● 06.28.09

● Links 28/06/2009: Red Hat’s KVM, Jolicloud Preview

Posted in News Roundup at 3:10 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Almost two years after its initial announcement, the Linux Solution Group (LiSoG) has now presented specifications for its OSDtBench (Open Source based Desktop Benchmark) desktop benchmark suite and demonstrated a prototype at LinuxTag 2009 in Berlin.

LinuxTag 2009

• In his keynote at the LinuxTag 2009 in Berlin, KDE founder Matthias Ettrich spoke about the future of user interfaces on mobile devices. In the process he presented QML, the newest development from his employer Qt Software.

• The facts are clear, Koyshkin said at the outset: every computer has but finite resources such as CPU time, memory, hard disk size and I/O, and network I/O. Administrators are interested in protecting these resources from DoS attacks so that they can continue providing QoS or simple processing.

FUD

• So, there you have it, these are some of the things that would help a guy like me to put new Linux machines side by side with the Windows ones.

• Earlier on this month a project came to the fore the Linux Unified Kernel or LUK for short. This is a Chinese based project (although I sincerely hope that it expands to become a global effort) at putting Wine code into the Linux kernel. The reaction to this has been mostly mixed with horror by many, stating things like “We should be making vendors support Linux natively” and “oh no, the security issues!” to other things such as the legal issues.

Desktop

• AWN (Avant-Window-Navigator). This is the first dock I tried a couple years back. It looks good, is easily configurable, and has a lot of great plugins (stacks, menu’s, weather etc…). It can pretty much replace the entire gnome-panel in features. However, I only ended up sticking with AWN for a couple months because the auto-hide feature was (and still is) buggy and would crash the dock during normal operation. This should be fixed for the upcoming 0.4 release; so, I might have to give it another try at that time. The original developer works with Canonical on the Ubuntu Netbook Remix (which I love) and is definitely capable of great things.

Server

• The platform currently only supports Linux applications.

Applications

• The development team behind the linuX-gamers project proudly announced earlier today that version 0.9.5 of their Linux-based Live DVD was now available for download. Being packed with a lot of games of various types, such as RPG, FPS, RTS, TBS, arcade or puzzle, linuX-gamers 0.9.5 is a ‘boot-and-play’ Linux distribution. This means the linuX-gamers allows users to play the titles directly from the Live DVD without having to install anything at all on their computers!

• Kaspersky has released a beta version of its antivirus software for Linux file systems.

• Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Linux File Server 6.0 is designed to address security issues passing through Linux file servers before infiltrating other systems, such as Windows workstations.

Distributions

• Xen has ruled the open source virtualization software market, but Red Hat is looking to change all that.

• The company’s upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization suite is based on another open source product, the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM).

Devices/Embedded

• Timesys Corporation (http://www.timesys.com), provider of LinuxLink, the first commercial software development framework for building custom embedded Linux based products, today announced LinuxLink 3.0 support for Xilinx Virtex-4 and Virtex-5 FPGAs.

• IGEL Technology today launched its new Linux Universal Desktop firmware adding important new power management, multimedia and virtualization functionality to its Linux-based thin client range.

• Embedded Linux as an operating system for modern ARM processors? Maybe not such a bad idea? Linux is a multitasking operating system and therefore, each process must be assigned its own process address space. However, this partitioning greatly complicates the debugging of processors and inter-process functionality. So what can be done to tackle this? The following article illustrates some possibilities how you can successfully achieve your goal.

Phones

• The Android 1.5 NDK, which was announced Thursday on the Android developers blog, doesn’t actually allow developers to run completely native code on devices. Instead, it supports adding native code into apps written to run in Dalvik virtual machine (DVM) instances.

• Marking a departure from the world of iPhone, HTC’s new Android-based Hero phone will also come with the ability to handle Flash elements that adorn many Web sites and power YouTube video.

Sub-notebooks

• Details of how Intel and Nokia will actually work together to create their brand-new category of not-a-smartphone, not-a-netbook mobile devices remain sketchy, but the first results will be open source software rather than any hardware platform.

• Under the arrangement, the companies said they will work together on chip design and open-source software. Intel recently has entered that field with its Linux-based operating system called Moblin, designed to function on portable devices, and Nokia has a Linux-based operating system, dubbed Maemo. In addition, Intel will license some modem technology from Nokia.

• LinuxDevices is pro-Linux, anti-Symbian, and now assumes Linux will displace Symbian:

• This “reading buddy” activity is being further developed conceptually as our members from Computer Science and Engineering departments commence work on the programming aspect of the work, and it is our hope that this can be done in a variety of languages in the future.

• Of course, it’s too early to draw any conclusions, but the current alpha version of Jolicloud does make a good first impression. The fact that Jolicloud is based on Ubuntu means that you can run it on pretty much any netbook and tweak the system to your liking. Jolicloud’s slick graphical interface makes it easy to install desktop and Web-based applications as well as keep your system up-to-date, which can prove to be popular with average users.

Free Software/Open Source

• Robert Young’s message is about how Red Hat competed with Microsoft by offering something Microsoft was not prepared to offer – free software. Red Hat changed the rules of the game and generates over $600 million a year in revenue.

• With the rise of open source in the embedded software industry and the ease that individuals can collaborate using social networking tools, we are standing at a unique point in time. A time where Wind River has lost its ability to control access to software, and where collaborating with a developer in China is as easy as popping your head over the cubicle partition. A time where we can eliminate the pay cheque for middle men like Ken Klein. A time where our future security will depend on ourselves, and the value that we create along with our peers. A time where we can change the rules of the game to favor our strengths, and compete with Wind River, even when it is backed by the resources, the distribution channels, and the R&D resources of Intel.

• Hotel Concepts-Brilliant, a leading global provider of technology and software solutions for the hospitality industry, today announced a groundbreaking approach to its software technology development with a new and converged platform called iTesso.

• Huntingburg Public Library has gone live with Evergreen, the consortial-quality open-source library automation software. 28 libraries are now live on Evergreen Indiana, a shared-catalog project of the Indiana State Library. Equinox Software, Inc., the support and development company established by the original Evergreen developers, provided bumper-to-bumper support for the migrations and is now providing round-the-clock ongoing technical support. Alpha-G Consulting also provided support for the migration

• Though it was only yesterday that Bluenog (news, site) announced the newest iteration of their integrated collaborative environment, better known as Bluenog ICE, the company is already back with more exciting news. Good Samaritans that they are, Bluenog plans to contribute back the enhancements it made to various open source projects during the development phase of Bluenog ICE 4.5.

• Research In Motion often fields the question of whether it might follow Symbian’s lead by making the BlackBerry OS open source. While there’s nothing to suggest such a move is in the cards, RIM executives have acknowledged that this could make sense in certain types of scenarios, and BlackBerry developers are intrigued by the options this would afford them.

Web

• Companies need the freedom to get at their data, to choose hosted or in-house options and more. All this can be found amongst open source solutions – but choose carefully, says Jason Brooks

• Click2try, a community site which enables the easy opening and trying of open source software announced the addition of MoinMoin to its online catalog of virtualized open source applications.

• Using cloud storage from Amazon has helped Automattic scale its fast-growing WordPress.com blog hosting service. But WordPress founding developer Matt Mullenweg said he’d much prefer to run an optimized open source solution on leased servers. While cloud computing is the hot buzzword, Mullenweg said open source is the key to competing in the new digital economy.

• Movable Type has been forked — at least the open source GPL version — into a new project called Melody.

• ObjectsOnClouds.org Announces the Launch of the ObjectsOnClouds Open Source Project Initiative. Developer membership is free and is open to anyone worldwide.

Business

• Many businesses are seeking ways to reduce cost and improve operational effectiveness to weather the current economic climate. The use of open source software offers the ability to do both while improving the quality of the systems used to operate the businesses.

• “The facts, however, prove the opposite. The very openness of the source code actually increases its security. This helps to explain why Windows sites are defaced disproportionately more often than can be attributed to its larger market share and why 80% of all spam is sent by infected Windows PCs.

• TelcoBridges™, the preferred hardware and software supplier for telecom system integrators, solution developers and service providers, today announced its partnership with Halo Kwadrat, a leading European reseller specializing in open source telephony solutions. Halo is adding TelcoBridges’ high-capacity platform to its portfolio, to deliver turnkey, carrier-grade solutions to local service providers throughout Central Europe, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Russia.

• Vyatta positions itself as the open source networking alternative to Cisco Systems. But what exactly does that mean? And how is Vyatta working with Citrix Systems, which recently invested in Vyatta? To find the answers, I spoke with Kelly Herrell (pictured), CEO of Vyatta.

ERP

• …released under the GPL and now averages more than 100 downloads per day from and has totalled some 250,000 from SourceForge alone.

• Experts had declared 2009 as the year of open source ERP. The maturing product lines, rising consumer awareness and the economic slowdown pain were expected to give a boost to open source ERP deployments.

PBX

• SIPfoundry has released its latest open source enterprise IP PBX (News – Alert) unified communications solution dubbed sipXecs marking the latest significant launch from the Open Source outfit.

• Unified MBX is a software-only IP business communication system built for mobile phones. By pre-integrating OnRelay’s Cellular FMC software with a feature-rich open source IP PBX, Unified MBX provides Unified Communications (UC) without the expense of proprietary telephony hardware or IP PBX licenses.

Ingres

CRM

• The number of companies in Europe using open source software to manage Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is surprising, an IT advisor has claimed.

• Companies are increasingly requiring their call centre staff to work using open source customer relationship management (CRM) applications, an expert asserts.

Releases

• Steven Edwards of the Bordeaux Technology Group released Bordeaux 1.8 for FreeBSD today. Bordeaux 1.8 has had many changes on the back end, our build process has been totally rewritten, packaging has been totally rewritten.

• Open source data integration software specialist Talend has released a new real-time data integration platform for enterprise application integration.

• Let’s close the week with a press release we just issued. Jamendo, more present than ever, in every nook and cranny of the internet!

Asia

• The two parties also inaugurated a technology center called the Center for Open Source Technology Awakening (COSTA) in an effort to push empowerment and development of Regional Information Technology Center (RICE) and Incubator Business Center (IBC).

• Ten Open Source Software Centers and related promotion organizations in Asian countries and regions announce the formation of Asian Open Source Software Center (AOSSC) alliance/network to further promote the adoption, and development of open source software (OSS) technology among Asian countries. The participating countries and regions include China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand.

Licensing

• Syntext, Inc. (http://www.syntext.com) is glad to announce the upcoming release of Serna Free XML editor as open source software.

Openness

• In case you missed it, history was made last week. The street uprisings in Iran, and the role that technology has been playing in that grass-roots democratic movement, has signaled a very important shift in the socioeconomic and geopolitical landscape of the planet. What is this technology I’m referring to? Actually, I’m referring to two: the open source paradigm and the web-portal, Twitter.

Programming

• PHP 5.3 could be out as soon as Tuesday June 30th. The new open source language release is a big deal for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that by my count this is the first major update to PHP since 2006 and the PHP 5.2 release.

• Software engineers today are about 200-400% more productive than software engineers were 10 years ago because of open source software, better programming tools, common libraries, easier access to information, better education, and other factors. This means that one engineer today can do what 3-5 people did in 1999!

• The advent of open source software makes engineers particularly efficient. One VP Engineering that I talked to gave me an anecdote about one module where they used open source files with about 500,000 lines of code and then wrote 7,000 lines of code to stitch it all together. Open source software is also free. In the company I was running in 1999, ?software? was a huge budget line item ? we had to buy databases, testing suites, libraries, and more. Today all that stuff is free ? a start-up might spend more money on sodas for the office than it does on software.

• Curious about programming, but having trouble getting started because you’re confused about all those languages? This article will give you an overview of the most common desktop languages you’ll see in free software today.

Applications

• The Mozilla team made available another release candidate of Firefox 3.5 last night.

• And if you’re wondering why it matters anyway that the South Koreans should be able to use Firefox and other “non-standard” browsers – don’t you just love that description? – it’s because the country’s users have some of the fastest broadband connections in the world; that means that new applications based on such connectivity may well emerge there first, so it’s important that open source be available and viable for all kinds of uses.

• Nagios Enterprises, LLC announces the launch of official support contracts for Nagios – the industry standard in Open Source IT infrastructure monitoring. Support plans are competitively priced for budget-conscious organizations and start at just $2,495 per year. Discounts are offered for customers who purchase support plans through June 30, 2009.

• Recently, I wanted to learn how to make Facebook applications using Ruby on Rails. For my first project, I decided to build a small application to let people find, share, install and promote Ubuntu software right from within Facebook.

Standards/Consortia

• FUD, for those who are unaware, is an acronym for “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.” Instilling FUD in people has often been a tactic of proprietary vendors, seeking to scare their customer-base away from other vendors or freer, non-proprietary alternatives. It has often been used to describe Microsoft’s tactics of denigrating free and open source solutions, for example. Essentially it is a scare-tactic which operates on people’s fear and ignorance.

• Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis are emerging technologies used for compressing video and audio, respectively. The Ogg formats are free and open formats that do not belong to any particular corporation, nor do they require any royalties to use.

Leftovers

• While it hasn’t gone that far, a talk given by Reuters’ Editor in Chief, David Schlesinger, to the International Olympics Committee Press Commission on rethinking journalism suggests Reuters recognizes the future a lot more clearly than the AP, and is looking to embrace it fully, rather than block it, like the AP.

• The debate over Wikipedia offers a fascinating window onto the various ways the Internet is changing how we compile and access information. This is the larger issue at the heart of Anderson’s writing: “The Long Tail” was an exploration of niche culture, the Internet’s tendency to encourage a glorious cacophony of fragmentation, while “Free” looks at what Anderson calls “freeconomics,” an open-source model in which data is the common currency.

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