07.24.15

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Desktop

  • Jack Wallen Gets It

    In 2015, we see the huge sluggishness of Wintel markets. This will motivate retailers to seek other solutions. Better GNU/Linux on those retail shelves than a product that’s not selling… Last Christmas was a wake-up call for retailers. GNU/Linux sold well, and “8.1” did not. Q1 of 2015 showed huge increases in usage of GNU/Linux according to web-stats. When school resumes in the north, I expect more increases. Then, what worked last Christmas will work again. 2015 will be the last year we see reluctance on the part of retailers to sell GNU/Linux. They’ve seen what Android/Linux has done. They will be ready to give GNU/Linux a try on the desktops. The OEMs are OK with whatever ships because the lock-in to M$ is gone. US DOJ v M$ and EU v M$ fixed that.

• Applications

  • Calibre Gets Support for the Crazy Expensive and Fun SONY DPT-S1

    The Calibre eBook reader, editor, and library management software, has been updated to version 2.33. It’s one of the smallest updates, and it’s just here to bring support for an important new device and deliver a few small changes.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How To Setup Ansible In Ubuntu 15.04

    • Why has the libguestfs appliance grown by 281 MB?

    • Speed Up WordPress Using Redis And Varnish On Ubuntu

    • Introducing flask-multistatic

    • Putting openSUSE Docker Images on a Diet

  • Games

    • Terraria Now In Open Mac And Linux Beta

      Since this is an open beta, the game doesn’t yet have SteamOS icons or Linux+SteamOS system requirements on the store page. If you own the game (or decide to buy it now), you need to right-click the game on Steam and go to Properties->Betas and select the beta from there. I personally haven’t tried the beta but I’ve heard from a couple of people that it’s working fine.

    • Terraria Comes To Linux Tomorrow The 23rd Of July In Beta

      The Terraria developers have confirmed the Linux version will launch tomorrow in open beta, I can’t wait.

    • Luckslinger, A Fusion Of Hip-hop & Platforming Now On Linux, Some Thoughts

      I briefly mentioned Luckslinger back in March, and now this odd mix is actually out on Linux, so what’s it really like?

    • Gnomoria, A Sandbox Village Management Game Released For Linux, Some Initial Thoughts

      I’ve spoken with the Gnomoria developer a few times over the past couple years, and I’m pleased to say the Gnomoria Linux version is now live!

    • Humble Weekly Bundle: Simulators 4 Brings Three Games with Linux Support

      A new collection of games called Humble Weekly Bundle: Simulators 4 has been made available and some of the titles game Linux support.

    • Team Fortress 2 Gets New Event Medals and Lots of Fixes

      A fresh update has been released for the famous online multiplayer shooter from Valve Team Fortress 2, and a bunch of balancing changes have been made to the game.

    • Gauntlet Linux Development Canceled in Favor of Windows Version

      Gauntlet is a co-op action title developed by Arrowhead Game Studios and published on Steam by Warner Bros. The studio has just announced that it’s dropping the SteamOS version in order to focus on Windows version.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • GUADEC presentation preview: compiling GNOME apps with the Meson build system

      If you talk with software developers, sooner or later the topic drifts to tools. The most obvious one is the editor. People really love their editors and are happy to talk about the wonderful features they have and how they increase productivity. The second tool is the compiler, which also receive a lot of praise. The compilers we have today are massively better, faster and more powerful than ones from just 10 years ago. And then there’s the build systems, which are, well…

• Distributions

  • Ballnux/SUSE

    • openSUSE releases first milestone for Leap

      Leap1The newest openSUSE release Leap 42.1, which is based on core SUSE Linux Enterprise source code, has just released its first development milestone.

    • openSUSE Leap 42.1 Is Based on SUSE Linux Enterprise, Milestone 1 Ready for Testing

      We reported the other day that the openSUSE Project had plans on publishing the first development milestone of their anticipated openSUSE Leap 42.1 operating system, which promises to change the openSUSE Linux distribution as we know it.

  • Red Hat Family

    • RHEL 6.7 upgrades LibreOffice from 4.0.4.2 to 4.2.8.2

    • Red Hat focused firmly on security & stability in RHEL 6.7 release

      RHEL users might be disappointed that there are no major new features in the latest edition. Instead, the focus has been on security and stability, with the arrival of a new read-only mounting option for removable media, epitomizing that focus.

    • 5 Stories We Didn’t Get to Cover, Week Ending July 24

      1. Red Hat Launches Linux Enterprise 6 – Open source solutions provider Red Hat (RHT) announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.7 this week. The latest version of the company’s Linux 6 platform is designed to help enterprise users increase their system security and speed up the identification and resolution of IT issues, according to the company.

    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.7 released

    • Fedora

      • PHP version 5.6.12RC1

      • New “remi-php70″ repository

      • Cutegram for Fedora 22, Rawhide and EPEL 7

        Few days ago there was an article on Fedora magazine by Jiri Eischmann explaining the current situation of Telegram clients on Fedora.

      • Fedora 22: Fresh Install Script (Ongoing Development)

        It’s a simple bash script and is free to modify and do what you want with.

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu Touch Transforms into a PC with Just a Bluetooth Mouse – Video

          Canonical has been talking about convergence for a long time, and we’ve had some examples along the way, like apps that work both on mobile and PC desktops. It’s now possible to observe convergence at a much deeper level, for the entire operating system.

        • Ubuntu Phone review: years in the making, but still not consumer-ready

          The smartphone arena is dominated by two operating systems. Gartner’s latest figures show that during the first three months of 2015, iOS and Android devices accounted for almost 97 percent of global smartphone sales. With established alternatives from Microsoft and BlackBerry already fighting for the leftovers, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of opportunity for new players. Canonical, maker of the popular Linux distro Ubuntu, is taking on the challenge regardless. With a version of Ubuntu built specifically for mobile, it’s hoping to shake up the current duopoly with a fresh approach to content consumption. That’s the plan, anyway, but after spending some time getting to know the OS, it’s clear Canonical has a lot of work to do if Ubuntu Phone is ever going to be a viable option for even casual smartphone users.

        • NBD Vulnerabilities Fixed in All Supported Ubuntu OSes

          Details about NBD vulnerabilities that have been found and fixed in Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS have now been published by Canonical in a security notification.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • Android

      • Why Android Auto may not be worth the wait (yet)

        Limited apps and software, combined with a mediocre messaging experience shows that Google still has some work to do with Android Auto.

      • Meet the app that fans are calling ‘the best thing that ever happened to Android’

        We’ve written about the Nova Launcher Android app before but this in-depth review from Android Central made us want to plug it all over again. For those of you who don’t know, launchers in general are like Facebook Home but 1,000 times less terrible — they take over your phone’s main home screen and make some great improvements to the design while also giving you added customization options. Android diehards have long had high praise for Nova Launcher, which just seems to get better and better with each new release.

      • Top rookie Android developer mistakes

        Android is a fantastic platform to develop for. Its development tools are free, easy to come by, and available for Windows, MAC and Linux computers. Android has excellent developer documentation, it is the dominant mobile operating system, and it is available on phones, tablets, watches, TVs and cars. Developing and publishing an Android app is also incredibly easy and straight forward, considering that there are multiple Android app stores available, unlike the single app store for iOS and Windows.

      • ​Sony testing ‘stripped back, vanilla’ Android with Swedish Xperia users

        Sony is considering launching a pared-down version of Android 5.1 Lollipop, and is testing the concept in Sweden first.

      • Sony is testing a ‘stripped back’ version of Android

      • WhatsApp for Android gets custom notifications, low-data mode for voice calls

        The WhatsApp Android app recently went through a succession of no less than five updates as the developers brought forward several new features. The fifth and most recent update to WhatsApp for Android bears version number v2.12.194.

      • Jet.com, Along With Android App, Launches To Become Your Internet Shopping Destination And We Have A Code For A Free Year Of Membership

      • Pebble Time gets backlight, font, and vibration settings, updated Android app

      • Hacking Team had RATted on Android: Trend Micro

      • Line Launches Lightweight Version Of Its Chat App For Emerging Market Android Phones

      • Nexus 7 Android M Update: 5 Important Details

      • Honda Touts Silicon Valley Chops, Debuts 2016 Accord With CarPlay and Android Auto

      • You can now watch vertical videos in full screen on YouTube’s Android app

      • Oracle tries to beef up copyright case against Android

        With Oracle and Google headed back to court soon to resume their dispute over Android, Oracle is seeking to update its lawsuit to reflect the huge gains Android has made in the five years since the case began.

      • Android rocks out with a new Marshall smartphone for music lovers

        Android and guitar amp juggernaut Marshall have teamed up to create what might be the greatest sounding smartphone ever. Jack Wallen gives you the scoop.

Free Software/Open Source

• IFTTT just open sourced some really useful mobile app frameworks

  IFTTT, a service that triggers actions between your favorite apps, launched its own suite of productivity tools this year. It’s now open sourced five frameworks for mobile developers, which were used to build the company’s Do range of apps.

• Creating The Open-Source Community Of Your Dreams

  When a company decides to embrace open-source software development, releasing the code under a suitable license is only the tip of the iceberg. The real challenge that companies face is learning how to attract and collaborate with contributors.

• 7 books every community manager should read

• The Appeal Of Open Source And The Opportunities For VARS

  Another advantage is increased innovation. By allowing anyone to contribute code, open source products can incorporate a greater diversity of use cases. That’s not the only facet though. As the saying goes, no matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for other companies. Open source permits — and encourages — leveraging of the collective knowledge of the larger developer base. In turn, this enables access to greater innovation.

• Capital One launches Hygieia open source DevOps dashboard

  Announcing that the company has taken another step toward establishing its “geek cred,” Capital One unveiled Hygieia, an open source DevOps dashboard at the Oscon open source conference this week. With Hygieia’s release, Capital One said it is the first large bank to release an open source software product to the world, and the company promises additional open source products are in the pipeline.

• A quiz to gauge your commitment to open source

  At OSCON this year, Jared Smith of Bluehost spoke about how our companies can become good open source citizens. At ByWater Solutions, my job involves engaging in community outreach and getting everyone more involved, so this was a great session for me to attend.

• IBM to Open Source 50 Projects

  IBM has announced a new web portal called developerWorks Open, bringing together various projects they are open sourcing. The projects cover many domains including Analytics, Cloud, IoT, Mobile, Security, Social, Watson and others. So far, IBM has open sourced about 30 projects, and they plan to increase the number up to 50 by the end of the year, and others may come in the future.

• IBM unveils developer friendly open source cloud projects

• IBM reveals open source platform as developers flood Portland conference

• Meet Speed Bumps, our newest open source release

  It’s the summer of open source at Fusion. Maybe you saw Publishing Checklist, which we released in June, or Shortcake Bakery (our Shortcake add-on), which we released just last week. Today we’re putting another major plugin into the fray: Speed Bumps, a tool to intelligently insert speed bumps into site content.

• Events

  • Video: Why architecture matters in open source

    What, exactly, is architecture as opposed to plain old software development? And why does architecture matter? In his keynote address at the OSCON conference this week, as seen below, author Martin Fowler took on these two questions and was able to deliver surprisingly detailed answers, given his scant 15-minute time limit.

  • Cloud Native Computing Foundation, space listening, and more open source news

  • The Implications of Cloud Native

    Two months ago, “Cloud Native” was something of a new term, adopted most visibly by the Cloud Foundry project; a term both aspirational and unburdened by legacy at the same time. As of this week at OSCON, it’s a statement, borderline manifesto. As if it wasn’t enough that Google and a host of others adopted the term as well, it now has its own open source foundation – the imaginatively titled Cloud Native Computing Foundation. In the wake of its relatively sudden emergence, the obvious questions are first what is cloud native, and second what does it mean for the industry?

• SaaS/Big Data

  • Intel with Rackspace: ‘Cloud for All’ developers, developers, OpenStack developers

  • Intel and Rackspace Team To Speed Enterprise Adoption of OpenStack

  • Rackspace, Intel to coordinate ‘world’s largest OpenStack dev team’

  • Fanatical elasticity: ObjectRocket by Rackspace adds managed Elasticsearch

    The company known for its ‘fanatical’ approach to managed cloud services support, Rackspace, has added managed Elasticsearch technology to its cadre.

    More specifically, Rackspace’s managed database platform ObjectRocket is expanding its database service portfolio to include fully-managed instances of Elasticsearch.

  • OpenStack Summit Tokyo 2015: Vote for Presentations

  • A Full Menu of OpenStack Choices

    Most major vendors have an open source cloud solution. But they take very different approaches, so you need to be a picky eater and find the right restaurant.

• Business

  • Industry Consortium Launches DMN Open Source Project OneDecision.io

    An open industry initiative was formed to promote the Decision Model & Notation (DMN) standard, by providing an open source reference implementation for automatic execution of DMN models. The OneDecision.io project is supported by Signavio, Alfresco, Omny Link and Bruce Silver Associates.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • GNUnet News: IETF getting cold feed about P2P Names?

    With broad support from the P2P community, we have been trying for a while to follow RFC 6761 to register special use domain names for “.bit”, “.exit”, “.gnu”, “.i2p”, “.onion” and “.zkey” to reduce the likelihood of ICANN accidentally creating a conflicting gTLD assignment.

• Project Releases

  • ReadableStream almost ready

    First remarkable thing is that I attended the WebKit Contributors Meeting that happened in March at Apple campus in Cupertino as part of the Igalia gang. There we discussed of course about Streams API, its state and different implementation possibilities. Another very interesting point which would make me very happy would be the movement of Mac to CMake.

  • PeaZip 5.7.0 released

• Public Services/Government

  • Shropshire council to share Intranet starter kit

    The imminent release of the Intranet starter kit was announced by Dale Shepherd. The Digital Services Manager at Shropshire Council was one of the speakers at the Open Source Conference that took place in London on 7 July.

  • France publishes its first Action Plan

    France has published its first Open Government National Action Plan which details 26 commitments to promote “a transparent and collaborative public action”.

• Openness/Sharing

  • Wikimania 2015 – random thoughts and observations

  • Philly’s Open Source project opens with massive mural by French artist JR

    The idea to create a service that anyone can use to his or her own end made him attractive to the Philadelphia Open Source project.

  • Jewelbots open source wearable teaches girls to code

Leftovers

• Security

  • libuser vulnerabilities

    It was discovered that the libuser library contains two vulnerabilities which, in combination, allow unprivileged local users to gain root privileges. libuser is a library that provides read and write access to files like /etc/passwd, which constitute the system user and group database. On Red Hat Enterprise Linux it is a central system component.

  • Thursday’s security updates

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Human rights for cats and dogs: Spanish town council votes overwhelmingly in favour of defining pets as ‘non-human residents’

    If the Magna Carta marked the birth of human rights, today we may have reached its apotheosis. In Spain, or at least in one Spanish town, politicians have just voted overwhelmingly in favour of creating what are effectively human rights for dogs and cats.

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • NPR Ombud Responds on FAIR Commentary Study – ‘Somewhat arbitrary,’ though pretty much ‘what NPR already knows’

    National Public Radio ombud Elizabeth Jensen (NPR.org, 7/22/15) responds to FAIR’s study of NPR commentary, saying, “I find the specific numbers in the study somewhat arbitrary, even though the broad sweep of its conclusions pretty much echo what NPR already knows.”

  • Brendan Fischer on Wisconsin Campaign Corruption, Lee Fang on Eric Holder’s Revolving Door

    This week on CounterSpin, a sort of theme show on how media cover government corruption disguised as business as usual. First up: A Wisconsin court has just handed Gov. Scott Walker a “big victory,” headlines in the Washington Post and elsewhere declared. One might’ve hoped they’d lead with what the ruling–about Walker’s abuse of campaign finance rules–did for democracy and the public’s right to know who’s paying what to whom in public office. We’ll talk with Brendan Fischer, general counsel at the Center for Media and Democracy, about what just happened in Wisconsin.

• Censorship

  • Challenging Censorship Internationally

• Privacy

  • Shame on France: French Constitutional Council Widely Approves Surveillance Law!

    By validating almost all surveillance measures provided in the Surveillance Law adopted on 25 June, the French Constitutional Council legalises mass surveillance and endorses a historical decline in fundamental rights. Algorithmic black boxes have been approved. Only international surveillance has been deemed to be non compliant to the Constitution.

  • Stop the Snoopers’ Charter bouncing back!

• Civil Rights

  • Hulk Hogan apologises for using ‘offensive language’ after WWE sacking amid racial slur claims

    “Eight years ago I used offensive language during a conversation,” Hogan’s statement said. “It was unacceptable for me to have used that offensive language; there is no excuse for it; and I apologise for having done it.”

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Copyright reform through competition law? The Commission’s statement of objections in the pay TV investigation

      The IPKat is delighted to host an extremely thoughtful contribution by competition law scholar and fellow blogger (Chillin’ Competition) Pablo Ibanez-Colomo (London School of Economics) on some key developments occurred yesterday.