● 04.24.09

● Links 24/04/2009: New Acer Ubuntu Nettop; New Wine

Posted in News Roundup at 7:10 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Godson will not compete with Intel and AMD for the x86 market since its chips have a MIPS core that does not support Windows. Its creators see the chip as an alternative that could be widely marketed on systems running Linux.

• And who is taking our place? Three of the nationalities mentioned as producing prominent engineering talent are Chinese, Indian, Russian. Now, keep those three countries in mind. Let’s take a look at a possible indicator, by checking Google Trends for keyword ‘Linux’, discovering who in the world has Linux on their minds enough to search for it.

• Satel announced a “smart radio modem” for long-distance industrial radio communications networks, combining TCP/IP functionality with a Linux development platform. The Satellar Digital System is based on an ARM9 processor, offers a modular design, and has a range of over 10 to 20 kilometers, says Satel.

• The company will have to work hard to overcome Siemens’ traditional direct sales focus, but Garland has said all the right things. For example, he wants a limited number of good UC VARs to move its Linux-based OpenScape Unified Communications Server product and is willing to pay fatter margins to attract them — perhaps away from Microsoft, Cisco, Nortel, Avaya and other UC competitors.

• Acer’s Nvidia Ion-based micro desktop PC, Revo, will go on sale in the UK on 5 May, with Ubuntu Linux among the available operating systems.

• I approach Linux and most software from a technicians point of view. Does it meet the needs that are needing a solution? How well does it meet those needs?

• What type of environment will the OS and software we are looking at or need to look at, be running in?

• It is the needs and outcomes that determines the tools we should use, not public opinion or juvenile one-upsmanship.

• In one situation, we may find that due to financial resources and the intended use by the user, Linux will work just fine and in that case, go right ahead and use it.

Kernel Space

• Last month there were five Linux driver releases from NVIDIA and we have already seen quite a few this month, but just days after releasing the 180.51 Linux driver, they have pushed out another new release. This time around NVIDIA released a new beta in the 185 series, which is called 185.18.04.

Applications

• What’s new in this release (see below for details): – Show a dialog on application crashes. – Much improved OLE copy/paste support. – Various listview improvements. – More Direct3D code cleanups. – Various bug fixes.

• Today I’ll continue with an overview with screenshots of MOC, and hopefully in a few days I’ll also review mp3blaster.

Desktop Environments

• This research aims at finding the needs, and practices of users of Gnome 2.x. Analyzing that data will give the Gnome Usability Team very precious information that will shape up the form of Gnome 3.0.

Sugar

• Sugar Labs offers ubiquitous access to Sugar in a USB (Universal Serial Bus) flash memory drive (stick). The Sugar on a Stick project (still in Beta) gives children access to their Sugar on any computer in their environment with just a USB memory stick. Taking advantage of the Fedora LiveUSB, it’s possible to store everything you need to run Sugar on a single USB memory stick (minimum size 1GB). This small USB device can boot into the Sugar learning platform on different computers at home, at school, or at an after school program, bypassing the software on the those computers. In fact, Sugar on a Stick will work even if the computer does not have a hard-drive. With Sugar on a Stick, the learning experience is the same on any computer: at school, at home, at the library, or an after-school center.

• Sugar Labs has announced the first beta release of Sugar on a Stick, a self-contained Sugar environment that is distributed as a live USB image. It can boot on conventional desktop computers from a 1GB thumb drive.

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• The beta includes several new activities, such as the InfoSlicer tool, which can be used by teachers to assemble bundles of Web content that can be edited and packaged for offline use. The beta also includes a new integrated IRC client and a command terminal.

Distributions

• Catch any Tom, Dick and Harry and ask him “What is Linux?”. What is the answer you expect? The result I get is “Linux is the opium of the geeks”. The image which they have of Linux is people sitting in front of black and white screen typing some obsecure characters and the computer replies back with even more weird results.

• You could go out yourself and get the Linux kernel, combine it with the GNU toolchain, a desktop environment and all the other things required to make a full system; but realistically not many people have the time, skill, patience or desire to do that. That’s why it’s good have distributions like Red Hat, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Debian, Slackware and many many more. This is what people usually mean when referring to different “flavours of Linux”, the different distributions.

• Debian developer Robert Millan is offering an alternative kernel for Debian’s Lenny free Linux distro. Unlike the standard Lenny kernel, it contains no proprietary firmware.

• If you check out DistroWatch.com you will see hundreds of Linux distros available. They’re not all widely known, as some are for specialized purposes. You’ll find some that are just for servers and others that were created for a specific task. There are distros out there for just about every purpose you can think of.

Mandrake/Mandriva/Ulteo

• This should work on any recent version of Mandriva, but specifically on 2009 (current) and 2009.1 (cooker).

• The Ulteo OVD is licensed under the GPL v2 and incorporates, by default, a number of familiar open source applications, including OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird and Pidgin.

• Ulteo, founded by Gaël Duvall, founder of Mandrake Linux (now Mandriva), and Thierry Koehrlen, had previously launched a version which only supported Linux application servers, but did allow for central management of the applications available on users desktops. A full list of features and an installation guide are available. OVD is licensed under the GPL2.

Red Hat

• The Fedora Unity Project recently announced the immediate availability of a new set of Re-Spins for the Fedora 10 Linux distribution. The new ISOs, based on the official Fedora 10 (Sulphur) installation media, include all the updates released until the 14th of April and are available in a stable state for the i386 and x86_64 architectures. There is also an ISO available for PPC processor architectures, but it is still marked as UNSTABLE by the Fedora Unity Project – users are welcomed to test it out and provide feedback.

Ubuntu

• After Canonical launches Ubuntu 9.04 on April 23, the company will play an encore by launching a series of training courses — for Ubuntu Server Edition and even cloud computing. Here’s the scoop, only from The VAR Guy.

• After Canonical launches Ubuntu 9.04 on April 23, the company will play an encore by launching a series of training courses — for Ubuntu Server Edition and even cloud computing.

• The new Ubuntu server distribution includes two complementary cloud tools, OpenNebula and Eucalyptus, so providing the technology required to build the three types of Cloud architectures, namely private, hybrid and public clouds.

• Ubuntu is beginning to make considerable progress in the server space. The 9.04 release brings a few noteworthy improvements to the Ubuntu server edition that could help to further accelerate Ubuntu’s growth on servers. It offers a first look at the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud stack, which leverages the Eucalyptus project to to provide software infrastructure that will enable companies to build their own self-hosted computing clouds. Ubuntu 9.04 server edition is also officially supported on Amazon’s EC2 service.

• Looking back to the genesis of Ubuntu 9.04 six months ago, I suspect that its subtle but powerful changes are due to the new user interface team that Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth said at the time he would put in place. If so, that team has already earned its paychecks and even more, and we’re looking forward to seeing what another six months of development will produce.

• In the meantime, kudos to Ubuntu 9.04: you got game.

• One thing that seems clear in cloud computing right now — the combination of operating system, hypervisor, clustering, applications and other cloud infrastructure components in the mix is creating some interesting competition. We’ve written before about the fight over the OS role and its relevancy as hypervisor vendors race to cover the OS parts, OS vendors race to cover the hypervisor parts and so on. We’re now seeing a similar battle in cloud computing, where open source looms large, as other vendors step up to the opportunities.

• [...]

• In terms of the ‘first cloud OS,’ I think Ubuntu Linux vendor Canonical may beg to differ. The company’s Ubuntu Linux is already a popular choice for cloud deployment thanks to its free availability and lack of licensing royalties that can quickly cancel out cloud cost advantages. With its latest release this week, Ubuntu 9.04, Canonical is doing more to back this cloud deployment of Ubuntu.

• In recognition of the value of FOSS gaming, the Ubuntu Gaming Team has been formed of mutual benefit to Ubuntu and FOSS gaming. As of today, the team is now open for anyone to join and participate in. Working towards improving FOSS games and developing its community will turn a significant barrier against Ubuntu adoption into an appealing reason to switch.

• I had to set up a Fedora 8 machine recently. The installation process was simple enough, but configuring the system reminded me of several simple features that I take for granted when using Ubuntu, but which, when absent, make the user experience significantly more daunting. Below are four of the features that provide an extra boost of user-friendliness to Ubuntu.

• Linux continues to entice previous Microsoft stalwarts with its increasing ease of use and the willingness of hardware vendors to produce compatible drivers. Ubuntu is one of the more mainstream Linux distributions, especially with the backing of commercial sponsor Canonical. With Canonical’s partner program, Ubuntu is poised to be a serious alternative as both a server and desktop operating system to Microsoft.

• So far, I’m sold to Ubuntu 9.04, because I have to use something on my Acer laptop and, you’re right, XP is boring.

• It’s official: Ubuntu has taken over the Linux world. On Digg’s Linux/Unix section at the time of writing, four of the top five upcoming stories are about Jaunty (with the other one being a TuxRadar story on programming the Arduino – w00t!). In fact, 11 of the top 15 are about Ubuntu, which is astonishing in a week where Oracle gobbled up OpenOffice.org and MySQL and the first full release of the hotly hyped Ulteo came out.

New Releases

Devices/Embedded

• RMI Corp. announced the availability of a WiFi-enabled hardware/software development kit for digital picture frames (DPFs) and mobile Internet devices (MIDs). The Home Media Player (HMP) Application Development Kit (ADK) is based on RMI’s MIPS-architecture Au1250 processor, and includes a Linux Board Support Package (BSP).

• According to TechRadar, the GP2X Wiz open source hand held game console from GamePark Holdings will be getting it’s own gaming app store this summer. The GP2X Wiz is a Linux based gaming system with a 533Mhz ARM processor, a 3D OpenGL accelerator,

Phones

• As it announced Thursday, Embedded Alley is porting Google’s Android stack to the MIPS microprocessor architecture, widely used in set-top boxes, HDTVs, and other devices you’d never mistake for a cell phone.

• It’s not clear exactly where these pics came from, but here’s the Palm Pre, running what appears to be a YouTube app and the email app.

Sub-notebooks

• Linux versions of netbooks are already doing quite well and if Microsoft shoots itself in the foot by crippling its OS, the question becomes less about choosing between Windows and Linux and more about choosing between crippled and “just works.”

• Another thing I’d like to try is an SSD in one of my laptops — maybe the $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt), which I’ve recently put back into service. At least the drive is easy to get to.

• If you own a netbook and want to run Linux based distro Ubuntu in it, Canonical has offered a great version for this. Here are some of the features that you would like to know before you go for it…

• The success of netbooks has taken the market by surprise. After the surprise comes the pain and the backlash, with expectations (and hopes) that netbooks will be squeezed out by smartphones and low-cost laptops. This is unlikely to happen.

Events

• It’s the 10th year for the free event, which is a showcase for the high-tech community as well as the general public interested in open source programming. Linux is a computer operating system that is freely distributed and is an alternative to for-profit operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows or Vista.

• Virtual Forum to Provide the Opportunity for the Open Source Industry to Discuss and Drive Standards-Based Cloud Computing

• Open Source Bridge, a new conference designed to increase collaboration in the open source development community across a broad range of disciplines, announced today its confirmed list of speakers, featuring topics that range from the Linux kernel to Configuration Management to MySQL to the Android mobile platform and everything in between. In addition to insights surrounding open source technologies, Open Source Bridge attendees will engage in discussions about the culture and practice of open source and the many ways it is being applied in commercial and nonprofit organizations.

Free Software/Open Source

• With the preview of the MySQL 5.4 database coming out this week at the MySQL Conference and Expo in Santa Clara, you would have expected Sun Microsystems to be talking up the integration of its systems, storage, operating system, and database even if Oracle hadn’t come along to buy the company on Monday.

• The Midgard Project has released the second Release Candidate of Midgard2 9.03 “Vinland” – the new generation of the Midgard content repository.

• The Internet Systems Consortium has announced that it has received enough support from sponsors to launch the BIND 10 project, to create a replacement name server for BIND 9. BIND 9 began its development in 1998 and is the most widely used DNS server software on the Internet. Among the sponsors are the UK’s Nominet and Germany’s DENIC.

• The roller coaster announcements coming from Oracle and Sun this week have a number of people questioning the fate of MySQL. While the GPL’d database probably isn’t going anyplace soon, now might be a good time to remind yourself that alternatives to MySQL do exist. And that some, in the case of PostgreSQL, are incredibly feature-rich.

• Automated testing of recent OOO310_m10 builds is finished. All Cat0 tests were run on English builds by automation team and have been completed. Unfortunately a fix in automated tests resulted in some problems on Solaris Sparc only. This issue #101240 was already fixed in CWS automation310g and results should be cleaned up for next RC OOO310m11

• Use of, and support for, open-source software is thriving across the globe, but uptake varies from country to country. To date, the factors that influence adoption of open source are little understood, and market watchers cannot explain why open source is more popular in one country than another.

• Drupal was mentioned in Forbes as part of an article called “Social networking terms you should know”. Great to see our work being recognized by Forbes. Super!

Graphics

• Last time I wrote about the basics of a GIMP plug-in written in Python. But how do you figure out how to do anything that’s actually useful? This article will show you.

• The BBC is looking for someone in the UK (3rd week in May) to do an informal demo of Blender to a bunch of MA Art students – creating 3D content for a 3D Holographic Projection.

Business

• I am particularly excited about our upcoming WaveMaker 5 release this month. This release sets a new gold standard for ease of use: you can build and deploy a complete, database-driven web application in just 3 mouse clicks!

• Among the new ZRM 3.1 features is a visual log analyzer, which allows database administrators (DBAs) to identify operator errors, catch malicious database changes, and easily revert errors or malicious events by restoring information from previous backups.

• Talend the leading provider of open source data integration software and Camptocamp, leader in open source geomatics for geographical information systems (GIS), announced today that the Pays des Vals de Saintonge has developed an access platform to local geographic data letting the cities improve their geospatial management and allowing residents to look at the land registry.

Government

• Public health agencies in Utah have deployed what the state calls the first open-source, Web-based infectious disease tracking and management system in the U.S.

• The Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (Mampu) aims to enhance cost savings by implementing an open source software system in all 724 agencies under its management in the public sector by early next year.

• The agency’s deputy director of ICT policy and planning division, Tan King Ing, said Mampu has to date recorded total savings of over RM47mil after the adoption of the open source system in 462 agencies.

• Of course, CIOs of enterprises need enterprise-class support. The growing adoption of Open Source in enterprises like LIC, Axis Bank, Central Bank of India, Bharti (Airtel), mission critical portals like Naukri.com, Yatra.com etc. point to the growing support infrastructure for OSS. As users test and deploy OSS, the demand for support is growing immensely.

Open (But No Source Code)

• March’s GLOW was a great success. A 200% increase in attendance led to an amusing and invigorating evening discussing open source related matters. Onwards and upwards!

• Public Domain Ideas (PDI) is a place where ideas and inventions can be submitted to the public domain. It’s like open-source software, but for ideas instead of code. Once an idea is submitted to PDI, it immediately goes into the public domain and cannot be patented. That means anyone is free to develop the concept without fear of litigation, and without having to pay licensing fees.

Standards/Consortia

• The move of Lotus Symphony to the OpenOffice.org 3 code base, and more importantly, having Lotus Symphony based on the current OpenOffice.org code trunk going forward, is the first step. We will see more pressure for full ODF and OOXML support, not the current OpenOffice.org implementation of ODF or the Office 2007 file formats, over the next 12 to 18 months. We as consumers of these products must demand full support of the file format – not the custom implementations out there today.

• Croatia’s biggest annual open source and open systems event (DORS/CLUC) will feature a presentation on ODF (by Bart Hanssens, Fedict) and a talk on OpenOffice.org (by Goran Rakić, OpenOffice.org Serbia)

Leftovers

Censorship/Web Abuse

• The EU took a step towards taking action against illegal logging yesterday (22 April) when the European Parliament voted in favour of stricter rules on timber sold within the bloc’s markets, including the introduction of sanctions against offenders.

Copyrights

• There’s a move afoot to argue that copyright infringement penalties should bear a rational relationship to the value of what was infringed. You might think that this could harm Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS), but I don’t think so. Here’s why.

• Sveriges Radio’s P3 news programme has found out that judge Thomas Norström is a member of the Swedish Copyright Association. And who are also members of this group? Henrik Pontén, Peter Danowsky and Monique Wadsted, who all three represented the entertainment industry in the case against the Pirate Bay.

• Apparently, he’s a member of a few organizations that work towards strengthening copyright laws, and even holds a board position in one of those organizations.

• Finnish book rental service Bookabooka is being threatened by national copyright lobby organization TTVK for running a service the lobby group calls “Pirate Bay for textbooks”.

• The Finnish book renting service targeted at students, BookaBooka, has been sent a cease and desist letter (in Finnish only) by the Finnish copyright agencies claiming that the company is breaking the law. The service has quietly received a lot of attention among students as a place to put your books into use – rent them for a monthly fee.

• That’s because Spanish courts have made clear that it’s not illegal to just link to infringing content.

• A federal appellate court has rebuffed a request from Google’s YouTube to dismiss a copyright infringement lawsuit on the narrow ground that the plaintiff in the case, videographer Robert Tur, voluntarily withdrew the lawsuit in order to join a pending class-action in New York.

• Amazee is a Switzerland-based, social “collaboration website” made for social activists and protestors to organize, promote, and fund their public uprisings and Earth-saving efforts.

• VP Joe Biden stood up in front of a bunch of Hollywood execs and promised to appoint a copyright czar, and furthermore, that this would be the “right” person to protect their interests. I would have voted Dem in the last election, if I got a vote, but make no mistakes: the Dems are the party of stupid copyright laws.

• We’ve already seen how the Justice Department is, for example, being filled with lawyers who regularly worked with the RIAA, MPAA and BSA — three of the biggest copyright lobbying organizations, and those individuals have wasted no time in expressing their desire to continue pushing those industry’s viewpoints in their new positions.

• 1996 is gone, and good riddance.

• In 2009, the world is populated by people who no longer believe that “Thou shalt sell media on plastic discs forever” came down off the mountain on two stone tablets. It’s populated by people who find the spectacle of companies suing their own customers by the thousands indefensible. It’s populated by activists who’ve figured out that the Internet is worth saving and that the entertainment industry is prepared to destroy it.

• Against widespread dissent and controversy MEPs in the European Parliament voted this morning to allow copyright term extension to pass a first reading.

• Last week a 22 year-old was sentenced to 6 months jail for running a file-sharing site carrying links to copyright works. On the surface it appeared that court ruled that due to placing advertising on the site, the admin had profited from infringement and therefore committed a crime, but all is not as it seems.

• A bunch of folks have sent in a story by Rory Cellan-Jones about how YouTube took down a video he had uploaded of 37 seconds of a football (soccer for us Americans) match in the UK he had attended. As he noted, he knew that the football leagues in the UK were angry over their content being webcast, but he thought it was for taking the official stream and rebroadcasting it online.

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