● 08.21.09

● Links 21/08/2009: ABI Compatibility Checker, 64-bit Chrome

Posted in News Roundup at 3:33 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• The Linux version of Synology Assistant is designed for Ubuntu distribution. In addition to the existing Windows and Mac version, users can now install Synology Assistant on Linux environment. “The Linux version completes our commitment in providing convenience of Disk Station setup on different platforms,” said Edward Lin, marketing director of Synology.

• Performing data backup and recovery in a Linux environment poses some unique challenges. Brien Posey, a freelance writer and former CIO, answers some of the most common questions about Linux data backup in this Q&A. His answers are also available as an MP3 below.

• And therein lies the biggest strength of Linux. It’s flexibility means that it can be almost anything to almost anyone in need of a good operating system, on almost any piece of hardware. And it’s here to stay.

Virtualisation

• This type of Linux choice is not typical of two-person IT staffs, especially those who are in the middle of major upgrades, analysts say.

• But perhaps the advantage that came through most strongly was in terms of ‘flexibility’ to run software on whatever physical platform may be wanted. For example, TheBloke mentioned it being possible to employ “Linux as the host OS while allowing me to continue to use the Windows apps I want – Microsoft Office, Toad for Oracle, Photoshop and more. Plus it allows me to use all those USB peripherals I have that don’t work properly under Linux. My mobile phone, for example.” He then made the valid point that “Having lots of RAM is important of course”.

Kernel Space

• As of the spring, nVidia had shipped over 100 million CUDA-compatible GPUs, although most of them were probably not in supercomputer clusters. The nVidia Tesla GPU co-processors are supported in both Linux and Windows environments.

• The Linux Plumbers Conference today announces the speakers and conference program for the 2nd annual conference to be held September 23-25 in Portland, Oregon immediately following LinuxCon Portland 2009. Both events will be held at the Marriott Downtown Waterfront in Portland, home to one of the largest Linux communities worldwide.

• As part of its LSB Infrastructure Project, the Linux Foundation has released a tool for testing the ABI compatibility of different versions of a C or C++ library. The ABI Compliance Checker tests whether data types or parameters passed to functions have changed between two versions of a library. Applications can behave incorrectly or crash where the binary interface is not compatible.

Google

• Google has begun work on a 64-bit version of Chrome for Linux, a move likely to whip Linux loyalists into a lather of excitement.

• “The V8 team did some amazing work this quarter building a working 64-bit port. After a handful of changes on the Chromium side, I’ve had Chromium Linux building on 64-bit for the last few weeks,” said Chrome engineer Dean McNamee in a mailing list message Thursday.

• Google engineers have been beavering away at a 64-bit version of the company’s Chrome browser for the Linux platform.

• According to Chrome developer Dean McNamee, Mountain View’s V8 team has been tinkering with a Chromium Linux 64-bit for several weeks now. V8, in case you were wondering, is the web kingpin’s JavaScript engine.

Desktop Environments

• KDE 4.3 is a great desktop, but there are improvements I think should be made to make it perfect. I have high hopes for KDE 4.4 and I’m hoping some of these ideas will be considered for the next release, which will probably be due in January. I’ll definitely make sure to submit them to the KDE team for consideration, as you should too if you have any suggestions. With all that out of the way, let’s get started.

Distributions

Red Hat Family

• For me as the operator and head of the StartCom Certification Authority, every computer application making use of SSL and cryptography is of importance, specially those of the various platforms from the house of Microsoft. That’s one of the reasons why I’m today extremely pleased to announce the upcoming default support of the StartCom Authority by Microsoft. Starting approximately the 22nd of September, Microsoft intends to distribute a non-security update package to the Windows operating systems which includes the trusted StartCom root certificate and the automatic root certificate update service will update the cryptographic certificates root store on those systems whenever a StartCom issued certificate is encountered.

• This not only means that Internet Explorer will finally support web sites secured with StartCom issued certificates by default, the implications for SSL security and the Internet at large are potentially reaching further than that:

• The open source revolution may have yet to happen, but with company budgets on the line, change is in the air.

• [...]

• Thus far, Red Hat has been focusing that help on the infrastructure side of corporate IT, so the kind of behind-the-scenes software on top of which applications run. It has branched out from its core Linux OS into all kinds of infrastructure software that enable things like clustering and virtualization.

Debian Family

• Recently I wrote about installing Ubuntu Linux on my MSI Wind netbook. Now that my netbook is happily running Ubuntu, my MacBook Pro is feeling deprived and slighted. It is time to do something about that.

New Distributions

Devices/Embedded

• Freescale says a Linux board support package (BSP) and multimedia codec library for the i.MX233 is available now, along with an EVK (evaluation kit) discussed later in this story.

• Datasound Laboratories has announced a pair of Linux-ready, fanless box PCs employing 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processors. The ACS-2663 and ACS-2664 include hard disk and CompactFlash storage, dual gigabit Ethernet ports, plus both VGA and DVI video outputs, the company says.

Phones

• Those developing applications for the Linux-based Pre smartphone can now submit them to be considered for inclusion in an upcoming “Palm App Catalog” beta. The test version of Palm’s online store will open in mid-September, the company said in a blog posting yesterday.

• The phone runs on Linux (the first smartphone to do so, to the best of my knowledge).

Sub-notebooks

• It seems that every vendor is getting on the netbook bandwagon-and if they’re not, they’re trying to get their own bandwagon rolling with a raft of similar form factor devices. Consumers love netbooks as a cheap, internet-enabled PC substitute and carriers seem happy to subsidise them in order to drive mobile broadband subscriptions. [...]

• Linux will be the glue that holds the joint effort together

• Both companies have their own in-house Linux projects-Intel with Moblin and Nokia with Maemo-and will align their respective strategies around a number of key open source technologies such as oFono, ConnMan, Mozilla, X.Org, BlueZ, D-BUS, Tracker, GStreamer, and PulseAudio. Incidentally, Intel recently acquired mobile and embedded devices software firm Wind River for $884m and said it would licence Nokia’s HSPA 3G modem technologies to complement its own mobility platforms.

• Google’s Linux-based Android mobile operating system has been fingered for powering mobile devices beyond the smartphone for some time now. On Sept. 15, Archos Technology will unveil just such a device, a tablet computer.

• At the Sept. 15 press conference, the company will showcase the touchscreen device, it said this week. The tablet will have a 5-inch display, with 720p video support, an HDMI output and native OpenGL libraries, all with a Texas Instruments processor.

Free Software/Open Source

• Despite all the nifty, gee-whiz technology that the Web 2.0 craze brought the software industry, it’s still stodgy enterprise software that continues to command a significant price tag.

• That’s because however much we may enjoy Facebooking, Twittering, etc., ultimately we pay for what helps us get our jobs done.

• For Chris Lundberg, open source is as much a philosophy as it is a method of software development. Open source and open access represent the idea that solutions are often better found via many, than via few, he says. Those are some of the ideas he takes to the table as a member of Open Source for America’s advisory board.

• fluid Operations today announced a breakthrough in the use of storage-assisted virtualization to drive IT efficiencies. After the initial publishing of the VMFS technology in March 2009 and making it available with an open-source license, the market started to anticipate new private cloud management features that would become possible.

• Computers get faster and smaller every year, but in the case of servers – the building blocks for many modern businesses – the tasks we expect them to perform have increased to match. We so rely on these servers that we increasingly need to monitor what they do, how they do it and when they hit problems.

• The BBC is starting work on what it calls its first ever open-source documentary, a collaborative blend of blogging and broadcasting that will chart the impact of the internet over the past 20 years.

• Pentaho Corporation, the commercial open source alternative for business intelligence (BI), today announced the opening of its newest office in San Francisco. The expansion is in response to growing demand for Pentaho offerings, and represents the latest in a series of 2009 achievements and milestones.

• Many of us are consuming video and audio content as part of our working lives; some of us are broadcasting it and encoding it, too. For both types of tasks, one of the best applications that you can get is the free, open-source VLC Media Player. It recently came out in a significantly updated version 1.0, and is now out in a stable version 1.0.1. I’ve been using the new version, and highly recommend it, whether you’re running Windows, Mac OS X or Linux.

• OSSEC is an open source HIDS that merges log analysis, file integrity monitoring, rootkit detection and active responses. It started as a side-project to help me solve some problems that I had on a previous job (6-7 years ago). They had the need to do integrity checking on multiple systems (Linux, Solaris AIX, etc) and Tripwire just didn’t scale for us. We were forced to make it scale, and started using it because was the only solution available at the time, but it was a pain to manage individually on 100+ servers.

Openness

• The Wikimedia Foundation, the organization responsible for the operation of the Wikipedia free online encyclopaedia, has received $500,000 from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

• Now, Moxie is among a consortium of academic groups that is developing the open-source caLIMS2 software, which will likely play a key role in its business plans.

Programming

• Eminent Java developers Richard Hall, BJ Hargrave and Peter Kriens have formulated a new proposal for a simple module system for Java, which could be developed as part of Java Specification Request (JSR) 294 ‘Improved Modularity Support in the Java Programming Language’. The authors hope their proposal will bring the different ideas on modularisation into some sort of harmony.

• The Qt-Python bindings might not be 100% stable, say the PySide project developers, but it’s in a usable shape — “especially if you can tolerate an occasional rough edge and unpainted surface,” as they put it in their announcement. Along with the Qt bindings, PySide provides automated binding generation tools. It thus not only targets Qt developers in the narrow sense, but is also applicable for other Qt-based or more general C++ bindings.The Qt-Python bindings might not be 100% stable, say the PySide project developers, but it’s in a usable shape — “especially if you can tolerate an occasional rough edge and unpainted surface,” as they put it in their announcement. Along with the Qt bindings, PySide provides automated binding generation tools. It thus not only targets Qt developers in the narrow sense, but is also applicable for other Qt-based or more general C++ bindings.

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