● 05.29.09

● Links 29/05/2009: Dreamlinux 4.0 Preview and the Win of Free Software

Posted in News Roundup at 6:59 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• IBM has announced the release of its own stream processing technology, InfoSphere Streams. Stream processing, a form of complex events processing (CEP), isn’t new. IBM’s entry is aimed at the high end of the market, encompassing a new stream processing language and engine, coupled with Red Hat Linux-based Intel clusters. InfoSphere Streams is intended to transform business intelligence (BI) from historical analysis to near-realtime predictive mode. Although currently too costly and complex for most enterprises, in the long run enterprises of all sizes will have need for predictive BI. The trick is for IBM and its rivals to package the technology into simpler, more digestible bundles that will ultimately expand the market in much the same way that online analytic processing (OLAP) was commoditized.

• On hand to meet with some of the world’s largest router, NAS, HD media player, and chip manufacturers, Paragon will be presenting its latest embedded solutions featuring Paragon UFSD™ (Universal File System Driver) technology — including NTFS for Linux, and the new HFS+ for Linux.

Events

• The SouthEast LinuxFest is a community event for anyone who wants to learn more about Linux and Free & Open Source software. It is part educational conference, and part social gathering. Like Linux itself, it is shared with attendees of all skill levels to communicate tips, ideas, and to benefit all who use Linux/Free and Open Source Software. LinuxFest is the place to learn, to make new friends, to network with new business partners, and most importantly, to have fun! [Reader says: "France is being highlighted at next month's LinuxTag. There has been a lot of progress over the last years there in IT. One of the most visible cases has been the Gendarmerie."]

• LinuxTag is the most important place for Linux and open source software in Europe. In 2009, the 15th LinuxTag presents news for professional users, decision makers, developers, beginners and the Linux community – from 24th until 27th June on the Fairground in Berlin.

• The Linux Professional Institute (LPI), the world’s premier Linux certification organization (http://wwwlpi.org), announced a program of events and activities at LinuxTag, Berlin, Germany (June 24-27, 2009) in celebration of the organization’s 10th anniversary.

Desktop

• HP has upgraded its Linux-ready “Mini” netbooks, offering its new “HP Mini 110 with Mi” at a much lower $280 pricetag than the previous Mini 1000. Meanwhile, Shuttle switched from an Intel Atom to Via’s 1.0GHz Nano U1700 processor for its latest, low-power Shuttle XS29F nettop.

Server

• There isn’t one Linux operating system — rather, you can buy a boxed version of Linux from a company or download it from a company or an individual. Most Linux server distros run the same Linux kernel but differ considerably in terms of software packages and licensing/support models. Prices range considerably, as well, from free to a couple thousand dollars, which is what the Red Hat server OS tops out at.

• HDE, a leader of Linux server management software in Japan, today announced Karesansui, free, open source virtualization management software with web-based user interface, which supports Linux servers and Xen. To download Karesansui, visit http://karesansui-project.info/get/.

Kernel Space

• Ext3, the default Linux file system for many years, is definitely starting to show its age. Modern mass storage devices are approaching its limits and block-based data management is no longer adequate for modern file sizes. High time for an update!

• One month ago we provided benchmarks of the Btrfs file-system and found that while it contained many features to make it a next-generation Linux file-system, its disk performance was rather displeasing. We had found the EXT4 file-system ran faster in a number of the tests and even EXT3 and XFS had their own advantages. Besides offering features like snapshots and online defragmentation, Btrfs has a mode that is optimized for solid-state drives. Will the Btrfs SSD mode cause this new Oracle-sponsored file-system to be the best for non-rotating media? We have benchmarks in this article, but the results may not be what one would expect.

• [...]

• The Btrfs SSD mode ended out our last test still being slower than not using the SSD mount option.

• The best thing to do with the Linux kernel right now is to make sure it has a stable programming interface that makes writing binary applications for Linux itself as appealing as possible. That’s up to the kernel team, of course, but the more they can be encouraged to include things that benefit Linux directly — instead of Windows indirectly — the better of Linux will be as a whole.

• X Input 2.0 is officially set to arrive in the X Server in just seven days. This input extension update for X.Org has been a longtime in the making and is needed for Multi-Pointer X and also improves other areas to enhance the input subsystem. X Input 2 was supposed to hit X Server 1.6 but then that got pushed back and now the X.Org 7.5 / X Server 1.7 schedule has been pushed back yet again to allow Xi2 to finally merge.

• NVIDIA hasn’t released as many Linux driver updates in May as they have in past months, but this week they are out with the NVIDIA 185.18.14 driver update. This proprietary driver for x86 and x86_64 Linux features a variety of bug-fixes, VDPAU enhancements, and better support for newer Linux kernels. Interestingly, NVIDIA hasn’t updated their proprietary FreeBSD or Solaris drivers to this latest version, nor have they even been updated in a while.

Applications

• This tutorial will demonstrate how to create a business card template using Inkscape. The steps in this tutorial will work for Inkscape versions 0.46 and 0.47.

• PiTiVi is a non-linear video editor based on the GStreamer multimedia framework.

• Hedgewars, an open source turn-based strategy game like Worms but with hedgehogs, is at version 0.9.11.

• 1) Ubuntu Tweak

• Ubuntu Tweak allows changing all the itsy-bitsy pieces of Ubuntu desktop OS. It is the equivalent of TweakUI for Windows. You can achieve the same results by using the gconf-editor tool in Ubuntu. Ubuntu Tweak also helps install third-party upgrades in a simpler fashion so it definitely gives a new boost to your clumsy Ubuntu desktop and increases UserExperience.

• I’ve mentioned a couple of times that, at least in my opinion, KDE is losing out to GNOME because there simply aren’t as many Qt applications as GTK ones. Competition breeds quality, and as a result, I find Qt applications in general to be inferior.

KDE4

• What’s that screen? it shows the embryo of our idea of user interface for a netbook. the actua plasma executable is another one that is way simpler that the full fledged plasma-desktop one, and it features just a panel (final layout still to be defined) and a main view (don’t call it desktop eh:p) that will display one of the two main activities we will ll come up for this project that are: SAL, a fullscreen application launcher/search interface/document browser/whatever (MoRpHeUz will talk more on that in the future:p) and the Newspaper activity, that’s where i spent the last 2 days of development, besides making the mini plasma shell work a bit better.

• Pony is a simple image manager written in PyKDE4.

Distributions

• PC/OS Developer Roberto J. Dohnert has announced the release of PC/OS 10 Open64 Workstation. The desktop distribution designed for 64-bit systems is based on Ubuntu 9.04 and includes all of the latest security and bug patches up to the 25th of May. All of the PC/OS editions, including OpenDesktop, OpenWorkstation and WebStation, utilise the lightweight Xfce desktop environment and focus on providing ease of use out-of-the-box.

• This anniversary version of Calculate Linux Desktop, the first version of which was exactly 2 years ago.

• Well, that was the sneak preview of what’s to come. Dreamlinux 4.0 has no release date at the moment, and is still under heavy development. There will be the standard default Xfce edition, Gnome edition, Fluxbox edition and possibly an Lxde edition as well.

• The aim is to keep Dreamlinux light, fast, and stable. There will be a few changes, and some amazing innovations with this release. They will not be announced until the final release as they will most certainly be “borrowed” by other distros.

• Personally, I like having absolute control of my audio system, but then before I ever touched a computer I was working with stereo equipment. For most users, the multiple slider approach is over-kill. Jonathan Corbet, the well-known Linux developer, has the best answer: “the volume control should have an ‘expert mode.’” Hopefully this common-sense suggestion will be implemented as the default in forthcoming versions of GNOME.

Debian/Ubuntu

• If you’ve ever tried to write some sample application with Visual Studio you surely already know that creating an installer for you Window application is pretty trivial. You follow the wizard, click here and there, et-voila ! You have a nice installer ready to be shipped wherever you want.

• What a shortsighted comment. Forget about initial costs. Let’s focus on total cost of ownership, and software productivity. A Dell Mini 10 with Ubuntu will never suffer from the security and virus issues that a Dell Mini 10 with Windows XP will surely experience.

• Running mounds of security software on a netbook can suck up processing power, slow down the system, hit your wallet … and the list goes on.

• HTPC is an acronym for Home Theater Personal Computer. A computer system designed with the sole intention of being connected to a television, for entertainment purposes such as watching live TV, playing movies, surfing the Internet, games, listening to music, or viewing digital photographs. A HTPC may also be referred to as a Media Center, which is usually the software portion of the device that combines the functions of a personal computer and media software into a single convergence device.

• And now I have an option too. I tried Portable Ubuntu for Windows today, during a few hours’ break from my weekly grind. This is the culprit, running on a fresh installation of Windows XP.

• Ubuntu is getting better. It’s easy to see why it leads the charge as the Linux desktop OS. This isn’t to say other distros can’t do the job (because they certainly can), but the user-centric nature of Ubuntu is what makes it great. Version 9.04 continues with that modus operandi and that’s why Ubuntu users enjoy the OS so much.

Devices/Embedded

• HTC has the only commercially available Android handset with the T-Mobile G1, but Samsung has shown off an Android smartphone that’s expected to be released in June. Companies like Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Asus-Garmin also are expected to release smartphones with the Linux-based operating system.

Sub-notebooks

• Pineda said smartbooks would have battery lives of up to eight hours, based on active usage. The devices, which will be made by Qualcomm’s partners, will have GPS and HD video playback, and will run on Linux with a smartphone-like user interface.

• Back at the start of the millennium I was working for a large government contractor supporting an agency of the U.S. federal government. This agency was a major customer of SGI. Many of the scientists who worked there had very nice SGI workstations and some of the SGI servers I supported were, to say the least, impressive technology at the time. At the time SGI systems, one and all, had 64-bit MIPS processors under the hood. SGI spun off MIPS Technologies in 1998 and stopped selling new MIPS based systems in 2005.

• [...]

• Although it takes considerable work it is also possible to run Debian Etch on the Alpha 400. The screenshot below, originally posted on the linked page, shows a Debian desktop using the IceWM window manager with windows open for Mozilla Firefox and mrxvt.

• With the release of the Linux Foundation’s Moblin 2.0 Beta, a number of people have missed the fact that the software is targeted more at Linux distributors and not at end-users. However, you would not think so when you take a closer look at some of the promotional activities that have taken place.

Free Software/Open Source

• The “free and open-source software” movement, as it is officially called, has come a long way from its anti-establishment origins. Pioneers such as Richard Stallman did not want users to be locked into monolithic products, but to be able to change programs in whatever way they wanted, and to share their modifications.

• Open-source software has won the argument. Now a new threat to openness looms

• [...]

• But now there is the danger of a new form of lock-in. “Cloud computing”—the delivery of computer services from vast warehouses of shared machines—enables companies and individuals to cut costs by handing over the running of their e-mail, customer databases or accounting software to someone else, and then accessing it over the internet. There are many advantages to this approach for both customers (lower cost, less complexity) and service providers (economies of scale). But customers risk losing control once again, in particular over their data, as they migrate into the cloud. Moving from one service provider to another could be even more difficult than switching between software packages in the old days. For a foretaste of this problem, try moving your MySpace profile to Facebook without manually retyping everything.

• Under the rubric Software, the project collects tools, tips and tricks. Included is the GNU wget command that, with some appropriate parameters, secures a complete WordPress blog on a local hard drive. Some site-specific pages relate to Google, Livejournal and Twitter.

• The European OSOR information service has a mission to “support the collaborative development of Open Source Software (OSS) applications and solutions, particularly cross-border collaborations and exchanges of knowledge and software.”

• Open source in itself is a success story. From being a niche concept, it has become a mainstream movement (well, more or less) and has received the attention of both individuals and businesses worldwide.

• There are thousands of open source projects and products out there, but which ones are the most successful? By successful we mean widely used and widely known. While there are many successful open source products, a few stand head and shoulders above the rest. We have listed them here below.

• The interesting side effect of that was the sudden realizations by these companies and individuals such as “Wow, FOSS is actually better!” or “Wow, and we get all this for free?” And what’s even more interesting is how not only are these companies not going back to previous proprietary solutions, they’re actually telling their friends and fellow businesses about FOSS.

• And all it took was a simple recession to finally give FOSS and Linux the kick in the pants it needed. And if you don’t believe me, look at how Microsoft is taking hit after hit after hit against it’s empire. If we were in an economic boom, that wouldn’t be happening. But since we’re not, it is.

• Supporters of open source are fond of quoting Mohandas Gandhi: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Did he happen to say what happened after that?

Business

• How do we, as technologists, respond to the reality of far less money, increased competition in a shrinking market and the ceaseless demands by management for innovation? How do we square this circle?

• Microsoft knows the answer is free and open source software, just as well as we do. It has spent a fortune analyzing the ‘threat’ and has chosen the cost of migration as the attack most likely to succeed.

Openness

• Despite Wikipedia’s occasional inaccuracies, it has grown up to be a useful tool. It’s good to see an optimized mobile edition of it.

Programming

• The Eclipse Foundation has published the results of the global Eclipse Community Survey 2009 in The Open Source Developer Report[icon:pdf]. The Foundation held the survey from mid-April to mid-May in order to get developer feedback on the tools and software that they use. The organisation wanted to learn how the respondents used open source software and how they interacted with the Eclipse community. Nearly 1,500 participants took part in the Foundation poll, of which 27.8 per cent were from Germany, followed by 15.7 per cent from the United States. Only 0.6 per cent of participants were from the United Kingdom. Approximately 80 per cent of the respondents worked for companies that are not members of an open source consortium.

• More tellingly, Linux is now the leading deployment platform at 43 percent and Windows has dropped to 41 percent among Eclipse users surveyed.

• The Eclipse Foundation has published the findings of its latest user survey. According to the results, the number of developers using Eclipse on Linux workstations and deploying their applications on Linux servers has increased. The results also show an increase in the number of respondents who say that their companies are contributing to open source software.

• Google kicked off its I/O developer conference here with a spirited endorsement of new Web tools and adoption of new standards, particularly HTML 5, as driving a new generation of more innovative applications.

• “The Web has won — it’s the dominant programming model of our time,” said Vic Gondotra, Google’s vice president for engineering.

• Sydney developer Lars Rasmussen has done it again. Check out the first screenshots of Wave, Google’s new centralised collaboration tool that mashes together emails, instant messaging and wiki style communication into one open sourced service.

• Is innovation in browsers where it should be? We’ve reported before on how most of the innovation is going on in open source browsers, as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer continues to lose market share. This week, at two separate conferences, officials from Google and Mozilla have weighed in on how browsers need to improve. Notably, they primarily agree, and their focus doesn’t seem matched by Microsoft with Internet Explorer.

• Most people I have talked to have responded this way: It’s their project, let them do what they want with it, something good is likely to come of it, and hey — there’s a lot of programming fish in the sea, it’s not like we’re losing them. And my response has been: No, it’s “throwing good code after bad”, to put a turn on another common phrase. It diverts the attention of very talented people into something they tell themselves is worthwhile, but is borne out of a premise that doesn’t really lift all the boats with its tide.

Applications

• There is a new download available for the Realeyes IDS version 0.9.5. Read the release notes for details, but essentially, this release is about new user interface features. The screenshots have been updated and there are two new demos, one on installation and configuration, and the other on the new features. There are links to all of this on the technology page

Leftovers

• It’s been quite troubling that for years various schools have simply accepted propaganda and totally inaccurate “teaching materials” about copyright and used them to teach students. These programs have been created by both the RIAA and the MPAA, at times. More recently, a lobbying organization backed by both of those organizations, the Copyright Alliance (which has a long history of making up the most fantastic myths about copyright) has been pushing a copyright curriculum on schools.

• In their race for one or more seats in the European Parliament, the Swedish Pirate Party has gathered support from all layers of society, including some well known public figures. One of them is Lars Gustafsson, one of Sweden’s most prolific writers, who openly expressed his support for the Pirate Party today.

• Separately, the CEO of The Conference Board of Canada has supposedly admitted the report was plagiarized. Kudos to Michael Geist for his relentless following of this story, and making sure it got the attention it deserved… and kudos to The Conference Board of Canada for actually backing down (despite first defending the credibility of the report) once it realized how problematic it was.

• Right now, in Geneva, at the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization, history is being made. For the first time in WIPO history, the body that creates the world’s copyright treaties is attempting to write a copyright treaty dedicated to protecting the interests of copyright users, not just copyright owners.

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