03.16.12

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Interview with Ken Starks

• Desktop

  • Guillermo Garron: Linux can be as easy as Windows, but you can complicate it as much as you want

• Server

  • Linux servers keep growing, Windows & Unix keep shrinking

    That means more and more customers are asking IBM, HP and Dell, the big three server hardware vendors, for Linux on their hardware. Specifically, IDC found that “Linux server demand was positively impacted by high performance computing (HPC) and cloud infrastructure deployments, as hardware revenue improved 2.2% year over year in 4Q11 to $2.6 billion. Linux servers now represent 18.4% of all server revenue, up 1.7 points when compared with the fourth quarter of 2010.

  • The Software Stack

    It’s certainly easier to run a LAMP server. No purchasing required except for hardware. No need to allow audits by M$ and “partners”. No need for so many re-re-reboots. No need to accept malware as a normal part of IT. No need to re-install during the life of the server. Less downtime. Better throughput because the OS is not working for M$. Easier to install. No EULA to “accept”. No authentication code to record for posterity. No licensing fee. Simpler accounting.

  • As Data Grows, so Grows Linux

    What’s more interesting, though, is the trends that emerge from the very latest reporting quarter, Q4. Linux was the only operating system that saw a revenue increase in servers Q4, with a 2.2 percent rise. Windows lost 1.5 percent and Unix 10.7 percent.

• Kernel Space

  • s ready for production in new Oracle Linux kern

    In “release 2″ of the “Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel” (UEK), which is intended for Oracle Linux from versions 5.8 and 6.2, Oracle has called the Btrfs filesystem “production-ready”. This makes Oracle the second Linux distributor to officially support Btrfs in an enterprise distribution, even though the filesystem is currently still considered experimental in the Linux kernel that is maintained by Linus Torvalds. SUSE took this step in late February with the second service pack for SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE), which is the first version where the use of the designated “Next Generation File System” is covered by the SUSE support.

  • LM_Sensors 3.3.2 Brings Linux Sensor Improvements

    It’s been a while since having anything to talk about concerning LM_Sensors, the user-space side to Linux hardware sensor monitoring, but yesterday they finally put out a new release. The LM_Sensors 3.3.2 release is about two months behind schedule but comes with several changes.

  • Nvidia’s Excellent Linux Adventure

    “The whole thing just shows how hypocritical and frankly more than a little nuts the Linux community is,” Slashdot blogger hairyfeet opined. “What is the one argument that gets trotted out any time anybody points out every other major OS on the planet has a driver ABI, like BSD, Solaris, OSX, OS/2, and Windows? Why, it’s ‘ZOMG people might make binary blobs! We can’t have that, better to make a lousy product whose drivers break often, ZOMG!’”

• Applications

  • Audacity 2.0 finally released

    Audacity 2.0.0 brings some of the fantastic Audacity Beta features into a full release, including an overhauled UI, improved effects, and lots of bug fixes

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Creating A Home Media & File Server With Ubuntu

    • How to search for subtitles with VLC by using VLSub

    • Network Programming with ENet

    • Setup Git server with read/write HTTPS on Debian

    • How to install Ubuntu/Linux Mint upon Windows using Wubi/Mint4Win?

    • How to Handle And Configure Firewall In Linux

    • Installing Cherokee With PHP5 And MySQL Support On Ubuntu 11.10

    • Tutorial: How to Install iTunes 7 using PlayOnLinux in Ubuntu

    • Keep Arch Linux Up-to-date with kalu

    • Authenticating in PHP using SSH

  • Games

    • Penumbra: Overture – Review

      Frictional Games is one of those few development teams which releases Linux native versions of their games and quite possibly the only one that provides us ‘Tux Gamers’ with the survival horror fix some of us crave. F.G. struggled to get off the ground, even though the Penumbra series proved to be moderately successful. It was generally well received by critics, though the sales numbers didn’t reflect this and they found themselves going through a rough patch. This changed when they included Penumbra: Overture in the first Humble Indie Bundle in 2010, alongside Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru HD, Samorost 2 and World of Goo. Due to the success of the bundle, Frictional released the source code for the game and offered a discount on all the other Penumbra games.

    • Released: 0 A.D. Alpha 9 Ides of March

• Desktop Environments

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

    • Spark becomes Vivaldi

      I’ve been rather quiet on my blog about the Make Play Live tablet project, and I hope you’ll all excuse me for that. So much has been happening that I’ve hardly had time to breath. I’ve spent the bulk of the last few weeks on the road speaking with various people and building upon our foundations.

    • KDE Tablet Spark Renamed To Vivaldi Due To Trademark

      The recently announced KDE Plasma Active powered tablet Spark has been renamed to Vivaldi due to trademark issues. The KDE project leader and creator of the tablet Aaron J. Seigo announces on his blog that they “ran into a problem with trademark for the name we had chosen, and this pushed us back to the drawing board.”

    • KDE Spark Tablet Renamed to Honor Classical Composer

  • GNOME Desktop

    • GNOME 3.4 Beta 2 Released

      Delayed seven days, the second Beta release of the upcoming GNOME 3.4 desktop environment was announced today, March 14th, by the GNOME Project developers.

      GNOME 3.4 Beta 2 updates various packages such as NetworkManager, Baobab, Brasero, Empathy, Eye of GNOME, Epiphany, Nautilus, Vala, GTK+, gvfs, GNOME Icon Theme, GNOME Desktop, GNOME Control Center, GNOME Screenshot, GNOME Keyring, GNOME Screensaver, GNOME System Monitor, GNOME Contacts, GNOME Backgrounds, GNOME Panel, and much more.

    • Fedora Wants Your Help To Improve GNOME’s Shell

      Happening on Thursday, 15 March, is a test-day surrounding the GNOME Shell and its extensions for the GNOME 3.x desktop. The Fedora camp is looking for people to try out the latest GNOME Shell and to then play around with the many GNOME extensions.

      Even if you’re not an ardent Fedora user, it’s recommended to participate in their test days if you’re interested in the project being tested. Unlike other distributions, the Fedora / Red Hat developers actively work towards pushing their changes back upstream, etc.

    • Cinnamon 1.4 released

      On behalf of the team and all the developers who contributed to this build, I am proud to announce the release of Cinnamon 1.4!

      It’s been a month since the 1.3.x releases and we’ve been reading your feedback with a lot of attention. Most of the things you’ve asked made it to this release and today we’re extremely proud to release another major update to the Cinnamon desktop.

    • Cinnamon 1.4 improves workspace management

    • Linux Mint Cinnamon – A sweet alternative

    • Cinnamon 1.4 Brings New Tools to the Linux Desktop

      It was just a few weeks ago that the Linux Mint project’s new Cinnamon desktop was declared officially stable–just a few short months since it was born, in fact–but on Wednesday the project team behind it unveiled a major new release packed with several new tools.

• Distributions

  • Anonymous-OS Live CD Based on Ubuntu is Fake

  • Anonymous Desktop OS Released, Hacking Tools Included

    The hacking group Anonymous now has its own desktop operating system, pre-loaded with tools for finding Website vulnerabilities and simulating denial-of-service attacks. However, some members of the group are already distancing themselves from the software.

  • Anonymous OS: Worth the risk?

  • Anonymous Operating System: Probably Not So Secure

  • Anonymous Releases Its Own Linux-based Operating System

    We “expect” Anonymous to launch coordinated DDoS attacks on sites that fall within their wrath. We “expect” Anonymous to be vocal about beliefs on political corruption and the rights of everyday people. But what we didn’t expect to see was an actual operating system from the hactivist group, yet it seemingly makes perfect sense given their view of governments and corporations worldwide.

  • Anonymous-os project response

    We looked at the project, and decided that although the name of the project was misleading (we see no evidence that it is connected with Anonymous) it appeared, on initial glance, to be a security-related operating system, with, perhaps, an attack-oriented emphasis. We have, in the past, taken a consistent stance on “controversial” projects – that is, we don’t pass judgement based on what’s possible with a product, but rather consider it to be amoral – neither good nor bad – until someone chooses to take action with it.

  • Anonymous operating system prompts security warnings

  • Anonymous OS: Fake and Full of Trojans, Members Say

  • CrunchBang Linux Review

    I pieced together a Gateway M250 laptop a year or so ago (3 bad ones parted out into 1 good one) and loaded it up with max RAM (2GB). It’s now a handy little 14 inch laptop with a 1.73Ghz single core Centrino processor. Not bad…but when playing videos or streaming them, it can really struggle. So keeping the operating system lightweight on it is a definite must.

  • How to Handle And Configure Firewall In Linux

  • Happy Birthday Arch Linux

    Arch Linux is turning 10 this month. Ten years that have gone so fast, it is the same time since my first daughter birth. I can still remember like yesterday being in the Hospital seeing her fragile body and now she is my best friend.

  • New Releases

    • Announcement: RapidDisk 2.0 Beta release with the NEW RapidCache kernel module

    • Bio-Linux 6.0.29

    • Vinux 3.0.2

    • FrostWire 5.3.3 has been released!

    • Calculate Linux 11.15 has been released

    • Guadalinex 8 has been released

    • Calculate Linux 11.15 Has Linux Kernel 3.2.8

      Alexander Tratsevskiy proudly announced earlier today, March 14th, the immediate availability for download of the Calculate Linux 11.15 operating system.

      Calculate Linux 11.15 brings lots of new features, especially the inclusion of the Linux kernel 3.2.8, KDE SC 4.8.1, GNOME 3.2, OpenLDAP 2.4.24, Samba 3.5.11, The GIMP 2.6.11, XBMC 11.0, and the LibreOffice 3.5 office suite.

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Mageia 2 beta 2: near the goal!

  • Red Hat Family

    • CentOS 5.8 Screenshots

    • CentOS and Linux Mint Get Refreshed

    • Oracle Accelerates Linux With Unbreakable Linux Kernel 2

    • Registration For Red Hat Summit And JBoss World 2012 Now Open

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Seven Tools for Improving Ubuntu Unity

        • Ubuntu Plans To Drop Non-SMP PowerPC Support

          As a last minute change prior to next month’s release of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Canonical is planning to drop the non-SMP version of Ubuntu’s PowerPC Linux kernel.

        • Wayland Is Not For End-Users In Ubuntu 12.04

          Two days ago I wrote about Wayland’s Weston compositor landing in the Ubuntu 12.04 repository, which excited many Linux desktop users. However, for those thinking that Wayland/Weston is ready for end-users with next month’s Ubuntu 12.04 LTS “Precise Pangolin”, that is not the case.

          The article two days ago that pointed out the Weston compositor landing in the Ubuntu Precise repository due to a package sync with Debian, but besides that, it also noted the GTK+ build in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is unlikely to support Wayland. While GTK+ 3.4 should be in the 12.04 LTS release, it must be built with the –enable-wayland-backend option in order to have the Wayland back-end support so that this tool-kit can function without X11.

        • Ubuntu 12.04: A ‘Coming of Age’ on Servers Too, Shuttleworth Says

        • Ubuntu vs RHEL in enterprise computing

        • Ubuntu Is Spanking Red Hat, Says Ubuntu Founder

        • Shuttleworth: Ubuntu beats RHEL

        • Red Hat falling behind Ubuntu in enterprise sector, Shuttleworth claims

        • Ubuntu disables app logging for privacy

        • Shuttleworth highlights server growth as Ubuntu overtakes RHEL on top websites

        • Has Ubuntu Linux been Certified on Intel Xeon E5 ?

        • Muktware Ubuntu Manual: Call for Editors

          Ubuntu 12.04 is an Long Term Support (LTS) release. LTS releases generally attracts more people to the Ubuntu Community due to its importance, support (5 years) and its stability. And Ubuntu 12.04 is no exception to this. While the Ubuntu developers are working hard to polish Ubuntu, we the community can contribute in other ways. One such way is to bring out an easy to read Ubuntu Manual for new users to Ubuntu. This will benefit the users new to Ubuntu and Unity (users upgrading from Ubuntu 10.04).

        • Ubuntu 12.04 Development update

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Dream Studio 11.10: Upgrade or Hands Off?

            Many Linux distributions specialized for multimedia distributions have come and gone. Some were pretty good, but Dream Studio has outshone them all. Musician and maintainer Dick Macinnis has just released Dream Studio 11.10, based on Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot. Dream Studio 11.04 is a tough act to follow – is it worth upgrading to 11.10?

          • Linux Mint 12 LXDE review

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • Android

      • Interview on AIDE, an Android Java IDE Running on Android

        AIDE is an IDE running on Android for developing Android applications. This post contains an interview with its creators.

        A small team from Germany has developed an Android Java IDE (AIDE) that runs on Android 2.2-4.0 devices and can be used to develop Java applications for Google’s mobile OS, including editing, compilation, automatic error checking and logcat debugging. AIDE can load and work with Android projects initially created with Eclipse. While development can be done on the road on a smartphone, the recommended scenario is working on a larger tablet that has a keyboard attached.

      • New Tools for Android Developers Arrive

      • Group rolls open source Android benchmark

        A new open source benchmark aims to give engineers and end users a way to measure the performance of Android-based systems. The Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium (EEMBC) released its AndEBench metric as an app on Google Play and the Amazon Appstore for Android.

      • 10 Most Creatively Designed Apps for Android: Part 1

      • Samsung To Upgrade Galaxy Devices To Android 4.0

      • Samsung May Use Android In Its Cameras

      • Writing native Android applications with Javascript? Not yet.

  • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

    • Apple iPad sales slip as cheap Android tablet tsunami looms

      Amazon’s Fire was the big driver for Android; the online shopping centre shifted 4.7 million units in the last three months of 2011, giving it 16.8 per cent of the world market. Samsung was the third most successful tablet-maker with 5.8 per cent of the fondleslab pie and Barnes and Noble (3.5 per cent) and Pandigital (2.5 per cent) were fourth and fifth.

      Windows doesn’t even seem to factor in IDC’s predictions for the years ahead that foresee iOS and Android continuing to carve up the market between them by 2016 with remaining manufacturers scooping less than 5 per cent.

    • Galaxy Tab 10.1 vs iPad smackdown

      Before launching into this review, which pits Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 against Apple’s iPad 2, I took a few days to familiarize myself with the Galaxy Tab’s Android 3.1 (“Honeycomb”) OS. The thing is, I’d already used iOS on an iPod Touch for two years, but was a rank newbie when it came to Android.

Free Software/Open Source

• 65 Open Source Replacements for Security Software

• A golden age of open source innovation?

  Open source’s ability to innovate has been challenged many times. But Glyn Moody argues that open source innovation is actually going from strength to strength, creating new opportunities to deliver cheap computing to people corporations would not normally consider.

• Computer Aided Design the FLOSS way: An Interview with Franz Reiter, lead developer of gCAD3D

• Events

  • ABLEconf 2012 Keynote: “Getting Animated with Open Source”

  • Patents, Legal Collaboration and our Legal Summit

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla Cranks Firefox to 11

    • Thunderbird 11 has been released! PPA Ubuntu 11.10 & LinuxMint

    • Mozilla struggles with Firefox for Windows 8 Metro development

      Mozilla’s Brian Bondy said the outfit did some preliminary work on getting a basic application working in Metro. However Bondy complained of poor documentation on Microsoft’s part and a general lack of public knowledge, saying, “To get started we read the MSDN whitepaper entitled Developing a Metro style enabled Desktop Browser. This document lacked quite a bit of information though so a lot of registry hacking was needed to get things working. Jim [Mathies] and I documented a lot of this missing information….”

    • Now You Can Chat From Thunderbird

      Thunderbird, the popular email client, has added chat support for future versions. The feature was introduced in the daily builds of Thunderbird. I am running 14.x series on Kubuntu.

    • Silent Updates Are Coming to Firefox in Version 12

      Back in December, we covered a blog post from Ehsan Akhgari, a Firefox engineer, which discussed work on what could eventually become an essential part of delivering silent updates to the Firefox browser. If you’re a Google Chrome user, you may already appreciate the fact that updates to the browser happen in the background, and now, according to a post on the Mozilla Hacks blog, background updates are coming to Firefox. Not every user is going to be happy with the news, though.

• SaaS

  • Hadoop Training Is Easy to Get, Online or Offline

  • Is the OpenStack Foundation All about Big Money?

    An interesting argument and McKenty knows alot more OpenStack than I do. That said, I think that McKenty is wrong.

    You need to look no farther than the Apache Software Foundation to see how this dual system of money and meritocracy can work. The Apache Software Foundation takes big money from vendors like Microsoft, who yield little influence on development. Development is managed by The Apache Way of meritocracy and it works. The Eclipse Foundation has a similar model that has also worked well.

    So yes, you can have big money and a meritocracy for developers too.

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Brand Confusion

    I cannot pinpoint accurately what caused to inflate the whole issue, but it seems that some at Apache OpenOffice (incubating) would like to stress that there are the rightful continuation of the now defunct OpenOffice.org project, to the point of showing outright hostility to LibreOffice. They base their claims upon the following elements:

    * they own the OpenOffice.org domain name
    * they own the trademark of OpenOffice.org
    * they must be the right heirs of OpenOffice.org since the Apache incubating project they’re contributing to was born out of the will of the copyright holder (Oracle) through its donation to the Apache Software Foundation.

  • Update on Apache OpenOffice

    Not too long ago, many, yours truly included, thought that OpenOffice was dead. That opinion was informed by the decision the major Linux distributions made to replace OpenOffice.org, as it was known at that time, with LibreOffice, the new office suite forked from OpenOffice.org by its former contributors.

    If this is all news to you, here is a brief recap of what happened. OpenOffice.org was a Sun Microsystems-sponsored project. It was, then, the most popular office suite, as it was pre-installed on almost all Linux and BSD desktop distributions. Then something happened. And that “something” was the acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Inc. by Oracle Corporation.

  • IBM on Licensing OpenOffice.org

    Clearly Heintzman does not get FLOSS. The GPL, for instance is a licence, not a contract, so one it not “contractually obliged to do anything”. One is permitted to copy by a licence from the creators under the conditions laid out by the GPL. OpenOffice.org ships under a mixture of licences for different parts of the code, reflecting its long history and huge number of contributors.

    He never does get around to explaining why IBM chose Apache/ASL licensing except to state that IBM chose it. He certainly does not explain why IBM went with the code contributed to Apache instead of the code forked to LibreOffice and the greater numbers of contributors if they were interested in “community”. OpenOffice.org has yet to make an ASL release while LibreOffice is chugging away making release after release and doing well while OpenOffice.org is still under code review years later.

  • LibreOffice 3.5.1 Is Now Available for Download

• CMS

  • Drupal, Joomla and WordPress face challenges in Germany

    Last week, I attended CeBIT, the enormous technology trade fair that takes place every March in Hanover, Germany. This year, as I walked through the building devoted to content management and other enterprise technologies, I spied a booth with Drupal, WordPress, Joomla and TYPO3. All except for the latter are well known in the United States, but I was surprised to find that those three are struggling to find market share in Germany.

    I found it remarkable that the three open-source web content management systems that are so popular in the United States were having trouble getting the same level of recognition in Germany.

• BSD

  • FreeNAS 8.2.0 beta 2 has been released

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Open-source Freeware Fave GIMP Ready to Take on Photoshop

• Project Releases

  • PulseAudio 2.0 Is Set To Be Released Very Soon

    While many Linux desktop enthusiasts still have nightmares concerning the early days of PulseAudio, the developers behind this common open-source audio server are planning to do a major 2.0 release before month’s end.

    PulseAudio has been found in major Linux distributions like Ubuntu going back to 2008, but it was only in September of 2011 that they hit the 1.0 status. Their next major release is now PulseAudio 2.0.

• Openness/Sharing

  • TopCoder and InnoCentive making open innovation work for companies and contributors

• Programming

  • The Code for America brigade effect

    Have you ever seen results from your community engagement and realized the impact of your efforts? We recently told you about the LocalWiki project and shared some of the results from the Triangle Wiki day event. But then our friends at Code for America took it a step further.

    The co-founders of LocalWiki were in the Code for America offices last week to see how they could build on the success of the Code Across America event. They took the data–633 page edits, 100 maps, and 138 new photos–and amplified it.

  • GCC 4.7 RC2 Released; The State Of C99 Support

    The second release candidate of GCC 4.7 is available today for those wishing to try out this open-source compiler that will be officially released in the coming weeks. Separately, there’s also updated documentation concerning the state of the C99 language support.

  • The Prominent Changes For The GCC 4.7 Compiler

    With GCC 4.7 being released soon, new compiler benchmarks at Phoronix will be published in the coming weeks (beginning next week Monday), but for those wondering what’s different on the feature side, here’s a look.

    Most of the key GCC 4.7 features have already been talked about in a number of different Phoronix articles, but here’s a concise summary of what to expect from this open-source compiler collection.

Leftovers

• Finance

  • A Response from Goldman Sachs

    The following letter to Goldman Sachs’ worldwide clients was issued today by Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein:

    Dear Goldman Client:

    By now, many of you have probably read the regrettable resignation letter published in today’s New York Times by former Goldman executive Greg Smith, explaining why he is leaving the firm after twelve years.

    In the letter, in which he excoriates Goldman and its practices, Mr. Smith comes across as a man of conscience, ideals, and high moral standards. And as you read his words, you no doubt asked yourself this troubling question: how could Goldman have hired such a person?

    At Goldman, we pride ourselves on our ability to scour the world’s universities and business schools for the finest sociopaths money will buy. Once in our internship program, these youths are subjected to rigorous evaluations to root out even the slightest evidence of a soul. But, as the case of Mr. Smith shows, even the most time-tested system for detecting shreds of humanity can blow a gasket now and then. For that, we can only offer you our deepest apology and the reassurance that one good apple won’t spoil the whole bunch.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • European Parliament Blocks Copyright Reform With 113% Voter Turnout