● 09.24.09

● Links 24/09/2009: Red Hat’s Results Analysed, Gnash Has New Release

Posted in News Roundup at 7:30 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Well, if you have your computer I could give you a few things to try. After all, sometimes, watching a tv series could get boring. Or it could be that you’ve seen your videos over and over and over again. You need to do something new. In that case, you might want to try doing these things that I do. It might not be the most adventurous thing at first but who knows what you might be learning along the way.

• Here you will find links to the topics we cover as well as links to software, websites articles, and other resources mentioned in the episodes of Going Linux.

Desktop

• What would an old computer be good for? The refurbished computers are older models but nothing obsolete, and are loaded with open source, minimalist software like the Ubuntu operating system. An older computer running Ubuntu is almost as fast as a modern machine running pretty but heavyweight Windows, and there’s barely a difference between the two when using the internet.

• A tip of the propeller hat to Bob Murphy, Mike Hanson, Nick Barter and Peter Gilbert, who spent Saturday afternoon preaching the Linux gospel inside the Morris County Library.

• Some things that I think were key to her success:

• * Google * The extraordinary tendency of the Ubutnu community to participate in forums and write guides and wikis. There is more of a “culture” of that in open source but I think the Ubuntu user community is a little more affected with the tendency. * Vista sucking bad enough to motivate her

Server

• Two-factor model for calculating hard-to-price asset-backed securities now runs on graphics processing units paired with Linux servers.

• Finally, although not associated with an inherent mainframe flaw, IBM saw the potential of running Linux on System z hardware and created Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) on the z boxes.

Kernel Space

• Paul Blankenbaker announced yesterday the release of Network Security Toolkit 2.11.0, a completely redesigned and engineered version of this Linux distribution that provides tools for system administrators and security experts.

• Gwenole Beauchesne of Splitted Desktop Systems shares that the H.264 video playback performance has improved significantly thanks to this VA-API support and with 1080p clips it’s working out much better than Adobe’s own proprietary Flash 10 player for Linux.

• Unlike with the ATI RV770 launch where we were able to report on their evolutionary leap in Linux support through providing same-day Catalyst drivers and many other feature improvements and also had out Radeon HD 4850 and Radeon HD 4870 Linux benchmarks. This time around though, we have nothing. We have no Evergreen hardware in hand and have not even received any technical briefings on this new hardware.

• boot.kernel.org (BKO) offers another possibility for Linux users to boot the free operating system via the internet. Still in its early days, the project allows Linux systems to be started via HTTP. Clients only require a broadband internet connection and the open source gPXE boot loader, which can be provided on a USB flash drive, a CD or – for those who miss the good old days – a floppy disk.

• Mesa 7.6 provides support for a number of new OpenGL extensions with its software rasterizer and the Intel i965 driver mostly, there is the rewritten Radeon/R200/R300 driver that uses the buffer manager (a.k.a. the Radeon 3D driver re-write), GL_EXT_framebuffer_object support for ATI when using the TTM memory manager, proper OpenGL 1.5 support for the ATI R300 series (and VBO + OQ support), and the assembly shader rework. This in fact is just a small portion of the changes. Mesa 7.6 is quite a huge update compared to Mesa 7.5, which was just released in July.

• The softpipe driver will remain an area that’s used for experimenting with new ideas by developers.

• While VIA’s Chrome 9 DRM has yet to be accepted into the mainline Linux kernel since its mostly used by VIA’s binary-only driver and then recently an updated 2D driver, with the viafb driver outside of X.Org, this frame-buffer driver has picked up many improvements with the Linux 2.6.32 kernel.

• This keynote wraps up the event. I’ve really enjoyed LinuxCon and look forward to attending the event again next year (in Boston). Kudos to the Linux Foundation.

Applications

• In my view i think, that this is an useful Applications for the Kids. I’m very interested in the upcoming Versions.

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment

• Benoit Schillings, who joined Nokia after its 2008 acquisition of Scandinavian mobile Linux firm Trolltech, is to take up his new role on October 1. Myriad, created from the merger of Esmertec and Purple Labs develops a, er, myriad of mobile software including browsers and Java engines.

• There will be quite some talks related to KDE. Accidental? We don’t think so. It shows that KDE is on the forefront of integrating open web technologies into the desktop. It also means that KDE is exciting and cool.

• We’re going to build a complete application that wouldn’t take too much additional work to qualify for re-distribution as a bona fide open source application. It’s an RSS reader which allows you to add your own feeds, lists the stories on that feed and then lets you read those stories within a browser window attached to the main application.

GNOME

• Version 2.28 sees the team behind the GNOME desktop environment for Linux and Unix warming up for version 3.0, scheduled for a March 2010 release. The current release continues the tradition of dotting lots of i’s and crossing plenty of t’s, but also brings a new broom to a few nooks and crannies.

• GNOME 2.28 represents a moderately compelling incremental improvement. WebKit-based Epiphany is definitely worth a try, and I’m finally starting to warm up to Empathy thanks to the bug fixing and user interface refinements delivered in this release. The enhanced Bluetooth support is also a welcome addition. Version 2.28 is a little bit light on new features relative to some previous GNOME releases, but that’s understandable as a lot of development effort is currently focused on preparing for the next-generation GNOME desktop.

• GNOME 2.28.0 is barely out the door and it’s starting to make its way into distributions, but the developers aren’t planning any vacations. They already started work on GNOME 2.30, which, depending on the advancements in the platform, might be crowned as the next major release, labeled with the 3.0 version number. If the developers aren’t happy with the progress made, they might wait until GNOME 2.32 to apply that version bump. Either way, we will know about it by March 2010, when 2.30 will be released. Should they decide that it doesn’t stand up to their expectations, we will probably receive GNOME 3.0 in September 2010.

Distributions

• It is best for low end computers and perfect for netbooks and sure it is best than windows 98. Now I can say it is a perfect windows killer.

• Moovida, Fluendo’s latest version of open source media center based on Gstreamer’s framework, was launched 4 months ago. To inaugurate our newly published documentation for developers, Fluendo decided to organize a contest in collaboration with Mandriva.

• If you haven’t tried Gentoo, I really do suggest giving it a whirl. It’s time-consuming, but I had always found the end product to be very worthwhile.

Zenwalk

• Zenwalk 6.2 is the latest version of Zenwalk, a Slackware-based, desktop-oriented Linux operating system. The last review of Zenwalk on this site was of Zenwalk 6. That was just six months ago. What changed between Zenwalk 6 and Zenwalk 6.2? Where the changes of a cosmetic or bug-fix variety, or where they much more substantial?

• I’m genuinely impressed by Salix, although I have to admit that it doesn’t seem greatly different to Zenwalk in either use or construction.

Red Hat Family

• Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT) rallied $1.17 or 4.70% to $26.05 after The biggest seller of the Linux operating system reported second- quarter sales and profit that beat analysts’ estimates as subscription revenue rose.

• Shares of Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) surged more than 14% in early trading today after the software company reported better-than-expected fiscal second-quarter results. Red Hat shows net income for the quarter ended Aug. 31 of $28.9 million, or 15 cents a share. This figure was up from $21.1 million, or 10 cents a share, a year earlier. Additionally, revenue climbed 12% to $183.6 million. -Marketwatch

• Red Hat’s ($27.95, +$3.07, +12.34%) fiscal second-quarter profit jumped 37% as the company again posted slightly better-than-expected results on growing revenue and higher margins. Competitor Citrix Systems Inc. (CTXS, $37.61, +$1.47, +4.07%) was also rising.

• After Red Hat (RHT) released earnings last night, Bank of America upgraded the stock from Neutral to Buy. The company earned twenty cents per share, easily beating analysts’ estimates of fifteen cents per share. With the upgrade, Bank of America raised its price target from $23.50 to $29 per share.

• Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT) soared 13% now trades at $28.11 on an unusual volume of 7.01 million shares after it reported net income for the quarter ended Aug. 31 of $28.9 million, or 15 cents a share. That was up from $21.1 million, or 10 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue climbed 12% to $183.6 million

• Red Hat Inc. jumped 12 percent to $27.96 for the largest advance in the S&P 500. The biggest seller of the Linux operating system reported second-quarter sales and profit that beat analysts’ estimates as subscription revenue rose.

• Overall revenue for Red Hat was up double digits, by 12 percent, with subscription revenue up by 15 percent. With other segments of IT, like the PC space, happy to be flat on a year-over-year basis, that’s saying something.

• Red Hat offers the Linux operating system and JBoss middleware, which lets computers share data. Red Hat makes money by providing technical support and software patches, and by selling premium paid versions of free open source products.

• The recession is proving to be an opportune time for Linux vendor Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) as it continues to grow revenues and earnings. According to Red Hat executives, the growth is coming at the expense of rivals and as a result of customer confidence in the abilities of Linux and Red Hat’s JBoss middleware platform.

• The growth of Red Hat’s business is not however a sign of bloat. During Red Hat’s second quarter earnings investor call on Wednesday, Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst responded to an analyst question about Linux founder Linus Torvalds’ comment earlier this week that Linux was bloated.

• “As Linux has continued to grow and its applicability continues to expand, there’s just more feature functionality that people are looking for to be built into the operating system,” Whitehurst said. “I don’t think of that as bloat.”

• Whitehurst added that in his view, bloat is when vendors add features that people do not want. Linux, he said, is growing but with features that people do want.

Debian Family

• Some of what I was explaining was around control. You want to control your technology right? Well if you don’t have access to the code, if you don’t have a license that permits you some freedom with that code. Then you have very little control over all and you certainly can’t find alternative suppliers to develop new functionality into existing products.

• Scores of people completed the USB Thumb Drive test during Atlanta Linux Fest. That’s great. But thousands of additional Ubuntu users would surely like to test their systems for Ubuntu 9.10 compatibility. Stay tuned: I hear Canonical plans to potentially move the USB Thumb Drive diagnostics software online — for anyone to use.

• Ryan Paul over at Ars Technica tried out the final alpha version of Ubuntu 9.1, which improves on boot performance significantly. Much like Microsoft’s soon-to-be-released Windows 7, Ubuntu 9.1 comes with optimization for computers with solid state drives (SSD).

• In April this year, Canonical introduced two new wallpapers and three new themes, along with a revamped boot splash theme and a brand-new login screen, for their Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) release. On October 1st, they will unveil Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) Beta and I bet everybody is wondering if Canonical will actually change the user interface (read: skin it) with a breathtaking one. The truth is that we have no idea if they will come with that professional-looking theme everyone was expecting since Jaunty, or they will just offer enough possibilities for users to create their own personalized desktops.

• I’ve spent the last few weeks testing Ubuntu One, Canonical’s file-storing and sharing service. Below is an outline of my experience, and thoughts on the future of the application.

• Ubuntu One, which will be installed by default in Ubuntu 9.10, allows users to sync files between different Ubuntu computers. The service runs in the background, and can be accessed either through a Web interface in Firefox or via the Nautilus file browser, with which it seamlessly integrates.

• Hopefully you will never see this improvement, but it’s now going to be there for when those bugs do creep in.

• Running under the theme “ICTs and Innovations — Strategic Opportunities and Challenges,” the exhibition is set to end today. The Ubuntu stand proved popular with its Freedom Toaster which visitors were using to download software free of charge. Ubuntu, the organisation, derives its name from a community developed Linux based operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers named Ubuntu. Whether one uses it at home, at school or at work Ubuntu contains all the applications one will ever need, from word processing and email applications, to web server software and programming tools.

• Cadence, quality, and design were the core themes of Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth’s closing keynote talk at LinuxCon.

• Speaking before a combined session of LinuxCon and the co-located Linux Plumber’s Conference, Shuttleworth drilled home the importance of these concepts in the Linux development ecosystem, particularly cadence.

• Shuttleworth has long maintained that if free and open source software projects can begin to sync their development cycles with each other, then both upstream and downstream developers (and, ultimately, users) will benefit. This is large part of the strategy behing Canonical’s strict six-month release for the Ubuntu distribution and the 18-month Ubuntu Long Term Support (LTS) cycles.

Devices/Embedded

• Arium announced the release of Linx hardware and software debugging components that now support Intel’s Atom CPU. Version 7.7.1 of the SourcePoint debugging software also adds code trace and flash programming functionality, together with Arium’s now-Linux-ready ECM-XDP3 hardware emulator, says the company.

• RMI Corp. announced a design win for its MIPS-based Au1250 processor in a Linux-based home energy monitoring system. Threshold Corp.’s Au1250-based device monitors and manages energy consumption in real time, and appears to incorporate the company’s NFC-based “BlueSpot” auto-configuration technology.

• AllGo Embedded Systems is shipping a reference design for a wireless multimedia player or home automation device based on Freescale’s ARM9-based i.MX233 SoC. The Linux-ready Stamp i.MX233 Wireless Media Player offers a WVGA touchscreen, WiFi, Ethernet, FM tuner, and Pandora and Flickr support, says the company.

• If you haven’t guessed by now, we’re big fans of ultraportable computers, and even happier when they can cope with 1080p video playback. One such device tickling our fancy is SmartDevices’ SmartV 5 MID, a 5-inch WVGA touchscreen handheld with a 600MHz processor, 2GB of flash storage and a choice of Android, Windows CE 6.0 or Ubuntu as OS.

• Editor’s choice of 10 semiconductor reference designs and starter kits which could offer engineers an out-of-the-box route to their next embedded system development.

• Meshcom Technologies, Inc. has announced a new embedded Linux line of business, EmbedOne, as well as a suite of software and services for the embedded Linux community.

Phones

• O2 HAS NAMED 16 October as the date when UK buyers will be able to purchase Palm’s Pre smartphone, the first device to feature the company’s new WebOS platform and tipped by many as the biggest rival for Apple’s Iphone.

• Maemo was developed in-house by Nokia, and is made up of a number of open and closed source bits and pieces, including Debian Linux. It draws much of its GUI, frameworks, and libraries from the GNOME project. The much anticipated N900 is the flag bearer for the OS, and Nokia is already running a ‘fun’ competition designed to highlight its possibilities.

• On the one-year anniversary of the debut of Google’s Android mobile software on its first handset, the T-Mobile G1, Taiwanese mobile phone service provider Far EasTone raised the number of Android smartphones it plans to launch this year.

Sub-notebooks

• 5. Sugar on a Stick (Eee PC 900)

• I really, really like this idea — especially for kids — but files aren’t being saved to my USB stick for some reason. At least the WiFi works…

Free Software/Open Source

• Alas, The VAR Guy doesn’t expect to hear much about MySQL at OpenWorld. This is, after all, an Oracle event. But some savvy speakers will surely inject MySQL into the OpenWorld conversation. One example involves Alex Gorbachev. He’s scheduled to speak Oct. 12 about “Developing Plug-ins for Oracle Enterprise Manager by Example.” Gorbachev’s example involves a MySQL plug-in.

• The code analysis tools vendor, Coverity, has released the 2009 edition of the Coverity Scan Open Source Report[icon:pdf]. The survey, which was originally initiated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2006, examines the integrity and quality of open source software. The results are based on an analysis of 11 billion lines of code from 280 open source projects including Firefox, Linux, PHP, Ruby and Samba over three years. The analysis was carried out using Coverity’s Scan service.

• MH: Sometimes they really surprise us, recently at the Atlanta Linuxfest one of our users, a large hosting company, was very creative in the way they auto-generated reports and emailed PDFs of their user’s hosted account usage. Sometimes our community members extend Zenoss in ways we never thought and even teach us a thing or two.

• The fourth beta of Thunderbird 3, which is the Firefox browser maker’s desktop email client, is now available for Windows, Mac and Linux users.

• Mozilla Messaging design expert Bryan Clark wrote a blog entry a few months ago about one of his experiments with rich mail visualization. He shows how CSS transforms can be used to display a message on an isometric cube. Although this example is somewhat frivolous and isn’t intended for inclusion in Thunderbird, it’s a great demonstration of how emerging Web standards can empower new approaches to presenting mail.

• When it comes to fonts, Helvetica or Arial is good enough for some people. Creative types and Web designers, however, love the nuances and subtle differences in a wide variety of digital typefaces.

Business

• Why is there no “open source business model”? Because open source is not a business. It’s the same oxymoronic thinking as the question “how can you make money if you give the software away for free”, which simply can’t be answered without correcting the questioner’s worldview.

• To assert there is “an open source business model” is to lose sight of the nature of open source. It may have been a fair thing to do when open source was a novelty to business minds, but even considering there could be such a thing leads people to misunderstand open source and treat the exceptions – like MySQL – as the rule. Not that it’s wrong to monetise ubiquity at the point of deployment by delivering the value that allows scaling (enabling adoption-led behaviour). It’s just most open source community members don’t do that.

FSF/GNU

• Gnash is a GPLv3′d SWF movie player and browser plugin for Firefox, Mozilla, and Konqueror. Gnash supports many SWF v7 features and ActionScript 2 & 3 classes. with growing support for SWF versions 8-10. Gnash also runs on many GNU/Linux distributions, embedded GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, non x86 processors, and 64 bit architectures. There are also standalone players for GNOME or KDE based desktops.

• Since they use their massive economic power to control the marketplace, they create an enormous incentive for manufacturers to ensure their equipment works with Microsoft software. As a result, nearly every consumer device you pick up at the local discount store will work in Windows. You will have to be a lot pickier with GNU/Linux. Unfair? Monopolistic? Absolutely! But it’s still true, and we pay this cost when we opt for free software.

• At the free event, Richard Stallman, an international Free Software advocate, will argue that software patents obstruct software development.

• Attending: Mairin Duffy, Leslie Hawthorn, Adelaida McIntire, Deborah Nicholson, Stormy Peters (via phone), Hillary Rettig, Christine Spang, Hanna Wallach, Marina Zhurakhinskaya

• Opening Statement: Our objective is to increase women’s participation in the free software movement and work to make sexism in person or online unacceptable within our community. Women represent less than 2% of the free software movement, yet our participation is a pre-requisite for the movements success. Having more women in our community advocating freedom will enrich our movement.

Licensing

• An appeals court in Paris has upheld the ruling from a lower court, which found that the French firm Edu4 had violated the GNU General Public License (GPL). The plaintiff was the French Organisation Association française pour la Formation Professionnelle des Adultes (AFPA), an umbrella organization for adult education.

• Henceforth OpendTect is released under a triple licensing strategy: 1) under the GNU / GPL license, 2) under a commercial license and, 3) under an academic license. Under the GNU / GPL license, OpendTect is completely free-of-charge, including for commercial use. The commercial license enables the user to extend the system with (closed source) commercial plugins that can either be purchased or leased. Under the academic license agreement universities can get free licenses for OpendTect and commercial plugins for R&D and educational purposes.

• Cyberoam iView is available to download from SourceForge and is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Support for additional devices, applications and systems is expected to be added in the next few months.

Leftovers

• A Texas man has been charged with insider trading by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for trousering $8.64m of illegal profit, following Dell’s proposed acquisition of services firm Perot Systems.

Intellectual Monopolies

• It appears that she actually qualifies. Quite directly. She’s offering music from, among others, Jay-Z, Jefferson Airplane, The Specials and The Kinks. Admittedly, it’s just a quick look around, but it appears many of the artists whose works she’s distributing for free have no connection with EMI. Even if they did, remember EMI was recently claiming that it’s never authorized MP3s for distribution for publicity purposes. Uh oh.

• Update: Wow. In the half an hour or so that I took to write this post, Lily erased the blog post where she responded (I’ve got a screenshot if anyone wants to see it), and just added a note to Twitter, saying that she’s shut down the entire blog due to too much abuse. Lily, it’s not abuse if we’re just asking you to rethink your positions that appear to not be particularly well thought out.

• The legislation would impose fines of up to 300,000 euros — the equivalent of about $440,000 — as well as possible prison terms for the illegal download of films or music.

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