● 02.15.09

● Links 15/02/2009: Debian 5.0 is Out; Canada Explores Free Software

Posted in News Roundup at 4:53 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzGNU/Linux

• Not only is TuxRadar reporting that Linux Format magazine sales are up 13.3% over the last year, but I also find that my local book stores shelves appear to have much more Linux reference books on the shelves as well.

• Video de demostración de la distribución de Linux cubana, Nova en su primera versión.

• The free Linux operating system doesn’t reveal its charms easily, but charms it has. You just have to know how to make the software work for you.

• That will become easier next weekend for those in the Los Angeles area, which plays host to the annual Southern California Linux Expo at the LAX Westin hotel.

• I have an announcement. The error of Microsoft’s ways is finally catching up and will cause the once-invincible juggernaut to kneel before that which is Linux. How is this? Microsoft started a tiny snowball when it released Windows Me. That snowball did nothing but gain momentum. There have been ups and downs along the way (XP being an up, for sure). But for the most part, the court of public opinion has steady lost faith in what once was considered the heart of personal computing.

• [...]

• 2: Consistent Linux releases

• Converse to number 1, you have the far more consistent releases of the various Linux distributions. Yes, there have been a few dips along the way (Fedora 9 being one of them). But for the most part, the climb for Linux has been steadily upward. Nearly every Linux distribution has improved with age. And this improvement isn’t limited to the kernel. Look at how desktops, end-user software, servers, security, admin tools, etc., have all improved over time. Once could easily argue that KDE 4 is an example of a sharp decrease in improvement. However, if you look at how quickly KDE 4 has improved from 4.0 to 4.3 you can see nothing but gains. This holds true with applications and systems across the board with Linux.

• I’ve been working on a project to outfit schools with ‘spray and wipe’ versions of live educational USB-key Linux distros for netbooks, for quite a while; I’ll write about this work on here sometime.

• I was therefore interested to hear about another project, with similar aims, being run by one of my colleagues here at work. While his team’s efforts aren’t education-industry specific, they are very applicable within that context.

• So it was then when I decided – I’m going for Gentoo Linux and NO Windows. I choose Gentoo because of its excellent package management system and the hopeful chance that I may be able to squeeze a few more clock cycles due to the fact that everything is compiled (read optimized) from source. And the learning curve? – well its not that bad.

Wine

• The Wine development release 1.1.15 is now available.

• What’s new in this release (see below for details): – Gecko engine update. – Better region support in GdiPlus. – Support for cross-compilation in winegcc. – Beginnings of MS Text Framework support. – Many fixes to the regression tests on Windows. – Various bug fixes.

• WorksWithU: Anything else you’d like to mention?

• Ritchie: Yes, code analysis tools. Wine’s benefited quite a bit from the static tools (Coverity and Smatch), which run free scans of Wine as a form of marketing. Valgrind is the most interesting however – There’s been work to slowly clear up all the valgrind warnings that Wine itself is generating. Once those are clear, you could in principle build/run a Windows application with Winelib and Valgrind and use it to find errors that wouldn’t be possible to find on Windows itself.

• Which, once word gets out, means we very well may see Windows developers testing with Winelib relatively early in the process even if their target platform is Windows — the Winelib/Linux port just sort of happens as a nice side effect – since valgrind is Linux only.

Applications

• A major complaint about Google’s Chrome web browser has been that so far, it is still not available on anything other than Windows. Google promised to deliver Chrome to Mac OS X and Linux as well, but as it turns out, this is a little harder than they anticipated, Ben Goodger, Google’s Chrome interface lead, has explained in an email. It has also been revealed what toolkit the Linux version of Chrome will use: Gtk+.

• While there are many Windows-based blog editors around, there are only a handful that Linux users can use on their desktop.

• If you are like me – a native Linux user and a seasoned blogger – here are 6 free blogging clients for Linux users.

• For Christmas, Danielle bought me a piece called Starstronaut(s) by local artist Mark Alan Miller. We had gone to an art show one Friday night in December, and the piece had caught my eye, but I left as I always do with the phrase, “I’ll think about it”. Knowing how I work, Danielle went back and bought it for me.

Games

• To get Games for Linux (no TM yet) we need to reach a tipping point, either on the side of Gamers which will convince the Publishers that there is a market, or on the side of Publishers which will allow enough gamers to try the OS out without much gaming withdrawal. Lets hope that the results for the WoG experiment will be another small push towards that point.

• The Linux version of World of Goo is finally ready for download! It’s available exclusively from our site, in three different packages depending on what your computer likes. (tar.gz, deb, rpm)

• We now get the chance to do what we say we are going to do. It’s been coming for a long time…now it’s here. The “big boys” won’t give us games…the little guys will. It’s time to say thank you.

Kernel Space

• What’s interesting is Wilcox touches on the circumstances that led the Linux kernel to become what it is in a rather passing manner. Linus Torvalds developed the Linux kernel in 1991, and then licensed it under the GPL. The concept and spirit of the license were spawned in the mid-80s, when Richard M. Stallman left MIT to pursue the GNU Project and ultimately form the Free Software Foundation. Without an open license of some variety, would the Linux kernel have gotten the foothold it did? Would it have seen the light of day? And more relevant to the “unlucky” discussion — would open source software be an unlucky break for Microsoft if the Linux kernel had never been created?

• All the rest is pretty much a collection of trivial small fixes. Yes, there’s a Intel SVDO update that shows up in diffstat, but the rest really is pretty tiny.

• All of the recordings from the X.Org meetings that took place during FOSDEM 2009 are now available on Phoronix. There were nine topics in total from RandR 1.3 to shader compiler optimization strategies.

• Jean Delvare of the LM_Sensors project has announced that a new release of this open-source system monitoring program will be coming soon. LM_Sensors 3.0.3 arrived nearly a half-year ago, but given the number of changes since then, the next release will be LM_Sensors 3.1.0.

Desktop Environments/Window Managers

• Google’s Summer of Code (SoC) Program has united students interested in open source with projects and mentors for several years now. The intiative’s goal is to foster interest in open source software while exposing students to “real-world” software development processes. It’s easy to see, based on how enthusiastically some projects embrace the annual event, that the students aren’t the only ones who benefit from the program.

• If you’ve never used Window Maker on your Linux desktop, you’re missing out. I’ve dabbled in nearly every window manager/desktop environment out there, and while all have their pros and cons, I always go back to Window Maker.

Distributions

• Linux lovers rejoice — you’ll also be getting a present this Valentine’s Day in the form of the Debian Lenny release.

• Lenny, named after a character in the Disney/Pixar film “Toy Story,” marks the first major Debian release since Etch in April 2007.

• It’s an important milestone for the distro, which is the basis of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution and competes in the broader Linux ecosystem against Red Hat and Novell SUSE, among others. In 2008, Debian celebrated its 15th anniversary as it continues to remain a relevant community-based Linux distribution.

• If you’ve read the latest Softpedia Linux Weekly you probably remember the video clip of the week showing a lot of awesome desktop effects. Wait, don’t leave just yet. I know you’re sick of all those Compiz Fusion praising videos that are everywhere on the Internet but this time it’s a little different. We’re talking about a distribution and its desktop environment that didn’t cross ways with Compiz. Until now. Yep, there is a special Elive E17 bundled with all the good 3D stuff. Knowing Elive’s reputation of being one of the most beautiful and stylish distributions out there, what can really go wrong if you combine two of Linux’s most valuable eye-candy providers?

• After watching that video, we decided to put it to the test on one of our machines to see if all that buzz around it was really worth it. For more fun, the test PC was sort of a prehistoric one with 512 MB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 (yeah…). Well, it wasn’t just for fun, but it was also a very good way to evaluate Elive’s performance under such extreme conditions.

Mandriva

• Delayed two days, Mandriva announced last night (February 12th) the beta version of the upcoming Mandriva Linux 2009.1 (Spring) distribution. This beta release brings a Live CD, for anyone who wants to test it without installing it, and some of the hottest Linux technologies, such as: Linux kernel 2.6.28, X.org Server 1.5.99.902, KDE 4.2, GNOME 2.26 Beta, XFCE 4.6 Beta 3, OpenOffice.Org 3.0.1, LXDE, Python 2.6.1 and above all that, support for the EXT4 filesystem, in the installer.

• Kickstarting what promises to be a busy couple of months for Linux releases, the Mandriva team has announced the beta release of its Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring edition. Codenamed Margaux, the beta version takes the first steps towards speedier boot times with part one of its Speedboot project which users can enable t to test out its progress.

Red Hat

• As businesses try to bounce back from the downturn in the economy, open source may be an even more attractive alternative. What do you think? Is Red Hat’s $500 million a true achievement, or is it just an attempt to give credence to open source

• In January, a whole slew of Red Hat engineers and Fedora Project volunteers got together at the Fedora Users and Developers Conference (FUDCon) to collaborate on features for Fedora 11, setting team objectives, and other initiatives. Contributors including QA experts, marketing gurus, community managers, and our friends from the One Laptop Per Child project all came together. They presented new ideas at technical talks, worked on tasks, and most of all had fun in the brilliant, vibrant atmosphere that defines Fedora. If you weren’t able to make it, here’s a chance for you to see what you missed. Get a taste for how FUDCon works and the excitement it generates for everyone in the community.

• If you’re not involved in Fedora already, you might not know that we have four foundations that guide what we do: Freedom, friends, features, first. If you look at what they mean you’ll see that these four foundations are the core values for our community — the beliefs that guide our actions and how we work with the FOSS community.

Devices/Embedded

• Linux can also help these publications in the server department, on desktops, PDA’s, mobile devices, cameras, and a wide range of other things. It’ll be everywhere, helping them to adapt to this new market and make the move into the 21st century of technology.

• With all these wonderful Linux powered devices standing by to help them, it’s now up to the companies to do the right thing and make the switch. But when and if they do it is another matter entirely. Then again, if they don’t, they’ll only have themselves to blame for their failure.

• Taiwanese network-appliance integrator AR Infotek has announced a Linux-ready network security appliance with a cryptographic security engine. Based on an Intel Pentium M EP80579 (“Tolapai”) SoC clocked up to 1.2GHz, the Teak 3020 sports four gigabit Ethernet ports and dual USB ports.

Phones

• Esmertec, a Swiss firm specializing in Android and Java virtual machines, is acquiring Purple Labs, a French vendor of mobile stacks compatible with the LiMo Platform. In a stock deal worth about 19.7 million shares, the two European companies will be renamed as “Myriad Group AG.”

Sub-notebooks

• I now have the HP Mini Mi for about a week. What’s so interesting about it is that HP made it really easy for people to use Linux by providing a very cool homescreen and the main tools people use.

• Netbooks are hot sellers. For years we’ve been charged exorbitant amounts of money for laptops with far less computing power than similarly priced desktop computers, so the idea that you can pay less for something that does less — especially in the currently less than stellar economy — has put the spotlight on netbooks.

UNIX

• On the other hand, an operating system is a reflection of the values, personality, and ultimately, the psyche of the designer. And if I’m going to have to settle for a reflection, is it too much to ask it be a nice, warm, sympathetic psyche in the glass? One that will enjoy walks on the beach and dinners by candlelight as much as I do? Is it wrong to want more out of a relationship in which so much of my time is spent? Isn’t it okay to want to feel just a little more fulfilled? I have so much to give… Must I throw my love away?

• Anyway, this is wandering away from PC-BSD and into KDE 4.1.3 review territory, because it comes down to this: PC-BSD delivers a KDE4 experience very close to what the KDE project itself produces as source. It’s nice. I like it that way.

Free Software/Open Source

• The Office-era of ICT teaching is for me a metaphor for what is wrong with education. Spoon fed training of incomprehending children for a future that is nowhere near as fixed as they have been lead to believe.

• As of late this evening, Sun will have shipped its 100,000,000th JavaFX runtime. Congratulations, folks! From a standing start in early December last year, JavaFX’s download rate makes it the fastest growing RIA platform on the market – demonstrating the fastest adoption of any product Sun has ever shipped.

• Google released the resulting dictionary entries under the three open-source licenses that Hunspell uses: the GNU General Public License and Lesser General Public License and the Mozilla Public License. Google added new words for 19 languages into the latest developer preview version of Chrome, 2.0.160.0.

Business

• IBM has continued to support Linux and other open source efforts ever since.

• Indeed, in the last year alone, IBM made a number of contributions to the open source universe, and other well-established enterprises have followed suit.

Government

• Federal government puts out a call for information on free software

• [...]

• Some examples of popular open-source software include the Linux operating system, the word processing suite OpenOffice and the web browser Mozilla Firefox.

Leftovers

• Participatory regulation is arguably the best way to surface and defeat corruption in government and industry. I’ve highlighted a range of impressive efforts below. They range from Transparency International’s more top-down survey and index approach to the bottom-up Wikileaks site where anybody can post documents that uncover instances of corruption.

• Despite getting plenty of attention for its Superbowl ad that felt more like a late-night-TV cable ad, Cash4Gold hasn’t really been having a very good month. The company was caught when a representative (the company claims he was “acting independently”) offered cash to a blogger if he would take down a negative review.

• The EFF, in its continuing effort to push back on bogus DMCA takedown notices has successfully convinced the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association to settle a lawsuit that the EFF filed on behalf of some animal rights activists. They had been attending rodeos and filming things they believed represented cruelty towards the animals — and then posting those videos on YouTube.

• Jailbreaking an iPhone constitutes copyright infringement and a DMCA violation, says Apple in comments filed with the Copyright Office as part of the 2009 DMCA triennial rulemaking. This marks the first formal public statement by Apple about its legal stance on iPhone jailbreaking.

• The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed requests with the US Copyright Office to exempt activities from legal threats under the DMCA, one of which attacks Apple’s secured software business model on the iPhone.

• Forbes, BusinessWeek, The New York Times, Mens Health, you name it. The big guys think that just because they entered in the game early, or because they have some popular print publication backing them up, they can get away with whatever they want.

• There is a long list of ways in which the rules set by the government determine economic outcomes. While these rules have an enormous impact on the economy, they do not amount to “big government” in the sense of a large amount of taxes and spending.

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