● 10.13.09

● Links 13/10/2009: Ubuntu 9.10 for Servers, ASUS Back to GNU/Linux?

Posted in News Roundup at 10:35 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Tustin, Calif.-based Arium, a provider of hardware-assisted development tools, recently announced the release of debugging technology supporting Linux OSs.

• In past Live Online chats and blog posts, I’ve mentioned any easy way to temporarily convert a Windows PC into a Linux-based computer in order to ensure that your online banking credentials positively can’t be swiped by password-stealing malicious software. What follows is a brief tutorial on how to do that with Ubuntu, one of the more popular bootable Linux installations.

• Also known as “Live CDs,” these are generally free, Linux-based operating systems that one can download and burn to a CD-Rom or DVD. The beauty of Live CDs is that they can be used to turn a Windows based PC into a provisional Linux computer, as Live CDs allow the user to boot into a Linux operating system without installing anything to the hard drive. Programs on a LiveCD are loaded into system memory, and any changes – such as browsing history or other activity — are completely wiped away after the machine is shut down. To return to Windows, simply remove the CD from the drive and reboot.

Kernel Space

• Prior to the Eleventh Real Time Linux Workshop in Dresden, Germany, a small group met to discuss the further development of the realtime preemption work for the Linux kernel. This “mini-summit” covered a wide range of topics, but was driven by a straightforward set of goals: the continuing improvement of realtime capabilities in Linux and the merging of the realtime preemption patches into the mainline.

• Much of the realtime scheduling work in Linux has been based around getting the best behavior out of the POSIX realtime scheduling classes. Techniques like priority inheritance, for example, exist to ensure that the highest-priority task really can run within a bounded period of time. In much of the rest of the world, though, priorities and POSIX realtime are no longer seen as the best way to solve the problem. Instead, the realtime community likes to talk about “deadlines” and deadline-oriented scheduling. In this article, we’ll look at a deadline scheduler has recently been posted for review and related discussion at the recent Real Time Linux Workshop in Dresden.

• This is also the release that carries OpenCL benchmarking support on Linux via the addition of the opencl-ati and pyopencl test profiles. Additionally, the Nexuiz test profile has been updated along with others, including the parsing change that has caused updates to nearly every test profile.

• As the recognized “embedded Linux guy” by many of my peers, my e-mail Inbox was flooded with references to and comments about Linus Torvald’s recent statement concerning the “bloated-ness” of Linux. In his opinion, as recorded in an interview at LinuxCon 2009, the Linux kernel has become “huge and scary.” I will agree that Linux is a large body of work, but I think Torvald’s use of the term “bloated” is both unfair and completely inaccurate.

• AMD has released the fourth beta of the ATI Stream SDK 2.0, which provides a complete OpenCL development platform with OpenCL ATI GPU support for the ATI Radeon HD 4000/5000 series. Besides running OpenCL on the GPU, this ATI SDK also supports running OpenCL on SSE3-capable, multi-core CPUs from both AMD and Intel too. The ATI Stream SDK is available for x86 and x86_64 Linux, with OpenSuSE 11.0 and Ubuntu 9.04 being officially supported.

• When it comes to the Linux support for the Radeon HD 5700 series, it is there with Catalyst 9.10. However, Eyefinity is not yet supported on Linux and OverDrive is not yet working, but both items will be addressed. Likewise, UVD2 will be coming very soon as well. The ATI Radeon HD 5750 and 5770 are impressive mid-range graphics cards from AMD that will be sure to shake-up the market. There is also open-source support for these graphics cards just out on the horizon.

Applications

• I found another cool and fun karaoke software for Linux that I would like to share to everyone. It is called Performous and it’s so far one of the best karaoke program that I’ve tried.

• [...]

• The singing octave is not important, because as long as you get the right note in any octave, you will get full points. Singing near the correct note likewise gives some points, but the amount of points per second decreases as you get farther from the right tone. Singing within the right semitone consistently gives full points, so you may actually be off by a quartertone and still get the points.

• You could buy a used car — albeit not a very good one — for the same scratch it takes to pick up a copy of Adobe Photoshop, the de facto standard in high-end photo editing software. Or a pair of GTX 285 graphics cards for that killer SLI setup you’ve always wanted. We could go on, but at $700 for a piece of software, Photoshop’s MSRP hardly needs put into perspective. In short, it’s expensive.

• And now a brief break from business-oriented coverage on WorksWithU. As a history Ph.D. student by day and free-software geek by night, I find that my poles of interest rarely converge. That’s why I was so excited when the real-time historical strategy game 0 A.D. was switched to an open-source license in July. I’ve been meaning since then to give it a try, and finally found the time and hardware necessary to do that. Here are the results.

• Pretty much every morning and every night I download the newest build of Chromium for Mac (the open source builds that will eventually turn into Chrome for Mac). While we made an auto-updater to do it for you, you can also manually find the latest builds here. This morning, I visited this site and noticed something new: A Chrome OS folder.

KDE

• About-information from developer profiles, desktop searches in online forums, an interface library and update notification of web page content bring the concept of a social desktop a step closer to reality.

• [...]

• This helps in presenting Free Software apps as more “human”, because it shows (through their profiles) that there’s real people working on the program.” His prize is a Inspiron 10v notebook from Dell with Ubuntu. The extended AboutDialog is already included in Amarok 2.2.

• The main difference between KDE 3 and KDE 4 is that the former is fixed and static while the latter is dynamic and interactive. For a trivial example of that go to System Settings / Desktop / All Effects and activate Snow. Now hitting the Meta+Ctrl+F12 keys (or Win+Ctrl+F12) will fill your desktop with falling snowflakes.

• [...]

• In short, Plasma and KDE 4 allow you to build your own interactive desktop. If that seems a little daunting, check out what others have done …

• With this goal, Karlitschek announced the contest on June 17. Prizes were a netbook from Dell for the winner and a one terabyte hard drive for the runner up, and $50 and $30 Amazon gift certificates for third and fourth place. Judging was done by Seigo and Karlitschek, and — partly to emphasize that the idea was not confined to KDE — Luis Villa of the GNOME project and Alexander Colorado of OpenOffice.org.

Distributions

Red Hat Family

• A few RPM developers from Red Hat and Novell met at the openSUSE Conference 2009 in September. The results of the meeting are now online.

• Banco Pastor, the Spanish banking group with 650 branch offices in Spain and a presence in the US and the cities in Europe and Latin America, has migrated its critical human resources and corporate emailing systems running SAP NetWeaver and SAP ERP and IBM Lotus Notes for Collaboration software to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Debian Family

• Canonical is touting private cloud capabilities in an upgrade to its Ubuntu Linux OS being announced on Tuesday.

• Available for free download on October 29, Ubuntu 9.10 Server Edition introduces UEC (Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud), an open source cloud computing environment based on the same APIs as Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud). Businesses can take advantage of private clouds, Canonical said.

• “Ubuntu 9.10 Server Edition puts Ubuntu users at a unique advantage in being able to quickly and simply deploy and manage cloud environments. We strongly believe that businesses which are already embracing virtualized environments, will take the next logical step to these self-service, super-efficient architectures and that Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud will be at the heart of that effort,” Canonical’s Director of Corporate Services, Steve George said in a statement.

• If you are getting ready to build your own internal cloud-style virtual infrastructure, Canonical – the commercial entity behind the Ubuntu distro of Linux – really wants you to think outside of the box and consider the forthcoming “Karmic Koala” Ubuntu 9.10 Server Edition.

• The beta of Ubuntu 9.10–or Karmic Koala as it’s also known–offers the core open-source updates you would expect. But it also provides important enhancements in the areas of disk encryption, tightened system permissions and cloud service integration–all of which combine to make Ubuntu even more attractive as the Linux distro of choice on the desktop.

• I was thrilled when I saw that Mark Shuttleworth announced the election of Elizabeth Krumbach to the Ubuntu Community Council. Here is my “open memo” of congratulations to Elizabeth:

• Elizabeth, you earned this honor to serve through your competent and tireless efforts to positively contribute to FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) communities like Ubuntu and its upstream, Debian. Collectively, it is the work done in the FOSS communities that has built a “game changing” software infrastructure which already delivers business results to illions of organizations around the world … day in and day out. Thank you for all that you do by contributing to these vitally important communities!

• New Linux server hands VARs and resellers an out-of-the-box way to sell private cloud computing behind the firewall.

• With new Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (EUC) capabilities and tools now fully integrated into its upcoming Ubuntu 9.10 Server Edition operating system, Linux vendor Ubuntu is getting ready to spread the benefits and promise of cloud computing to corporate users, VARs and resellers.

Devices/Embedded

• This is apparent from the company’s approach to the Linux market, which it sees as strategically important for the future.

• Wind River has commercial versions of Android and LiMo, as well as Moblin, Intel’s own Linux-based operating system.

• The Moblin v2.1 release for netbooks and nettops includes many community and customer requested enhancements; for example, support for additional nettop screen resolutions, myzone improvements, IM improvements, better language support, updated kernel, Moblin Garage, Moblin Application Installer, 3G data support, and Bluetooth.

• Intel’s Moblin Linux platform has finally arrived on netbooks. Ars takes a hands-on look at Dell’s new Mini 10v with the Ubuntu Moblin Remix.

• Openmoko announced today the availability of WikiReader, a palm-sized electronic encyclopedia containing the more than three million English language articles of Wikipedia that can be accessed immediately anytime, anywhere without requiring an Internet connection. WikiReader is available for $99 at http://thewikireader.com and Amazon.com starting today.

• In short: the WikiReader has no cellular radio, or any radios at all actually, inside. It’s just an offline scratch resistant tempered glass capacitive touch screen device with 3 buttons, and 3 million Wikipedia articles stored on a built in, removable, and upgradable, microSD card. It runs on 2x AAA batteries and lasts for 1 year if used for 15 minutes per day, so that is a little over 90 hours of use. Thomas Meyerhoffer designed it, and it will cost only $99. You’ll be able to purchase it from here “soon” according to the website.

• The Gyy, from iUnika, solves the problem with minimal specs: an 8-inch screen, 128 MB of RAM and a 64 GB solid state drive, running Linux…

Phones

• INITIAL DEMAND for the Palm Pre is expected to beat the Iphone at its launch, according to the latest poll.

• The Pre is the UK’s most anticipated phone, with 26 per cent of mobile users expressing an interest in buying one. This is almost double the 16 per cent who said they would buy the iPhone before its launch in 2007.

• At the Maemo Summit in Amsterdam, Nokia unveiled the roadmap for the next generation of its Linux-based Maemo platform. The company plans to introduce support for multitouch and a number of other compelling features.

• That said, warts and all I found this to be a helpful way to get my feet wet with Android. I really look forward to future versions as I think just a little more time and work will move this from my ‘good’ list to my ‘great’ list. Making things a little tighter and cleaning up the few typos and errors would certainly make this an 8 instead of an 7, which is really substantial in my mind. I’m no super developer and I need stuff like this, that can take things a little more slowly and make it all clear. I think this guide is great for those of us in that category as long as the reader is o.k. with hopping to external sources for the information they’ll need to get the newer tool set working.

Sub-notebooks

• But this weekend Asus did something interesting. The company posted Linux source code for the Asus Eee PC 1008HA. In fact, there are 5 different downloads, ranging in size 299Mb to 488MB. I have no idea what the difference is between one and the other, and I’m not entirely sure what’s contained in the files yet. But if I had to guess, I’d say that Asus is preparing to launch a version of the Eee PC 1008HA that runs Moblin Linux.

• Now, we find they list GNU/Linux as an OS for the new eeePC 1008HA Clamshell. They also have a download for the source code.

• What are you doing ASUS? Has the deal with M$ expired? Is GNU/Linux from the competition eating your lunch? Could this be hard bargaining before “7″?

• The UbiSurfer, a Linux device with a seven-inch screen, a built-in SIM card and a 1GB flash drive, retails for $299.

Free Software/Open Source

• Q. I’ve heard that certain business software is available for free – where can I find out more?

• A. You may be referring to open source software, which is often available as a free download. One well-known example is the Mozilla Firefox web browser, but there are many others with business applications, such as word processing or archiving and even full office suites.

• ’Asterisk and related open source telecom technologies have revolutionised the telecoms industry in recent years and provide highly cost-effective telephone systems around the world. Many also include free calls through Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). VoIP also offers the advantage of running both voice and data communications over a single network, which can represent a significant saving in a company’s infrastructure costs.’

• Kongkiat began the development of information-system software for hospital management by using open-source technology. He named it “Hospital OS”. The aim was to convert the information systems of small- and medium-sized government hospitals, with fewer than 100 beds, to electronic format.

• With five programmers working on a volunteer basis, the first version of Hospital OS was installed in 14 small- and medium-sized hospitals around the country in 2001. Kongkiat’s team was operating under research and development funding of Bt1.9 million from the Thailand Research Fund (TFR). It had undertaken to equip just 10 hospitals with the new system, and was buoyed by its ability to implement the system in 14, despite the fact that the number represented only a tiny fraction of Thailand’s 700 small- and medium-sized government hospitals.

• …Linux environment, making it both scalable and powerful. It also provides the lowest cost possible for retailers with multiple branch operations.

• Open ERP, an Open Source management software solution, is reportedly offering a new service offer – Odoo, the On demand ERP solution.

• The researchers are saying the content management market is set to explode in the next several years, and open source CMS vendors are contributing to this growth, as well as to how customers are changing their CMS selection processes. Let’s take a look at details — some of them you may find quite amusing.

• There was not a whole lot of fanfare over the recent merger of the West Coast-based Open Solutions Alliance and the European-based OW2, but the move may also reflect a greater, global market crossover among different geographies and vendors using open source software.

• Margins on support business are very good. Look at RedHat’s margin (over 80%) as an example of this. If you look at proprietary vendors like Oracle, their business is built around making money from their support and maintenance offerings.

• The wireless industry is rapidly advancing from 2G and 3G networks to 4G. A major benefit of 4G is that it provides greater wireless broadband capacity for more users than prior technologies. Mobile operators around the globe are racing to be first to market with WiMax and LTE networks.

• -Mckoi Software announced today that Version 1.0 of MckoiDDB, a distributed database system, is available for download at http://www.mckoi.com/ under the open source GPLv3 license. MckoiDDB is a database management application that provides software developers an engine for organizing large and complex data-sets over clusters of servers, and an API that supports transactions and low latency queries.

• The release of SPARK GPL completes the strategic shift that sees the once proprietary SPARK technology now a part of the Freely Licensed Open Source Software (FLOSS) ecosystem.

• Yesterday we analyzed some of the applications being built with Pachube, an open source platform enabling developers to connect sensor data to the Web. We at ReadWriteWeb think that Pachube is an excellent example of one of our Top 5 Trends of 2009: Internet of Things. So we’re exploring Pachube in-depth in a 3-part series.

• Many people are confused about the free software vs open source debate because they don’t know (or they hide) their own alignment.

• For the last year, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has held around 70% of the market, while Mozilla’s Firefox has held 20%, according to Janco Associates. The rest of the market is held by smaller players: Google Chrome with 4%, Opera with 1%, Apple Safari with less than 1% and the remainder to older versions of Mozilla and Netscape browsers.

Sun

• It has been a pretty successful 9 years, with OOo having achieved approx 10% market share and even more in certain segments and countries.

• The most shocking remark that McNealy made in his 45-minute presentation was that Sun was the pioneer of open source software. He put open source software as number three on his list of Sun’s top 10 tech innovations of all time. Before he made the claim, he admitted, “I’ll sound a little like Al Gore here.” Then McNealy said he thinks the assertion can easily be backed up. He pointed to the open source origins of BSD and the fact that “BSD + UNIX System 5 = Solaris.”

• Open SSO, Sun’s open source single sign on solution, has gotten a big boost from Pat Patterson, a sun engineer who did the community a huge favor in creating not one but 3 different flavors of an OpenSSO plug-in for some of the most popular open source CMS’ on the market: Drupal, WordPress, and Joomla.

Funding

• GroundWork Open Source, Inc. (GWOS, www.gwos.com), the leader in commercial open source systems and network management software, today announced it has secured $5 million in its fourth round of venture capital financing.

• The U.S. continues to buy plenty of proprietary software, but it’s encouraging that when it comes to international development, the federal government recognizes that open source pays better long-term dividends than subsidies for the export of proprietary software. Even more encouraging, this practice appears to be neither Democratic nor Republican in origin.

Government

• Lindsay Tanner’s Gov 2.0 Taskforce has spawned three hacker events in support of its Mashup Australia competition – including two hosted by Google Australia – as it seeks creative ways to use dormant public sector data.

Openness

• Earlier this month, much to the chagrin of some of our readers, I equated the Hadoop-focused startup, Cloudera, to Red Hat. My argument was that in the late 1990s, open-source operating systems and web software proved to be major disruptors and helped Internet services grow exponentially. About a dozen years later, the future of Internet services revolves around data and data analytics.

Programming

• Keep May 19 – 20, 2010 open if you plan to attend the next Google I/O Developer Conference. It’s slated to be held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA and registration opens in January. The event brings thousands of developers together for a two-day sprint through session about some of Google’s most popular products and tools, including App Engine, Google Web Toolkit, Android, and Chrome.

Leftovers

• Zachary Christie is a six-year old student in Newark, Delaware who is facing 45 days in reform school because he brought his new Cub Scout eating utensil to school for lunch.

• Rentokil Initial has become one of the largest user of Google Apps, rolling out the cloud-based office suite to 35,000 users globally.

• Rentokill plans to use Google to consolidate 40 email systems including open source products and Microsoft Exchange, into a single email system. The complex setup prevented staff from sending email across the group.

Bailout for Bonuses

• CNBC’s Charlie Gasparino reports that “Rival banks are eagerly awaiting this week’s earnings announcement from Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) not only for the third-quarter results but for how the firm deals with up to $20 billion in bonuses just a year after it received federal bailout money during the height of the financial crisis.”

• Reinforcing criticism of his too-close relationship with Wall Street, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is reportedly in touch with executives of Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs on a regular, sometimes daily, basis, spending more time with industry leaders than with key lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

• The latest estimates are that Goldman’s total compensation to company employees will total $22 billion, about $700,000 a person. That means that some of the most senior managers at the firm will make tens of millions of dollars.

• It can probably afford to: Bloomberg’s predicting that Goldman’s third quarter profits will triple.

• As President Barack Obama vowed in a Sept. 14 speech in New York’s Federal Hall to correct “reckless behavior and unchecked excess” on Wall Street, Mike McMahon and Barney Frank sat in the audience discussing how to ease proposed rules for the $592 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market.

• The US treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, was on the phone to his British counterpart, Alistair Darling, as often as he spoke to some of Wall Street’s top bankers during the financial crisis, but the boss of Goldman Sachs commanded more of his time. A diary released by Geithner’s office reveals he spoke with Darling an average of once every 18 days as the financial crisis raged during the first half of this year.

• While the Goldman Sachs hate continues we should be ashamed of our leaders for not making the most basic of fixes to our financial system. Goldman and it’s greedy, smart, connected leaders are not the problem. The system in place is broken.

Censorship/Web Abuse

• Wikileaks.org, the online clearinghouse for leaked documents, is working on a plan to make the Web leakier by enabling newspapers, human rights organizations, criminal investigators and others to embed an “upload a disclosure to me via Wikileaks” form onto their Web sites.

• The upload system will give potential whistleblowers around the world the ability to leak sensitive documents to an organization or journalist they trust over a secure connection, while giving the receiver legal protection they might not otherwise enjoy.

• Update: After this story got spread all over the internet (especially on Twitter), it looks like Carter-Ruck backed down. Of course… the end result? Much worse than if they had never tried to gag the newspapers. A lot more people are aware of the story. Why do lawyers still think banning such things will work?

Intellectual Monopolies

• According to a new report (PDF) from the Business Software Alliance, “roughly 41 percent of all software installed on personal computers is obtained illegally.” And, although the US government is reluctant to bring prosecutions against noncommercial P2P users or against downloaders, the Department of Justice is increasingly willing to prosecute criminal copyright infringement cases brought to its attention by groups like the BSA. But who are these criminal masterminds, exactly?

• For the last hundred years, rightsholders have fretted about everything from the player piano to the VCR to digital TV to Napster. Here are those objections, in Big Content’s own words.

• Doron sez, “Folk musician Steven Arntson wanted to write a song that riffed on a Woody Guthrie’s ‘I Ain’t Got No Home’. Guthrie’s song was based on the Carter Family’s ‘This World Is Not My Home’ which was in turn based on an old spirtual… Unfortunately Arnston is finding out that current copyright law does not allow for the creative give and take that was once a vital and basic part of music composition.”

• TorrentFreak has some numbers from a music industry presentation discussing how these extortion-like enterprises can pay quite handsomely. Basically, this one group, DRS, sends out emails demanding €450 ($650) per offense, with the company getting to keep 80% of any proceeds.

• Claiming that the outlook for the music industry is grim is like claiming that the outlook for the transportation industry is grim in 1910 because the market for horse carriages is declining.

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