● 03.02.09

● Links 02/03/2009: New GNU/Linux Releases and Android Threat to Windows

Posted in News Roundup at 8:34 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• PCWorld announces new blog: LinuxLink. Wow, it’s only taken PCWorld a mere 10 years to come up with this fantastic brainchild. I’m impressed. There’s nothing quite like being on the leading edge of technological advances like Linux. I hope their rapid move in this obtuse new direction doesn’t singe their nose hairs or scare off readers.

• Although he ignores openGL as an alternative to Direct3D it does not make his point void. EA have numerous products that are heavily invested in DirectX, porting those products to OpenGL wouldn’t be of significant benefit in their eyes. One should also recognise the fact that most games are built upon old code, so in most cases you’re starting with a DirectX code base from a previous game.

• As we shared would be coming soon, LM_Sensors 3.1.0 was just released by Jean Delvare. This significant update to the LM_Sensors 3 code-base has a significantly reworked sensors-detect utility, various improvements to the LM_Sensors library (libsensors), a new /etc/sysconfig/lm_sensors format, and a new default sensors.conf configuration file.

K Desktop Environment

• The part of getting the data from server, protocol differences, local storage and caching is taken care of by the Akonadi framework.

• Spezialized Akonadi clients, called resources, will take care of transferring data from servers and local storage. The Akonadi service will take care of caching and uniquely identifying data items and their core properties such as MIME type.

Distributions

• As expected all devices are detected. Slackware is fast and responsive. Boots to command line – boy does that take me back… Fortunately I haven’t forgotten how to type “startx”.

New Releases

• It includes many new and updated features. We switched the base system to Ubuntu 8.10 including Kernel 2.6.27 and Xorg 7.4.

Red Hat

• Congratulations to the programmers at Red Hat/Fedora.

• I’ve been using Ubuntu at work, still, but Fedora is an excellent alternative. Thus far, I can recommend it.

• Clint Savage, West Regional Ambassador for North America, joined the FedoraProject.org, gave a talk at SCALE this year on how to spin your own custom version of Fedora and create a livecd or bootable USB image using open source tools.

• Here is an excerpt from the original abstract from Clint’s SCALE Speaker Web Page:

• Fedora offers a complete set of tools for generating your own customized distribution. The output format can be installable CDs or DVDs, or Live images suitable for CD/DVD or USB keys. These tools allow sub-communities to consume and contribute to FOSS using a platform that is geared toward their specific needs.

Ubuntu

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #131 for the week February 22nd – February 28th, 2009. In this issue we cover: Jaunty Alpha 5 Released, Needed: Countdown to Jaunty Banners, Ubuntu Global Bug Jam Success, Voting for New MOTU Council seats, Ubuntu Server: Call for testing, Next Ubuntu Hug Day, Developer News: Issue #2, LoCo Team Meeting, Philadelphia Bug Jam, Chicago Bug Jam, Arizona team has new website, Launchpad Performance Week Roundup, Launchpad 2.2.2 released, Meet the Devs, Ubuntu podcast #20, Full Circle Magazine #22, UK government backs open source, Random Ubuntu Sightings, Feburary Team Meeting Summaries, Team of the Week(Ubuntu New Mexico), and much much more!

• I have a few quibbles, but that’s really all they are. For example, this Ubuntu comes with OpenOffice 2.4, instead of the newer and faster OpenOffice 3.0. I can live with that though. It’s still more than fast enough on this portable powerhouse.

• Oh and the best part? All of this computing goodness came to me with a $289 price-tag. Now, this, this is my kind of computer.

• So the rating is going to be high for this great OS: 4/5. It has a great GUI, great speed, and great applications that it has picked has worked out to be an advantage for this OS.

Devices/Embedded

Sub-notebooks

• But now, online news sites are talking about the possibility of a Google Netbook mini-computer that runs on the Android operating system. Would this be a big threat to Microsoft — or Apple — or any company using Linux on small computers?

• Microsoft’s announcement last month of relatively poor financial performance, together with news of the first job cuts in its 34-year history has added to the gloom already felt on Wall Street.

• Also watch out for operating systems. Linux is the free operating system that can be found on the cheapest models.

• Microsoft got things seriously wrong when it released Vista and the company knows it. In the past, the absolute market dominance of Windows on the desktop has allowed Redmond to get away with such mistakes. That may no longer be the case now that Google has entered the operating system market with its Linux-based Android platform.

• GNOME is highly customizable and can be tweaked to suit every user’s needs. That’s why I think its versatility makes it a perfect desktop environment for Linux netbooks.

• Since netbook displays are small, desktop space should not be wasted. I have here some tips that I hope you will find useful on how you can optimize GNOME for your netbook’s diminutive desktop area.

Audio

• ZFS, the Sun Microsystems-created file system providing simple administration, transactional semantics, end-to-end data integrity, and significant scalability.

Free Software/Open Source

• Online shopping is the activity that consumers engage in when purchasing products or services over the internet. This activity has many distinct advantages over ‘traditional shopping’ for both consumers and the businesses.

• This year for the first time they have an open source sub-conference hiding pretty much unadvertised inside the event and I’ll be speaking there on Wednesday March 4th at 3:15pm. I’ll also be presenting one of the open source awards on March 5th in the evening.

• Up 9% Year-Over-Year Media Revenue Increase 4% — E-Commerce Revenue Increase 10%

• MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA, Feb 26, 2009 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) — SourceForge, Inc. (NASDAQ: LNUX), the leader in IT community-driven media and e-commerce, today announced financial results for its second quarter of fiscal 2009, which ended January 31, 2009.

Leftovers

• Tomorrow marks the first ever British Convention on Modern Liberty, co-sponsored by The Guardian, OpenDemocracy, and Liberty. It’s a daylong, nationwide forum on the erosion of liberty, privacy and civil rights in Britain. Boing Boing is a proud sponsor of the event, and I’ll be speaking at the closing plenary with Billy Bragg tomorrow afternoon in London.

Censorship

• David sez, “On a decentralized network it’s much harder to map blockages than to create them. Herdict.org takes a crowdsourcing approach. Install the add-on and click the button when you encounter a site that’s down…”

Copyrights

• Opposing the stubborn and ridiculous will of the French governement to disconnect whole families from the Internet without real proof or trial, La Quadrature du Net issues a call to all freedom-cherishing citizens to a “black-out” of their sites, blogs, profiles, avatars,… As has been done in New Zealand, the only other country with France where the “graduated response” would have been imposed by law, and was finally pushed back: to protest against this stupid law and its “white list” of authorized websites, the French Web must act and dress in black.

• An internet hosting company has published a copy of the nasty-gram Ireland’s music industry lawyers bulk-mailed to that country’s internet service providers, demanding they begin blocking access to any website accused of piracy or else.

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