03.07.14
Posted in News Roundup at 12:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Privacy
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In the EU – US trade negotiations (TTIP / TAFTA) the US tabled a proposal that would prohibit to require local data storage. If the EU accepts this proposal, the EU would give away an instrument essential to protect privacy.
On 5 March 2014 the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament organised a meeting on the complex relationship between data protection, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and the general context of EU-US relations after the Snowden revelations. (Stream available)
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Grumpy with Dropbox? Forget sueing the company, which is trying to keep you from your lawyers with its new Terms of Service document effective as of March 24th, 2014.
NSA
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SURVEILLANCE WHISTLEBLOWER Edward Snowden has responded to the European Parliament’s questions about PRISM and data privacy.
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The NSA whistleblower has given extensive evidence to an inquiry into the surveillance of European citizens, describing what he calls a “bazaar” of EU intelligence agencies allowing the U.S. to spy on pretty much everyone.
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But this zero-sum framework ignores the significant damage that the NSA’s practices have done to U.S. national security. In a global digital world, national security depends on many factors beyond surveillance capacities, and over-reliance on global data collection can create unintended security vulnerabilities.
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Sen. John Walsh, D-Mont., introduced his first bill Thursday, to restrict the ability of federal security agencies to secretly collect phone records and other personal data on U.S. citizens.
Walsh’s bill, titled the Civil Liberties Defense Act, also would require the National Security Agency to purge records of already collected data that don’t comply with standards established by the act.
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The NSA is forbidden to spy on American citizens. But the GCHQ is not so forbidden. So has the NSA farmed out its surveillance of Americans to GCHQ? The NSA would then be following the letter of the law, but, through its association with the GCHQ, would have immediate access to surveillance of Americans.
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The National Security Agency leaker will speak with Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist of the American Civil Liberties Union, about NSA’s spying techniques and “the ways in which technology can help to protect us from mass surveillance.” The event will take place Monday and be moderated by Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy & Technology Project (who is also a legal advisor for Snowden). Snowden will take audience questions.
Torture
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Earlier this week, we wrote about the accusations that the CIA was spying on Senate staffers on the Senate Intelligence Committee as they were working on a massive $40 million 6,300 pages report condemning the CIA’s torture program. The DOJ is apparently already investigating if the CIA violated computer hacking laws in spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee computers. The issue revolved around a draft of an internal review by the CIA, which apparently corroborates many of the Senate report’s findings — but which the CIA did not hand over to the Senate. This internal report not only support’s the Senate report’s findings, but also shows that the CIA has been lying in response to questions about the terror program.
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“The Senate Intelligence Committee oversees the CIA, not the other way around. Since I joined the Committee, the CIA has refused to engage in good faith on the Committee’s study of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. Instead, the CIA has consistently tried to cast doubt on the accuracy and quality of this report by publicly making false representations about what is and is not in it.
Militarism
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After successful testing last year, the Navy is preparing to deploy its first directed energy weapon to the fleet. When it puts to sea this summer, the afloat forward staging base ship USS Ponce will be equipped with the Navy’s Laser Weapon System (LaWS).
Drones
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The Pentagon has confirmed launching a drone strike against the Logar Province of Afghanistan today, hitting their allies in a case of mistaken identity. The strike kill five Afghan National Army soldiers, and wounded eight others.
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In order to frame last night’s Intelligence Squared U.S. Debate, moderator John Donvan invited Georgetown University constitutional law professor Nick Rosenkranz on stage to give the audience a jumpstart on their thinking as to why this event was distinct from the previous debate on drones. He explained that while the first debate looked at policy–which invariably brings politics into the equation–this argument, “The President Has the Constitutional Power to Target and Kill Americans,” focuses solely on the question of constitutionality.
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This past week, I had to write a paper on the psychological determinants of the United States’ response to the attacks on September 11, 2001. I clarify the year because if y’all never noticed, the Benghazi attacks happened on the same exact day ten years later … eerie. Like most political science papers I write, I dove headfirst into the topic and justified my watching of movies before bedtime because I chose ones that had to do with 9/11. First, it was United 93. Very bad choice. Quite similar to the night I came home from going out and thought “I’ll just watch a short rom com and fall asleep while it’s playing.” I chose Hotel Rwanda. Three hours later, I was alone in bed bawling my eyes out because why is the world such a horrible place?!
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In 2011, a so-called terrorist threat, Anwar al-Aulaqi, was targeted and successfully removed from the picture, much like many other covert operations led out by top American military forces. The only thing that made this different from the assassination of Osama bin Ladin was that Anwar al-Aulaqi was an American citizen, as was his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman al-Aulaqi, whose death was officially stated as a “mistake” by the United States government. There were outcries from journalists and social justice groups following the two separate incidents; what happened to innocent until proven guilty? The response of the government was that the reasons for assassinating these two men — well, really one boy and one man — were too dangerous to let the public in on. So basically, we should really just trust the military and let them kill whomever they want, regardless of citizenship. Because the government is always looking out for the people, right? Except when they unlawfully assassinate us … it’s a cycle of complete bullshit.
Ukraine
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The EU has just announced that it’s going to freeze the suspect assets of 18 Ukrainian politicians, including former president Viktor Yanukovych. This comes after Switzerland and Austria froze assets earlier in the week. Quite apart from the criticism that the EU’s delay gives plenty of time for Ukraine’s missing billions to be shifted further afield, there is a bigger problem here.
If there are concerns that this money is corrupt, why did any of the EU’s banks accept it in the first place? Banks are supposed to obey anti-money laundering laws that require them to check out their customers and their source of funds. Then they’re supposed to turn down money that has been earned through crime – including the sort of state looting that seems to have been happening in Ukraine. And governments are supposed to hold banks that fail to do all this to account.
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In recent days, the Crimean peninsula has been at the heart of what some have described as the greatest international crisis of the 21st century. But this is not the first time the region has been so critical to international affairs. Many educated people have at least heard of the great struggle known as the Crimean War (1853-56), although its causes and events remain mysterious to most non-specialists.
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While the Kremlin denied any involvement, Georgian officials accused Russia of being behind the attacks.
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Posted in Mandriva at 11:12 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Today is a good day in many senses: winter ended and OpenMandriva Lx 2014 Alpha2 is here!
To keep up to high standards we decided to move Beta to RC1 date, and have Alpha2 today, to deliver you new fun according to the promise. This change does not affect the final release date.
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Mageia has been one of my favorite projects and distributions since its inception, but Jesse Smith said today that the spell is broken for him. Smith had issues with his network connection upon first boot, but continued to have installation and updating of software issues. He complained of poor performance, missing packages, and a seriously annoying task switcher too. All in all, he wasn’t pleased. He concluded (in part)…
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The PCLinuxOS Magazine staff is pleased to announce the release of the March 2014
issue. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published
by volunteers from the community. The magazine is lead by Paul Arnote, Chief Editor,
and Assistant Editor Meemaw. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is released under the Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license, and some
rights are reserved.
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Security at 10:53 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Shifted focus (diversion towards non-issues like the GnuTLS flaw) and what we really need to watch out for when it comes to surveillance on GNU/Linux users
Cryptology is a funny thing. It’s an instrument of control (through predictive information. espionage, blackmail and so on). That’s more or less the thesis of a popular book from Wikileaks folks, titled “Cypherpunks”. Held in the hands of ordinary citizens, cryptology gives citizens power. Abused in the hands of freelance thugs [1] or state-sanctioned thugs like the NSA, cryptology helps guard the thugs (secrecy) and expose citizens who are only ever ‘enjoying’ fake cryptology, such as Microsoft’s and RSA’s. Now that Apple is receiving horrible publicity for breaking cryptology around the same time Apple joined PRISM there is some dodgy attempt to divert attention towards GNU/Linux, even if GnuTLS flaws are already patched and GnuTLS is not so widely adopted, not to mention the fact that is not used for very sensitive transactions such as banking [2]. The Linux Foundation was also quick to rebut the FUD [3], stating that “some were quick to point out that Linux distributions were not vulnerable to this particular issue” (contrary to corporate media reports).
What remains much bigger an issue, other than weak passwords (human error), is closed-sourced and proprietary hardware that may or may not incorporate Linux [4], such as my Home Hub from BT (which is rumoured to have back doors, based on some British press). A lot of what we’ve learned from the NSA leaks is that secret deals and collusion with companies is what’s responsible for back doors, not something which is visible at source code level. It is also what makes Red Hat, an NSA partner, difficult to trust these days [1, 2, 3]. The NSA reportedly asked Torvalds for back doors in Linux [1, 2, 3, 4]. Social engineering, bribes from the CIA in exchange for access (as reported in mainstream media) and even cracking is how spies get their way. They need not rely on programmers’ errors. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Researchers from the University of Kent quizzed a total of 48 people who had been affected by CryptoLocker. Of the sample, 17 said they paid the ransom and 31 said they did not.
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It seems that it’s only been a few weeks since we all heard of a nasty certificate validation error in Apple’s software, a.k.a. the infamous “double goto fail” bug. While some were quick to point out that Linux distributions were not vulnerable to this particular issue, wiser heads cautioned that a similar bug could be potentially lurking in software used on Linux.
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Team Cymru, the US-based security outfit which published the report, said that the network of hacked routers is one of the biggest of its kind that has been discovered, with most of the hacked routers in Columbia, India, Italy, Thailand, and Vietnam.
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Posted in Microsoft, Windows at 10:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Windows XP is almost officially dead now, so rather than cling onto it (as parts of China reportedly do) one needs to move to GNU/Linux
Microsoft is leaving Windows to rot (even where there is a large userbase [1]), so we should too. Sometimes in my job people who are mentally dependent on Windows (fearful of change) try to cling onto Microsoft APIs [2], Windows applications, server protocols etc. without quite realising that they only make their life more difficult, especially if they try to rely on GNU/Linux for the rest (especially on the desktop, not just the server). The right thing to do right now is to find alternatives to Windows which are based on GNU/Linux [3], protecting freedom [4] and dodging incarceration that proprietary software so gleefully promotes [5].
Some people said that 2014 would be the year of GNU/Linux on the desktop and based on what I see at work this is actually very probable. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Windows XP is 13 years old and Microsoft has no obligation to continue supporting it — but failing to support it means that many of the most vulnerable or cash-strapped customers could end up playing host to an avalanche of malware or security exploits.
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If you were hoping to eventually be able to run Windows applications within Google’s Chrome OS environment via Wine, the possibilities of that working out well are very slim.
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Microsoft will soon no longer support Windows XP so current XP users will need to migrate to a newer version of Windows or possibly Linux. If they don’t migrate, they run the risk of serious security problems once Microsoft stops issuing updates for Windows XP.
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We need to protect the freedoms in which Linux was born and grew up.
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The OS is the core of your computing experience. There’s no point trying to run a fully legal setup if the base of it is illegal. Windows and Mac OS are the most known operating systems, however they aren’t free.
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Posted in Red Hat, Servers at 10:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Another Red Hat move which puts citizens’ data in the hands of unaccountable spies and their corporate partners/accomplices
Amazon, which is a very special partner of the CIA* (we gave dozens of references before in order to highlight this), has already earned Ubuntu some tough words and a snub from the EFF, FSF, as well as many others (nongroups). For Red Hat to play buddies with Amazon makes little or no sense. Amazon not only does many disgusting things (to customers, staff, externalities) but it also pays Microsoft for GNU/Linux, including RHEL. Like with Azure (as we explained repeatedly before), putting any computational resource on Amazon ‘clouds’ is like handing it all over to the NSA (for surveillance, interception, interference, censorship, modification leading to framing, and so on). Red Hat is said to have joined some nonsense programme that involves AWS [1-4], marketed as “secure” and “federal”. Who is this secure from? The Federal government of the United States? Surely not, unless of course you happen to be the government itself. The whole thing sounds so dodgy and it won’t give Red Hat much credibility now that Red Hat’s relationship with the NSA [1, 2, 3] is debated in some circles (it was last mentioned in an article from Sam Varghese earlier this week).
Making things even worse, Red Hat makes an approach [5] towards something which resembles Mono and promotes Microsoft APIs. This is not a wise move, for reasons that we are going to deal with in the next post.
Red Hat’s CEO speaking of himself as a “great leader” (without saying so directly) in Red Hat’s self-serving Web site that’s now treated as a news site by Google News [6]. Some say that Red Hat is a one-of-a-kind [7], but if Red Hat leans towards the NSA, puts customers’ data on Microsoft-taxed and NSA-eavesdropped ‘clouds’, hires executive staff from Microsoft and even promotes/spreads .NET and Hyper-V (which provides an NSA back door into GNU/Linux guests through Windows hosts**), then maybe it’s better to promote alternatives to Red Hat as a flag bearer and GNU/Linux leader. Red Hat recently found itself in somewhat of a scandal involving OpenStack [8-10] while it also formed OpenStack partnerships [11-15]. Red Hat really can do and should do more to embrace and disseminate freedom, not cages like AWS. Red Hat’s middleware business is a good example of this [16,17] as business (as in revenue/sales [18], like IBM's) becomes the top priority, even when Red Hat makes public appearances [19,20].
Perhaps what we need now is more strength for community projects like Arch and Debian. They, unlike Red Hat, don’t share a bed with malicious companies that violate users’ rights. █
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* The CIA was, just earlier this week, found to be illegally spying on government officials that act as watchdogs.
** Proprietary virtualisation software is the issue here. VMware is not much better because it’s run by former Microsoft executives (Microsoft is the top NSA partner) and is owned by EMC, which also runs RSA, the NSA’s notorious back doors partner.
Related/contextual items from the news:
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If you’re a government worker and have been wanting to run Red Hat Enterprise Linux securely on your Amazon cloud, it’s your lucky day. The popular open-source operating system is finally available on Amazon Web Services.
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Uhuru was founded just over two years ago by veteran ex-Microsoft executives: former vice president Jawad Khaki and former general manager Jawaid Ekram. They are self-proclaimed experts in bringing Windows to Open Source PaaS.
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Over the last 25 years of my career—from serving as a partner at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), to my time at Delta Air Lines, to my current role as president and CEO of Red Hat—I’ve been exposed to my fair share of leaders. I’ve learned that leaders and leadership styles can vary greatly depending on the company culture, industry and size, but there’s one commonality I’ve noticed among all of them: to be effective, leaders must be respected.
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The bottom line, therefore, is that in order for the model promoted by Levine to succeed, it’s predicated on the existence of underlying projects that achieve the balance of benefits that I alluded to above. Without the right scope of opportunity, sufficient success in recruitment, and abundant skill in execution, there will be no more RedHats emerging from this new model than the last. But where this methodology is understood and followed, not only will such opportunities emerge, but they will do so with far greater predictability than in the past.
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There’s rarely a dull moment when looking through Linux newsfeeds. Today we find Jesse Smith has reviewed Chakra GNU/Linux 2014.02. LinuxInsider.com looks at why distributions gain popularity then disappear. And finally, The Register covers a bit of convention confusion between Red Hat and cloud newcomer Piston.
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Piston, an Openstack-in-a-box vendor[1] are a sponsor of the Red Hat[2] Summit this year. Last week they briefly ceased to be for no publicly stated reason, although it’s been sugggested that this was in response to Piston winning a contract that Red Hat was also bidding on. This situation didn’t last for long – Red Hat’s CTO tweeted that this was an error and that Red Hat would pay Piston’s sponsorship fee for them.
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Red Hat originally made a name for itself as the only U.S.-based public company exclusively focused on open source, as it has proved that its Linux-focused strategy could be very profitable. But the company’s future is increasingly being tied to cloud computing and OpenStack in particular. This week, Red Hat marks two years of collaborating with contributors and developers on key OpenStack.org projects “to bring OpenStack from a project to a product.”
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Red Hat, a provider of open source solutions announced that Alcatel-Lucent deployed Red Hat Enterprise GNU/Linux OpenStack platform based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM), as the common platform for its Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) solution, CloudBand.
“Alcatel-Lucent specifically chose Red Hat Enterprise GNU/Linux OpenStack Platform for use in managing CloudBand Nodes, the turn-key, all-in-one compute, storage and network node system that interfaces with the CloudBand Management System, along with any other OpenStack-enabled nodes,” the company said.
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A key part of the overall solution is Alcatel-Lucent’s Cloudband technology which is the company’s NFV platform that provides the server, storage and networking infrastructure with the Cloudband Node. Cloudband also includes management and orchestration functionality to deploy and manage network functions deployed on the infrastructure.
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Red Hat’s new JBoss BPM Suite is in part the result of its 2012 acquisition of Polymita, noted 451 Research analyst Carl Lehmann. The addition of that technology and other new features brings Red Hat’s BPM offering on par with other BPM suites and “gives Red Hat some competitive differentiation in the market,” he said. “I think they did a pretty good job there.”
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That’s according to a Red Hat spokesperson who gave me some additional insight into a press conference that the Raleigh-based open source software company will hold on Tuesday at 11 a.m. to announce new products in middleware.
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Videos from the DevConf.cz conference that happened earlier this month in Brno, Czech Republic, are now available online from the Red Hat focused event.
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Red Hat at 9:12 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Red Hat’s Fedora 21 will come out in the middle of October, according to a newly-published schedule
AFTER much anticipation and speculation [1] it turns out that the next release of Fedora will be in late autumn, some time in the middle of October [2]. Phoronix, which recently wrote some in-depth analysis (with a lot of links) about Fedora, also explained how Mesa 10 packages were made available for Fedora 20 [3].
The nice thing about the Fedora project, as we pointed out before, is not only its insistence on free/libre graphics drivers but also extensive work on such drivers. Without Fedora we would all be losing a lot.
Fedora does not need to look ‘ugly’ or ‘not polished’ (it got this reputation some years ago when poor releases were made). Fedora has no consistent ‘face’ because it’s highly customisable and unlike Ubuntu (which demotes “alternative” desktops/themes) it comes in several very different ‘flavours’ [4] which are all managed and distributed (as equal) by Red Hat. Fedora 20 looks like a solid option and half a year from now we will see another fine release of Fedora, which is always getting better. I have used many release of Fedora over the years and I was always mostly satisfied. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Fedora.Next is bringing lots of changes as the longstanding distribution seeks to effectively remake itself and move forward with greater vigor. When it comes to this next major distribution update, Fedora 21 already has lined up support for non-KMS drivers to be abandoned, other old GPU support removal, out of the box OpenCL support, Wayland support improvements, Hawkey usage, and many other changes, besides simply having updated upstream open-source Linux packages.
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The next Fedora Linux release is being postponed until October since if shipping in August they are left midway between GNOME 3.12 and 3.14. GNOME 3.14 will be released by late September and thus if shipping in mid-to-late October would allow time for a fresh GNOME 3.14 desktop to be incorporated into the release. October/November release targets have also been what’s long been sought after by Fedora (among other distributions) for nailing close to the GNOME release time-frame and other software projects.
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While Fedora 20 is looking to land GNOME 3.12 as a stable release upgrade, the developers normally shipping a bleeding-edge Linux graphics stack haven’t sent down any stable release updates for the much-improved Mesa 10 drivers. Fortunately, there’s some unofficial choices.
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Lifehacker reader Royale with Cheese has a sharp-looking flat desktop that looks like OS X at first glance. It’s actually Fedora 20, and it’s smooth as butter. Here’s how he set it up.
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Posted in Debian, GNU/Linux, Red Hat at 8:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Updates and news from the Debian camp, focusing on the silent or lesser-acknowledged role of this international project in computing
Linux Mint, which does not come with Amazon spyware (unlike Ubuntu, which fell behind Mint in DistroWatch), seems to be leaning more and more towards Debian with this new release [1] which was reviewed some hours ago (in the publication sense) [2] and surely has momentum [3]. Even the release candidate (RC) [4] received such coverage [5] (mind the UEFI ‘secure’ boot rant), proving that there is definitely some interest from users (Jim Lynch’s/IDG’s sensationalist headline merely links to screenshots like these [6]).
Debian recently added OpenRISC support [7,8] (Debian is perhaps best known for huge hardware diversity) and there is a new project for better security [9] (think of it like SELinux, except intervention of the criminal NSA, which wants back doors in Linux [1, 2, 3, 4]). Red Hat's Systemd may not be the only option [10], but we don’t know for sure yet. Someone needs to continue to offer alternatives to Systemd. Debian is very important with its many new derivatives [11], role in hardware [12] and embedded domination [13] (bar Android and closed Linux-based systems), hence the importance of its decision on init systems.
A strong Debian (and derivatives like Ubuntu) acts as an essential regulating force in the face of Red Hat/CentOS domination; lack of diversity, history teaches, limits security and increases vulnerability. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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The team is proud to announce the release of LMDE 201403.
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The four distributions obviously have a lot in common; Debian is well known as one of the oldest, best established and most respected Linux distributions, Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) is derived from Debian, with a lot of the goodies which have been developed for the Linux Mint ‘main’ distribution added, and both SolydXK and Tanglu are derived from a combination of those two plus a good bit of work in packaging, repositories, updates, appearances and such.
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The Linux Mint blog is reporting that Linux Mint Debian Edition 201403 has been released. LMDE is a semi-rolling distro that is based on Debian Testing. It is a good alternative for those who want the features of Linux Mint without having to use Ubuntu as its base.
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We look forward to receiving your feedback. Thank you for using Linux Mint and have a lot of fun testing the release candidate!
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The installation was absolutely routine with the exception of the well-known difficulty with UEFI firmware configuration on the HP Pavilion. There was even good news on that system, though, because the very difficult wi-fi adapter (Ralink 3290) seems to work just fine.
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Mempo is a project started in H2’2013 that’s been trying to provide a secure yet robust Debian platform that currently classifies itself in a “pre-alpha” state. Mempo is patching Debian packages with better security and privacy, providing newer versions of packages than what’s found in Debian, using a hardened “GrSecurity” Linux kernel, and is working to support other work in and outside of Debian.
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Since the Debian technical committee decided they will use systemd over Upstart, the latest vote on their agenda was over init system coupling and how Debian developers maintaining packages should deal with different init systems or what guidance the technical committee should send to these package maintainers.
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Tanglu is a fairly young project and perhaps has flown under the radar somewhat. The 1.0 release is a major milestone for the distribution, which is based on a mixture of Debian Testing, Debian Unstable and in some cases even Debian Experimental.
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PLDA has launched an SODIMM-like computer-on-module claimed to be the smallest Xilinx Zynq COM yet, supported with a carrier board and Debian Linux BSP
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Posted in GNU/Linux at 8:02 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Arch (GNU/)Linux is used by a lot of people and inspiring big derivatives such as Manjaro, Chakra GNU/Linux, and more
LAST YEAR we started writing quite a lot about Arch (GNU/)Linux because it had become popular, and not just among advanced computer users. Many people out there are now Arch users, including, according to this new interview [1], the voice behind Linux Voice. Arch is a very fast-moving distribution which offers the latest of everything (including Linux of course [2,3]), so no wonder we see many people raving about it [4] and exploring it [5].
Chakra, a beautiful derivative of Arch, was recently reviewed by DistroWatch [6] and another derivative, Manjaro, received two good reviews in recent weeks [7,8].
As we argued last year, for those who seek a cutting-edge, secure, community-driven distribution that is not Debian “unstable”, Arch is definitely an option. One can think of Manjaro, Chakra etc. as the Knoppix/Ubuntu of Debian. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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I’ve run Arch for a couple of years. I like its minimalism and the way you end up knowing every installed component. I’m not massively keen on having to check the Arch website before upgrades (because things break), or the way you have to start from scratch with every fresh install. Getting hold of the latest releases is one of the most important parts of my job, and the Arch User Repository is the best way I’ve found of getting hold of software that more often than not installs. I love the way it bundles the source code, and the way you can rollback packages. It’s also relatively straightforward to modify packages yourself, which I’ve occasionally found useful. At the moment, I’ve also got Mageia 4, Fedora 20 and Mint 16 installed on the same machine.
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During the last years Arch Linux proved to be a pioneer distribution, especially when we talk about the latest software releases. Unfortunately, this was not the case with Linux kernel 3.13, which caused some issues and required modular PS/2 keyboard support.
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Okubax’s desktop is actually pretty simple — it’s less about the wallpaper and more about the other customisation tricks.
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Probably the best part for me(so far) is with breaking away from Ubuntu, I’ve been forced to take a serious look at the various window managers and desktop environments out there. Which has brought me to i3.wm, on it’s own its excellent although there are a lot of new key bindings for me to learn and a almost crazy amount of customizability to play with, and it is missing some of the standard functionality I want in a desktop environment, such as wall papers, lock screen etc. Luckily it can replace the window manager in XFCE4 easily and makes for an excellent combination.
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The short version of all this is Chakra has some nice features and it does some interesting things. I love how amazingly fast the project’s build of KDE is on my hardware and I like that the project does some things a bit differently. I like that the team has put together an increasingly comprehensive collection of documentation. I especially appreciate that GTK-based software is no longer shipped in stand-alone bundles, but rather in an add-on repository, allowing the user to add software using a single package manager, rather than switching between different software managers. In short, I feel Chakra has made positive progress over the past year. The distribution still has rough edges, plenty of small, unpleasant surprises for the unwary user, but overall it is improving. The project is well worth a look if you are a fan of either Arch Linux or the KDE desktop.
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Manjaro is one of just a handful of desktop distributions that are trying to make all the goodness of Arch Linux available to new and seasoned users alike. It’s matching along with Antergos and Chakra Linux in this regard, though it seems to be further along than Chakra Linux and running neck-and-neck with Antergos.
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Manjaro Gnu/Linux is a Unix Like Operating System which is Arch Linux Based. This desktop oriented Distribution has desktop environment Xfce by default and any other desktop environment can be installed and configured later.
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