• GNOME Desktop

  • Faience: New GNOME 3 Icon Theme By Tiheum

Distributions

• New Releases

  • Chakra 2011.09

  • Puppy 5.1.4

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • Mandriva 2011 is here!

  • Mandriva Linux 2011 Officially Released, Screenshot Tour

    Mandriva proudly announced last evening, August 28th, the immediate availability for download of the final and stable release of the highly anticipated Mandriva Linux 2011 operating system.

  • Mandriva Linux 2011.0 Released

  • First look at Mandriva Linux 2011

    I have mixed feelings about Mandriva Linux 2011. On the one hand, I can understand the developer’s motivation to simplify the distribution in order to create a more uniform, newcomer-friendly and easy-to-support installation class. This would be a perfect scenario for schools and government offices and with Russia’s highest political echelons reportedly encouraging more free software deployment in the country, one can easily see the reasons for having a simple, easy-to-use and pre-configured desktop system provided locally. On the other hand, long-time Mandriva users are likely to be disappointed with the sudden lack of options previously available to them. Yes, the hybrid live/installation DVD image is a step in the right direction, but those users wishing to use Mandriva in a different deployment scenario than the default KDE desktop might be discouraged by the amount of post-install customisation work and the unequivocal endorsement of KDE as the only supported desktop.

    This inevitably brings up the subject of comparison between Mandriva Linux 2011 and Mageia 1 (read our review of Mageia 1 here). As always in these situations, it is best to try both releases and decide which of the two better meets the user’s needs, but in my view, it’s clear that Mandriva 2011 has departed too far from its roots. In fact, Mageia 1, which resisted the temptation to make large scale changes to its first release, is now a more genuine “Mandriva” than Mandriva itself. Those users who enjoyed the older Mandriva Linux releases will undoubtedly feel more at home with Mageia 1 than with the latest Mandriva release.

    Mandriva 2011 feels like a completely new distribution, extravagantly disconnected from its past and with dramatically new values, concepts and orientation. I suspect that it’s targeted mainly at larger organisations with a need to have a uniform desktop setup across dozens of computers and, to a lesser extent, at newcomers to Linux. The only thing that still links this release to the old Mandriva is its superb control centre, but everything else has changed or, as in the package manager’s case, is about the change. This is not necessarily a bad thing and it’s entirely possible that this new philosophy will find acceptance among certain users and organisations where too many choices would present a new set of problems. Furthermore, the Rosa Labs set of desktop tools is an interesting addition, perhaps not entirely bug-free, but presumably well-tested on less technical users. As such, Mandriva could be in a good position to attract new Linux converts, but in the process it has probably shunned many of the more technical users.

  • Five Good Reasons to Try Mandriva Linux 2011

    Canonical’s Ubuntu may frequently dominate the headlines in the Linux world, but the fact remains that it’s just one of many popular desktop distributions of the free and open source operating system.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat 5 STIG: Network Settings

    The draft release of the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency’s (DISA) “Red Hat 5 STIG” earlier this year has a few system administrators panicking. For Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 5 administrators, this Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG) has supplanted the generic UNIX STIG.

    The generic UNIX STIG had the single potential discrepancy indicator (PDI) “GEN003600 – Network Security Settings.” The checklist document required you to check four network settings in the running kernel. The new Red Hat 5 STIG, however, has many more settings and provides better explanations.

  • Red Hat’s biggest enemy? VMware

    Let’s play a game. Who do you think Red Hat’s biggest enemy will be in a few years? Will it be Microsoft, Linux’s traditional enemy? Could SUSE, the number two business Linux distributor, make a try for the top? Might Ubuntu’s Canonical make its big break into corporate Linux? All good guesses, but Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst, is pretty sure that Red Hat’s biggest competitor in 2016 will be VMware.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • A closer look at Ubuntu 11.10 Oneric with Jono Bacon

      • Google Music App For Ubuntu with Sound Menu and Native Notifications Support

        Google Music Frame runs Google Music web interface in its own window and provides integration with Ubuntu sound menu and notifications. It also remembers last session and the current view (album, genre list, etc.)

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Bodhi Linux: First Impressions

          What I like the most about Bodhi Linux are freedom of choice for applications and profiles (Bare, Desktop, Laptop and Tablet/Netbook) that I truly need, the familiar Synaptic Package Manager and vast choices of themes and icons for customization. It’s a great surprise for such a minimalist OS with such highly customizable aesthetic interface! There are more to learn about the lightweight Enlightenment Desktop and other configurations, though.

Devices/Embedded

• Video: Eben at the Bletchley Park Educating Programmers Summit

• Phones

  • Android

    • LG Enlighten Spotted in Walmart Catalog

      We first heard about the LG Enlighten earlier this month, and we got a better look at it on Tuesday. It appears that the Enlighten will be making its way to Big Red through Walmart, as someone has gotten their paws on a Verizon catalog that’s advertising the device.

    • Rumour titbits: Sony Ericsson Nozomi is global phone; SK19 is cancelled

      Secondly, we recently wrote about the Sony Ericsson SK19 suggesting it could be a Xperia ray pro. However, he says this model is now cancelled. It was a keyboard slide phone being developed for AT&T in the US and would have sat in between the Xperia mini pro and Xperia pro. The reason we trust him? He told us all about the Xperia neo V before today’s announcement including the difference between it and the Xperia neo. We’ll bring you more news as we have it.

    • CyanogenMod Team Gets Android Working On HP TouchPad

      There have been a flurry of efforts in recent days aimed at getting a workable version of Android up-and-running on the webOS-based HP TouchPad. The mission has been funded in part by modding community called HackNMod, which is hoping to give the tablet’s early adopters an operating system with a more certain future: Android.

      It appears that the CyanogenMod team has finally made that happen. According to a public statement and accompanying video, the developers say they now have an alpha version of the CyanogenMod 7 firmware running on the TouchPad.

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Sony S2 Tablet is the Tablet P, Specs Continue to Leak

    More specs have recently leaked about the upcoming Sony Tablet S and the codenamed Sony S2 which are expected to launch next month. The S2 will launch as the Sony Tablet P, the dual 5.5″ screened clamshell will weigh 370 grams, have 512Mb RAM, 4GB of storage with a 2GB SD card and connectivity over 4G or WiFi. Both the Tablet P and Tablet S will use Nvidia’s Tegra 2 processor and have 0.3MP front-facing cameras. The Tablet S will weigh 600g, have 1GB of RAM and come in 16GB or 32GB flavours. No word on price or exact shipping dates, but it shouldn’t be too much longer before they’re known.

  • Samsung unveils LTE-equipped phone, tablet

    Samsung announced LTE (long-term evolution) editions of its Galaxy S II smartphone and Galaxy Tab 8.9 tablet computers, claiming potential download speeds of up to 100Mbps, and uploads of 50Mbps. The phone also upgrades to a 4.5 display and eight megapixel camera, while the slate weighs only a pound and is just over a third of inch thick, the company says.

Events

• Ohio LinuxFest Celebrates 20 years of Linux

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Mozilla introduces WebAPI

  • Rapid Releases: How Are They Working for Firefox and Thunderbird 6?

Databases

• CUBRID Bug Bash Event!

  Today at CUBRID we are very happy to announce yet another contest which will start on September 1st, 2011, and will last for one month.

  The idea of this Bug Bash event is to fix potential bugs which may exist in the latest version of CUBRID Tools and Web Apps, thus, increase the quality of this software, and engage users in CUBRID development.

• EnterpriseDB Brings PostgreSQL to the Cloud

  Managing the open source PostgreSQL database has often been the domain of command line tools and scripts. That’s now about to change thanks to the release of Postgres Enterprise Manger from commercial PostgreSQL firm, EnterpriseDB.

  EnterpriseDB is also taking PostgreSQL beyond the confines of traditional data center deployments with a new Postgres Plus Cloud Server service. The new services and tools come as EnterpriseDB ramps up their PostgreSQL offerings in the wake of Oracle’s takeover of Sun and the MySQL database.

  “What we’re trying to do at EnterpriseDB is to really make it easier for the user to deploy more PostgreSQL,” Karen Tegan Padir, Vice President, Products and Marketing at EnterpriseDB told InternetNews.com.

Public Services/Government

• Untapped: Why the developing world must treat IT as a national resource

  The open source movement has the potential to empower developing countries to use IT as an important national resource — to communicate to its citizenry, expand its educational platform and address national disasters. Open source software is not only free from license restriction; it is also free to be used as a basis for innovation, allowing custom solutions for the unique context of specific issues faced by developing nations. But for many nations, software is not enough.

• Defence conducts OpenOffice.org trial

  The Department of Defence has reportedly conducted an informal trial of the open source OpenOffice.org productivity suite involving some 100 users.

  According to iTNews (click here for the full story), the initiative was kicked off by Defence chief technology officer Matt Yannopoulos over the past year. However, it does not appear likely the initiative will immediately broaden into a wider rollout at Defence, with Yannopoulos noting it would be a major decision for the department, which has long been a Microsoft shop.

Licensing

• Desktop Summit: Copyright assignments

  Copyright assignment (or licensing) agreements for projects is a rather contentious issue that reflects differing views of how free software will be best-positioned to grow over the coming years. Several perspectives were on display at the “Panel on Copyright Assignment” held on August 6 at the Desktop Summit in Berlin. The panel consisted of two opponents of such agreements, Michael Meeks and Bradley Kuhn, as well as perhaps their most outspoken proponent, Mark Shuttleworth, with GNOME Foundation executive director Karen Sandler handling the moderation duties. In the end, each position was well-represented, but, as might be guessed, neither side convinced the other; each will likely continue to pursue its path over the coming years.

• The Mozilla Public License – almost 2.0 (part 1)

  Over the past 18 months, the Mozilla community has been revising the Mozilla Public License. See earlier post. We recently announced, in true community development fashion, a release candidate–the text that we hope will become MPL 2.0 after one last set of eyes review it. This piece is a brief backgrounder on what has changed in the new MPL, explaining why we’re proud of this work and we hope you’ll consider reviewing it – and maybe even using it for your next project.

• Citrix CloudStack Shifts to Single GPLv3 Flavor

Programming

• Five easy ways to get you coding

• Getting Started with the Fuel PHP Framework

  Regular PHPBuilder readers are well aware of my personal affinity for framework-driven development. These days I opt to use a framework for every conceivable web project, no matter how minor. Thankfully many other developers feel the same about the framework’s amazing breadth, because a wide range of framework solutions are available for projects large and small. For large projects, you might consider using CakePHP, Symfony, or my personal favorite, the Zend Framework. Smaller projects might take advantage of one of the many microframeworks, such as Fat-Free or Limonade.

• Opa – a unified approach to web programming

• Retiring the DLJ

  With Java SE 7 and JDK 7 out of the door, and with OpenJDK as the official Java SE 7 reference implementation, and OpenJDK serving as the basis for future Oracle JDK 7 update releases through the now up and running JDK 7 Updates Project it’s finally time to retire the “Operating System Distributor License for Java” (DLJ).

• Oracle retires licence for distributing its Java with Linux

  With a brief news item, Oracle has retired the “Operating System Distributor License for Java” (DLJ) that was created by Sun in 2006. The non-free licence had allowed Linux distributors to package and distribute Sun’s, and later Oracle’s, Java versions in their Linux distributions. Sun made this licence available after releasing Java as open source at the JavaOne conference in 2006. It was designed to ensure that users had easy access to packages containing the well-tested Sun Java during the development of the free OpenJDK.

• sun-java6 packages removed soon from Debian/Ubuntu (and all other linux distros)

• An LLVM backend for Sparse

Standards/Consortia

• TransferSummit: Innovation, commoditisation and value creation

  In the second of a short series of articles introducing some of the topics which will be discussed at the upcoming TransferSummit in Oxford, IBM’s Don Harbison discusses the benefits of an open approach to the development of document standards.

Science

• Republicans Against Science

  Jon Huntsman Jr., a former Utah governor and ambassador to China, isn’t a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination. And that’s too bad, because Mr. Hunstman has been willing to say the unsayable about the G.O.P. — namely, that it is becoming the “anti-science party.” This is an enormously important development. And it should terrify us.

Health/Nutrition

• Mr PM, what’s in our food?

  Last week, I visited Vanashree, an eco-farm about a 100 km outside the city. Run by IT professionals Srikanth and Priti, the place is an embodiment of minimal human interference with nature. The duo use no pesticides — chemical or otherwise — on the lush eight-acre farm that has bananas, coconuts, chikoo, betelnut, poultry, dairy and bee-keeping, among other things. They’ve been running the place for about six years and by now, a lot of their methods have made the land more fecund, the soil soft and fertile. In their rainwater harvesting ponds, the fish are jumping.

• Volunteer Doctors Can’t Keep Up with Needs of Uninsured and Underinsured

  A few months before I left my job in the insurance industry in 2008, I was working on a “white paper” to try to persuade people — especially lawmakers and candidates running for office that year—that the problem of the uninsured in this country was not a big deal.

  At that time, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were an estimated 47 million Americans who were uninsured, a number that has increased since then by about 4 million. My job was to slice and dice the Census data in such a way to convince people that most of those without coverage were just shirking their personal responsibility to buy it.

Security

• Gopher problem in Squid

Defence/Police/Aggression

• UK diplomats in Tripoli as 50,000 rebels listed missing

• Gaddafi bunkers and tunnels an elaborate setup

  The entrance is hard to find: To get there, you go past the front door equipped with a fingerprint reader, through the garden and behind neatly trimmed shrubs, where there is a mysterious passageway. From there, it’s three flights of stairs down until you arrive at a one-foot-thick steel door. Behind the door, there’s a lair straight out of a James Bond film.

Cablegate

• 00. Editorial – Wikileaks Statement on the 9 Month Anniversary of Cablegate: Release of 133,887 Cables

  Over the past week, WikiLeaks has released 133,887 US diplomatic cables from around the world – more than half of the entire Cablegate material (251,287 cables). The new release was met with a sustained Denial of Service (DOS) attack during the first 36 hours. WikiLeaks had to rely on back-up servers for some hours. With supporters’ help, WikiLeaks was able to bring in additional servers to stave off the attack.

  For the first time, the diplomatic cables are available from every country that has US diplomatic representation. Until now, many countries had been excluded from the news stories, partly due to WikiLeaks media partners’ geographical bias, and partly due to Wikileaks’ resource constraints in establishing new media partnerships (there are now over 90).

• Will the guilty try to implement ways to suppress freedom of speech?

  I write this letter to commend Wikileaks founder Mr. Julian Assange in his brave role in leaking highly confidential and important information in the Embassy of Georgetown cables.
  Wikileaks has been described by Time Magazine as “Could become as important a journalistic tool as the Freedom of Information Act.”

• 00. Editorial – 30 new revelations from #wlfind

• Fairfax hoards explosive cable

• How WikiLeaks has changed the role of journalism

  “The timidity of the New York Times came as a surprise and disappointment to me,” Hrafnsson told the assembly of 60 news executives, editors and reporters. “It was not the New York Times of the early 1970s where the Times was willing to take on the Nixon administration by publishing the Pentagon Papers.”

  It’s pretty much a given that Hrafnsson, or any WikiLeaks official, would be arrested if he set foot in the United States. Hrafnsson also is certain that the National Security Agency monitors every email he receives.

  After his presentation, I asked Hrafnsson, a veteran journalist from Iceland, why he was singling out the Times for criticism. (I spoke to the same group a few hours later.)

  When WikiLeaks released 77,000 Afghan War documents to news organizations in July 2010, the New York Times was accorded the right to publish the scoop on its website. Instead, Hrafnsson said, the Times apparently was so worried about the likely furor over release of the Afghanistan war logs that critical minutes passed, and the Times decided to report the news only after other publications had done so.

• Diplomatic cables claim Australia has failed to stabilise ‘fragile’ Solomons

  MORE than a billion dollars and eight years of effort by Australia has failed to build political and economic stability in the Solomon Islands, according to secret United States diplomatic assessments.

  The assessments say Australia’s intensive policing and aid effort has not succeeded in stabilising the country and predict it would relapse into turmoil within weeks if the multinational Regional Assistance Mission were withdrawn.

• WikiLeaks: USA made “enormous concession” in talks on Czech radar

  The Czech team negotiating on the SOFA treaty in 2008 achieved “an enormous, unprecedented concession” of the U.S. delegation by limiting the treaty’s scope to a planned missile defense radar site, according to a Prague U.S. embassy’s cable released by WikiLeaks on August 25.

  The U.S. negotiators pointed out that the USA has general, broad-scoped Supplemental Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs) with other NATO allies, the embassy’s cable from April 29, 2008 says.

• 240 Wikileaks cables on pharmaceutical data exclusivity

  The following are the cables identified in an August 29, 2011 search of the wikileaks cables, from http://cablesearch.net, using the search terms data exclusivity and pharmaceutical. This search identified 240 cables. Some 40 countries are mentioned in the cables. More than half of the cables involve 5 countries: Turkey (76), Taiwan (21), El Salvador (11), Honduras (11) and Tunisia (10).

• The Guardian blames Wikileaks for the arrest of Bradley Manning

• US interested in what makes American-born settlers tick

• WikiLeaks: Washington and Brasilia Monitoring Chávez in the Caribbean

  As more and more WikiLeaks cables get released, the Brazilian-U.S. diplomatic relationship has become increasingly illuminated. Though somewhat wary of each other, Washington and Brasilia sometimes saw eye to eye on matters of geopolitical importance. Take, for example, both countries’ handling of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. Under the helm of Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, Brazil cultivated a strategic alliance with Venezuela and publicly the two nations embraced South America’s “pink tide” to the left. Yet, WikiLeaks documents reveal that Brazil may have shared Washington’s concern over Chávez’s rising geopolitical importance, particularly in the Caribbean theater.

Finance

• Goldman Sachs targeted as ‘Jaws’ joins battle over banking crash

  He is known as “Jaws”, the perfect nickname for a lawyer entangled in a lawsuit filed against a massive investment bank that has been dubbed a “vampire squid” by its critics. But Jacob Zamansky, a renowned Wall Street defender of the little guy, with a record of extracting large settlements from giant firms, does not fear the tough reputation of Goldman Sachs.

  Indeed, he is happy to be helping on a class-action lawsuit against the bank taken out on behalf of a group of shareholders seeking millions of dollars in damages for alleged illegal behaviour. “Goldman misled these investors. So they came to me,” Zamansky said.

  However, Zamansky’s lawsuit is just one o

• Ceiling at 16: California’s Lack of Recovery

  Total employment in California fell in June from 15.974 million to 15.910 million. The bigger story however is that, in addition to making a lower low in 2010, California employment never regained the 16 million mark first achieved early last decade.

Civil Rights

• Revealed: the secrets of Scotland’s dna database

  Given exclusive access to police information, the Sunday Herald today reveals that one in 10 Scottish adult males now has their DNA held on a database containing 300,000 profiles – with 3000 a day being added to the total By Judith Duffy

Copyrights

• Web-blocking and Illegal Sites

  In the last week there have been three stories in the news concerning copyright infringement and “illegal websites”. In each case, a group with an interest in enforcing copyright has called for or announced measures against such websites, but this raises an important question of what makes a website illegal. In terms of copyright infringement this is a very tricky question as there is no easy way to tell whether content or a service is unlawful.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Kids today need a licence to tinker

Back to school time and millions of British kids are heading back to classrooms to embark on the national curriculum so beloved of busybody ministers. One item in particular on that curriculum will bemuse the youngsters. It goes by the initials ICT, short for information and communication technology. If they are in primary school, they will have to get through key stages 1 and 2. Secondary pupils have to get through stages 3 and 4 which, the soon-to-be-abolished Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency tells us, “have been developed to enable schools to raise standards and help all their learners meet the challenges of life in our fast-changing world”. Michael Gove, the government’s education supremo, has set in train a root-and-branch overhaul of the national curriculum, but for the time being our kids are stuck with the current version.

[...]

Another takes students through converting their paper-based designs for data entry forms and invoices into “the real thing”, using “a spreadsheet program”. Guess which spreadsheet program? If you answered Microsoft Excel, go to the top of the class, because that’s what the vast majority of British schools have.

[...]

How we got to this ridiculous state of affairs is a long story. It’s partly about how education departments, like generals, are always preparing for the last war. Thus, while we’re moving into a post-PC age, our ICT curriculum is firmly rooted in the desktop computer running Microsoft Windows. It’s also partly about the technophobia of teachers, local councillors and officials. But it’s mainly about the chronic mismatch between the glacial pace of curriculum change in a print-based culture, and the rate of change in the technology.

There might have been a time when computers and networking were so exotic that ICT deserved a special roped-off space in the curriculum. But those days are long gone. Retaining it nowadays as a discrete subject is as absurd as it would be to have “books” as a special component of the national curriculum – a point nicely made by the educational research group Alt-C in its recent submission to Michael Gove.

[...]

When will the Raspberry Pi go into production?

We are hoping to start shipping them in November. The first customers will be probably hobbyists, but I have had hundreds of emails from all over the globe. I’ve had inquiries from headmasters in Kenya asking where they can get 1,000 units for their schools. Moreover, at £15 it could help get a computer into low-income households in the UK and create opportunities for children in those families to develop an interest in programming.

What kind of stuff can you do with it?

You can program it using scripting languages like Python, or compiled languages like C and C++. You could write a game of a similar level to Angry Birds or Quake 3. You can run Firefox on it and free office software such as OpenOffice.org.

Linux Australia to live stream SGM

Linux Australia is holding a special general body meeting tonight to vote on some pending issues – and for the first time the organisation will be live-streaming the meeting.

Desktop

• What’s Wrong With This Picture?

  These fail to notice that GNU/Linux does make it on the desktop around the world in particular markets, like the BRIC countries. All of the “reasons” vanish when monopolistic control of retail shelves and OEMS is weak. The reasons GNU/Linux makes it on the desktop are many:

  * the four freedoms work for real people,
  * because GNU/Linux is Free Software it may be freely copied, lowering the cost of acquisition for everyone,
  * there are millions of developers of FLOSS working cooperatively around the world to deliver software the world needs,
  * the four freedoms also ensure the software is flexible and can be used for optimal benefit to users, not restricted by the marketing plans of a business,
  * the low cost of acquisition is a huge advantage for the poor, students and young people who are not rich,
  * the low cost of acquisition keeps the bulk of expenditures for supply and distribution in the local economy, where the software is actually used, maximizing benefits of the activity,
  * the software works on ARM just as well as it works on old and new computers of all kinds, and
  * the software works faster and more reliably because the only objective for its existence is to run, not to lock-in users to some corporation’s plan for world domination.

Kernel Space

• 20th Anniversary of Linux Gallery Tour

• Linux at 20: the quiet giant

  Linux, the operating system that grew out of Linus Torvalds’ “hobby”, now runs the majority of the world’s web servers, including those (CDN networks) that deliver The Telegraph website.

• Graphics Stack

  • Mesa Kills Old Hardware Support: No More 3dfx Voodoo

    The death sentence to legacy Mesa drivers was carried out over the night. All DRI1 drivers have been removed from the Mesa tree along with support for BeOS and other old code, in an effort to remove drivers that receive little maintenance and are just causing a greater burden in re-factoring core Mesa code for the modern drivers. This means though that the Linux desktop loses its support for hardware like VIA Unichrome and 3dfx Voodoo graphics cards.

Applications

• Stellarium: setting up your very own Planetarium at home.

  Star Gazing has always been an authentic hobby of many people around the globe and it is indeed one of the oldest hobbies known to man. We all must love gazing stars at night, most of them don’t make it as their hobby, but many of us still try hard to look out for the constellation, or even spot out a planet or a galaxy, and for amateur’s like me it is even difficult to spot a planet in the night sky.

• KNemo – Network interfaces monitor for KDE’s systray

  KNemo displays for every network interface an icon in the systray. Tooltips and an info dialog provide further information about the interface. Passive popups inform about interface changes. A traffic plotter is also integrated.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Guest account and user management on Mandriva 2011

  • Improve font rendering in Fedora 15 KDE

  • How to Pin a Package in Debian or Ubuntu — to stop automatic upgrades of the package

  • Save Pidgin Passwords In GNOME Keyring Instead Of Plain Text

Desktop Environments

• “The Changing Desktop Trends” – A Linux Perspective – KDE vs Gnome3 vs Unity

  UI enhancements and eye candy has always been proprietary OS turf, but with time and massive development developers has turned the table and made the free and open source environment an eye candy galore. Ranging from the black terminal to the regal and boggling 3d effect, the Linux desktop experience is now far cry from its counterpart. We jump in to get a sneak peak of the UI developments.

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • Thoughts about KDE Plasma on non-Linux Systems

Distributions

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • Mandriva 2011 “Hydrogen” is out!

    Hooray! As promised earlier, we are happy to announce that Mandriva 2011 is out. You can download ISO images from here.

• Gentoo Family

  • Quick Look at Sabayon 6 (GNOME)

    A bit more than a year ago I had a look at the LXDE and Xfce spins of Sabayon 5.3 and came away quite unimpressed as they even refused to install on my low end hardware, but to be fair both these editions are still experimental and the advice is to use the more mature main GNOME and KDE editions.
    So today, with number 6 out, I’ll finally write about those, and without hardware restrictions because I do not expect them to perform with less than 512 MB RAM. Some distributions still manage to do so, but Sabayon is known to be on the heavy side, and it isn’t a problem on this Acer Aspire 5551 with 4GB.

    Sabayon is a customized distribution spin based on Gentoo, for those who don’t fancy doing the whole compile and configure from absolute scratch. That’s also already where the problem lies for me. What’s the point of wanting to use a distribution whose strength it is apparently that everything is custom compiled for the machine it is on, when you then use a pre-compiled version of it done by somebody else on their machines. Why not just use any other binary distribution or ArchLinux as a happy medium, which does provide ready made packages but is both faster and just as configurable, with the option of compiling extra packages that you want to add to the small base should you be so inclined, or just go with what’s available in the repository. Anyway, the choice is yours.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • A Complete Review of Bodhi Linux With Screenshots

      Bodhi Linux was recommended to me as a possible solution to try after I mentioned having system resource issues with Ubuntu One. I have to admit I’ve been rather curious about Bodhi as I have read several rave reviews on it.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Full Circle magazine #52 is out!

      • Ubuntu One Developer Evening In Manchester On Thursday

        On Thursday 1st September at 7pm in Lecture Theatre C014 at Manchester Metropolitan University the ever-enjoyable Stuart Langridge will be giving a presentation about how to write applications that harness Ubuntu One. He will talk about the different APIs, how to write web, desktop and mobile apps using the technology, and the interesting ways in which Ubuntu One can empower your apps.

Devices/Embedded

• Demo – Raspberry Pi running Quake 3

  Here’s something to liven up your weekend: a video of the Raspberry Pi running Quake 3. We’re still working on ironing a few kinks out (specifically, there seems to be a library issue which means our framerate, while good, isn’t quite as spectacular as we know it can be; we’re working on it as I post this) – but this is what test boards are for, and we’re making great progress getting the boards running smoothly.

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Ten… budget Android tablets

    Tablets, eh? A nice idea but a shame about the price. From the iPad to the Xoom, the PlayBook to the TouchPad prices starting at or near £400 are a little on the steep side for many folk. Well, the TouchPad maybe an exception these days but only very recently.

    You’ll pay a premium to buy into fondleslabs from Apple, HP or RIM, but Android users have another option, a cheap tablet. These can be picked up for anything between £100 and £230 and sometimes less if you are in the right place at the right time.

    Across the board cheap Android tablets are nowhere near as ghastly as they were just a year ago. Of course, there are sacrifices. You are not going to get Honeycomb or a glass screen or a true multi-day battery life. Increasingly, what you will get is a capacitive rather than resistive screen, Android in it’s 2.2 or 2.3 incarnation – rather than antediluvian 1.6 version – and even access to the Android Market and Google mobile apps.

It’s Not About the Software

A few days ago, I had an epiphany. I, like many of my readers, have spent a good portion of my life advocating for libre software. There has always been a particular glow to the idealistic concept of information flowing through society, and to the possibility of adaptation to a particular context. Unfortunately, as most advocates and critics alike have come to learn, a good portion of libre software is known to few beyond the developer, and modifications to suit a particular need are not nearly as common as advocates would have one believe.

What, then, is the allure of libre software? Is it the simple possibility of these theoretical ideals? Why should we use, develop, or recommend libre software over the alternative proprietary platforms that my have more features? “The development model,” claim some, “is collaboration based, and ensures no malignancies will enter into the codebase.” However, only some libre software is developed this way. Many projects are quite unforgiving to new contributors, and most projects never pique the interest of anyone at all for contributions. Because of this, malignancies cannot necessarily be avoided. When nobody is interested in or capable of (without a fork) making changes, the hypothetical options available to prevent intentional dysfunctions dissolve in practicality.

Mozilla

• Why Mozilla’s Firefox Rapid Release Cycle Works and Why it Doesn’t.

  There has been a lot of discussion this week about Mozilla’s Rapid Release cycle. Much of that discussion was fueled by a blog post from Mozilla Chief, Mitchell Baker.

  Baker’s post is a defence of the new cycle, which has caused lots of concern in the Mozilla community and elsewhere. Baker’s view is that the browser needs to be more like the Internet.

• Light Switch, Dim Everything But Media In Firefox

  It can sometimes be very irritating to interact with elements on a web page if other page elements catch your attention as well. Have you ever tried to watch a video on a web page only to be distracted by an animated banner on the same page? Or maybe you have played games and more than once failed to complete your objective because you have looked over at the auto-updating chat window?

• Future Firefox Features, What I’m Looking Forward To

• Open Fire Fox inside Fire Fox Tab -Firefox Tips and Tricks

• About Firefox About

• Firefox 7.0 Beta 2

  Firefox Beta is the build for those who like a little bit of jeopardy, but who don’t want to risk everything by trying out Firefox Aurora. It gives you a sneak peek at the next version of Firefox with a relatively stable build that’s not quite ready for primetime, but still pretty solid.

• Firefox 6 already sees bump in traffic soon after debut

  Firefox 6 officially debuted last week with a host of new features and security fixes. Internet users must already be flocking to the latest version of Mozilla’s browser at a rapid pace — at least according to Chitika Insights (a.ka. the research arm of online advertising network Chitika).

• Firefox Ships with 6000 Potential Bugs, Community Lead Departs

  A blog post published by Community Lead Tyler Downer rocks Mozilla as he claims that Mozilla Triage QA process is broken and he believes that the current rapid release process drowns Firefox in a sea of bugs with no land in sight.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• LibreOffice Hackfest 2011 in Munich

CMS

• Hacking Joomla! — the fast and easy way

  Popular open source Content Management Systems (CMSs) like Drupal, Joomla! and WordPress, are regularly subject to source code reviews as well as blackbox pentesting. Thus, vulnerabilities in these systems are quickly identified and fixed. And security updates are frequently released.

Public Services/Government

• Defence bolsters search for open source software

  The Department of Defence has stepped up its push for open source software to reduce its $100 million annual software licensing bill.

  Last week, it joined five other government agencies in forming the Open Technology Foundation, which aimed to facilitate collaboration and interoperable technology in the public sector.

  Defence chief technology officer Matt Yannopoulos said the department had been considering open source software for more than three years.

  Prior to the Federal Government’s introduction of a more aggressive open source policy in January, Defence had not “specifically encouraged” open source software tenders from the market.

• “Giving Back” Instead of Paying for Licences

  We all know The City of Munich is in the process of migrating the majority of its PCs to GNU/Linux and has migrated all its employees to OpenOffice.org. DBI Gmbh is a business that provides IT services especially software migration. These are two examples of organizations giving back to the FLOSS community to make better software for the world.

Say What? Top Five IT Quotes of the Week

H-P’s One-Year Plan

Let’s say you were given a year to kill Hewlett-Packard. Here’s how you do it:

Fire well-performing CEO Mark Hurd over expense-report irregularities and a juicy sexual-harassment claim that you admit has no merit. Fire four board members, as publicly as possible. Foment a mass exodus of key executives who actually know how to run the giant computer company.

Hire new a CEO from German competitor, SAP, which sells business software, not consumer products. Tell the new CEO, Leo Apotheker, that Mr. Hurd “left H-P in great shape.”

Security

• Defending Against The ‘Apache Killer’ Exploit

Defence/Police/Aggression

• Prosecuting War Crimes? Be Sure to Read the Fine Print

  Especially if they’re convicted. Justice is better than revenge. And justice must be done for the relatives of the victims as well as for the dead. Part two of the Mubarak trial this month was a case in point. Egyptians want to know exactly who ordered the killing of innocent demonstrators. Who was to blame? And since the buck stops—or is meant to stop—at the president’s desk, how can Mubarak ultimately escape his just deserts? The same will apply to Gaddafi when—if?—we get him.

• WikiLeaks: U.S. Embassy asked State Department to vet IDF chief Gantz in 2008

  The U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv asked the U.S. State Department to carry out a background check on current Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz in October 2008, according to a diplomatic cable leaked by the WikiLeaks website.

  Gantz, then the IDF’s attache in Washington, came under scrutiny due to the Leahy Law, which bans the United States from assisting foreign military units that violate human rights.

• New WikiLeaks Cables Show US Diplomats Promote Genetically Engineered Crops Worldwide

  Dozens of United States diplomatic cables released in the latest WikiLeaks dump on Wednesday reveal new details of the US effort to push foreign governments to approve genetically engineered (GE) crops and promote the worldwide interests of agribusiness giants like Monsanto and DuPont.

  The cables further confirm previous Truthout reports on the diplomatic pressure the US has put on Spain and France, two countries with powerful anti-GE crop movements, to speed up their biotech approval process and quell anti-GE sentiment within the European Union (EU).

Cablegate

• WikiLeaks’ classified cables on abortion politics worldwide

• WikiLeaks cables expose Washington’s close ties to Gaddafi

Finance

• Madoff whistleblower: Here’s the next big fraud

  The man whose e-mails detailing Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme were ignored by the Securities and Exchange Commission has a new target — foreign exchange fraud.

• Wikileaks: Speculators Helped Cause Oil Bubble

  When oil prices surged to a ridiculous $147 a barrel in the summer of 2008, conventional wisdom held that normal supply and demand issues were the cause. Both the Bush administration (in the form of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission) and most of Wall Street (through both media figures and market analysts) blamed such factors as increases in oil demand from the Chinese industrial machine, and the failure of Americans to conserve, for the surge in crude prices.

• Let’s Get Political…Government Should UPHOLD the Law NOT Help Break It.

  Politics and our government specifically has, in my opinion, done more to break and circumvent laws. This complete disregard for our laws and the protection of our people has been led by the leaders of our government from the President on down to our Congressmen, Senators, Governors, Mayors and even Judges. This has been gong on for quite some time but became blatantly evident during the George W. Bush administration. It matters not Republican or Democrat. Both sides are guilty and seem to work from the same play book in what I have called a Democratic Dictatorship.

  From illegal wiretapping to allowing white collar crime (for a select group of elite primarily in the finance industry), our government – past and present – continue to violate our Constitution and our constitutional rights if it works to their advantage.

• Dylan Ratigan Interviews Director Charles Ferguson – How Wall Street Took Over Government

  Both Glenn Hubbard and Laura Tyson have played major roles in American economic policy, and both also, unfortunately, exemplify the disturbing, opaque conflicts of interest that pervade the economics discipline.

  Over the last thirty years, academic economics has been penetrated by special interests, particularly financial services, in the same way that America’s political and regulatory systems have been compromised by campaign contributions and the revolving door. In fact, the “revolving door” is now a triangular trip between industry, government, and academia.