● 08.07.09

● Links 07/08/2009: Camp KDE 2010 Planned, ASUS May Return to GNU/Linux Sub-notebooks

Posted in News Roundup at 7:41 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Inna Kuznetsova, Director, Linux Strategy, led the meeting attended by IT analysts and painted a telling picture of what IBM’s Linux business has been in recent months: in short, strong and growing. To give an idea of this strength, Kuznetsova reported that in the past three years, over 1,800 customers have migrated from competitive platforms to IBM, and nearly 50 percent of those IBM wins included Linux.

• If you think FOSS is for Linux then think again and start Googling (or Binging). I have a Linux box (Mint 7 KDE 4, try it), a Mac and a Vista Dell (my Wife’s, honest). I use the same FOSS on all three.

• xFOSS simply allows all students, schools and teachers to access the same high quality facilities for free.

• The Learn at Home generation may fare well or poorly, either way simple fairness implies that they will use xFOSS at home. My feeling is that separating teaching and learning away from other aspects of schools will be very effective. It will be an interesting experiment.

• Many pundits who have seen this data have postulated that the economy is actually the source for this rapid rise in valuation, as companies are flocking to open source software due to budget constraints. Anecdotally I have seen this as well, and our members tell us they are seeing it too.

Desktop

• I just received my first back to school notice in my email box. It came from PCMagazine. They’re touting “Back to School software.” But they also feature a review of Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system.

• I looked it over and I’m not impressed. You can read the review here. If you currently run Windows XP, well, you’ll want to know about “XP Mode.” This is virtualization software that allows XP users to run XP legacy software in Windows 7. Problem is, it doesn’t work very well.

• And other questions about Windows 7 are cropping up. John C. Dvorak’s column details some of the backlash.

Server

• Leading anti-spam vendor prepares to fight spam on the next generation of the Internet

• When the Open Source Channel Alliance launched in April 2009, the organization (led by Synnex and Red Hat) vowed to develop turnkey open source solutions for Synnex’s 15,000 resellers. HP’s Open Source Jump-Start Appliance is the first fruit of that work.

Kernel Space

• As part of their Stream 2.0 Beta, AMD announced yesterday their OpenCL (Open Computing Language) Software Development Kit designed for multi-core x86 CPUs. They have submitted this SDK to the Khronos Group for certification, but it is available now. This OpenCL SDK, which is part of Stream 2.0, is available for both Windows and Linux. When it comes to AMD’s Linux support, they are currently supporting this new SDK under OpenSuSE 11.0 and Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.

Applications

• BOH is an original, retro-flavoured game of exploration and action. You move in claustrophobic, traps-packed, mind-boggling battlefields searching for the Evil Masters, who throw countless enemies at you until you discover and face

• Mozilla’s Firefox has been my favourite web browser since the first version of the free software download appeared in November 2004. Its arrival triggered a rerun of the 1990s “browser wars” that pitted Microsoft’s then upstart Internet Explorer against the incumbent Netscape Navigator.

Chrome

• If you have anything to do with IT or computers you know about the Google Chrome browser. No matter where you stand on your opinion of Google, you can not deny the Chrome browser is fast. In fact, Chrome is setting the standard for browser speed such that the competition is now playing a serious game of catch up. The Chrome browser is so fast (at both startup and page load) that the difference goes well beyond noticeable. Next to all of its competition Google Chrome looks as if it is running in a completely different gear all together.

• Meet the new boss, not quite the same as the old boss. While Google Chrome isn’t likely to unseat Firefox as the browser of choice for most Linux users very soon, recent development builds are showing a great deal of promise.

• Just like Firefox, Google Chrome web browser is now theme-able. That is if you have Google Chrome 3.0 Developer Preview or the most recent Chromium build installed.

• Chrome for Linux has recently been released in an unstable version. As I have been looking forward to it for a year now, I cannot wait more. So I am going to have a look at that beta version (3.0.196.0).

KDE

• We are pleased to announce Camp KDE 2010!

• Camp KDE 2010 will take place at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) in La Jolla, California, USA from January 15th until January 22nd, 2010. The event is free to all participants.

• KDE 4 features a new desktop shell named Plasma. Part of Plasma is support for desktop widgets, known as ‘Plasmoids’, which can include a clock, a notepad and more.

Distributions

• I went whole hog and used a 128 MB stick. Yep, that’s it. I have a huge 20 MB left for storage. Now that I know this works (at least on my Dell, the only box to which I have access that also allows booting via USB) I’ll get a bigger stick and actually have some room to, as they say, maneuver.

• Doing the install was easy. I booted Puppy 4.1.2 from a CD I had previously burned (I know Puppy is up to 4.2 … I’ll have to try it). Then I used the menu to install to USB. The only thing I did that wasn’t a default was selecting mbr.bin as the boot method. It works.

• Web-Pardusman has a schedulder queue where each distro build request will be queued according to the server build capacity and at a time specific number of builds will be processed. After the build, next request will be accpeted from the queue.

• First off, FOSS (free open source software) thrives on variety. Without it, FOSS wouldn’t truly be FOSS.

• [...]

• So in the end, we really don’t have too many distros. In fact, in some areas we don’t have enough, and in others we have just the right amount. So always remember, when something seems too big or like there’s too many choices, make sure you’re not looking at the case, but rather the box inside that pertains to you.

Red Hat

• RHEL is all about “selling boxes” (i.e., servers), in other words. It’s tactical, not deeply strategic.

• rPath, an innovator in solutions for automating application deployment and maintenance, today announced that Sony Pictures Imageworks, Inc., has selected rBuilder and the rPath Lifecycle Management Platform. Using the rPath solutions, Sony Imageworks will automate the packaging, deployment and maintenance of the digital character animation and visual effects applications used to create its award-winning movie projects.

Ubuntu

• Canonical’s Ubuntu Server Edition is finally showing some ISV (independent software vendor) momentum. The latest two examples involve Openbravo and Alfresco. Here’s the news and a bigger picture look at Canonical’s attempt to compete against Windows Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Novell SUSE Linux on the server.

Devices/Embedded

Sub-notebooks

• Asus may have pulled its experimental Google Android-powered netbook from sight after teasing journalists with it at Computex in June. But that doesn’t mean the company is sticking to Windows and Xandros Linux. Sascha at NetbookNews says a reliable source has told him that Asus will launch a netbook with Moblin Linux in October.

• Linux-powered netbook users that have been missing their doctors’ appointments and kids’ school plays because operating a calendar application on their tiny portable is, at best, clunky and painful, can finally breathe an accurately-scheduled sigh of relief. Srinivasa Ragavan, who is one of the user interface developers for the open-source Evolution personal information manager project, has taken it upon himself to develop netbook-happy frontends for the calendar and mail portions of Evolution.

• Mark my words. In 2015, two out of every three netbooks will be running Moblin. Computer users worldwide will be able to enjoy a free, super-fast, super-beautiful, lightweight, secure operating system that will cater to their simple joyful needs, focusing around media, Internet and social life online. Best of all? They will not even know they’re running Linux.

• I have spent the last few days playing with Moblin 2. Boy, it’s something else. It’s such a radical leap from the conventional Linux desktop you will be hard-pressed to believe that you’re using the geekiest operating system in the world.

Free Software/Open Source

• But for a system integrator like Potts’ employer, Optaros, code is critical. Potts is particularly well-suited to call this out, given that prior to Optaros he was a vice president at Hitachi Consulting where he did Documentum and other proprietary software deployments.

• There are two reasons why Linux and other open source software have demonstrated such explosive growth. One is the growth of the Internet, which is the largest collaborative platform in the history of mankind, connecting 1.4 billion people across the world. The other is the open, participative, distributed development model of open source where users are actually encourage to contribute to the development of the software. This is in sharp contrast to proprietary software that allows very limited rights to users.

Databases

• Monty Widenius, founder of MySQL, has said in a blog posting – “Thoughts on Dual-Licensing Open Source Software” – that he recently became aware that Sun Microsystem’s OEM licence agreement for MySQL would restrict users who had signed up for the commercial licence to the open source database from modifying MySQL or using any forks of MySQL. According to Widenius “The basic idea for our dual-licensing was this: if you bought a license then we waived the GPL restriction that you have to redistribute your code as GPL” and that the current version of the OEM licence goes against that principle to the detriment of customers.

• Sun’s internal surveys indicate that data warehousing is the fifth-most-common use case for MySQL, which explains why it is not just Infobright that is looking to build a data warehousing business around MySQL.

• The European Commission is contacting users of MySQL in the run up to the antitrust review of the Sun/Oracle deal. According to the Wall Street Journal The antitrust review is set to report on September 3rd, .

• If you do not follow MariaDB development, I want to head up XtraDB has been commited to MariaDB server and will be included in binary releases of MariaDB (scheduled on end of August – September) as replacement of InnoDB storage engine.

• EnterpriseDB, the leading enterprise-class open source database company, today announced an Oracle Migration Assessment Program designed to aid the thousands of companies locked into the Oracle database and related products who face a constant drumbeat of price increases from the vendor.

Licensing

• A few days ago I blogged that we will “most likely” be moving to the Eclipse Public License as our preferred license on code.intuit.com. The “most likely” disclaimer is being removed. We will be moving to the EPL.

Openness

• With the current economic downturn placing public finances under significant pressure, local authorities need to prepare for a more challenging future. In a climate of increasing budget constraints, councils are now facing inescapable demands to develop new and innovative ways to transform services, generate cashable efficiencies and deliver more for less. At the same time, local government IT costs are rising: In January this year, Socitm (the professional association for public ICT management) reported ICT spending by UK local authorities would soar by 5% in 2008/09, reaching a record level of £3.2 billion of expenditure. These developments underline the need for councils to drive more value from their IT investments.

• Openness is a much-misunderstood word; a kind of good-will moniker to which people attach an impressive variety of definitions; open source code, open standards, open handsets, openness as in transparency, shared roadmaps, open APIs, open route to market… It’s a very forgiving term as far as definitions go.

Leftovers

• Google quietly announced yesterday that it was buying On2 Technologies. For $106.5 million dollars, Google gets On2, a leading developer of video compression, publishing and encoding technology. Could Google be getting poised to jump into Internet TV?

• After its public relations firm was outed for sending fake letters opposing the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill to members of Congress, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) is expanding its “grassroots” outreach. The coal industry front group “is launching a $1 million campaign” to secure more concessions for coal in the Senate version of the climate change bill.

• No surprises there, of course; but what’s significant is that it’s the Daily Mail that’s pushing this jolly news out to its assembled readers. This means the message is going out to groups beyond the obvious Guardian greeny-lefties and Telegraph Tories.

Censorship/Web Abuse

• The Iraqi government has decided to crack down on Internet service providers and ban sites that incite violence or carry pornography, officials said Tuesday, a move that has been strongly criticized by freedom of speech advocates as a dangerous first step toward political censorship.

• Fox has ordered distributors to stop providing Redbox with new DVD releases, joining Universal in its attempt to prop up its ailing DVD business. Redbox is awaiting a ruling on its lawsuit against the studios over what the rental firm describes as their anticompetitive practices.

• Rupert Murdoch’s mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it anymore. High-handed treatment from Amazon, that is.

Intellectual Monopolies

• A third path would be to find or create some way to enforce the Four Freedoms without relying on copyright law to do so. Is there a different area of law that could be used? I am unaware of any non-copyright-based Free Software ideas. If there were no copyright, could the Four Freedoms be enforced?

• If Ian Shapira was upset that Gawker “only” gave him three links, I wonder what he feels about a long list of newspapers taking a story from a blog and giving no credit at all (found via Mathew Ingram)

• Before that joke, though, he was more specific on his opinions of physical formats that hold digital media: “I mean, I always hated CDs. Me and Stanley [Donwood] always hated CDs. Just a fucking nightmare,” he ranted, adding later, “there’s a process of natural selection going on right now. The music business was waiting to die in its current form about twenty years ago. But then, hallelujah, the CD turned up and kept it going for a bit. But basically, it was dead.”

• Either way, this is a story of the movie studios letting their own greed interfere with innovation. These movies are being legally purchased. It’s difficult to see how the studios have any leg to stand on in preventing Redbox from using their movies in its service. Isn’t there a First Sale right somewhere?

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