● 04.17.09

● Links 17/04/2009: Red Hat Breaks Record, OpenOffice.org Success Story from Denmark

Posted in News Roundup at 7:07 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• “We’re going to be installing Linux on these machines Ben, is that going to cause you any problems?”

• I finished my sketch in the next two seconds and looked up to see his physical response.

• “No, that’s all I run here.”

• I was just about overwhelmed with relief and I raised my hand in a high-five invitation and couldn’t help but show my delight.

• “Dude!”

• We completed the male ritual with unpracticed awkwardness. It was about 5 minutes into the rapid-fire back and forth about distros, servers, Kernels and networking stuff that I noticed the female portion of our group had left.

• Enough with the flamewars — let’s look to something a little more positive. Linux continues to make strong first impressions with everyday computer users, and free software has managed to win the hearts and minds of even more governments around the world. In addition, the Linux Foundation has picked its winners in the “We’re Linux” video contest.

Kernel Space

• The next major Linux version will include new Wi-Fi drivers for chips from Atheros, Intel, Intersil/Prism and Marvell and new drivers for Intel LAN chips. The kernel will also in future make better use of energy saving features in the latest Wi-Fi hardware and Oracle is contributing code for the Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) cluster protocol.

Games

• Our friends at Unigine Corp have published a 2009 development road-map for the Unigine Engine, their cross-platform gaming engine that is able to deliver stunning graphics on Linux. In 2009 the Unigine Engine is set to receive support for game consoles, improved physics capabilities, multi-monitor support, world layers support, an integrated terrain editor, high-level vehicles support, a new game logic framework, and much more.

• Here is the 666 MB heavy download. In case you care about traffic more than graphics and sounds or have a weak system: An Arch Linux user created a ~60MB version for 32-bit Linux systems.

• EVO is the first open source convergence system to combine PC, DVR, Gaming Hub, Cloud, and Internet TV in an all-in-one device. Currently beta units are been shipped to customers, partners, and distributors. The suggested retail price for the system is $379.99, and 9 classic Linux games are available April 29, 2009.

Desktop Environments

• Lancelot and Raptor are alternative menus intended for KDE 4. We are, however, at the frosty point, and we should ask ourselves the most important question here – which one to choose, and are they sufficiently mature and functional at all to compete with the default menu? Let’s look at them closely then to know the answer.

Distributions

• The SliTaz team proudly announced last evening the immediate availability of the SliTaz 2.0, a minimalistic Linux distribution. The new version comes after thirteen months of hard work and includes many bug fixes, as well as significant new features. So, if you’re wondering what’s new in SliTaz 2.0, let us tell you that it can handle various new pieces of hardware (such as Wireless devices), support for Windows drivers, support for web boot, the Openbox window manager and a lot of new system utilities. Not to mention the fact that SliTaz is still one of the smallest and fastest Linux distributions around.

• The dust is starting to settle around last week’s Intel Xeon 5500 series processor “Nehalem-EP” launch, in which Red Hat was a prominent partner. Intel called it their “most revolutionary server processors since…the Intel Pentium Pro processor 15 years ago.” The proof may be in the large number of new performance records that were established at the launch in which Red Hat and our partners exceeded previous results on eight different industry-standard tests. The results delivered by the applications that we ran reflect the real-world scalability and performance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the new quad-core Intel processors.

Devices/Embedded

• Micetek announced a PowerPC development platform that includes a processor module, carrier board, and Linux board support package (BSP). The MPC8572PC module and Type-N carrier board provide a development platform for the Freescale dual-core MPC8572 processor clocked at 1.3GHz, and they offer gigabit Ethernet connectivity.

• To cut costs and enable aggressive pricing, many netbooks are powered by Linux. Stable and reliable, Linux is also less expensive than Windows. With many netbooks selling for $400 or less, and OEM copies of Windows XP still selling for approximately $100 or more, it’s easy to see how many manufacturers are tempted to pad margins by replacing Windows with Linux.

Free Software/Open Source

• After interacting with many software end users in different industry verticals, we found that when it comes to open source there are main two concerns, first is to get required documentation to start with and second is to get proper timely support for training, customization and maintenance. Also as open source product evolves on every day basis from contribution of its large community, some end users afraid of improper code and bugs while using it.

• One of President Obama’s biggest presidential ambitions is to reform the U.S. health care system. With more than $2 trillion spent each year on health care costs, an estimated 25 to 30 percent of which is administrative waste, one of the best stimuli to the U.S. economy could be to fix our broken health care system.

• Optaros, providers of custom online applications for clients through the Assembled Web, announces the development of a tailor-made open source CMS solution for InfoWorld, IDG Communications subsidiary and online media outlet for IT decision makers.

• Parallels today announced that Network Solutions® has significantly broadened its range of open source hosted application offerings through the Application Packaging Standard (APS), which was developed to enable companies to make applications available in the software-as-a-service model quickly and simply. Network Solutions® is a leading global hosting provider that manages more than 7 million domains, over 1.5 million e-mailboxes, and more than 350,000 websites.

Business

• I discovered open source ecommerce applications engaging a significant proportion of ecommerce professionals. Open source software are considered as entry level choice for shopping carts by most ecommerce professionals. Although the completeness of open source apps are far from realized, they are increasingly making it to the mainstream markets. Extending my support to the open source aficionados, I delved into the intricacies of the up and coming Magento Commerce.

• OpenX, a software company that makes an open-source ad serving product for online publishers, has launched a platform called OpenX Market to directly connect buyers and sellers.

Funding

• What would the open source community do with that money? What could it do with that money? What should it do with that money? Those are the questions.

• Before we try to answer those questions, let’s consider how each software delivery model operates.

Symbian

• TI’s OMAP processors have a long history of success in mobile phones, but until now they were hard to use in mid-volume apps. Gumstix is solving that problem with an innovative Overo series of computer-on-module boards.

• The Symbian Foundation is looking to bring in more developers for the upcoming open source Symbian, and it has created a new development platform based on Texas Instrument’s OMAP technology.

Sun

• Michel van der Linden is head of IT in Municipality of Gribskov in Denmark. In this article he explains how the municipality changed from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice some years ago. Initially they saved about two million Danish Kroner and later one million per year.

Leftovers

• The online planning for today’s Digital Britain Summit was poor even before the conference began – but the web output from the event itself could make a citizen wonder Lord Carter’s advisers are really best placed to make Britain digital…

Censorship/Web Abuse

• A controversial proposal that would have seen judges directed to consider the use of Internet proxies when handing down sentences for online crimes has been rejected by the US Sentencing Commission. The initial proposal would have directed judges to consider the use of a proxy as an indication of the sophistication and intent of those who have been convicted, but civil liberties groups and technology advocates strongly opposed the matter, given that there are a variety of common and legitimate uses of proxy servers. The arguments put forth by these advocates apparently held the day.

• The Wikimedia Foundation has asked Phorm to exclude all its domains and websites – including Wikipedia – from Phorm’s BT trials, because it considers such scanning to be an infringement of its users’ privacy.

• Some Kindle users are angry because Amazon blocked them from their Kindle accounts, thereby blocking them from accessing their already-purchased media. Even if these stories are exaggerated, they once again highlight the caveats that come with DRMed media. You don’t own your content—Amazon does.

Copyrights

• Today, Norway’s Minister of Government Administration and Reform, Heidi Grande Røys, launched a new book, edited by the Minister, about sharing and the social side of computer networks. The book is titled “Delte meninger” (in Norwegian this has the dual meaning of “shared opinions” and “conflicting opinions”). There is also a website dedicated to open, public debate about the issues raised in the book.

• The Harvard Law professor and students who are defending Joel Tenenbaum from the RIAA lose their bid to have the entire case webcast. The trial judge approved of the idea, but the First Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the RIAA and said it would not be allowed.

• The folks behind The Pirate Bay insist that the site will live on and the verdict means nothing, but it may create an inconvenience for users of the site — especially if other nations use this as yet another excuse to ban the site. The folks this will hurt the most are those content creators who actually do value The Pirate Bay — such as best selling author Paulo Coehlo, who found that “pirating” his own book helped him tremendously, and who recently spoke out about what a useful tool The Pirate Bay has been. It’s a shame that because some big lumbering companies are unable to change their business models that they get to use the legal system to disrupt and annoy those who have figured it out.

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