● 09.22.09

● Links 22/09/2009: LinuxCon Coverage, Red Hat Share Price Almost Doubles

Posted in News Roundup at 6:08 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Free, Open Source Software (FOSS) offers schools colleges and the public sector in general enormous savings. These savings are wide ranging. They encompass software purchase and licencing costs, support overheads and energy consumption. If you want to cut spending then you need FOSS.

Desktop

• Sutor drew up several possible futures for the Linux desktop in the years ahead, including Linux going away altogether, one distribution dominating Linux desktops, one distro dominating all desktops, Linux reaching parity with Microsoft and Apple, and desktop Linux disappearing altogether and making the whole issue moot.

• “I think trying to make it a complete drop-in replacement is a dead-end strategy,” Sutor said. “They’ve got a little bit more money, and even more important than that is they’ve got the market share and the mind share.”

• Instead, Sutor said he sees Linux’s impact on the desktop being measured differently than its role in the cloud and in virtualization — where he sees Linux truly dominating.

• My LinuxCon 2009 keynote is now available in PDF form as well as from SlideShare.

• Of course I added a few spoken comments, but be certain of one thing: the Linux desktop is not to be discounted and, as I list as the fith possibility, it could end up with sizable marketshare:

• 1. It goes away. 2. We stop using desktops, so who cares? 3. The Linux desktop becomes a tactic instead of a strategy. 4. One Linux desktop distribution ends up with 90% marketshare among those using Linux desktops. 5. One Linux desktop distribution ends up with 90% marketshare among all desktops.

• There was a time when, if you wanted to be sure a Linux distribution to work on any PC, you almost had to include some proprietary firmware for graphic and Wi-Fi drivers. Those days are long gone. Hardware component manufacturers tend now to either include open Linux drivers or open up their specifications enough that Linux developers can created their own drivers.

• As autumn begins, the nights start drawing in and you’re no doubt itching for new things to do with your Linux box. Well, we asked our projects expert to rustle up 7 great things you can do on your penguin-powered machine – host a photo album, make sweet music, create stop-frame animations and more. Read on to get cracking!

• More and more people are migrating to the world of Linux day by day. However, most of these new users are people who have absolutely no prior knowledge or experience with Linux and how it works. Thus, most of them end up getting frustrated at the kind of learning curve they encounter. It is in this regard that I have compiled this short list of sites that can be helpful to new users in scaling the sometimes steep learning curve they meet.

• Leaders in the Linux community seemed resigned to the fact that Linux still hasn’t made headway in the desktop market, but they made it clear on Monday that their success in other markets, such as mobile, is at least as important.

• At the Linuxcon event in Portland, Oregon, panelists on one session that included Linux’s founder, Linus Torvalds, seemed ambivalent when asked whether next year is finally the year for Linux on desktops.

Server

• It is ironic, in that sad IT definition of irony, that SGI had the right ideas so long ago, ideas that Intel is only getting to market with the QuickPath Interconnect architecture of its Nehalem family of chips this year. The Octanes ran both Irix and Linux.

Kernel Space

• Merely seconds after the doors opened at LinuxCon, the Linux Foundation announced its newest member — the creators of the Splashtop instant-on platform, DeviceVM.

• The development of Linux 2.6.32 is in full swing – although the integration of devtmpfs into the main development branch has caused considerable friction. The integration of DRBD, which already seemed certain, is also being debated again. X Server 7.5 is making progress as the developers release the first RC and several new drivers.

• # FLT2: Matt Asay, CNET open source blogger and VP of business development at Alfresco # FLT3: Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier, former reporter and currently community manager for openSUSE # FLT4: Jono Bacon, Community Manager, Ubuntu

• Will next year be the year of the Linux desktop? * Ted: “Next year will be the year of the Linux desktop because ‘next year’ is always the year of the Linux desktop.”

• These test results are designed to give just a basic overview of the level of KVM virtualization performance in different areas. Eventually we will run a larger set of tests across different virtualization infrastructures.

• David Airlie has just called for the first DRM pull request for the Linux 2.6.32 kernel. To no surprise, R600/700 3D support can be found within the Direct Rendering Manager code as with kernel mode-setting support for these newer ATI Radeon graphics cards.

• Zemlin greeted the 600-plus crowd of attendees at the conference with a high degree of excitement, pleased to note the strength of the event and the promise that it should bring to the Linux development, user, and business community.

Applications

• I found some widgets running through kludgets are resource hogs – not so much that they slow the system down, but still more usage than probably needed for long periods.

• As such, i recommend opening Kludgets only when you want access to your screenlets.

Desktop Environments

• Since the 4.0 release, KDE has defaulted to the Kickoff menu. Inspired by the Windows Vista menu, Kickoff divides the menu into five separate views: Favorites; Applications; Computer, which includes system settings and common destinations in the directory structure; Recently Used, which includes both applications and documents, and Leave, which includes a number of options for what to do when you have finished your work.

• In each view, only one menu level is visible at the time, which means that you must use the arrows at each side to move through the menus. In addition, a search menu with tab completion helps you to find items quickly.

KDE

• Just as an update to my Upgrading KDE 4.2.4 to KDE 3.5.10 in Slackware 13 post, Patrick Volkerding has apparently released KDE 3.5.10 for Slackware 13.0 (link here).

• This is probably a better way to go than my procedure, which was more of a proof of concept than an actual workable solution, though I have received some comments that indicate that the KDE 3.5.10 packages from Slackware 12.2 were usable in Slackware 13.0.

• KRunner is one of those KDE applications that people generally take for granted. Since it has the same shortcut key, Alt+F2, as Gnome’s Run Application terminal, those who have just started using KDE generally assume that it is just another version of Gnome’s Run Application terminal. However, it cannot be farther from the truth. In reality KRunner is one of KDE 4.3’s most useful application.

• Yet, the web experience we deliver in KDE leaves many issues, or rather missed opportunities. We have built a wonderful desktop, window effects that support running many applications at the same time in a — for the user — manageable way. We have created a lot of new possibilities for an ergonomic and beautiful desktop, and strong applications on top of that. Many developers want to develop KDE applications for non-desktop machine, such as smaller, mobile devices and media centers.

Distributions

• My favorite LiveCD is System Rescue CD. System Rescue is a Linux system rescue disk available as a bootable CD-ROM or USB stick for administrating or repairing your system and data after a crash. It aims to provide an easy way to carry out admin tasks on your computer, such as creating and editing the partitions of the hard disk. It comes with a lot of linux software such as system tools (parted, partimage, fstools, …) and basic tools (editors, midnight commander, network tools). It requires no installation since you just have to boot on the CD-ROM. It can be used to perform admin tasks on both linux servers, linux desktops or windows boxes. The kernel supports most of the important file systems (ext2/ext3/ext4, reiserfs, reiser4, btrfs, xfs, jfs, vfat, ntfs, iso9660), as well as network filesystems (samba and nfs).

• Price: Free Pros: Small, light-weight, fast distro. Comes with a great range of apps and only weighs in at about 100MB when you download it. Cons: Ugly, dated configuration screens. Suitable For: Anybody who needs a lightweight, portable version of Linux particularly for emergencies. Summary: Puppy Linux fits the bill nicely for those who need a portable Linux to tote around with them and who want a full range of bundled applications without the bloat of a full desktop distro. Rating: 3.5/5

• I think Mandriva is going to windows way by selling most of things whether it is codecs or its powerpack.Desktop experience is excellent. This edition comes with all latest Software and mind blowing KDE 4.3. So, Lets enjoy Mandriva.

Red Hat Family

• To be sure, Red Hat’s stock has surged so far this year. Shares are up 95% year-to-date, and could go higher.

Debian Family

• Since Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) is a Long Term Support (LTS) release, he expects the April 2010 offering to attract some new ISVs. Without making any firm promises or announcements, Pugh added that Canonical continues to work to bring ISVs like Oracle into the Ubuntu world. Pugh also cautioned readers not to focus on any one ISV, since Canonical is speaking with multiple potential partners.

• Anyway, my conclusion here is that people is starting to realize that there are other alternatives than just sticking with one operating system, and that the best thing of all is that they won’t have viruses. However, they are really not aware that Linux exists. This clearly shows that there’s a huge market were Linux, and specially Ubuntu, can kick in, because… they are paying companies for virus free solutions, such as Mac, while they are not aware that this is not their only solution.. From my point of view… most of these people only uses their computers to edit documents, listen to music, and browsing the Internet… and this is something that they could do with Ubuntu… without a problem! So, let’s start Ubuntizing people!!

• The point I would like to drive home with this blog post is that E-waste is a HUGE problem in our society. And I would highly recommend anyone view a documentary called “Manufactured Landscape” to learn more about what I am talking about. We can all do simple things, but please remember that when you throw electronics away, that YOU are contributing to the decline of our environment. Their are recycling centers everywhere that will help recycle your old electronics and in some cases re-use them as well.

Devices/Embedded

• K-micro (Kawasaki Microelectronics America) announced that MontaVista Linux has been ported to its “CatsEye” hardware/software development platform for complex ASIC designs such as system-on-chips (SoCs). The MontaVista version of CatsEye supports the dual MIPS24-based CatsEye SoC, a Xilinx Virtex-4 FPGA development board, and numerous Linux boot options for easier debugging, says K-micro.

• The Sensia is the next-generation update to the Evoke Flow Internet radio (pictured at right), which was announced in August 2008. Like the Evoke Flow, which was limited to a small, non-touch OLED display, the Sensia runs on embedded Linux, is equipped with WiFi, and offers FM and DAB playback.

Phones

• I attended OSiM in Amsterdam for a day (had to be back to China the next day) and it was quite an interesting and diverse crowd attending and/or speaking – hard core open sourcers along with big fat OEMs trying to leverage open source to make the most of it. In the first Open Source in Mobile blog, I’ll make an overview of alternatives for building devices using open source software. Apart from Windows Mobile, all software stacks being used in Smartphones are now open sources.

• What will advanced Android-based smartphones look like a year from now, and what will be under the hood? Motorola would have you believe that they’ll place very heavy emphasis on unified social networking features. Archos has its eyes on tablets that double as smartphones, with advanced video capabilities. China Mobile and others believe that Android will work best in forked, unique versions.

• And you know what? It just might do it. The Pixi is lightweight, comes in colorful cases (as seen in the photos) and is devoid of anything that sniffs of business. In this situation, webOS serves as the ultimate contact integration engine, and gets the job done with color and flair.

Sub-notebooks

• A new Linux netbook based on Moblin will be introduced this week, and it may represent a new way that the Linux community is approaching the mass market.

• Last year, about 5,000 laptops were donated throughout the region to carry as a pilot project.

• More pacific islands countries will join some of the pilot nations this year.

Free Software/Open Source

• There was one thing, however, that did come out of this year’s celebration and that was OpenDisc. OpenDisc came into being when Open CD was on the outs. The Open CD project really never gained much traction, but OpenDisc could very well go places Open CD couldn’t. Why? OpenDisc is an outstanding project. But what is Open Disc?

• OpenDisc is a high quality collection of Open Source software for Windows put together with an easy-to-use front-end that makes installing and/or learning about these applications simple. Of course, OpenDisc has a secondary purpose – to educate users about the Linux operating system.

• Looking at the world wide growth of F/OSS (Free / Open Source Software), the Association of Open Source in Indonesia (AOSI), who’s members are observers, developers, trainers, users, as well as supporters of open source movement; and in cooperation with State Ministry of Research and Technology (Ristek), and the Department of Communication and Information (Depkominfo), will be hosting the “Global Conference on Open Source” at Shangri-La Hotel Jakarta, on 26-27 October 2009.

• According to numerous sources, Yahoo has been shopping around Zimbra, the open-source email company it bought in late 2007 for $350 million.

• According to All Things Digital, the web giant is looking to offload Zimbra, the open-source email and collaboration outfit it acquired just two years ago for $350m. Sources tell ATD that Comcast and Google are potential buyers.

• Based on the idea that the tree-style viewing options typically found in today’s montoriting software is longer the best choice for applications running in the cloud, GroundWork has developed what it’s calling a “Seurat View” to help users see at a glance where tiny pieces of data fit into the larger picture.

• Mozilla has switched to a quick-paced “sprint” cycle for Firefox that it hopes will bring new features to users faster, the company’s browser architect said today.

• Due to the inherent complexity of OOo’s code base with several million lines of code it should be clear that contributing code to it sometimes isn’t easy and needs some process support. But there are always contributions that apparently are harder to get into the code base than expected. I think to a large extent this is caused by missing knowledge, missing communication, some unfortunate “ features” of our build environment and grief with our QA approval process for Child Workspaces.

• Just one year after the Department of Computer Science at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany hired its first professor of open source software, its Open Source Research Group is now seeking to fill several positions. According to the job posting, the University is currently looking for “recent graduates or experienced software developers to start doctoral studies” in open source.

• So maybe all of you Big Mac and Coke fans out there can tell me how these other two are using Linux and open source software significantly. Regardless, I think it’s clear that open source software is helping the largest companies and brands in the world maintain their place atop the mind and market.

• TriSano 2.0™ (http://www.trisano.org) is available. TriSano™ is an open source, citizen-focused surveillance and outbreak management system for infectious disease, environmental hazards, and bioterrorism attacks.

Openness

• I believe that the underlying facts about the Wikipedia phenomenon — that the general public is actually intelligent, interested in sharing knowledge, interested in getting the facts straight — are so shocking to most old media people that it is literally impossible for them to report on Wikipedia without following a storyline that goes something like this: “Yeah, this was a crazy thing that worked for awhile, but eventually they will see the light and realize that top-down control is the only thing that works.”

• Will the new, more gentle tool, be more widely used than protection was? I certainly hope so. We are always looking for ways to help responsible people join the Wikipedia movement and contribute constructively, while gently asking those who want to cause trouble to please go somewhere else.

• Faced with the choice of preventing you from editing at all, versus allowing you to edit even though you might have bad intentions, we have erred consistently for the latter — openness. The new tool, by making it a lot easier to keep bad stuff from appearing to the general public, is going to allow for a much more responsible Wikipedia that is, at the same time, a much more open Wikipedia.

Programming

• The company TIOBE, founded in 2000, is involved heavily with Software Quality. They call themselves ‘the coding standards company’ and deliver tools to assess the quality of software by checking coding standards, among other things. Unfortunately, despite the fact that their website is written in PHP, they do not support PHP yet with their tools (at least as far as I can tell from their website), but they have one activity that is of interest to us in the PHP ecosystem: they collect statistics on the popularity of programming languages and have been doing this for a few years now.

Standards/Consortia

• Using OpenID makes the log-in process much simpler, according to Stefan Hultberg, CEO at Accumulate. But since you are still authenticating using a user name and password it doesn’t make it that much more secure, as that information can be stolen by hackers, he said. He argued that Mobile OpenID eliminates that risk factor by moving the authentication process from the PC to the mobile phone.

Fog Computing

• Cloud computing is a relativity new computing concept where resources are provided via the Internet instead of on the local computer or network. One of these resources can be an entire operating system (OS), or at least Web applications that try to mimic Windows and other OSs. This resource is commonly referred to as a Web OS.

• One of the points behind Web OSs is to relieve the local computer of the work; to put the computing power behind a central server. It’s virtualization over the Internet. The client or end user computers don’t have to be regularly maintained; they just need a Web browser. For example, applications can be globally installed or uninstalled from the Web OS server instead of on each PC.

• This is, for me, pretty standard stuff, and for these LUG members as well. We talked about the benefits of the cloud: for me, the former configuration manager, getting more apps from the cloud means less support and maintenance issues on the client machine; for one LUG member, the ease of seamless upgrades to reduce costs.

• Of course, there are cons to the cloud right now, things that will need to be worked out, the most basic need being maintaining availability. When Gmail went down last week, it caught many people (myself included) unprepared on what to do when we couldn’t access our messages or file attachments. But another con was raised that I had not considered before, and I think it deserves a little more examination.

Leftovers

• The Federal Government yesterday asked the Sony Corporation to withdraw with immediate effect and tender an unreserved apology for posting an advertisement on the internet portraying Nigeria as a home of fraud where its citizens hardly do genuine business.

• Adaptive Marketing, which ran into controversy a few months ago for using former New York Times columnist Ben Stein in its TV ads for “free credit scores,” has brought a pre-litigation discovery proceeding against a blogger using the pseudonym “flaneur de fraude.” Flaneur’s crime? She agreed with a Reuters blogger who had the audacity to refer to its advertising as a “predatory bait and switch.”

AstroTurf

• In an article in the magazine’s October 1 issue, not yet available online, writer Tim Dickinson reveals that Phillip Morris “worked off-the-record with … writer Betsy McCaughey as part of the input to the three-part expose in The New Republic on what the Clinton plan means,” Rolling Stone reports.

• McCaughey, a conservative columnist and former deputy governor of New York, penned a 1994 article in The New Republic that was credited with helping to kill the Clinton-era health reforms. As RS noted, the magazine later retracted the story. And The Atlantic magazine ran a story in 1995, entitled “A Triumph of Misinformation,” debunking McCaughey’s arguments at TNR.

Censorship/Web Abuse

• During a speech at the Brookings Institution this morning, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski outlined a proposal for explicit rules that would protect consumer access to an open Internet. The proposed rules would preserve “network neutrality,” preventing broadband-based Internet providers from discriminating against certain services, applications, or viewpoints on the Web, and requiring providers to be transparent about their network management practices.

• Comcast and Vonage have been pretending to be friends for a while now. It’s all part of the “We don’t really need that old Net Neutrality” song Comcast and the other big ISPs have been singing, including the verse that says Vonage is okay by them.

• Ex-Cash4Gold employee Vielka Nephew filed a motion to vacate the default in the company’s lawsuit against her this week, a lawsuit we’re a party to.

Intellectual Monopolies

• South Korean prosecutors Friday rejected accusations by foreign pornographers that local Internet users have breached copyright by uploading their content onto websites.

• Malaysia is starting a food fight with other countries to win bragging rights for producing some of Southeast Asia’s most beloved recipes, including chili crabs and coconut cream rice, a news report said Thursday.

• As fashion designers in the US are, once again, pushing for a misguided new “fashion copyright,” it’s worth remembering that studies have repeatedly shown that knock off fashions are what help make the fashion industry so successful.

• But what’s quite odd is that Ms. Allen, while complaining about such unfair copying, seemed to have absolutely no problem with copying my entire Techdirt post — without credit or a link.

• That seems like an odd way to characterize things. First, it seems odd to lump the medium in with a certain type of reporting. There are plenty of “real reporters” who do plenty of “serious fact-checking” within the blog world too. Blogs are just a publishing medium. Yes, because there’s a lower barrier to entry, you do end up with a much larger absolute number of bloggers, many of whom are just giving opinion.

• The president said he is “happy to look at” bills before Congress that would give struggling news organizations tax breaks if they were to restructure as nonprofit businesses.

• Today we just got some new information about the appeal case. It turns out that one of the jurors in the appeal will be a person employed by Spotify.

• Spotify, part-owned by the record companies that are the suing party, is a Swedish company that sells/streams music online.

• Last month TorrentFreak reported on DigiProtect, the anti-piracy company with the tagline “Turn Piracy Into Profit”. A manager from DigiProtect revealed some of the inner workings on how the company operates but according to a lawyer who defends alleged file-sharers, he may have revealed just a little too much.

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