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Links 13/4/2012: Android on the Wrist, $35 Android ICS Tablet





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • 'Flashback' Mac Malware: One More Reason to Switch to Linux
    Given the vast numbers of Macs that are apparently infected with the Flashback Trojan malware, it's not at all surprising to see that sales of Mac security software are now skyrocketing.


  • Desktop

    • Malaysia Educates the Public About GNU/Linux
      The Government of Malaysia has long used GNU/Linux internally. In their country, many consumers are unaware of GNU/Linux and replace FreeDOS on PCs with illegal copies of that other OS. A program is under way to persuade OEMs and retailers to use GNU/Linux on PCs instead.


    • Google Chrome OS Review: Heading Towards Microsoft Market?


      With an eye on an unseen, distant future the 'pseudo-modern' desktops are adopting the single windowed approach. Whether it be Microsoft's Metro, Ubuntu's Unity or Gnome's new shell, they all think PC is nothing more than a smartphone with a touch screen.

      I am one of those who are not big fans of this approach. The 'pseudo-modern' desktop Uis are focused on smartphone/tablet like devices where you use one window (one app) at a time. What's the point of buying expensive CPUs and GPUs (minimum system requirements for modern operating systems) and 27" multiple monitors when all I can do is run one app at a time?


    • If OSs were Cars
      You are not your car. You can be a hacker and ride a sedan, you can ride a muscle car being a writer and you can go to school in a BMW. For some, the car is important or even has philosophical signifant but for most, the goal is ‘what I’m going with my car’.




  • Server

    • SAP Unveils Ambitious Plans for Database Market
      While HANA and its in-memory capabilities is a key platform for SAP's database strategy, so too is the Sybase database. SAP acquired Sybase in 2010 for $5.8 billion. Sikka said that Sybase is now able to run the entire SAP business suite.






  • Kernel Space



    • Graphics Stack

      • Open-Source ARM Mali Graphics Driver Achieves...
        The open-source ARM Mali graphics driver, known as the the Lima project, has achieved a major milestone.

        Since delivering the exclusive news of the Lima project as an open-source reverse-engineered ARM Mali graphics driver for Linux back in January, there hasn't been too much else to report on about this driver that's still early in its development life. This driver is called Lima since it doesn't have the official blessing of ARM Holdings and right now has been only running simple demos with Limare. The code is available and is running on the KDE Plasma Active Tablet as was talked about and shown at FOSDEM 2012.

        Fortunately this morning I've heard some news from the Lima developers about hitting a major milestone. Joining Luc Verhaegen, the lead developer of the Lima project, have been Ben Brewer (another employee of Codethink) and Connor Abbot have been the latest developers joining the Belgian on this open-source driver project.


      • Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Approaches Stable State


      • Improving Linux DRM For Embedded Systems
        A set of Direct Rendering Manager patches have appeared to ease the development of targeting DRM drivers for embedded systems. There's also two new DRM drivers using this SDRM layer.

        These patches for DRM on embedded systems provide "helpers" to take care of the DRM device and introduce an "SDRM" layer. The helpers can setup the CRTCs, encoders, connectors, and other components as separate devices rather than having the current monolithic design to a DRM driver. This work is based upon some of the Exynos driver patches by Samsung but was written by Sascha Hauer of the German-based Pengutronix.






  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments

    • Is Ubuntu Unity Faster Than Gnome Panel?
      One of the most active Ubuntu developers Jo-Erlend Schinstad is also a pro-active defender of Ubuntu Unity and HUD. He tries his best to clarify doubts of users and educate them about the features of Ubuntu Unity. Muktware has published quite a lot of his articles on various topics related to Ubuntu. We recently interviewed him to understand his approach towards Ubuntu and its users. He has now posted a video to compare Ubuntu Unity with Gnome Panel, as people seem to keep saying that they are more efficient with Gnome Panel than with Ubuntu Unity.


    • More details emerge about MyUnity 4.0


    • Report: Aura Window Manager, I'm confused.


    • LMDE MATE/Cinnamon 201204 RC Screenshot Tour
      The Release Candidate of the upcoming Linux Mint Debian Edition 201204 operating system has been announced by Clement Lefebvre on April 11th, 2012.

      Linux Mint Debian Edition 201204 RC comes in two editions: the first one features the MATE 1.2 and Cinnamon 1.4 desktop environments, and the second one features the Xfce 4.8 desktop environment.


    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Calligra 2.4.0 released
        After a long developmental period, Calligra 2.4.0, the first stable version of Calligra, has been released. Calligra is a Qt-based graphic and office suite forked from KOffice in 2010. Note: In some quarters, Calligra is said to be a continuation of KOffice, rather than a fork.


      • The First Version of Calligra Released


      • The Impact Of KDE On 3D Gaming
        Being discussed following the Ubuntu 12.04 Desktops Impact Performance, Power Consumption was the impact that KDE's KWin compositing window manager (and others that don't redirect fullscreen windows by default) has on the OpenGL gaming performance.

        Depending upon the driver it can potentially cause a hit as shown in Wednesday's comparison of Unity, Unity 2D, GNOME Shell, KDE, Xfce, LXDE, and Openbox. All of the desktop environments were tested in their "out of the box" / stock configurations on Ubuntu 12.04. The KDE aspect is being discussed in this forum thread where the usual items are brought up.






  • Distributions

    • ROSA Desktop 2012 beta review


    • Student stiffs penetration tool BackTrack Linux with 0-day
      A student has discovered a critical vulnerability in BackTrack, a flavour of Linux that's a favourite among security pros.

      The previously undiscovered (hence zero-day) privilege escalation bug in the network penetration-testing distro was discovered during an ethical hacking class organised by the InfoSec Institute.

      Jack Koziol, security programme manager at the institute, explained that the bug in Backtrack 5 R2 (the latest version) allowed the student to overwrite settings to gain a root shell. The flaw was found in wicd (the Wireless Interface Connection Daemon), which has not been tested for "potential remote exploitation vectors" according to Koziol.


    • New Releases



    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mageia 2 Default Wallpapers Chosen
        Last fall Mageia put out the call for artists to participate in their Mageia 2 artwork contest. It's been eight long months, but the choices have now been made. The new Mageia 2 default and alternative backgrounds have been chosen.

        Submitted by Luiz Fernando, the winning image is a lovely deep blue base with wisps of royal blue cutting across the primary focal lines.




    • Red Hat Family



    • Debian Family





  • Devices/Embedded





Free Software/Open Source



  • Expert witness says most popular Hotfile downloads are open source apps
    Hotfile is determined to outlast Hollywood’s ongoing crusade against file locker services. The company is defending itself against an aggressive litigation campaign that movie studios first brought against it over a year ago. Hotfile’s case may be bolstered by a recent report which shows that the two most widely-downloaded files distributed through the popular file locker service are open source software applications.

    Charges against Hotfile that alleged direct copyright infringement were thrown out last year by a federal court judge. The remaining charges allege that the company is liable for inducing its users to infringe copyright. The answer to that question will hinge on whether the courts find that Hotfile has substantial non-infringing uses.


  • The Benefits of an Open Market, Revisited
    Overall as I developer, I find the ability to instantly push out updates highly desirable. As a consumer I appreciate the fact that submissions are tested and verified to at least technically work and not crash. Is there a perfect system? Not that I know of. What is the perfect system? I don’t know. If there was a way for developers to be able to reach their users quickly with bugfixes and even new features that allow for consumers to not have to wade through extremely low quality and exact duplicate apps, then I would be one happy developer.


  • Open Source Technologies: Saving and Improving Lives
    The thought of ‘open source’ need not always conjure up images of socially removed geeks slamming away at their keyboards.

    There have been instances of the open source ideology saving and improving lives, and this article explores a couple of examples on that aspect.


  • PhoneGap 1.6 Released!
    We are happy to announce the release of PhoneGap 1.6! The PhoneGap/Apache Cordova Community has worked hard to fix many bugs (including the nasty local storage bug caused by the iOS 5.1 update) and added some new features.


  • Events



  • Web Browsers



  • SaaS



  • Databases

    • Oracle previews MySQL 5.6
      Offering a glimpse of the new features some database administrators will be working with before too long, Oracle has posted a preview version of the next MySQL relational database management system.

      The Development Milestone Release (DMR) for MySQL 5.6 comes with a number of new and still experimental features for the open source database system, including improved replication and the ability to bypass the SQL framework for faster data access.


    • Firebird SQL Project Newsletter, Issue 3


    • 10gen announces MongoDB Hadoop Connector
      10gen, the company behind MongoDB, has announced the general availability of a connector for its open source NoSQL database and Apache Hadoop, the MapReduce framework and distributed computing platform. According to its developers, version 1.0 of the connector is the "culmination of over a year of work to bring our users a solid integration layer between their MongoDB deployments and Hadoop clusters for data processing".


    • MariaDB 5.5.23 arrives with performance improvements
      Version 5.5.23 of MariaDB, a drop-in replacement for MySQL, has been published by the developers at Monty Program. The first stable release in the 5.5 series of the open source database includes performance improvements and "a few added features" over MySQL 5.5.23, which it is based upon.




  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • How LibreOffice Writer Tops MS Word: 12 Features
      When reviewers look at LibreOffice and its ancestor OpenOffice.org, they inevitably assume that it’s inferior to Microsoft Office. At the very most, they may grudgingly find it acceptable for undemanding users.

      However, when you examine LibreOffice and MS Office without assumptions, the comparison changes dramatically. That's especially true when looking at the word processors, LibreOffice's Writer and MS Office's Word.

      For one thing, features frequently have different names in Writer and Word. Although LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org have a history of conforming to MS Office's name-choices -- for example, in the spreadsheets, data pilots were recently renamed pivot tables to match Excel's usage -- holdouts remain. For example, the equivalent of Word's AutoSummary in Writer remains AutoAbstract.




  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Who Cares About Software Freedom?
      Well it's been a disconcerting kind of week here in the Linux blogosphere, not least because of all the darn construction going on down at the Google+ Grill.

      First it was the hammering giving Linux Girl a headache. Then, on Wednesday, she walked in after lunch and could barely recognize the place. What is this interface sorcery, she wants to know?

      Then, of course, there was the retirement of Linux Girl's old friend, Maverick Meerkat, in the past few days as well. Alas, dear distro -- we hardly knew ye!




  • Openness/Sharing



  • Programming





Leftovers



  • Security



    • New ZeuS-based Trojan leeches cash from cloud-based payrolls


    • End of Windows XP support era signals beginning of security nightmare
      Microsoft’s recent announcement that it will end support for the Windows XP operating system in two years signals the end of an era for the company, and potentially the beginning of a nightmare for everyone else.

      When Microsoft cuts the chord on XP in two years it will effectively leave millions of existing Windows-based computers vulnerable to continued and undeterred cyberattacks, many of which hold the potential to find their way into consumer, enterprise and even industrial systems running the latest software.






  • Finance



  • Copyrights

    • Illegal Copying is not Theft
      Under US law, violation of copyright is not a crime unless commercial use is made of the copy or the value is more than $1K. Even when it is a crime, illegal copying is limited to 1, 5 or 10 years for different levels of severity and this guy was likely in the 1 year category.






Recent Techrights' Posts

With 9 Mentions of Azure In Its Latest Blog Post, Canonical is Again Promoting Microsoft and Intel Vendor Lock-in, Surveillance, Back Doors, Considerable Power Waste, and Defects That Cannot be Fixed
Microsoft did not even have to buy Canonical (for Canonical to act like it happened)
Links 28/03/2024: GAFAM Replacing Full-Time Workers With Interns Now
Links for the day
Consent & Debian's illegitimate constitution
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The Time Our Server Host Died in a Car Accident
If Debian has internal problems, then they need to be illuminated and then tackled, at the very least in order to ensure we do not end up with "Deadian"
China's New 'IT' Rules Are a Massive Headache for Microsoft
On the issue of China we're neutral except when it comes to human rights issues
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 27, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 27, 2024
WeMakeFedora.org: harassment decision, victory for volunteers and Fedora Foundations
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 27/03/2024: Terrorism Grows in Africa, Unemployment in Finland Rose Sharply in a Year, Chinese Aggression Escalates
Links for the day
Links 27/03/2024: Ericsson and Tencent Layoffs
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Amid Online Reports of XBox Sales Collapsing, Mass Layoffs in More Teams, and Windows Making Things Worse (Admission of Losses, Rumours About XBox Canceled as a Hardware Unit)...
Windows has loads of issues, also as a gaming platform
Links 27/03/2024: BBC Resorts to CG Cruft, Akamai Blocking Blunders in Piracy Shield
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Android Approaches 90% of the Operating Systems Market in Chad (Windows Down From 99.5% 15 Years Ago to Just 2.5% Right Now)
Windows is down to about 2% on the Web-connected client side as measured by statCounter
Sainsbury's: Let Them Eat Yoghurts (and Microsoft Downtimes When They Need Proper Food)
a social control media 'scandal' this week
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 26, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Windows/Client at Microsoft Falling Sharply (Well Over 10% Decline Every Quarter), So For His Next Trick the Ponzi in Chief Merges Units, Spices Everything Up With "AI"
Hiding the steep decline of Windows/Client at Microsoft?
Free technology in housing and construction
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
We Need Open Standards With Free Software Implementations, Not "Interoperability" Alone
Sadly we're confronting misguided managers and a bunch of clowns trying to herd us all - sometimes without consent - into "clown computing"
Microsoft's Collapse in the Web Server Space Continued This Month
Microsoft is the "2%", just like Windows in some countries
Links 26/03/2024: Inflation Problems, Strikes in Finland
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Gemini Links 26/03/2024: Losing Children, Carbon Tax Discussed
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Mark Shuttleworth resigns from Debian: volunteer suicide and Albania questions unanswered, mass resignations continue
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 26/03/2024: 6,000 Layoffs at Dell, Microsoft “XBox is in Real Trouble as a Hardware Manufacturer”
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/03/2024: Microsofters Still Trying to 'Extend' Gemini Protocol
Links for the day
Look What IBM's Red Hat is Turning CentOS Into
For 17 years our site ran on CentOS. Thankfully we're done with that...
The Julian Paul Assange Verdict: The High Court Has Granted Assange Leave to Appeal Extradition to the United States, Decision Adjourned to May 20th Pending Assurances
The decision is out
The Microsoft and Apple Antitrust Issues Have Some But Not Many Commonalities
gist of the comparison to Microsoft
ZDNet, Sponsored by Microsoft for Paid-for Propaganda (in 'Article' Clothing), Has Added Pop-Up or Overlay to All Pages, Saying "813 Partners Will Store and Access Information on Your Device"
Avoiding ZDNet may become imperative given what it has turned into
Julian Assange Verdict 3 Hours Away
Their decision is due to be published at 1030 GMT
People Who Cover Suicide Aren't Suicidal
Assange didn't just "deteriorate". This deterioration was involuntary and very much imposed upon him.
Overworking Kills
The body usually (but not always) knows best
Former Red Hat Chief (CEO), Who Decided to Leave the Company Earlier This Month, Talks About "Cloud Company Red Hat" to CNBC
shows a lack of foresight and dependence on buzzwords
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 25, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, March 25, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
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a considerable share exists
In At Least Two Nations Windows is Now Measured at 2% "Market Share" (Microsoft Really Does Not Want People to Notice That)
Ignore the mindless "AI"-washing
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Still Has Hundreds of Thousands of Simultaneously-Online Unique Users
The scale of IRC