09.15.11

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Desktop

  • Does Tux Like to Move House?

    Just to remind you who are inhabitants of my harddisk now:

    * Windows XP – as pre-installed system, and I still use it occasionally
    * Mageia 1 KDE
    * Linux Mint XFCE
    * Debian Squeeze GNOME

  • What is The HeliOS Project?

  • TLWIR 17: MS Visual Studio Alternative, Software Freedom Day 2011, and OpenJDK

• Kernel Space

  • Understanding the File System and Structure in Linux

  • Linux 3.1-rc6

  • Graphics Stack

    • Intel Aims For Open-Source OpenGL 3.0 Driver By Year’s End

      There’s more good news out of the 2011 X.Org Developers’ Conference in Chicago. Besides the big news that the S3TC patent might be invalid, PathScale has a working OpenCL compute stack, and other events, here’s something very exciting: Intel really expects to have working OpenGL 3.0 support in Mesa for hardware drivers by the end of this calendar year!

      The OpenGL 3.0 specification was published by the Khronos Group in July of 2008, but up to this point there isn’t any open-source Linux graphics driver with full support for OpenGL 3.0. This is while the latest ratified OpenGL specification is already up to OpenGL 4.2.

    • X.Org Server: Merging Drivers Back In, Avoiding Regressions

      Ending XDC2011 Chicago on Wednesday afternoon was a discussion led by Apple’s Jeremy Huddleston, Intel’s Keith Packard, and Oracle’s Alan Coopersmith. The discussion was about X.Org Server release schedules. The two main points brought up is merging the drivers back into the X.Org Server tree as well as aiming for a regression-free X.Org Server by reverting any commits to the server Git tree that are regressions that aren’t fixed within one week’s time.

    • The X.Org Code-Base Of The Future

      On Monday at XDC2011, Jamey Sharp talked about what he sees as “the codebase of the future” for X.Org and was an open discussion with the three dozen other developers at the Chicago event.

    • Nouveau Driver XDC2011 Status Update

      Martin Peres provided a status update on the Nouveau driver during XDC2011 Chicago. Ben Skeggs, who’s employed by Red Hat Australia to work on this open-source NVIDIA driver, was also in attendance at this development conference. Here’s some of the key points in terms of future work.

• Applications

  • Make the Most of Your Media with These Free Tools

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • A Look at the Compgen Bash Builtin

    • Linux For Beginners

    • DIY: Replace Ubuntu Unity with a different desktop

    • Alias to find process id of a running process

    • HOWTO: Scale Your Display under Linux

    • Create Your Own Syntax Highlighting in Vim

    • How Do I Get Cool Desktop Effects in Linux?

    • Bash Tricks and Tips

    • Bash scripting – Basics

    • How to create conditional plotting with Gnuplot

    • How To Create A Debian Wheezy (Testing) OpenVZ Template

• Desktop Environments

  • GNOME Desktop

    • Bisigi: A Brilliant Collection Of Gnome Themes

    • Ready for Gnome 3.2? no more suspend on laptop lid close

      Gnome 3.0 was revolutionary in many ways. It rewrote the entire desktop metaphor without being (or even look like) a cheap windows or Mac rip off. This is the first time any Linux system became truly innovative in that sense. But at the same time there were some stupid mistakes done by the gnome team and there were numerous customers outcry for options and changes. The suspend on user menu (hidden shutdown/restart), lack of an application list readily available on the desktop etc, were some of the issues that many users got frustrated about the otherwise awesome desktop.

• Distributions

  • Zenwalk – A Distro For Zen Computing

  • New Releases

    • Zentyal 2.2 Is More Responsive, Adds New Internet Access Module

    • Qomo 3.0

  • Red Hat Family

    • CentOS 5.7 Screen Shots

    • CentOS gets with the RHEL 5.7 Program

      CentOS took a lot of flack from all angles around the extreme delayed release of CentOS 6. That was a release that came out in July, some 8 months after the upstream Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 release.

      While CentOS lagged on RHEL 6, they’re doing much better keeping up with RHEL 5.x.

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • New titles in the Ubuntu Software Center

          Things are really ramping up with submissions into the Ubuntu Software Center. With a app per day being submitted, the packaging team is getting busy keeping up with the cool applications arriving!

          TRAUMA is likely the most interesting new submission. Very unique. You are in the mind of a traumatized young woman as she has just been in a car accident. You experience her dreams in a interactive way.

        • Ubuntu’s Software Center: The Business Side of Open Source

        • A Grab Bag of Resources for Getting to Know the Next Ubuntu

          While the official current release of Ubuntu remains version 11.04, the Oneiric Ocelot Beta Release of Ubuntu 11.10 is now available, as we covered here. Based on the 3.0.0-9.15 Ubuntu-centric Linux kernel, the Ubuntu 11.10 Beta enables “multiarch” support for installing 32-bit library and application packages on 64-bit systems. It also includes an upgraded version of the much discussed Unity desktop environment, and many upgrades to the Ubuntu Software Center, designed to make it easier and more flexible to discover and install new applications. Here is a collection of resources you can take advantage of to get to know the next major version of Ubuntu.

        • Canonical woos developers with Ubuntu app prep portal

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Bodhi Linux Powered Tablet/Netbook Give Away

            Something you may not know is that unlike many Ubuntu derivatives, Bodhi maintains it’s own repositories. While these are vital to our operation they are costly. Our operating costs are now over 100 USD per month. My post today is simply to ask that if you are using Bodhi and like what you see please consider sending us a donation.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Wireless-N on Linux (USB Device)

    The speed is limited by the USB 2.0 interface and the radio power isn’t awesome due to the incredibly small size, but overall I am quite pleased with the device. It is inexpensive but not cheap and it works well.

  • Phones

    • Android

      • Pantech Breakout Headed to Verizon with 4G LTE on September 22

        The Pantech Breakout is Verizon’s next 4G LTE phone to follow the DROID Bionic and is looking like the option for anyone interested in having high data speeds without having to pay upwards of $300 up front. We gave you a quick preview of the specs on this phone a few weeks back, but now have the full and official spec sheet to tighten up any loose ends. The Breakout won’t blow you away in this day and age with its hardware – I’m not sure it was built for that though. At some point, Verizon was going to have to offer affordable 4G LTE phones and this looks like it will be the first.

      • Verizon Flipping the LTE Switch for Another 26 Markets Today

      • Google and Intel Android pairing spells trouble for Microsoft

        Now that Google is on its way to owning Motorola Mobility though, albeit a pretty price, I think Google has far fewer patents problems. When you add in Intel, with its rich patent portfolio, to Google’s side I no longer have any worries about Google fending off all the IP (intellectual property) attacks its enemies can bring to bear.

        That’s also bad news for Microsoft. Their best bet in getting a chunk of the mobile market was to get it to stagnate in pointless patent wars. We’re still going to be stuck with patent lawsuits for the next few years, but I don’t see any OEMs holding back from joining forces with the powerful one-two punch of Google and Intel.

  • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

    • Chucking MeeGo: Asus Eee PC X101 tested with Windows, Ubuntu, Chromium

      The Asus Eee PC X101 is an inexpensive netbook with 1GB of RAM, an 8GB solid state disk, and a 1.33 GHz Intel Atom N435 processor. Those specs are pretty anemic compared to a typical 2010 or 2011 model netbook, but they all help keep the price low. Asus expects the X101 to sell for $199. But there’s one more thing the company has done to keep the price low: The Eee PC X101 ships with MeeGo Linux instead of Windows.

Free Software/Open Source

• ‘Bossie’ Awards Crown FOSS’ Best of Breed

• Events

  • Q/A: Contributing To Open-Source Projects

  • Software Freedom Day, Team Christchurch

    This Saturday is Software Freedom Day – a global celebration of free and open-source software and the international community that supports it.

    The Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome internet browsers, the OpenOffice.org productivity suite, and GNU/Linux operating systems are all examples of free/open software that many people use efficiently every day. This combination of personal and business computer tools runs virus-free, saving time and raising both user productivity and technical experience. They thus form first-rate educational tools, and without licensing costs.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Hands-on: Firefox Mobile’s new Android tablet interface

• Databases

  • Oracle Set to Announce New Database Product – Is it Hadoop?

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Oracle v. Google – Oracle’s MSJ Opposition on Copyright – Some Interesting Nuggets

    When we did our earlier article on Oracle’s opposition to Google’s motion for summary judgment on the copyright issue, we didn’t provide the Roman Swopes declaration [343, PDF] in text or its associated exhibits because most of those exhibits had been heavily redacted. Now the exhibits have been made available unredacted, and they contain some very interesting nuggets of information taken from the depositions and documents of various individuals at Google.

    What is interesting about these nuggets is that they actually support Google’s theory and evidence the continuing lack of understanding of the relationship of copyright to software on the part of Oracle (or at least on the part of legal counsel representing Oracle) and the continued distortion of actions by Google.

• CMS

  • Site builders: Drupal vs. Joomla vs. WordPress

    Building a website has never been easier. Gone — mostly — are the days of having to hand-code HTML and PHP scripts in order to get a slick, fully functional website, thanks to the capabilities of content management systems that do most or all of the heavy lifting for site creators.

    There are boatloads of content management systems (CMSs) for serious site creators, but the most common for websites today are three open-source tools: Joomla, Drupal and WordPress. Actually, to call them “tools” is an understatement — these are full-fledged platforms, with tens of thousands of add-on tools created by very active developer communities.

• Project Releases

  • ephcom-2.0.2 has been released

• Public Services/Government

  • French Prime Minister encourages greater use of open formats

    The government announcement makes the point that there are also economic gains to be made from a more transparent approach to government data, noting that the opening of public data helps to develop the digital economy and to support innovation, growth and employment. It adds that web entrepreneurs and researchers will be encouraged to develop new uses for public data.

• Licensing

  • How NOT to Push a New Open Source License, Part 1

    Bruce Perens wrote several times that he had to check with the lawyers to see what the various terms of his open source covenant really mean. If this license is so complicated that he doesn’t understand it, shouldn’t it be fixed? And why would he be publicly advocating others use a license he doesn’t fully understand? This doesn’t inspire confidence.

  • Why make a new open source software license? MPL 2.0 (part 3)

    In my previous posts, I discussed the new features of the MPL and the new compatibility between MPL and other licenses. In this final post, I’ll summarize a few other small details about the new MPL that may be of interest to opensource.com readers.

• Programming

  • Mesa Compiler Stacks, A Hard Dependency On LLVM

    Tom Stellard, the former Google Summer of Code student who worked on R300 GLSL improvements and a new register allocator, is now working for AMD and his work is focused on bringing up open-source OpenCL / GPGPU support in the Radeon Linux driver.

  • Gedit as a Django IDE for Linux

  • Covenant for contributors has real promise

    Open source developers continue to struggle with how they can work with commercial entities and still keep some measure of control over their code, and vice versa. But a recent plan crafted by an open source software pioneer may offer another option to solve this conundrum.

    The issue of contributing to open source projects maintained by commercial companies is not some sort of incongruity between open source software licenses and for-profit business interests, as many FUD-sters would have you believe. It’s not the licenses that are the problem, but rather the copyright: who owns the code?

• Standards/Consortia

  • Critics call foul as Google takes aim at JavaScript with Dart

    Google is developing a new scripting language for the Web that the company hopes will eventually supplant JavaScript. The language, which is called Dart, will be presented next month during an opening keynote at the GOTO conference.

Leftovers

• Health/Nutrition

  • Ontario school cuts Wi-Fi over safety concerns

• Defence/Police/Aggression

  • Blackberry would close UK service in unrest if ordered

    BlackBerry said on Thursday it would close down its hugely popular messenger service in Britain if ordered to at times of civil unrest, after police singled out the system as a key tool used in last month’s riots.

  • Google’s IBM Patents Feast: Good or Bad?

    Nicholas George planned to brush up on his Arabic vocabulary during a flight in August from Philadelphia to California, where he was to start his senior year at Pomona College. So he carried some Arabic-English flashcards in his pocket to study on the plane.

  • Cameron, Sarkozy meet with Libyan rebels

    British Prime Minister David Cameron has sent a strong message to Moammar Gadhafi and his followers still waging war in Libya to “give up” the fight, warning that NATO’s mission will continue “as long as it is necessary” to protect Libyans.

    Cameron spoke at a press conference alongside French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday — the first world leaders to travel to Libya since revolutionary forces seized the capital and ousted Gadhafi. Both countries led international support for the rebellion.

• Cablegate

  • Moyo loses sleep over Wikileaks

    Zanu PF politiburo member Jonathan Moyo has presented the party with a “golden opportunity” to discuss the emotive succession issue and those quoted in the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables should stick to their guns and tell President Robert Mugabe to go, analysts said yesterday.

  • Nigeria: The Rage and the Fever of Wikileaks

    The fever that is raging in Nigeria today is “wikileaks”. Yet as entertaining as these secret communications are, the truth is that if you believe everything that you read in Julian Assange’s “leaks” then you will believe anything. I say this based on my own personal experiences. So far I have been fingered twice by them and in both cases I can assure you that the stories were fabrications. They simply never happened.

  • WikiLeaks fever grips Harare

    The story exploded last week with many political and economic heavyweights were alleged to have leaked sensitive information to US Ambassador Charles Ray.

• Finance

  • UBS Blames $2 Billion Loss on Rogue Trader

  • Rogue trader suspected in $2 billion loss at UBS

    One man armed with only a computer terminal humbled a venerable banking institution yet again. This time it was Swiss powerhouse UBS, which said Thursday that it had lost roughly $2 billion because of a renegade trader.

    The arrest of 31-year-old equities trader Kweku Adoboli in London is one more headache for troubled international banks, and fresh proof that they remain vulnerable to untracked trading that can produce mind-boggling losses.

  • John Mack Stepping Down as Chairman of Morgan Stanley

  • Questions and answers about the crisis in Greece

    Its economy is smaller than that of many U.S. states. It’s better known for olive oil and souvlaki than high finance. It last strode global affairs 2,400 years ago, when men wore togas.

    Yet everyone is suddenly worried about Greece.

  • Deficit panel senses ‘historic’ moment

    Ignoring calls for their talks to be out in the open, members of the new deficit-cutting supercommittee went behind closed doors Thursday to begin their first bargaining that could reshape federal spending and programs for years to come.

  • The Lehman Brother Anniversary Bailout!

    Although this could be looked at as awful news — more economies and banks in such dire straights as to need yet another central bank bailout, moral hazard notwithstanding — the kneejerk response was relief. Dax is up 4%, US futures flipped positive, Dow now up 100.

    The key question is the another QE2, or a failed European TARP?

  • Lagarde calls for unified action to fight Europe crisis and backs Obama job-growth plan

    The head of the International Monetary Fund called Thursday for bold and collective action to combat a slowing global economy and a worsening European debt crisis.

    IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde also said she welcomed President Barack Obama’s U.S. job-creation plan in light of the unemployment crisis in the United States.

  • Study: Privatizing government doesn’t actually save money

    The theory that the federal government should outsource its operations to private firms usually rests on a simple premise: It saves money. But why should we believe it saves money? Often the argument is made by pointing to salaries for public- and private-sector employees in comparable jobs and noting that the private-sector employees make less. So outsourcing the task to the private worker should be cheaper, right? That’s the theory, at least. But a new study from the Project on Government Oversight suggests that this theory is quite wrong. In many cases, privatizing government turns out to be far more costly.

  • Number of poor hit record 46 million in 2010

    The U.S. poverty rate hit its highest level since 1993 last year with a record 46 million Americans living below the poverty line, according to a government report on Tuesday that depicted the grim effects of stubbornly high unemployment.

• Privacy

  • Exclusive: Ziff Davis Offering Money To Sites To Secretly Track Users

    Technology publisher Ziff Davis is offering money to tech sites to secretly track their users, Medacity has learned exclusively.

  • U.S. border deal could compromise Canadian privacy: report

    The anticipated trade and security agreement with the United States carries no guarantee of a reduction of red tape at the border for Canadian business and is more likely to violate national privacy laws, a new report suggests.

  • The Government Might Know You’re Reading This

    “If you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.”

    Many Americans have said this, or heard it, when discussing the expanded surveillance capabilities the government has claimed since 9/11. But it turns out you should be concerned. Just ask peace activists in Pittsburgh, anti-death penalty activists in Maryland, Ron Paul supporters in Missouri, an anarchist in Texas, groups on both sides of the abortion debate in Wisconsin, Muslim-Americans and many others who pose no threat to their communities. Some of them were labeled as terrorists in state and federal databases or placed on terror watch-lists, impeding their travel, misleading investigators and putting these innocent Americans at risk.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Canadian Police Issue File-Sharing Scam Letters Fraud Warning

      Canadian authorities are warning Internet users to be vigilant following the emergence of a file-sharing settlement scam operation. West Vancouver police, who have now issued an official fraud warning, say that seniors have been receiving letters claiming they have been caught downloading a range of porn titles. Unsurprisingly, the letters come with an offer to settle for thousands of dollars.