03.30.12

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Munich saves a fortune switching to Linux

  The poster child for the government adoption of Linux, the City of Munich, is reporting that it has saved more than a third of its IT budget in making the move.

  According to Golem magazine, which we get for the advanced pottery projects, the city experienced the minimum disruption in shifting to things more open saucy.

  The city said that it saved 4 million euro in licensing costs.

• Munich’s mayor claims €4m savings from Linux switch

• Open source “tricorders”: handheld sensor packages for everyone

  For the past five years, Peter Jansen, a Canadian scientist whose PhD is in neural computation and cognitive modelling, has been developing a series of open source hardware “tricorders” — handheld sensor packages running GNU/Linux that can be used by everyday people to make and record observations about the world around them. There are several versions of the tricorder, some with sensors attached (atmospheric, electromagnetic, spatial), others that are “blank,” with places to mount your own sensors. The latest version, the Mark IV, is still in development, and is intended to be mass-produced at low cost.

• Specs for DIY Linux-powered Star Trek tricorders hit the web

• Desktop

  • Mele A1000 is a $70 hackable, Linux-friendly ARM-based PC

    The Raspberry Pi folks have been getting a lot of attention for their $35 PC with an ARM-based processor and support for some open source software. But as the cost of computer components continues to drop, the Raspberry Pi is hardly the only inexpensive PC capable of running Linux.

  • Never mind Linux on the desktop – what about on laptops?

• Kernel Space

  • Qualcomm Calls To “Kill All Proprietary Drivers For Good”

  • If You’re Lucky, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Can Boot Faster

    Ubuntu 12.04 LTS “Precise Pangolin” can boot faster… sometimes. If you are not lucky, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS can boot more than twice as slow as Ubuntu 10.04, the previous LTS release. Here are boot performance results of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS running on six distinct notebooks and comparing the Bootchart results upon clean installations of Ubuntu Linux going back as far as six years from the days of the Ubuntu 6.06 LTS “Dapper Drake” release.

  • Graphics Stack

    • Gdev: A Competitive Open-Source CUDA Implementation

      Shinpei Kato, the developer that last year at XDC2011 Chicago presented TimeGraph as an open-source GPU Linux command scheduler and PathScale’s GPGPU run-time, has something new to share. Shinpei’s latest project is Gdev, which comes down to being an open-source CUDA implementation that’s competitive to NVIDIA’s proprietary stack.

• Applications

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Four of my most-used CLI commands

    • How To Set Up Software RAID1 On A Running LVM System (Incl. GRUB2 Configuration) (Ubuntu 11.10)

    • Brief Look at CloudFTP

    • 8 Tips for Choosing A Secure and Strong Passwords | Pwgen CLI Tool

    • Reset password ubuntu using SytemRescueCD

• Desktop Environments

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

    • Vivaldi Tablet plays an Open Source Tune

      Looking for a tablet that can serve as an eReader and possibly more while not wanting to support the corporate giants in the business such as Apple, Samsung or Nokia? Then MakePlayLive might have the solution for you.

      The company has started to take orders for its 7-inch form factor Vivaldi tablet, one of the first tablets that is available using an open source operating system rather than iOS, Android or any of the other operating systems currently on the market.

• Distributions

  • AgiliaLinux: No More Interviews!

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat Expects Growth In Storage, Virtualization

    • Red Hat: What an open cloud really means

    • Red Hat Announces $300 Million Stock Repurchase Program

    • Tech Stocks Fall, But Red Hat Soars

      Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) soared up 16.19% to $59.69.

    • Red Hat’s red-hot shares climb to 12-year high

      Red Hat Inc. RHT-N is red hot. The software maker’s shares were up 19 per cent Thursday, hitting a 12-year high, after an earnings report that highlighted how much Red Hat is benefiting from a shift in the way big companies meet their technological needs.

    • RIM Keeps Getting Worse, Google Targets the iPad, and Red Hat Soars

    • Red Hat: S&P Gainer

    • Red Hat revenues exceed a billion dollars

    • Red Hat Sees Lots of Green

    • Open source validated long before Red Hat’s milestone

      It’s not that it’s sour grapes or anything… for me, the sense that Red Hat would make this milestone was a bit inevitable, and I never really saw any real chance that they would fail to make this goal. Seriously, it would have taken a disaster to stop Red Hat’s strong growth.

      While I can see the value of celebrating milestones like these, I really wonder if this whole notion of basking in the reflected glory of Red hat as proof that an open source based company can Make It Big is a good idea.

    • Red Hat Hits $1 Billion, But It’s Only the Third Inning

      Red Hat has been a public company since 1999, but according to its CEO the company still has a lot of opportunities left to capture. Red Hat reported its fiscal 2012 earnings late Wednesday, passing the $1 billion mark in revenues for the first time.

      Red Hat is the first pure play open source and Linux vendor to achieve the $1 billion milestone. For the year, Red Hat’s revenues were reported at $1.13 billion for a 25 percent year-over-year gain. GAAP Net Income for the full year was reported at $146.6 million or $0.75 per diluted share, which is a dramatic gain over the $107.3 million or $0.55 per diluted share reported for fiscal 2011.

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu 12.04 Beta 2 Arrives for Testing

        • Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) Beta 2 Released.

        • 6.5KHz computer boots Ubuntu in 6 hours

          Everyone always talks about making their computer faster and faster, but what about if you wanted to make it slower? It’s not as easy as you might think. Using the standard assortment of compatible components means that there is a point where your computer can’t really get any slower, because the old parts just won’t work with the software. For example, you can’t load Windows 8 CP on that 486 you keep in the deepest, darkest corner of the basement. While that might be true, there are ways to work around it if you are really intent on building yourself the worst computer ever.

        • The world’s slowest Linux PC

        • Revealed: 75 Percent of Ubuntu Users Also Use Windows OS

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Linux Mint’s Cinnamon Recreates GNOME 2

          • Linux Mint Debian Edition, Update Pack 4

            I wrote a few weeks ago about the approaching Update Pack 4 for Linux Mint Debian Edition. According to a new Mint Blog post, the release is getting near, and there is lots of good news about it:

            - Lots of updates, of course. Pretty much along the lines of what I wrote previously about this. Linux kernel 3.0.2, Firefox and Thunderbird 11.x, Opera 11.62, MATE 1.2, Cinnamon 1.4, X.org server 1.11.4, and much more.

            - It sounds like they realized the same thing that I suspected and wrote about last time, that LMDE has become a sort of haven for Gnome 2 users. So there are a number of options for those users, including of course the latest MATE and Cinnamon releases. But on top of that, they are creating a special repository which will remain with Gnome 2. This is important – when Update Pack 4 is released, it will automatically install Gnome 3 (and remove Gnome 2). So if you want to stay with Gnome 2, make sure that you update your repository list as described in the blog post referenced above before installing Update Pack 4.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Enea adds Linux to OS offering

    Operating system vendor Enea AB (Stockholm, Sweden) announced at the DESIGN West exhibition that it is now supplying Enea Linux together with some complementary technologies.

  • Phones

    • MeeGo gets a stay of execution? Two new Nokia MeeGo phones reportedly in the works

      Nokia CEO Stephen Elop had several tough decisions to make when he came on board and replaced former chief executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. Of course the biggest shift for Elop’s Nokia came in mid-February last year when the company confirmed that the burning platform had scorched MeeGo, and Nokia planned to dump its Linux-based mobile operating system for Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS. Nokia still went on to launch the N9, and it was widely believed that the handset would be the only MeeGo device from Nokia to ever see the light of day. According to a recent report, however, the Finnish vendor may have new MeeGo devices works.

    • Android

      • Android Apps in Linux Changes Everything

        With the news that the Linux kernel is going to see Android compatibility, there has been a growing sense that Android apps will be finding themselves at home on the Linux desktop.

        In this article, I will dive into how Android compatibility might affect the desktop Linux and what we might see happening in the near future as well. While the news of Android compatibility might seem unimportant to the casual Linux user, it could potentially mean big opportunities for Android developers.

      • ARM-Android to outship Windows-Anything by 2016

  • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

    • A Google Nexus tablet? Bad news for Android partners

Free Software/Open Source

• XBMC Entertainment Hub Targets Third-Party Developers

• Internet Solutions launches cloud-based, unified messaging service

  Internet Solutions is to expand its unified cloud messaging offering to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with fewer than 1 000 users and to the public sector – using Zimbra, VMware’s next-generation, open source, Linux-based e-mail and calendar groupware platform.

• YouTube for nerds: Slashdot TV has launched

• Apache HTTP Server: Proof Open Source is Secure

  There is a false assumption that open source is less secure. Pingdom, which claims to be big fans of the Apache HTTP web server, recently published an interview with William A. Rowe Jr., who until just recently, was the Vice President of the HTTP Server Project.

• Adobe announces Open Source Media Framework 2.0

  Adobe has announced the launch of version 2.0 of its Open Source Media Framework (OSMF), an open software framework for building media players and applications, based on the company’s closed source Flash platform. Kelash Kumar, Adobe Video Solutions Group Product Manager, says that the new version of OSMF includes a number of improvements aimed at helping developers “create even more engaging experiences” and notes that the developers have “reworked the inner workings of OSMF”.

• The Apache Software Foundation Announces Apache Rave as a Top-Level Project

• Equalis Appoints THiRA Solution and Consulting as its Partner for Korea

  Equalis, the leading provider of open source numerical analysis, visualization and simulation solutions for engineers and scientists, today announced that it has appointed THiRA Solution and Consulting as its partner for Korea. THiRA is a specialist Korean manufacturing operations and optimization software and services provider. It is headed by industry veterans and with extensive experience working with major Korean manufacturing companies and education institutions. The Equalis solution is based on the world’s leading open source numerical computation platform, Scilab. Through this partnership, THiRA and Equalis will drive the adoption of the Scilab application by providing customers direct access to a local, dedicated team of application specialists to quickly solve challenges.

• NuoDB Launches Open Source Initiative on Github

• Open Source Framework for Commercial Baseband Software Project Call for Contributions

• How Open Source Powers a Battlestar Galactica-Inspired Flight Simulator

• Web Browsers

  • Chrome

    • Google Chrome 18 features improved graphics acceleration

    • U.S. Stocks Decline as Jobless Claims Top Economists’ Estimates

• SaaS

  • ownCloud Partner Program for Cloud Infrastructure Software

  • Amazon Web Services Updates Linux Implementation

    Amazon Web Services has upgraded the Linux image that runs in its cloud to include newer versions of Tomcat, MySQL and Python, while at the same time allowing enterprises to stay on older versions, the company said in a blog post on Wednesday.

  • Amazon Adds a Hint of Eucalyptus to AWS

  • GigaSpaces Announces New Cloudify Community to Support Open Source Product

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Coming to LibreOffice: Collaborative Editing

  • LibreOffice Work In Progress Towards Collaboration

• Business

  • Semi-Open Source

    • Puppet Labs Announces Puppet Enterprise 2.5

    • Puppet 2.5 propels ahead with Windows, big data support

    • OW2 releases version two of open source cloud broker

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Ruby Creator, GNU Health Win 2011 Free Software Awards

  • Wrangling Data Vizualization with Gnuplot 4.6

• Openness/Sharing

  • An Open Source Software Is Hoping To Change The Way That Party Politics Work

    It’s true that, in practice, a pure democracy seems untenable. What the US, or America, political system is to give citizens the ability to vote for a local representative who will then represent their interests — indirect democracy.

  • Open Source Robotics Platforms are Flourishing–As They Should

    All around the world, open source robotics efforts are maturing, to the point where an open source robot surgeon might even save your life, and commercial companies are taking shape around open source robot platforms. In the past week, there have been some high-profile debates about whether open source robotics software platforms are necessarily better to pursue than proprietary ones. There is a high level of disagreement on the issue.

  • Can Willow Garage’s “Linux for Robots” Spur Internet-Scale Growth?

  • Open Data

    • Raleigh Taking Steps to Publish Open Source Data

      Later this year, Raleigh residents could have access to city information and data in an accessible and usable format.

      As part of its plan to become an “open-source” city, staff presented information Tuesday to the Council’s Technology Committee about plans to publish more data on the city’s website.

      The first step will be to create a website where the information can live. The site will link from the city’s website and provide a “one-stop shop for how the public can engage in conversation,” according to Chief Technology Officer Jonathan Minter. He said that step will be complete in April.

  • Open Hardware

    • Can Willow Garage’s “Linux for Robots” Spur Internet-Scale Growth?

    • A new licence for open source hardware

      IP lawyer Andrew Katz has announced a new open source hardware licence. The Solderpad Hardware License is based on and compatible with the Apache 2.0 License and has the same goals, but is aimed specifically at hardware.

• Programming

  • Google going forward with Go language

    Downloadable at the Go website, the open source Go has been positioned as a general-purpose language suitable for uses ranging from application development to systems programming and offering such features as garbage collection and concurrency. It also is intended to be easy to program.

  • Google Go 1 is go; apps a go go; devs agog

  • Google’s Go programming language hits the 1.0 milestone

  • Google Summer of Code 2012: student application period opens

    Google Open Source Programs Office (OSPO) member Carol Smith has announced that the student application period for this year’s Google Summer of Code (GSoC) event is now open. Students have until 19:00 UTC on Friday 6 April to submit their proposals to one of the 180 accepted 2012 mentoring organisations.

  • Google Summer of Code offers temp jobs to students

  • Google Now Accepting Student Applications For Its 2012 Summer of Code

Leftovers

• Finance

  • US economy grew 3 percent in final quarter of 2011

  • British Review Faults Banks for Weak Checks Against Corruption

    A review of 15 investment banks released on Thursday by Britain’s financial regulator showed that a majority lacked adequate anticorruption and bribery checks.

    The Financial Services Authority said its review of the banks, including eight major global investment banks, had found that about half had an inadequate bribery risk assessment. The review, conducted during the second half of 2011, also found that managers were not sufficiently knowledgeable about anticorruption and bribery laws.

  • CoreLogic: Almost 65,000 completed foreclosures in February 2012

  • House approves Republican deficit-cutting plan

    A divided House approved a $3.6 trillion Republican budget on Thursday recasting Medicare and imposing sweeping cuts in domestic programs, capping a battle that gave both political parties a campaign-season stage to spotlight their warring deficit-cutting priorities.

    But the partisan divisions over the measure, which is dead on arrival in the Democratic-led Senate, also underscores how tough it will be for lawmakers to achieve the cooperation needed to contend with a tsunami of tax and spending decisions that will engulf Congress right after this fall’s elections.

  • Banking Regulator Calls for End of ‘Too Big to Fail’

    An annual report from a regional Federal Reserve bank is typically a collection of banalities and clichés with some pictures of local worthies who serve on the board.

    And so it is with this year’s annual report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, whose pages are graced by the smiling, stolid portraits of board members who run local companies like Whataburger Restaurants.

  • Why ‘Too Big to Fail’ is a psychological construct

    When it comes to Wall Street, liberals and conservatives can agree on at least one thing: The government should avoid bailing out big banks on the taxpayers’ dime. Dodd-Frank was supposed to make that less likely to happen. But it’s uncertain whether that will actually happen, as the new regulation has no explicit prohibition on bailouts.

  • Is it time to release oil from the strategic reserves?

    With oil prices still in the stratosphere, the rumblings are getting louder that the world’s nations may release some of the crude they have saved up in their strategic reserves. On Thursday, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said there was a “good chance” that the United States and Europe will tap those reserves.

  • Spain engulfed by nationwide anti-austerity strike

    Spanish workers enraged by austerity-driven labor reforms to prevent the nation from becoming Europe’s next bailout victim slowed down the country’s economy in a general strike Thursday, closing factories and clashing with police as the new-center right government tried to convince investors the nation isn’t headed for a financial meltdown.

  • Bank Lobby’s Onslaught Shifts Debate on Volcker Rule

    After a four-month lobbying blitz led by firms including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN), U.S. regulators and lawmakers are signaling they’re receptive to delaying and revising their plan to stop banks from making speculative trades on their own accounts.

    Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat and co-author of the 2010 law mandating the ban, urged regulators last week to simplify their first draft, while a bipartisan group of senators proposed pushing back its effective date.