● 09.08.09

● Links 08/09/2009: Foxconn Makes GNU/Linux Sub-notebooks

Posted in News Roundup at 7:27 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Like a fervent preacher appearing before his flock, Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin emphasised benefits and potential for the Linux platform Thursday during an industry conference that also featured an update on mobile Linux efforts.

• At the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in San Francisco, Zemlin cited advances by Linux into multiple spaces, including supercomputing and embedded systems. “It is the fastest growing platform in every aspect of computing,” Zemlin said, “Linux is growing two to three times faster than any other platform out there today.”

• The virtual classroom consists of live interaction between instructor and student using VOIP and allowing students to login to the instructor’s screen to view demonstrations. These are the keys to any successful training, especially as it is related to acquiring skills on Linux servers. One of the major trends that we see every day is the movement of Windows Administrators to Linux Administrators.

• Linux is the universal operating system. It runs on everything from personal computers to traffic signals. Airplanes, automobiles, and even wrist watches can also run Linux. Originally started as a hobby in 1991, Linux creator Linus Torvalds claimed that Linux “won’t be big and professional…” Given the rapid global reach of Linux today it’s easy to see why many believe this was the biggest understatement in all of computing history.

• The battle between Microsoft and Open Source is never ending. This video produced by Jordanians mimic how fanatics on both sides defend their turf.

Desktop

• Dell’s U.S. website has started offering Ubuntu 9.04 on a Mini 10V and Inspiron 15N laptop. The move comes less than two months before Microsoft’s Windows 7 launch — essentially reinforcing Dell’s commitment to Ubuntu in some targeted markets. But will Dell pre-load Ubuntu 9.04 on a desktop PC? Here’s some analysis.

• We will be manning an open source software / Linux booth at the Solano Stroll. The Stroll is a fantastic street festival in Berkeley/Albany on Solano Avenue with a lot of great food, entertainment and vendors. If you are in the area, come check it out and stop by to say hi and learn about free software. Look for us a couple blocks from San Pablo.

• Generally, if you are new to Linux, a community as great as this will help you (and will definitely help me) to further your knowledge about Linux in general, and has already. I have been compiling my first programs from source code already, a thing which I have tried but never succeeded in other distros. VL just seems cleverly designed, slim enough to be fast, yet powerful enough to cater for my needs and it just makes sense.

Server

• For some companies which I know of they value Linux because it is free and has better support for the applications they wish to use. Some use it for their databases, others use Linux in the products they manufacturer, PBX’s for example. Even though the Linux operating system itself is free they still purchase support contracts for that finger pointing feeling which is so important in enterprise culture.

• The new application, to be developed by Unisys, is expected to be built in the Linux Open Source environment using Java development tools. The Open Source approach is designed to increase the flexibility of the application environment to reduce support costs through easier maintenance of the system.

Kernel Space

• David Airlie has pushed a horde of new code into his drm-next Git tree, which is what will get pulled into the Linux 2.6.32 kernel once the merge window is open. Most prominently, this new DRM code brings support for kernel mode-setting with R600 class hardware as well as 3D support. Of course, to benefit from those features, you will also need the latest libdrm, Mesa, and xf86-video-ati DDX code too.

• I have come across some very good news to those who, like me, own a Logitech Audio Hub USB speaker system. Until now it did not work properly on Linux systems, there was always a constant clicking in the sound. I have been dragging it back out and trying it again from time to time, as new Linux releases come out… and I am pleased to report that it works beautifully with three of the current test distributions I just tried – Ubuntu 9.10, openSuSE 11.2 and Fedora 12! Hooray!

• Linus Torvalds will release 2.6.31 a few days later than previously announced and has scheduled another release candidate, RC9. After some delay, the development of X.org 7.5 is now going ahead at full steam, and the developers plan to have the final version ready by the end of this month. Greg Kroah-Hartman wants to clean up the staging area – this could also affect Microsoft’s Hyper-V drivers. Con Kolivas has released BFS, a process scheduler specifically tailored for desktop systems.

• This morning Intel has introduced their new mainstream desktop chipset, the Intel P55, and has brought forth the Core i5 processor family along with new Core i7 processors for use with this new chipset and socket. Intel sent us out a review kit of this new hardware so we are already able to comment on its Linux compatibility. In this article we are talking specifically about the Intel P55 and its Linux compatibility with regard to the Intel DP55KG motherboard while in the next article we have Ubuntu Linux benchmarks using an Intel Core i5 750 and Core i7 870.

Web Browsers

• NORWEGIAN WEB BROWSER outfit Opera announced today that its latest version, Opera 10, has been downloaded some 10 million times in the first week.

• Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) browser, which once dominated the Chinese Internet world with 96 percent of the market, has seen its share shrink to 57.8 percent due to the growing popularity of domestic brands.

KDE

• After a much heated discussion about how to fix the horrible resizing and performance bug with FGLRX and KDE4, no one knew where to start looking. The X team had to do a little digging; the KDE4 team needed to change somethings; the FGLRX warehouse needed to get their shit together and listen to the users… bla bla bla the flame wars raged on, fingers were pointed, and nothing ever got done.

• I’ve also started the work on an advanced configuration dialog for Phonon-Xine, like the Xine configuration dialog in Codeine (the Xine-based video player in KDE 3), exposing all the available options, without having to edit the config file by hand.

Distributions

• Compared to version 1.0, Slitaz is an improvement. It’s more refined and polished, better looking, more intuitive to use, and simplifies a number of important system functions with friendly GUIs. Samba sharing has also been added.

Gentoo

• Fixed releases offer a measure of stability as much testing is done on the packages within that release. New versions are released on a schedule and typically given a cool name. This may sound very appealing also, but you typically find your app versions are slightly dated and doing a complete OS install for each new release may be a bit of a pain.

• After nigh on a year of sweat, tears and beer, Viridior, JavaJake and the rest of the Gentoo Pandora team have restructured, repurposed and renamed their project Neuvoo.

Red Hat Family

• Anyone finding Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) subscriptions a tough sell for management used to Microsoft’s one-time license fee for Windows must emphasize that there are more factors to be considered, chiefly return on investment, Red Hat officials said Friday.

• Red Hat can’t match Microsoft or Oracle’s marketing budgets, but the open source paradigm gives it an advantage in the long term, chief executive Jim Whitehurst told eWEEK Europe

• Red Hat chief executive Jim Whitehurst is on a high after the company’s annual customer conference. The event, launched RHEL 5.4, it also took JBoss middleware to the cloud, and included new cloud projects

• Goldman Sachs upgrades Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) from Neutral to Buy and raised their price target from $18 to $28. The firm cited a robust upcoming server cycle, an appealing strategic platform position in the migration to cloud-based computing, and “Street” estiamtes are too low.

Ubuntu Family

• In addition to the highly popular Ubuntu operating system, Canonical also sponsors several “official” derivatives of Ubuntu, aimed at different types of hardware, different user preferences, and different use cases.

• One great tool power users in the Windows world have long enjoyed is Microsoft’s unsupported TweakUI. A range of similar Tweak utilities have followed for successive versions of Windows. Ubuntu Linux users have their own little-known tool called Ubuntu Tweak to help achieve the same degree of modification.

New Releases

• The Frugalware Developer Team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Frugalware 1.1, our eleventh stable release.

• Zenwalk 6.2 is mostly new code (nearly all packages have been updated), and the base system has been slightly modified (EXT4, kernel 2.6.30.5). The switch to LZMA for package compression has reduced the overall size of the ISO image (490MB) while allowing us to provide more applications and drivers.

• Continuing on with the theme of Slackware based distros, today I tried out the latest version of Zenwalk Linux. The 6.2 version had been released earlier this week, and it caught my attention, so I tried it out.

Devices/Embedded

Phones

• Such swap-shop options seem unlikely, because HTC’s already announced the handset’s hardware features.

• In remarks reported by Digitimes, Nokia’s Multimedia Vice President Jonas Geust (who last made a splash way back in 2007 when he predicted the iPhone would tank) indicated that Nokia was planning on taking the Dual OS road for their smartphones and mobile devices.

Sub-notebooks

• Other changes include bug fixes, upgrades to Picasa and OpenOffice, the replacement of Songbird with Banshee and a new hybrid image format for distribution which works as an .img and .iso file at the same time.

• The Ubuntu-based netbook distro Easy Peasy was formely known as Ubuntu Eee. Easy Peasy uses the Ubuntu Netbook Remix graphical user interface and provides a mix of popular open-source and proprietary software. If you’re trying to stay away from proprietary software completely (not a bad idea) this ones not for you. I found it interesting that so many have commented on Easy Peasy working out of the box. Along with my questions about compatibility I was curious about the features, new appearance and day-to-day usefulness of Easy Peasy 1.5. Could the Ubuntu-based Easy Peasy be anything more than a toy?

• Although this is still only Alpha 5 of Karmic Koala, Kubuntu NBR feels very, very stable. Unlike the constant crashes of ‘Window Picker Applet’ that the netbook proper version seem to dish out on schedule, Kubuntu feels like a finely tuned release already.

• Will ARM-based netbooks retail for under £100? The Taiwanese contract manufacturer behind the Foxconn brand seems to think so.

• A Hon Hai Precision staffer – one Young Liu, special assistant to the company’s CEO – admitted this week that “we have a few smartbook projects and I think there is demand for these sub-$200 devices”.

• Foxconn Technology plans to launch its first smartbooks next year, which are mini-laptops that use microprocessors from Arm Holdings normally found in smartphones.

• The PC-Z1 NetWalker by Japanese electronics manufacturer Sharp is a mini-netbook with a 5″ touchscreen (1024x600px) display that runs Ubuntu 9.04 or more precisely Ubuntu Smartbook Remix with a custom user interface adapted to the small size of this mobile device.

Free Software/Open Source

• IBM seems to have figured out better than most how to marry the global open-source laboratory with a massive internal laboratory. Talking to Schick, there appears to be a very blurry line between “internal” development and “external” development, giving the company a significant advantage over proprietary (Microsoft) and open-source (Liferay, Open-Xchange) competitors alike.

• Local student wins data mining competition using software developed at Waikato University

• Furthermore, future business leaders will have a completely different attitude and be less sceptical towards Open Source and free software. This Millennial generation grew up with software like Linux, Gimp, Open Office, etc., and knows that product price and product quality are two totally independent factors.

• Internally, we have developed solutions based on Open Source software, including a custom-built software configuration management solution. We were able to save significant costs on licensing fee and acquisition costs, by adopting Open Source software for developing the solution.

• When rootkits are mentioned the things which come to mind are generally hackers, Trojans, even Sony BMG. Now you can add open source software to the list with the release of the first open source rootkit framework called Stoned.

• TomTom, the world`s leading provider of navigation solutions and digital maps, developed a dynamic location referencing technology as an open standard for the navigation, mapping and ITS Industry, called OpenLR.

• At the Linux Users Victoria (LUV) Annual General Meeting, held on Tuesday 1 September 2009 at Trinity College, Melbourne, Donna Benjamin was elected to the position of President for the second year running. With a membership of 1793, LUV is a significant organisation in the Australian Free and Open Source software community.

• Virgin has used open source components, including the MySQL database, JBoss application server, Apache web server, Jaspersoft Business Intelligence Suite and Talend extract, translate and load database tools, to build a service-oriented architecture to take donations on behalf of UK charities.

• Recently a Techrepublic reader sent me a link to this story from Science Daily about a professor (Mark Levoy) of computer science at Stanford who is developing an open source camera. The article tells the story of a fledgling program, Computational Photography, which researches photography to help improve cameras. Mr. Levoy developed the camera so that other computational photographers could help improve the software.

• It’s a busy day for releases today with a new release from the Typolight team as well. This new version is 2.7.3

• ipoque, the leading European vendor of Internet traffic management solutions, today published its award-winning DPI engine as open source software. OpenDPI is derived from the commercial PACE product, ipoque’s traffic classification engine that is used in its carrier-grade DPI and bandwidth management solutions.

• WSO2, the open source SOA company, announced that it has been named an InfoWorld 2009 Best of Open Source Software (Bossie) Award winner. The company was recognized in the platforms and middleware category for the WSO2 Carbon Framework, which serves as the basis of WSO2’s fully componentized service-oriented architecture (SOA) platform.

Fog Computing

• I’m not quite sure about the “epic” bit, but it’s certainly clever. If the operating system is being abstracted away by clouds, Red Hat seems to be saying, the best thing to do is to abstract away the entire cloud computing layer by hiding all the different APIs currently out there with another API on top – by means of open source code running on GNU/Linux – and writing to that.

• P2P is the antithesis of the Cloud. The former uses individual computers that interact with each other using the Internet merely as a relay infrastructure. The latter is a server-centric model where services and data are hosted centrally and with which individual computers interact with the servers via the Internet.

• Hadoop is the popular open-source implementation of MapReduce, a powerful tool designed for deep analysis and transformation of very large data sets. It enables you to explore complex data, using custom analyses tailored to your information and questions. It’s also one of the most buzz-worthy, talked about open-source projects around.

MySQL

• Last week, I argued that the European Commission, the European Union’s top competition authority, was wasting its time delaying Oracle’s acquisition of Sun. Since then, I’ve heard from Henrik Ingo, the COO (chief operating officer) for Monty Program Ab, the MySQL fork headed by MySQL’s founder Michael “Monty” Widenius. He has a different take on the EU’s opposition to the deal, and I thought it worth sharing his viewpoint with you.

• First, Ingo notes that “While it’s true that many use MySQL for free [under the open-source GPL license), and some even hack on the GPL’d source code, most of MySQL’s paying customers use MySQL under a commercial license which has nothing to do with Open Source. It is in this market that MySQL competes against Oracle and for those customers the GPL version of MySQL offers no consolation. This is the main reason why the EU is concerned.”

• Sun has got it in the neck – again – and the EU gets it right.

• The EU has delayed the now long-running acquisition of Sun by Oracle – out of which Sun’s founders stand to make a very large pile of cash – because it wants to investigate a potential monopoly.

Mozilla

• Mozilla recently released a product roadmap with a number of new details on what the foundation is hoping to release between now and the end of 2010

• As is true of most good software, both Firefox and Thunderbird work pretty well installed with default options. But like most complex tools, a bit of learning and tweaking pays off.

Openness

• Our talks, presentation and workshop strand is always a must – a unique chance to get closer to the creative process, hear from and experience how, why people work they way they do and this year more than ever get hands on across toy hacking, open source, digital distribution, city interventionism and sharing as a creative business model, thoughts on topics such as how we are creatively educated and, how you make friends and influence people!

• [...]

• A lot of this thinking is hinged on the convergence and collaboration ethos that onedotzero has championed for over a decade and is still at the heart of . I also think the idea of open source and sharing is a recent development hat is now being taken more seriously by larger brands and companies. it’s good to be open is a panel discussion that explores this. open source developed out of an open distribution of software, offering practical access to source code for others to improve and develop together. this open and collaborative approach has spread much further as a means to approach design, development, and new production models as the world wakes up to the value of sharing and openness. with fantastic speakers including nokia, tinker.it! creator joel gethin lewis and new media thinker Russell davies.

• The tcktcktck.org website will today receive its 1 millionth pledge from people all over the world campaigning for a just and binding global deal at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Standards/Consortia

• It’s incredible how many people are sympathetic towards Google and Apple’s opposition of Ogg Theora within the HTML 5 codec debate. Of course, nobody expected anything else from Apple, but Google, really? Outside of YouTube, Google seems to be very supportive. YouTube may still be somewhat separated from the rest of Google. The site still looks more like it did pre-aquisition than it looks like a Google project. The Google Chrome web browser, a “pure” Google project, supports Theora, and a blog post Google made on the Ogg Theora book sprint which specifically makes mention of HTML 5 leads me to wonder if they might actually be planning on supporting it.

Leftovers

• A 12-year-old was expelled from school after having his cell phone confiscated and searched by authorities. What did they find? Pictures of him dancing. Now, the ACLU has taken up the case, arguing that even students are protected from unreasonable search and seizure.

• Yet press coverage of the debate has often been lacking. The Project for Excellence in Journalism, for example, found that so far this year 55 percent of coverage of health care has been about the political battles, 16 percent about the protests, and only 8 percent about substantive issues like how the system works now, what will happen if it remains unchanged, and what proposed changes will mean for ordinary people.

• On Dec. 13, 1981, Poland’s communist government declared martial law to put down the Solidarity movement. Telephone lines went silent across the country, and once service was restored, each time anyone picked up the telephone they were greeted with a voice: “Rozmowa Kontrolowana.”

• “This conversation is being monitored.”

• Since telephone service was still a rare privilege in a country where the political establishment feared citizen-to-citizen communication, some could shrug their shoulders because it did not directly apply to them. When, days later, the government set up regional censorship offices to read everyone’s mail, shrugging one’s shoulders ceased to be an option.

• Not quite 30 years have passed, and tales like these remain common, from the Egyptian government’s efforts to register and track users at Internet cafes, to Iranian government agents showing up on Twitter this spring to intimidate protesters.

• A teenaged artist who was forced to stop selling his collages when Damien Hirst sent threats to his gallery (the collages incorporated ironic images of Hirst’s diamond-encrusted skull sculpture) is now facing a possible jail sentence because he took a box of pencils from a Hirst installation as a prank and offered to return them only if Hirst would let him go back to displaying and selling his art.

Censorship/Web Abuse

• People hate DRM, but one IEEE study group has a possible fix for many of its problems: make digital content easy to steal from others. The moment that happens, consumers can be trusted with content.

• Today the Free Software Foundation (FSF) filed an objection in court to the proposed Google Book Search settlement (The Authors Guild, Inc., et al. v. Google Inc.). The objection urges the court to reject the proposed settlement unless it incorporates terms that better address the needs of authors using free licenses like the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), and does not provide special competitive advantages to Google.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Don’t be discouraged if nobody is buying your music. If your music is genuinely good then you just need to update your business model. The business of selling music has changed. Music sales may be down but music consumption has never been higher. The demand for music is bigger than ever. People WANT your music. There is no one strategy I can give you, what works for on artist probably won’t work for another, but hopefully the points above have given you something to think about.

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the DayMandriva CEO Jean Francois Boncilhon 04 (2005)Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating. Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

----------

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.