● 04.03.09

● Links 03/04/2009: ASUS Linux Phones, More Free Software in Russia

Posted in News Roundup at 8:22 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• “The principals of diversity in the desktop space are well established,” Shuttleworth told InternetNews.com. “The benefits to consumers and industry of having an alternative are very substantial. Any change in the status quo is an opportunity.”

• I would suggest you to shift to linux ASAP. More update on my Linux experience soon.

• This time on the show: Last.fm, Microsoft and the German state FAIL miserably, Linux router worm, an ATI rant and Dan reviews Arch Linux.

Applications

• This is an overview of 5 most popular applications for ripping DVDs in Linux: dvd::rip, K9Copy, AcidRip, thoggen and HandBrake.

KDE

• We have a number of new Plasma components lining up to make it into 4.3. Not least among them is a geolocation DataEngine, making it absolutely trivial for anything Plasma to get at the information either via a GPS device or by looking up the location of your network address if you are online. Along with a handful of new widgets, some I’ve already written about recently, we also have no less than six new wallpaper plugins that may make it into 4.3!

• To the entire KDE community, great job on the 4.2.2 release today. Everything upgraded smoothly, KMail seems to be syncing faster now with GMail in dIMAP. Once again thank you and congratulations on a job well done!

GNOME

• With Gnome 2.26 safely out the door the Gnome development team is now planning for Gnome 3.0, a release it expects to make in March next year. Responding to growing criticism that the Gnome project lacks vision the team says that the 3.0 milestone release will have to have “big user-visible changes”.

• “If you look closely at our community, it’d be wrong to say that people are lacking a vision; but the project as a whole does indeed have this issue,” the team said in its public posting. With this in mind the team is looking at a release that will both streamline the desktop as well as revamp the overall user experience by giving users new ways of interacting with their desktop and managing files.

• A roadmap for the immediate future of GNOME desktop has been published on the GNOME Live site. The roadmap charts the planned progress of the Linux and Unix desktop from its recently released 2.26 version and the 2.26.1 update due in April, through a GNOME 2.28.0 release in September to a GNOME 2.30.0, which will be renumbered as 3.0.0 when released in March 2010.

Distributions

• MoonOS is one of those elegant distros, where it focuses a lot on eyecandy and looking good. And it definitely has a lot of good things to look at. Sorta like something that comes by and catches your eye in a way that nothing else can. But good looks don’t mean that what’s underneath is all that great. But sometimes the good looks are only the beginning of the greatness hidden beneath that flashy exterior. So which is it for MoonOS? Let’s find out.

• When someone asks you to name a small Linux distro, under 100MB, names like Puppy and Damn Small Linux come to mind. Now, the featherweight category has another candidate, a 25MB fighter called Slitaz.

• [...]

• At 25MB, Slitaz cannot possibly satisfy every need. Slitaz is an incredibly light and fast distro, visually pleasing, stable, and well made. It has a solid, modest baseline of programs and a very convenient software management utility that makes it quite easy to expand. Other functions are lacking, like networking and automounting of drives. I’d like to see improved Wireless support, connectivity for Windows (Samba) and better multimedia.

• The installation was smooth. In the same server when we installed Windows server 2003 it could not detect the RAID driver and hence it didn’t detect the HDD as well.

• Bottomline: Considering its features and support architecture, it is well suited for work stations and servers.

Red Hat

• All I can say is “WOW!” No, not the fan-boy stuff; it has to work the way I work. I can be quite merciless about discarding the most expensive, the best supported and wildest hyped, and I really could care less who you are and what matters to you — if it won’t work for me, it’s not worth my time. I haven’t tested every detail, but I’m getting there. However, the things I always look at first are the things which impress me most about CentOS.

Ubuntu

• Although the Ubuntu desktop has won wide popularity, Ubuntu’s fairly sophisticated server OS has yet to establish significant inroads in U.S. data centers.

• In a recent Ubuntu global user survey, nearly a third of the respondents worked for companies with 10 or fewer employees and only 28% worked in the U.S. (compared to 55% from Europe). And the overwhelming majority are using it for basic functions like Web, print and file, database and backup servers, with only a small minority using it for advanced tasks like virtualization or cluster computing. (The low usage for the latter mirror the findings for Linux as a whole in a TechTarget data center survey last year.) The most prevalent Ubuntu industry sectors, unsurprisingly, were technology and education.

• The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the beta release of Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04. This is the first release of UNR to be fully integrated into the Ubuntu family, fully up to date with the latest applications and hardware support.

• Now thanks to the author (Hiroshi Seo), two ubuntu-jp LoCo members (Fumihito Yoshida and Hajime Mizuno) and myself*. We finally got the rights to translate the comic into English, got the script translated and re-edited each image page, replacing the Japanese with English.

• Mark Shuttleworth joins us for a video podcast to discuss the upcoming 9.04 release, Ubuntu history, Linux on the desktop, impacts of cloud computing, Ayatana, the community and Ubuntu, Ubuntu and Canonical, Google Summer of Code, Ubunet, and much more!

• The third secret Ubuntu community is enthusiastic. Account throughout the world with 5,000 volunteers dedicated to promoting their use and distribution 38,000 translate to multiple languages. Most of this community is in Europe, but sympathy is extended throughout the world. Like him, as at the time happened to Google and others. In fact, Google employees use a modified version of Ubuntu, the Goobuntu.

• If you’re interested in Linux then most likely you have taken a look at Ubuntu. And if you have taken a look at Ubuntu then you know there are a lot of derivatives out there that specialize in one cross section of society or another. But which one is right for you? That is where gHacks comes in.

• A big feature for 9.04 is cloud compatibility, in the form of a) being able to run instances of 9.04 directly on Amazon EC2 clouds and b) being able to provision cloud-computing infrastructures with local servers (Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud). There’s a whole raft of other goodies, too, most of them built around making servers that much easier to provision and manage, but the cloud features made me sit up and pay attention.

New Releases

• The VectorLinux team is pleased to announce the final release of VL6.0 Light. Find it here:

• * VL6.0-Light-Final.iso * md5sum 770b8789100a8097f3d200561205c0bb

• Light is aimed at users with some Linux experience. It is biased towards technical simplicity and high performance. Based on VL6.0 Standard, the most resource hungry applications have been removed or replaced with lighter alternatives. Running services are kept to a minimum.

Devices/Embedded

• Though it’s not technically a smartphone, the Nuvifone G60 is still based on Garmin’s own Linux-based platform, and the company bragged quite a bit about the length their own software developers went in order to make this an original device.

Phones

• Appearing a somewhat solitary member of the Asus Eee product family, the unique AiGuru SV-1 Videophone stands alone in more ways than one. At around 25cm tall, with curves akin a to Brancusi sculpture, this tabletop unit bearing a widescreen 7in LCD features built-in 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and a rechargeable battery to deliver round-the-home portability.

• Robert Dotson, chief executive of T-Mobile USA, delivered a keynote speech this week at CTIA in Las Vegas. It was full of revealing facts and figures about Google’s G1 smartphone, which launched last fall. An estimated 1.5 million of these phones were ordered, though it’s still not clear how many phones have been sold by T-Mobile, both here and abroad. Here are the best bits from Dotson’s speech…

• AT&T is testing whether customers will want to buy their laptops like they do their mobile phones: cheap at first but expensive over the long haul. Subsidized netbooks sold like phones is a service supported by Linux leaders as a way to beat Microsoft’s Windows in the growing netbook segment, and that’s been mooted as a possible direction for Google.

• At this stage, though, it’s not clear whether AT&T will make Linux or Windows available on its netbooks.

• After seemingly disappearing off the face of the earth while companies like Nokia and RIM released multiple phones, and while Apple’s iPhone 3G has continued to enjoy immense popularity, Palm has finally hit back. The Pre is considered a make-or-break release for Palm — the smartphone is built on an entirely new Linux-based operating system called webOS.

Sub-notebooks

• The Wall Street Journal has reported how HP and other PC OEMs are currently exploring their options for Android-based netbooks.

• After doing all the research, I pounced on a President’s Day sale and bought a 2.2 lb. Dell Mini 9 for $199, pre-installed with Linux Ubuntu. While this computer hardly sets the world on fire with speed or features, it cost $900 less than my entry-level MacBook. It’s taken some getting used to, but it’s a capable backup and perfect for working on the road. It has decent speakers, modest battery life, good wireless connectivity, several USB ports and a built-in memory card reader. Mine has a tiny 4 gigabyte hard drive (it comes in larger sizes, too). In this world of Web-based Gmail and Google Docs, I actually doubt I’ll fill it up, since Ubuntu is lean and mean, and I’ll still use my MacBook for my photos and music.

Free Software/Open Source

• Earlier this week, we launched version 1.0 of Mozilla’s community support project called SUMO — this is the project behind the popular support site Firefox Support. Driven by the Mozilla community, SUMO has already made a big difference to Firefox users around the world.

• The solution to the problem of flexibility lies in free and open source software. India has already adopted open source approaches in administrative systems and education projects. This represents a good policy foundation on which to build a national eHealth system. It could, for a start, leverage the strengths of the large open source software community.

• There are also many performance and security enhancements in DimDim version 5. The application automatically recognizes webcams and microphones, and the company claims that DimDim uses less bandwidth in this version. You can also share videos and the like with meeting attendees, not just static web pages.

• RICHARD Stallman once wrote that the point about free software is it is “free as in freedom, not free as in beer”, meaning people should be at liberty to do as they pleased with software, rather than subscribe to its restrictive licences.

• As some of you may know, Linux is not the only Unix-like operating system available. There are other UNIX derivatives, and one of the most popular among them is called BSD. If you have been to Distrowatch, you will see different BSD distributions listed in there.

• I have said before that I’m interested in trying BSD distros, but until now I still can’t find the time to actually do it. I just did some research about several BSD distributions and read a couple of reviews so if I have the time to finally take the plunge, I’ll be prepared.

• If you’ve yet to try VLC, do so. Whether you just want to play media files or also want to convert them, VLC can handle just about anything you throw at it. When all other media players fail, whether on Windows, Linux, or the Mac, VLC will almost always deliver.

FSF/GNU

• Now there are plans afoot to create a completely free (as in freedom) alternative called Libre.fm. I’ve been on Last.fm for a couple of years now and the main benefit for me is keeping track of the music I listen to whilst also advertising my fabulous *ahem* taste and sharing with friends. It keeps track of the music you play through a back-end system called Audioscrobbler which records song names, artists, albums etc and shows them on your profile page.

Government

• As a true geek, Medvedev is probably also not a big fan of Microsoft. While the rest of the world has been battling Bill Gates’ empire for almost two decades, it’s only now that Russia has waken up to the challenge and has placed the company on a government antitrust watchlist. CNET has more.

• I wonder if the persecution of Microsoft is somehow related to much-discussed plans for the development of a genuine Russian “national open-source operating system” that could overtake other open-source projects like Ubuntu. Most open-source systems are – how should I put it – already (or still?) very hard to use; giving them an extra Russian edge would make them appealing only to the small tech-masochist niche – or, perhaps, the Russian bureaucrats who are the usual victims of such experiments (in late 1990s, they were all complaining about having to drive Russian cars to work). But of course, the situation would change dramatically if the Russian geek-in-chief were to ban Microsoft from Russia!

Programming

• DreamFace 2.0 will be available under a dual-license open source model based on GPL 3.0. DreamFace 2.0 Beta 1, including the enhanced widget platform and the new mobile services features, will be available this month. DreamFace 2.0 Beta 2, including the social networking framework, will be available next month. In order to get the beta, you have to join DreamFace’s community and a notification will be sent when the first beta is available.

Standards/Consortia

• What all these apps which have adopted this model have in common is something that will delight people who are passionate about the use of open standards rather than proprietary tools: you can’t make a player float over the page using pure Flash, so none of these players are 100% Flash anymore. Pure-Flash in-browser playback has become a lagging edge thing.

Leftovers

• Police were called to Broughton, near Milton Keynes, after residents staged the protest accusing Google of invading their privacy and “facilitating crime”.

• It is difficult to believe in democracy in which we aim to live and write. After 41 hours and 40 minutes of passionate discussion on the text, there remained only a handful of courageous members around 22:45 Thursday evening when the National Assembly decided, on the instructions of the Secretary of State Roger Karoutchi to pass immediately to vote on the Creation and Internet law, which was not expected before next week. One exception, which allows you to hide the large number of UMP deputies who would have abstained if the vote had been, as tradition dictates, after the government issues Tuesday night. Thus wished Nicolas Sarkozy.

• [...]

• So one of the most important, and contentious piece of legislation in recent years is passed by trickery. In this way, those pushing this law have shown their true colours and their contempt for the democratic process.

• All this means is that people aren’t sharing so much stuff online. But now that you can pick up a 1 Terabyte external hard drive for less than a hundred quid – which can store about a quarter of a million songs – guess what people are going to turn to in order to swap files in the future?

Censorship/Web Abuse

• McSherry says it’s that control — not piracy prevention — that’s the real goal of Digital Rights Management. Which is why it may be around for a long time.

• In an earlier post, I noted that the Department of Foreign Affairs will be holding a consultation meeting on ACTA next week. DFAIT first consulted on ACTA in the spring of 2008. While I discussed some of the findings based on documents obtained under the Access to Information Act, I did not previously have access to the entire draft report. I do now (through ATIP) – it is posted below for research and news reporting purposes.

• With the Obama administration appointing a whole bunch of copyright maximalists to various positions (despite an early indication that perhaps he recognized issues with copyright law), a bunch of public interest and consumer interest groups have gotten together to write a letter to Obama, asking him to recognize that he seems to be filling every open slot with a very heavily biased viewpoint which could do significant harm towards innovation. Some of the letter may be inspired by the rumored candidates for the IP Czar position — all of whom also fall into the copyright maximalist camp. Though, the fact that it’s taken Obama so long to appoint this position (upsetting the Senators who wrote the law requiring the position in the first place) suggests (at the very least) he isn’t considering this to be a priority.

Copyrights

• By all accounts, President Barack Obama’s road to the Oval Office was one replete with firsts. For example, the 2008 presidential campaign marked the first time many had heard of Los Angeles street artist Shepard Fairey. Fairey’s stylized poster of Obama—which bears the Obama campaign watchword, “hope”— became a symbol of Obama’s candidacy among many supporters. Now that image has landed Fairey in a legal battle with the Associated Press, which claims that Fairey’s poster infringes on its copyright to a 2006 photograph. On Feb. 9th of this year, Fairey fired back, seeking a declaratory judgment that his poster of Obama does not infringe on any AP copyrights.

• Just as in the UK, where Google decided to block all music videos from the major record labels, after those labels demanded payments that Google felt was way out of line with what could be made from advertising, it looks like Google has now pulled music videos in Germany as well. Once again, the record labels will likely complain and demand investigations — even as other artists have learned that they don’t need to profit directly from their videos on YouTube, but that they can profit indirectly and that pulling their videos down actually does a lot more harm than good.

• The record labels’ animosity towards Seeqpod has never made much sense. Seeqpod is a basic search engine that seeks out music files online. Some of these files are, undoubtedly, unauthorized copies, but Seeqpod has always been focused on streaming the music rather than letting you download the tracks.

• Now, I’m not naïve enough to believe that José Manuel Barroso will personally ponder my ideas on this issue, but I hope that someone, somewhere, in the European Commission will at least note their existence when offering a summary of the views expressed. In other words, I do think it’s worth giving your two ha’p’orth on this matter, if only to counterbalance other views.

• Talking of which, it’s fascinating to compare and contrast what two giants of the computing world, Microsoft and Google, have to say on the subject in their submissions.

• As you might expect, Microsoft loves copyright, and wants everything to be done to keep it as it is, nice and strong, with no silly exceptions that might let people do anything so subversive as taking content and using it to create something new. Here’s its opening comments…

• One could reasonably ask why four members of the European Parliament’s committee which is putting through such an important piece of legislation which affects users Internet rights, and which should be giving full consideration to the users’ views, agreed to chair presentations at a conference which is geared towards measures that will erode users rights ?

• Limitations are being written in, and any hints of users rights in respect of the Internet are struck out, as the Council moves to close the deal with the European Parliament.

• Of course, it does bring up a few interesting points of discussion. First, is that the main purpose of using copyright here is so that the doctors can make use of the DMCA’s notice-and-takedown safe harbor provisions, rather than be stymied by the similar (but not quite the same) CDA section 230 safe harbors for things like defamation.

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