● 11.30.09

● Links 30/11/2009: KDE 4.4 Preview, VirtualBox 3.1 Released

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

• It’s still not uncommon to find sites that don’t work with Firefox, Slashdot blogger Barbara Hudson told LinuxInsider.

• “My first response is to try with Opera; sometimes it works,” she said. “After that, I boot my laptop into Windows, do the updates that have accumulated in the six months since the last time I booted Windows, then go to the site.”

• Over Thanksgiving, I had to deal with a Windows XP laptop, belonging to a relative, that blue screened during startup. Normal startup failed, as did safe mode, safe mode with command prompt and Last Known Good.

• The first question that always needs to be answered in these situations is whether the problem is hardware or software. To that end, I booted the computer using my favorite rescue disc, the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows (UBCD4WIN).

• The CD started, from the main menu, I chose to run UBCD4WIN, but it eventually hung on a totally blank screen.

• [...]

• I do travel with a copy of Linux on a USB flash drive, but the computer was too old to boot off a USB connected device.

• So I removed the hard drive from the laptop and took it home. That the hard drive rattled when shaken did not make me optimistic.

Google

• Chrome OS is a cloud-based application delivery platform, built for a very specific purpose, namely those little netbooks. Your data and the heart of the applications in Chrome OS live in Google’s cloud. A lot of people will be very happy with that. There are, however, countless other applications that aren’t suited to the cloud-based model. Applications that can only realistically live on the desktop (at least for the foreseeable future). Desktop Linux, and Ubuntu by extension, will continue to thrive there and to evolve into something even greater than what it is today. Chrome competes with Microsoft where Microsoft is, er, softest. The cloud.

• The chart details which systems have been “officially” tested by developers and reveals what hardware works and what doesn’t. Several models are listed, but I’ve simplified things a bit. Listed below are models on which everything works – 802.11 wireless, ethernet, touchpad, and suspend/resume.

• Google certainly has the clout to market this OS to the masses, and brand recognition that won’t make people run for the hills. It’s still Linux, but people won’t know about it, and therefore won’t be scared of trying it. Could chrome be the first user friendly, mainstream Linux distro tailored towards non-geeks using legacy hardware?

• It’s certainly interesting. I’m anxiously awaiting the release of the OS to see if it will follow the same high quality design as most other Google products. I’m also very curious as to how it will be received by mainstream, non-technical population.

Kernel Space

• One of the underlying features that has been lacking from the ATI R600/700 DRM / kernel mode-setting driver on Linux has been support for interrupts, which is needed for the sync-to-vblank operation and other important areas.

Instructionals

• Basing from my previous GIMP article titled Creating Pseudo-3D Imagery with GIMP, you learned how to do some basic selection manipulation, gradient application, faking Depth of Field, etc. In line with that, I’m following it with a new article very much related to the concepts discussed therein but we’ll raise the bar a bit by having a glimpse on compositing, where we’ll use an existing image or photograph and later add in our 2-dimensional element seamlessly with the said picture.

Desktop Environments

GNOME

• The GNOME Foundation has announced its annual conference, GUADEC, will be held in The Hague, Netherlands, July 24-30, 2010. More than 500 from the GNOME community are expected to attended the event and come together to discuss the future of the popular desktop for Linux.

KDE

• I have managed to find some time to cover the recent changes in the development version of KDE 4.4. The number of changes is not impressive but they are interesting enough to write an article.

• [...]

• To my great surprise, the whole thing works fast and the system is responsive. I haven’t encountered a single crash when playing with KDE 4.4 r1055000. This makes my hope that the next release of my favorite desktop envoronment will be a great success.

Distributions

• After running Mandriva Linux 2010 GNOME for a couple of days, I could say, Mandriva Linux 2010 GNOME edition is as stable as its predecessors with newer versions of popular software and makes a great desktop experience.

New Releases

• After a long time of development, we finally present Debris Linux 2.0.

• Macpup Foxy 3.0 is the latest from the Macpup team. Macpup Foxy 3.0 is based on puppylinux 4.31.1 (k2.6.30.5) a bug fix version by Ttuuxxx. It also includes all the updates from the 4.3.1 servicepack.Fox 3 has all the apps from 4.3 plus Firefox (updated to 3.5.4) and Gimp 2.6.3. Fox 3 also Has Dbus 1.2.16 & Sakura 1.2.3 compiled and installed from source. The Enlightenment e17 window manager version .062 was also compiled and installed from source.You can also use jwm. Use the exit menu to change window managers, In e17 that is the exit icon on the desktop. Please note that not all the options in the e17 system shutdown menu work with puppy linux. That is why the exit menu was added.

Red Hat Family

• I recently got a Kodak zi8 video recorder. It works great in Fedora 12 so I was inspired to create a 15-minute video highlighting five fun things in Fedora 12.

• Concurrent (Nasdaq: CCUR), a leading provider of time-critical Linux® operating systems, integrated software and computer solutions for mission-critical applications, today announced RedHawk Linux 5.4, a new version of its popular real-time operating system. RedHawk Linux is widely used in time-critical applications in simulation and training, data acquisition, imaging, financial services and process control. RedHawk guarantees that a user-level application can respond to an external event in less than 15 microseconds on certified platforms.

• Concurrent has revised its Red Hat-based real-time Linux distribution, adding support for Intel Nehalem and AMD Opteron processors with up to 48 cores, among other enhancements. RedHawk Linux 5.4 also improves NUMA performance and provides enhanced Nvidia drivers that support Nvidia’s “Cuda” parallel computing technology, says the company.

• rPath, an innovator in automating application deployment and maintenance, today announced a management solution for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux(R) operating system. The move expands the rPath release automation platform beyond operating systems such as Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise and Ubuntu to include Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5. This provides Red Hat customers a solution for low-overhead, compliant system provisioning and maintenance across physical, virtual and cloud environments.

Debian Family

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #170 for the week November 22nd – November 28th, 2009. In this issue we cover: Jono Bacon: Introducing Lernid, Mackenzie Morgan Interview, New Developers, LoCo News: Maryland, Massachusetts, Chile & Nicaragua, Ubuntu Forums Tutorial of the Week, The Planet: Laura Czajkowski, Andres Rodriguez, Amber Graner, & Harald Sitter, Full Circle Magazine #31

• I can’t believe it has been two weeks already that I’ve used Ubuntu Linux exclusively. If I had to sum up the experience 100x100ubuntuin one word, that word would be “satisfying.” And my regular readers/listeners know that I can’t sum anything up in one word, so I will use this format to provide a complete synopsis of my Ubuntu thoughts.

• [...]

• Will I continue to use Ubuntu? Absolutely, as my primary laptop? Will I give up my Windows PC? Not until all the support that I give lies only in Linux, which unfortunately won’t be any time soon.

• So far I have only installed Linux Mint 8 on my two HP 2133 Mini-Notes – but they are probably two of the most difficult systems. I will add a short note here once I have it installed on all of the other systems, with notes and comments as necessary.

• By the way, I have already confirmed that Linux Mint 8 does not have the irritating 60-second delay on Logout/Reboot/Shutdown (Hooray!).

Devices/Embedded

• Kontron has enhanced its family of thin-client HMI (human-machine interface) devices. The fanless “Micro Client IIA” devices feature touchscreen displays from seven to 15 inches, CompactFlash storage, and 1.6GHz Intel Atom processors, the company says.

Phones

• Rumors of a ‘Google phone’ are almost as frequent as those of an Apple iTablet, but the search giant may indeed release some form of hardware platform in January.

• Despite blog speculation, and even ‘leaked photos’, of full-blown Google smartphones, it is unlikely that the company will compete with its own licensees. Instead, we would expect it to release a series of reference designs that can be used, in particular, by low end or white label suppliers, to extend Android’s reach – and that of Google’s web services – beyond the smartphone.

• The world’s largest mobile phone maker Nokia is reportedly contemplating of moving all its N-series devices to open source Linux-based Maemo 5 platform from the current Symbian platform by 2012. But is it a good idea?

• In an interview published this morning in the German magazine Wirtschaftwoche, Mr. Vanjoki, who is also Nokia’s head of marketing, admits too that his company needs to work harder to improve its mobile Internet products if it is to to stay in contention with the likes of Apple, Google and Research in Motion – the manufacturer of the increasingly popular Blackberry PDAs.

Sub-notebooks

• By now almost anyone who keeps up with Ubuntu knows about the Ubuntu Netbook Edition (formerly Ubuntu Netbook Remix). What many people are not aware of is that there is now a Kubuntu Netbook Edition and an Ubuntu Moblin Remix in development as well. By the time Ubuntu 10.04 “Lucid Lynx” is released next April netbook users will have three Ubuntu variants customized for their smaller systems. Development versions of the forthcoming Kubuntu and Moblin variants were released simultaneously with Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” in September. This week we take a look at the Kubuntu Netbook Edition 9.10 Technology Preview. Since the name of the release is more than a mouthful I’ll refer to it as KNE from here on.

• Price: 276 Tech Specs: OS: Ubuntu for Netbooks Remix CPU: Intel Atom (1.6GHz) RAM: 1GB HDD: 160GB Dimensions: 292mm x 216mm x 22-28.9mm

• Meanwhile, Acer has given us a return to Linux on the netbook.

Free Software/Open Source

• customer: I upgraded from Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Ultimate. When I did, Microsoft Mail program disappeared. I called Microsoft who told me to do this and that to bring it back but it still is not there. Do you have any suggestions for me?

• manager: That’s Microsoft for you.

• customer: Is there a separate Microsoft product I can buy to bring back Microsoft Mail?

• manger: No. Sorry. I don’t carry anything like that. Sorry I can not help.

• ble: Mind if I make a suggestion?

• (exit stage left store manager)

• customer: Sure.

• ble: I am writing down a website were you can get a free mail program called “Thunderbird.”

• customer: Yes! I have heard of that. I use Firefox too. I do not know why I never thought to use Thunderbird for my mail.

• Today Sun released VirtualBox 3.1, a major update introducing the following major new features:

• * Teleportation (aka live migration); migrate a live VM session from one host to another

• [...]

• More details about the release can be found in the Change Log. VirtualBox 3.1.0 is available to download for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris. VirtualBox is released under version 2 of the GNU General Public License (GPLv2) and VirtualBox binaries are released under the VirtualBox Personal Use and Evaluation License (PUEL) licence.

• Open-Xchange, a leading provider of open source groupware, today announced enhancements that simplify the aggregation of e-mail and contact information, giving users access to their data anywhere, anytime and with any device.

• Mobile network operator Orange has developed an NFC Application Developer Toolkit and made it available as open source software. IzyNFC is designed to enable the development of mobile NFC applications based on a SIM-centric architecture and Java platform.

• Java clustering infrastructure provider Terracotta has acquired the popular Quartz open-source job-scheduling software, filling a gap in its ability to support scaleout in virtualized environments.

• Chicago-based HighTowers, an advisor-owned financial services firm described by company officials as serving “high net worth clients,” reportedly announced that it has “deepened” its open-source platform and services with the addition of new international capabilities and advisory talent.

• The range of options has grown dramatically in recent years, and the relative merits of Software as a Service, Open Source and proprietary solutions can be difficult to understand. While it is tempting – especially in the recession – to buy purely based on cost, businesses should be cautious of low price points and consider the long term implications of an e-commerce solution.

• SeaMonkey is available for free download for all platforms, namely Windows, Mac and Linux. As it is built on the open source Mozilla Gecko rendering engine – the same one as used in Firefox, Camino and other browsers released by the Mozilla team – SeaMonkey renders pages in the same manner in which Firefox does. Let’s take a look at each of the components of SeaMonkey.

Management

• As a hosted version of one of the most popular open source content management systems, Drupal Gardens promises to speed up how quickly content owners can produce useful sites, and more. Many newspapers and other types of sites are switching to Drupal, and a cloud-based Drupal service could also help facilitate workers contributing content from distributed remote locations. According to Rodrigues’ post, Dries Buytaert refers to the project’s promise as “design to online in hours.”

• In late November, the Japanese version of Movable Type 5 (news, site) was released. The rest of the world’s Movable Type 5 is expected in early December.

• rSmart, which develops open source applications for the education sector, has launched a new professional services offering to support the Kuali Financial System (KFS). KFS was launched earlier this year by the Kuali Foundation, with new deployments at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins; the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA; and San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton, CA. The latter two institutions are also the first two customers for the new service offering.

VoIP

• Digium® Inc., the Asterisk® Company, and Altitude Software, the leading independent contact center solutions vendor, today announced Altitude Software as a new Digium Premier Solutions Partner. The agreement marks a major addition to the growing portfolio of advanced business solutions running on top of the Asterisk open source telephony platform and Digium’s telephony gateway cards.

FSF/FSFE/GNU

• What I found was a man who is profoundly dedicated to a cause. RMS is the type of person you see on TV, mostly in shows about lawyers and crime-fighting who give the long, inspiring and fictitious* speeches in the courtroom spouting dialog about freedom, what it means to be free and our Founding Fathers’ original purpose.

Government

• The use of open source software is fundamental to a sustainable and technologically independent development, says Rafael Martín Espada, Director General of ICT, regional government of Extremadura.

• “We have a long list of recommendations that we are willing to share with all administrations that are considering open source”, Espada said last week Thursday at a seminar in Brussels.

• The region for instance advises to take fiscal measures to promote the creation of open source business. “Make its adoption a priority for public administrations. Use open source when you are organising electronic polls, stress its use in your development strategy and build demo centres to increase the trust in this type of software.”

Leftovers

• And it does seem odd that the government has been reduced to encouraging youngsters to sign up for the ID card, so that they can continue to binge drink. Then again, this is the same government that brought in round the clock drinking, so they can’t be all bad.

Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

• Yet again, despite all the secrecy and bogus claims of “national security,” the details behind what’s being proposed in ACTA have leaked, and they don’t look good at all. It’s basically an attempt to force the worst of the DMCA on much of the rest of the world, with a few carefully chosen modifications. While there are lots of issues, it’s worth noting the most basic of all, found in the first paragraph that contains the “general obligations” of participating countries.

• The European Commission analysis of ACTA’s Internet chapter has leaked, indicating that the U.S. is seeking to push laws that extend beyond the WIPO Internet treaties and beyond current European Union law (the EC posted the existence of the document last week but refused to make it publicly available). The document contains detailed comments on the U.S. proposal, confirming the U.S. desire to promote a three-strikes and you’re out policy, a Global DMCA, harmonized contributory copyright infringement rules, and the establishment of an international notice-and-takedown policy.

• From this, Captain Kibble alerts us to an accurately described “rant” at ScreenRants.com about how this is “indisputable” evidence that piracy harms movies. The basis of that claim? Reese’s heat of the moment claim that this could impact the making of a sequel. According to the ScreenRants folks, this suggests it’s a fact that movie piracy is harming movies. Of course, there’s no actual evidence that there is any decreased interest in making a Zombieland sequel. In fact, since the highest grossing movies almost always correlate to the most shared movies online, it seems that being a top pirated movie also likely has extremely high correlation with movies that get sequels.

• I keep reading about the big brother of copyrighted content going all gun ho on doing whatever it can to shut down torrent web sites. The latest victim is the www.mininova.org torrent site which has been forced to limit itself to content distribution serviced according to a recent court ruling.

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the DayMichael Shaw, community reporter for Assigment Zero 07 (2007)Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating. Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

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