● 10.20.09

● Links 20/10/2009: Nikto 2.1.0 Released, Parsix GNU/Linux 3.0 Reviewed

Posted in News Roundup at 1:08 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• My experience with forums when I switched to Ubuntu was generally positive. I asked questions, making it clear I was a newbie, and I don’t remember a single derisive comment. The only aggravation was that a couple of times I posted questions and was berated for either posting in the wrong place or for failing to look for the answer before asking. I hate being told to look harder, and I actually want to learn about technology. Imagine being an average user, just trying to take a screenshot or set up Empathy, and being told to “look before you ask.”

• Have you ever been tempted by desktop Linux’s security and stability, but you didn’t want to go to all the trouble of installing two operating systems on one PC or the expense of buying a new PC? Then, you’re in luck, because there are many ways to give desktop Linux a try without changing anything permanently or using a spare desktop.

• It used to be that if you wanted to try desktop Linux, you had to be a confident power-user and make permanent changes to your PC or have another computer. Those days are long gone. Today, you have four different, easy ways to take Linux for a spin.

Audio

• In this episode, we interview Randal L. Schwartz about Perl, Merlyn and Stonehenge, BSD, being a professional comedian, how Karaoke saved his life, the Schwartzian transform, FLOSS Weekly and much more.

Applications

• All you need to create this disk image and copy it over the network to another computer is a Windows version of the common GNU/Linux tools DD and netcat, which are both free and open source. DD creates the bit-image disk copy and netcat will send anything over the network. Of course, you’ll need the second computer on the network that will receive the image and has enough capacity for the image. You’ll want to put these two tools on safe media — preferably a CD. This way they are known to be “good” and won’t be compromised when used on a compromised system.

• Scrolling through the blueprints on the Docky launchpad page also gives up some insight in the sheer awesomeness that Docky will morph into now it’s pandering to it’s own destiny. I’ve summarised them below, but take a look at the official Docky blueprint page for information.

• One of the strong criticisms leveled against Linux is the lack of good quality games for the platform. A lot of strides have been made in getting games ported to the Linux platform. One of the attempts to make games playable on Linux caught my attention. It is the Live.Linux-gamers.net project.

KDE

• Nepomuk, which is KDE’s semantic desktop framework is a very interesting new technology, and has the potential to move many applications forward. Nepomuk needs an RDF store to save and retrieve semantic information, such as data from your filesystem indexer, tags, ratings, and other, much more complex bits. Up until now, there were performance problems. There were two possible ways to store your information: redland and sesame2. Redland is written in C++, but is very simple and by far not meeting the performance requirement we need for Nepomuk’s use-cases.

• As a devoted free software user, I’m almost as likely to stick my hand down a running garbarator as buy a copy of Windows 7. In fact, so far, I haven’t tried Windows 7. But if its features list is any indication, I’m missing little that I don’t already have with the latest version of the KDE desktop.

• Of course, exactly what Windows 7′s new features are can be difficult to tell. The features list is as much a marketing document as a technical one. In places it’s more apt to give you an overdose of adjectives than any specifics. Nor is every feature available in every edition of Windows 7.

• Then, too, a few listed features, such as 64-bit support, are so far from new that I wonder why they are mentioned.

• Plasma-netbook will make a big splash, and contribute to KDE’s rising visibility.. Many distros will still ignore it, but one will switch its focus to kde, and then another… other areas of KDE will mature, and the benefits of our Pillars of KDE will shine through… In two years we’ll be the default on most distros. Gnome won’t know what hit them

Distributions

• Since I’m not familiar with some of the distributions on this list, most of the information is taken directly from the distribution’s own website.

• 1. Arch Linux – Billed as a lightweight and flexible Linux distribution that tries to Keep It Simple. Arch Linux is an independently developed, i686/x86-64 general purpose GNU/Linux distribution versatile enough to suit any role.

• Parsix Linux is definitely worth taking a look at if you’re an intermediate or advanced Linux user.

• Beginners are certainly welcome to check out the Live CD but the partitioning required to install Parsix Linux might be a bit much depending on the person’s experience with such things.

• I am a six-month-old Gentoo user now! Six month ago, I posted about being a newbie of Gentoo. Now I could say I am happy with my decision of switching from Fedora. Please note that Fedora is a great distribution, I personally think Fedora is better than most of distributions—Ubuntu included.

New Releases

Red Hat Family

• Not since the heady days of the dotcom boom has the share market for an open source company’s stock been brighter.

• As of the last Nasdaq trade on October 19, 2009, Red Hat’s share price stood at $28.46 with the mighty Microsoft in its shadow at $26.36.

• With so much noise made about IT company share prices over the years — Michael Dell said he would shut down Apple if he was in charge, but then in 2006 Apple surpassed Dell’s market capitalization — why did such a momentous occasion go unnoticed?

Debian Family

• The release of the newest version of Ubuntu is only 10 days away. Many sites, including MakeTechEasier have covered its pending arrival and given you a glimpse of the Beta version. Today we are going to take a look at Kubuntu, the KDE-based version of Ubuntu.

• Not only does the up-coming Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, released on Thu 29th October 2009 bring this rich platform, as well as Quickly, but it also bring the new Ubuntu Software Center which provides a refreshed means of browsing and installing applications. My hope is that we will continue to leverage this rock-solid platform and be able to have opportunistic programmers everywhere be able to get their apps in front of Ubuntu users, in much the same way the iPhone and Android Market Place does so.

• Along with other updates to Ubuntu’s look in Karmic, the changes to NetworkManager reflect a solid and successful effort to meet and surpass the interface enhancements of proprietary operating systems, demonstrating that software can be Free and good-looking at the same time.

• REvolution Computing’s enhanced distribution of R, REvolution R, has been available for free download from our website for Windows and MacOS for over a year now, and has been used by thousands of R users for high-performance statistical data analysis. Soon, we’ll be expanding our free distributions to Ubuntu Linux, with the release of REvolution R 3.0.

• In the first of a seven-part series on Where Karmic’s Karma Comes From, I’d like to introduce you to the managers of the Canonical Platform Team. The Platform Team is made up of the following teams: Foundations, Kernel, Desktop, QA, Mobile, Community, and Server. In this first interview, Robbie Williamson, the Ubuntu’s Foundations Team Manager, discusses what’s coming out in Karmic Koala and what we can expect in the Lucid Lynx release.

Devices/Embedded

• Overall I would recommend this router. The storage and media server features are great, especially at the price. The throughput is a little lower than I expected, but more than acceptable for most uses. This combined with the Linksys interface, options, and support make it a great choice for someone looking for a reasonably priced draft Wireless-N router. If Linksys can produce a firmware update that will improve the throughput inconsistency, we’ll have a real winner on our hands. The Linux firmware? Well that’s just the icing on the cake.

Phones

• There’s no question that there’s been some pretty astounding growth around Android, Google’s open-source mobile phone operating system. A year ago, there was only one Android device out there – the T-Mobile G-1. Today, Android is powering 12 devices in 26 countries with 32 carriers – and there’s more on the way.

• Linux-based mobile phone platforms are really just specialized distributions. Like other distributions, phone platforms will live or die based on how well they meet the needs of their users. The Android platform has a high profile at the moment as the result of the entry of more handsets into the market, but also as a result of Google’s actions toward derived distributions. Android is clearly not meeting the needs of all its users currently, but changes are afoot which may improve the situation.

Free Software/Open Source

• It’s also a big deal for open source health IT generally. It comes just as the Veterans Administration is becoming a big booster of its own VistA software, seeking industry help in making it a standard electronic health record (EHR).

• More management features have been added to Version 3.0 Enterprise MX, Jitterbit’s open source data integration system.

• “Some computer science students in Tennessee will graduate without having taken a single class about the open source technologies poised to become mainsteam choices for enterprise deployment,” explains Marcus Whitney, CEO of Nashville-based thought leadership and tech evangelist firm Remarkable Wit, LLC, the host of an educational Big LAMP Camp for developers and the Enterprise LAMP Summit, an IT thought leadership event for IT decisionmakers.

• In the insurance business, everyone’s headed into the hinterland. But the cost of every new branch can bite deeply. Here’s how going Open Source helped ING Life save US$1.7 million and funded its expansion plans.

• What this type of technology should open our eyes to is, broadly, the fact that the US is doing this and the UK isn’t. Alfresco chief executive and founder John Powell is refreshingly vocal on this subject and is (I would like to suggest) unselfishly highlighting his company’s success in the US to show us what we are not doing in the UK.

• Perhaps the increasing adoption of open source in the commercial enterprise space will cause the government to wake up and see the benefits of these technology streams. Or maybe it won’t.

• The overall number of defects in open-source software projects is dropping, according to a new study by San Francisco-based vendor Coverity Inc.

• Coverity, a maker of tools for analyzing programming code, received a contract in 2006 from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to help boost the quality of open-source software, which is increasingly being used by government agencies for critical applications.

• Small businesses can buy open source IP PBX Asterisk software as an addon to IBM’s Smart Cube office in a box package.

• Microsoft’s webserver lost a fraction of share (-0.37%) in October. However, apart from Apache, Nginx grew a fraction (+0.39%), translating into a gain for the server developed by Russian Igor Sysoev by 1.1 million websites in October to a total of 13.8 million.

• To reach CIOs hearts and wallets, open source vendors should rethink their messaging to move beyond just cost to talk about the “more” that they are providing for “less.” Note that “more” can actually be less, as in less complex. For instance, MySQL clearly provides a “lower cost for higher value,” in terms of less complex and fewer administrators required than Oracle DB for certain use cases. This is why Oracle continues to value MySQL as part of the pending Sun acquisition.

• As the open source movement sweeps through the world of software development, business applications based on open code are popping up all over. So it comes as no surprise that open source versions of specialized apps like warehouse management software (WMS) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are starting to show up.

Openness

• It says its selling point is that it operates on the same principle as open-source software, at a time of growing sentiment that professional funds charge too much and can be opaque about their internal workings.

Programming

• In the past, I’ve always shied away from integrated development environments (IDEs), but I recently had a strong enough motivation to finally learn how to use Eclipse — one of the most widely-used free software IDEs available today. Eclipse is known mainly as a Java IDE and it does require Java itself, but it is also a powerful and flexible multi-purpose platform, and adaptations exist for programming in many languages, including Java, C/C++, Lisp, and Python. Python support is available with an Eclipse package called “PyDev”, and I have found it to be a big step up.

• After an eventful if not turbulent last twelve months in the history of the Qt cross platform C++ GUI tool kit, the technology now resides within the corporate acquisition underbelly of Nokia’s many-chambered stomach. Within this same time frame, Nokia’s corporate manoeuvring has also seen Qt pushed to an LGPL distribution. Where the balance now sits in terms of proprietary technology self-interest versus open source altruism may be open to question for those new to the company.

• Nikto is an Open Source GPL web server scanner which performs comprehensive tests against web servers for multiple items, including over 3500 potentially dangerous files CGIs, versions on over 900 servers, and version specific problems on over 250 servers.

Leftovers

• Joy. Citibank closed my credit card today, not because of anything I did but because of some unknown merchant problem. Aside from being an inconvenience to me, Citibank also apparently thought it was a good time to pitch me on credit monitoring. Bad idea.

• Just as in the MediaFire/SkipScreen dispute, Virgin Mobile seems to have created a business that requires coercing consumers into doing something they really don’t want to do; namely, sticking with Virgin Mobile when there are less expensive network alternatives and the technological means to do something about it. Even if MediaFire and Virgin Mobile are entirely correct in their legal positions (and they may very well be), they are nevertheless swimming against the current of consumer expectations and desires. That seems like a very difficult business to sustain over the long term.

• First of all, to the folks at Hansen and Monster Energy… what the heck? Ever hear of “fair use”. I fail to see anything in my reviews that could be considered us having “advertised and/or sold products bearing one or more of the Hansen marks, or confusingly similar derivations thereof.”

• Augustin is an angel investor and advisor to early stage technology companies, he currently serves on the Boards of Directors of Fonality, Hyperic, Medsphere, OSDL, Pentaho, SugarCRM, VA Software (NASDAQ: LNUX), and XenSource. Worth Magazine named him to their list of the Top 50 CEOs in 2000.

• I asked Larry a few questions:

• YB: Is there a future for corporate data center-centric applications? Or is the writing really on the wall?

Internet/Censorship/Web Abuse/Rights

• An increasing death-knell is sounding for Lord Mandelson’s proposals for 3-strikes Internet disconnections. The latest blow comes from the All Party Parliamentary Communications Group. After a consultation earlier this year, they have now published their response, and it’s not one favorable to ‘Darth Mandy’ and his plans.

Intellectual Monopolies

• As I posted earlier today, the Electronic Commerce Protection Act comes to a conclusion in committee on Monday as MPs conduct their “clause by clause” review. While I have previously written about the lobbying pressure to water down the legislation (aided and abetted by the Liberal and Bloc MPs on the committee) and the CMA’s recent effort to create a huge loophole, I have not focused on a key source of the pressure. Incredibly, it has been the copyright lobby – particularly the software and music industries – that has been engaged in a full court press to make significant changes to the bill.

• There’s a growing number of studio deals with new language aimed specifically at curbing usage of social-media outlets by actors, execs and other creatives. The goal: plugging leaks of disparaging or confidential information about productions via the likes of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

• The Eastern District of Michigan issued a decision on Wednesday that is sure to be controversial. A group of publishers brought suit alleging that a copy shop had infringed thirty-three of their works. The copy shop had accepted course packets from professors; ensured that the course packets were in proper form to be copied; given the packets to students upon request; and provided copy machines for the students to copy the packets.

• New clues to the content and sustainability of journalism are all around us. They are melding good reporting, a sense of place, a passion for community, and information that adds value. To really reconstruct journalism, we need to follow these breadcrumbs, make sense of the patterns and re-imagine what news and information needs to be for the future—not just how we pay for it.

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