● 06.01.09

● Links 01/06/2009: Hacao Linux 4.21 Pro Released, Stallman Receives Honorary Degree

Posted in News Roundup at 4:42 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• To put it quite simply. If you wish to uses a particular operating system then only choose hardware for that operating system. Don’t use the hardware as an excuse for not using that operating system. Because that is all it is, an excuse, not a reason.

• Where is Linux going?

• This is a question a lot of forums hash over and argue about constantly.

• Linux essentially started life as a DIY, ( Do It Yourself) kind of OS. Meaning mostly that, if you want to use it, you will play every role in using it. End user, technician, even quasi ‘developer’ (depending on how ‘into it’ you got.)

Desktop

• Now there will be nine more PCs pretty model to pick when the Windows computers are banished by the Mac hipster! Today the New York State Ubuntu Local Community Team co-sponsored an install fest with LUGOR (Linux User Group of Rochester) and RCSI (Rocehster Computer Society Inc).

• Hannover – Video editing has long since moved beyond the Windows-and-Macs-only realm. Amateur filmmakers can enjoy a wide range of free Open Source software available for Linux as well. Programs like Kino and Avidemux are especially good for simple video editing, reports Hannover-based c’t magazine in its special Linux kompakt edition. Users who want to draw on the benefits of a large user community in case of problems should use Kdenlive. Professional work and HD videos are best handled using Cinelerra.

• Mac Software: $3,622.55 Linux Software: $0.00

Kernel Space

• AMD released their monthly Linux ATI Catalyst display driver package for their graphics cards; the requisite release notes delineate the changes in this build:

• * Catalyst Control Center, the primary display is now identified when using the Identify Displays button

Applications

• Most popular Linux distributions that use the GNOME desktop environment come with Rhythmbox pre-installed. If that’s not the case, be sure to check the software repositories and see if you can install it from there. If you still can’t find it or want the latest available version (0.12.1, instead of 0.12.0 that is currently available in Ubuntu’s repos), download the latest sources or .deb files from Softpedia. After the small download and quick installation, you will find Rhythmbox in the “Sound & Video” (or similar) category.

• If you’re searching for a really great audio player, look no further. Rhythmbox, in spite of its low memory footprint, has a lot to offer to both hardcore music junkies and occasional listeners.

• Remote Desktop Control displays the screen of another computer (via Internet or local area network) on a local screen. This type of software enables users to use the mouse and keyboard to control the other computer remotely. It means that a user can work on a remote computer as if he or she was sitting directly in front of it, regardless of the distance between the computers.

• Version 0.73 of DOSBox, which emulates DOS for the purpose of running old applications (games!), has been loosed upon the world (thanks backstander!).

• DOS, the PC’s original Disk Operating System really was a crock of you-know-what, but it did somehow manage to foster some great little games. And now you can recall them all with DOSBox — for Windows, Mac and Linux.

• Cheese is not going to make you a more productive worker. In fact, it’s just fun enough that it might make you a less productive worker. But when you need that interface to your trusty webcam, just say “Cheese” and you’ll be ready every time.

KDE

• The KDevelop team is proud to announce the third public beta of KDevelop4. This release includes some major new features, such as a new code-writing assistant, a new documentation plugin showing you the API docs for Qt and KDE APIs, a reworked Mercurial plugin and a rewrite of the classbrowser plugin. On top of that we improved stability a lot, made loads of small improvements throughout and fixed as many bugs as we could.

• The Ubuntu Artwork community just made the first official beta release of the Breathe Icon Theme. It’s a refresh of the Human icon theme using Oxygen as a base. The idea is to create as modern a set as Oxygen but with that distinctly Human feel.

Distributions

• Meet Mandriva 2009 (One), a distro which states a similar level of “out of the box” compatibility as Ubuntu, but does it deliver?

• I decided to write this article to cover a topic that has been concerning me for a while. Whilst Ubuntu is a great distro offering “out of the box” support, there is so much more to Linux and Linux != Ubuntu! With that in mind Ive picked a distro which Ive dabbled with on occasion in the past, but since Heron 8.04 went on by second rig and Gentoo remains my distro of choice, I’d neglected the distro for a while. I think (if i’m honest) theres are reason for this.

• I’ve enjoyed my time looking at Chakra, and while it has many rough edges to iron out before an official release, I do think it’s potential is there for all to see. Arch is a great distribution and building on top of it like this makes perfect sense to me. I’m not sure exactly who Chakra is aimed at but it doesn’t seem to be new Linux users. They even say that on their website. I think for Arch users who like KDE it’s definitely worth a look, even in this early stage. Why not get involved and help them make it even better. Some knowledge of Arch is essential if you’re planning to get involved with Chakra. Having the backup of my Arch experience really helped me fix some teething problems. The liveCD works perfectly already, they just need to tweek the installer a little and they’ll be onto a winner. One thing is for sure, when they finally get a full release of Chakra ready for public consumption, I’ll be back to look at it. It’s one to keep your eye on I say.

• So next time you get into a bit of trouble with Windows, just think. It doesn’t have to be this way. Go on dip your toes in. Ubuntu, Mint, Mandriva, openSuse. Just “google” “ask” or “yahoo” one of the names and take a look. They are all free so you really do have nothing to loose but ten minutes of your time.

• Install them, spend a little time playing, give them a chance and I think you’ll agree, there’s nothing wrong with free!

• In PC industry, hardware outdated too frequent. Your hardware often too old and too slow for the latest applications or Operating System. But you can give life to your old desktop by installing some lightweigth Linux distro.

• Long time no release new version.

• Today, Hacao Linux 4.21 Pro release…

Red Hat

• Paul W. Frields of the Fedora Project, the free and open source arm of the Red Hat Linux distribution.

Ubuntu

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #144 for the week May 24th – May 30th, 2009. In this issue we cover Ubunutu Forums Tutorial of the Week, New Ubuntu One sub-forum, In The Press, In The Blogosphere, the latest Ubuntu-UK Podcast, Meeting Summaries, LoCo Teams, Upcoming Events, and much, much more!!

• While buying some new hardware — Intel X25-M SSD 80Gb SATA internal drive, Samsung external DVD and some DVD’s — I came across the following special offer from my favourite hardware vendor Newergg: Combo Deal 05/28/2009…

Devices/Embedded

Phones

• Even though Google Android users have yet to receive the “Cupcake” update that will deliver Android 1.5 to their devices, Google is already hinting at the operating system update’s successor: “Donut.”

• Donut, also known as Android 2.0, made its debut during a keynote speech at the Google I/O conference this week. Android Interface Toolkit Engineer Romain Guy gave attendees a sneak peek at three big advancements in the open source mobile operating system, which will be a part of Android 2.0, codenamed Donut.

• The most enthusiastic for Android was Sehat Sutardja, the chief executive of the Marvell Technology Group, which makes processor chips for phones as well as other gadgets, including a new $99 computer the size of a cellphone charger.

Sub-notebooks

• This video is a screen recording of Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) running on an ASUS Eee 901.

• According to the State Minister of Education Theoneste Mutsindashyaka, Government has already ordered 100,000 units to be delivered in phases, worth about US $18.1m and the first shipment of 5,000 computers is expected in the country at the end of June while more 15,000 pieces will be shipped in by August.

• The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program, envisioned by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) professor Nicholas Negroponte and introduced in Nepal in 2008, has already equipped children in 26 schools throughout Nepal´s six districts with a laptop each.

• As we emphasized above, if you’re fired up to go netbook shopping after perusing the Hive Five (or reading the 127th article about them in the tech press), make sure to pay attention to the details. In a world of fairly standardized 1.6GHz processors and 1.3MP webcams, it’s the little details—the spacing of the keys, layout of the USB ports—that really make the difference in how comfortable your mini-mini-computer will be in actual use. If you can’t get to a brick and mortar store to actually play around with the machines, try searching Google for comparison reviews and images of your top few choices. Many gadget and laptop review sites have pictures of comparable laptops stack on top of each other, side by side, and so forth so you can see if that extra .5″ really matter to you.

• With the usual disclaimer that is a very early barely working prototype that will be probably massively different from anything final, it’s nice to show the screenshot of the other day in action.

• I’ve had an AAO D150 for 5 days now and I have to say that I’m entirely happy with it – my only complaint is that I wish I’d had more time to spend on it!

• The unit itself comes put of the box with the usual manuals but does expect you to burn the reinsallation and drivers disks yourself. I’ve always though that this is a rather mean policy when you’re selling a device that doesn’t include an optical drive, but maybe that’s just me.

• [...]

• My over-all impressions of the unit are that is is well built, well spec’ed and very smooth to use. Exactly what I was looking for!

Free Software/Open Source

• The fates, through SGI nee Rackable, have granted a new beginning to Silicon Valley’s once darling Silicon Graphics. Despite old mistakes and economic challenges, Silicon Graphics’ engineering contributions are legendary: their systems (Oh, the systems!), and software such as the well known OpenGL and the little known Performance Co-Pilot (a.k.a. PCP).

• When it comes to open source Intrusion Detection/Prevention Systems (IDS/IPS) one name stands alone — Snort. Yup the hog is still protecting lots of networks and today Sourcefire (Nasdaq:FIRE) –the lead commercial vendor behind Snort) issued a release celebrating Snorts 10th anniversary (technically the anniversary was December but hey…). SNORT claims 3.7 million downloads (a few of those might be mine) and over the last ten years it has continued to evolve with new IDS/IPS features.

• A company called Kickfire is applying the same principle to data warehousing. By combining open-source database technology with innovative hardware, it has created a promising new data warehousing solution at a fraction of the cost of competing products.

• Could open source software save the planet? Steven Chu, the US energy secretary, says it can certainly help, by making it easier for all countries to access tools to design and build more energy-efficient buildings.

• The best thing anyone can do to continue making the Internet more closed, restrictive, and prohibiting is to use Adobe Flash as it exists today. The Internet was created to allow for the open and unconfined infrastructure to share information; yet, it is being used today for the opposite purpose: to stop this information torrent. Many people do not see Flash as an issue, and don’t view Adobe as a malevolent authoritarian. In fact, though, Flash is the biggest bottleneck on the Internet’s effectiveness in the same way that the variety of world languages spoken worldwide is the biggest bottleneck on the global social network. A change in Adobe’s business strategy with regards to Flash is the only way to turn this unnecessary throttle on the potential of the Internet-connected community into a true innovation and synergistic technology.

• For those of you interested in the release of Sun’s next OpenSolaris operating system, it is coming next Monday. OpenSolaris 2009.06 has many package updates and improvements to this desktop Solaris operating system since the release of OpenSolaris 2008,11 last year.

Business

• RightScale, Inc., the leader in cloud computing management, today announced that Mårten Mickos, former CEO of MySQL, has joined its board of directors. Mickos brings extensive knowledge and experience in high growth startups from his role at MySQL, where he guided MySQL’s successful commercial open source business through to its acquisition by Sun Microsystems in 2008.

• A private cloud could offer almost all the benefits of a public cloud, but without the attendant security and privacy headaches, said Jim Whitehurst, president and chief executive officer of enterprise open source software vendor Red Hat.

• Moreover, if a company is running more than 1,000 servers, it could save money and become more flexible with its processor resources by building an internal cloud computing infrastructure.

FSF/GNU

• Richard StallmanFree Software Advocate

• Richard Stallman is internationally recognised as a leader in the free software movement, which argues that everyone should be free to run, share, study, and modify software. To understand the concept of free software, Richard says, “You should think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer.”

• Born in New York City in 1953, Richard Stallman graduated from Harvard with a BA in Physics in 1974 (one year before Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard to create Microsoft). While studying at Harvard, Richard also worked as a staff hacker at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, where he learned how to develop operating systems. After graduating, he continued working at MIT until 1984, when he left to start the GNU (pronounced guh-NEW) Project.

• [...]

Government

• One of the most exciting developments in the last few years has been the application of some of the core ideas of free software and open source to completely different domains. Examples include open content, open access, open data and open science. More recently, those principles are starting to appear in a rather surprising field: that of government, as various transparency initiatives around the world start to gain traction.

• It’s unclear at this point from my point of view how this situation will end. It is clear that the issue of a no-bid contract is an issue, as is the fact that (according to Red Hat at least) the Swiss claimed they went with Microsoft because they saw no alternatives.

• What this whole situation does though, is highlight the fact that open source vendors are not going to standby idly, while governments simply renew their proprietary choices without giving open source vendors at least the opportunity to bid on contracts.

Openness

• Open source hardware could well be India’s best bet to get started with a hardware industry, without spending years designing microchips from scratch, writes Varun Aggarwal

Programming

• At its annual developer conference here, Google demonstrated Wave, a program it said could represent the future of online communications. The software—the brunt of which the company said will be made open source–blurs the lines between email, instant messaging and online document collaboration.

• I’m still reading through what little detail we have on Google Wave, but there certainly appears to be enough for developers to get excited about.

• Before we even get to the technical details of what Wave does, or how we develop for it, there’s the way it’s being designed, developed and distributed. At first glance, everything about Wave is open: Source, protocols, licence, including a patent retaliation clause.

• Developers in the mobile companies I talked about are working on the GNOME Mobile mailing lists and in the GNOME projects with freelance developers, developers from their own companies, developers from competing companies and developers from all up and down the supply chain from chip manufacturers to carriers. And that results in happy developers, more integrated products, complex products that get to market quickly and in lots of very cool options for end users.

Graphics

• A new release of Blender, the immensely popular open-source 3D modeling software, is now available. This is not the much-anticipated Blender 2.5 release, but instead version 2.49, which brings forth several prominent changes and improvements while the developers continue work on the next major release. As part of the 2.49 release, the Blender Game Engine (BGE) has also received improvements too.

• Converting digital images to B&W is a bit like the Swiss fondue recipe: everyone has a different version and each person is convinced to have the best. I previously blogged about the subject with a “blind comparison” between different methods – with the comparison’s result.

Leftovers

• The under-the-radar meeting hosted by the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) Thursday brought together top newspaper executives to discuss various issues, including the much-debated topic of charging for online content.

• Participants aren’t commenting specifically on their discussions, but the summit raises the question: Can newspapers collectively decide to put content behind a pay wall? And if they did, would that violate antitrust laws?

• With the Canadian mainstream media featuring prominent coverage of the Conference Board of Canada’s decision to recall its now discredited IP reports (Globe and Mail, CBC, Montreal Gazette, IT Business, Vancouver Sun, Ottawa Citizen, Toronto Star, Chronicle of Higher Education) it is worth remembering why the copyright lobby funded the Conference Board to produce the report in the first place. I believe the answer is fairly clear – the plan was to use it for media coverage, to support its conference (chaired by the Canadian Recording Industry Association’s Graham Henderson) and to provide in the regular meetings between the lobbyists and Canada’s politicians and policy makers.

• Elena Kagan Just what, exactly, are all those Hollywood types getting in return for their investment in Barack Obama’s presidential bid? The Justice Department, a steady ally for the entertainment industry on copyright issues during the Bush administration, today opposed the studios in a potentially precedent-setting dispute with Cablevision over TV recording services. U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan urged the Supreme Court not to review the 2nd Circuit’s ruling, which held that Cablevision’s “network DVR” service did not infringe copyrights (download the brief here.)

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