● 05.06.10

● Links 6/5/2010: PCLinuxOS 2010.1, KDE SC 4.4.3 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 2:20 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• All this rant was just to say… be nice, be kind, be considerate when discussing your favorites and beliefs regarding operating systems and software.

• Many network routers and adsl modems use Linux as their operating systems. When you go to print a page there is a big chance that your printer is running on Linux. What about that big game that you recorded on your Tivo or equivalent? That is running on Linux. Have a satellite link for your TV? Some of those also use Linux. Even some of the latest model televisions have Linux running them.

• 6. Wally – From the website: “Wally is a Qt4 wallpaper changer, using multiple sources” – Sounds good, so I downloaded the .deb file. (be careful to select your disto here) After a few painless seconds to install, I found Wally setting in the Apps menu. So I clicked on it, and the settings menu came up. And as you can see from the image below, it’s very easy figure out, and yes it lets you download from Flicker and about a dozen other on-line sources. Heres the screenshot:

• There were other, more subtle clues for the trained observer. When I would attend LinuxWorld conferences, I could usually tell what distro someone was running by the color scheme. Green was SUSE Linux or openSUSE. Blue usually indicated Fedora, with red reflecting, well, Red Hat Enterprise Linux. And if was brown, you knew it was Ubuntu.

Server

• Melbourne-based company FastMail.FM has been around for 10 years. Founder Jeremy Howard, a former management consultant with McKinsey and A.T. Kearney, launched FastMail.FM with a school friend Rob Mueller. It was an innovative e-mail solution that was built on open source platforms such as Linux, MySQL and Apache.

Google

• Not to mention the fact that it looks slick and futuristic as the only other features similar to it are only available for Linux.

• Sony (SNE) will build both Blu-Ray players and TVs with the Linux-based Android ‘Dragonpoint’ platform built-in. Until now, Android has mostly been built to run with ARM chips on touch-based mobile devices. TVs and BluRay players will demand more horsepower to drive 1080P screens and and won’t be so limited by battery requirements of small form factor phone devices.

Kernel Space

• The Linux Foundation announced keynote speakers and panels for LinuxCon, scheduled for August 10-12 in Boston. The show will feature keynote speakers including Virgin America’s Ravi Simhambhatla, GNOME’s Stormy Peters, the SFLC’s Eben Moglen, and Forrester’s Jeffrey S. Hammond, and hosts a Linux Kernel Roundtable with Ted T’so and other kernel insiders.

• Linux® continues to invade the scalable computing space and, in particular, the scalable storage space. A recent addition to Linux’s impressive selection of file systems is Ceph, a distributed file system that incorporates replication and fault tolerance while maintaining POSIX compatibility. Explore the architecture of Ceph and learn how it provides fault tolerance and simplifies the management of massive amounts of data.

Hardware

• So far I have only tested the nVidia proprietary drivers version 195.36.24 and the performance is impressive when turning on all compiz effects. If you have the card or you are thinking about getting it and happen to try the open source drivers before I do, please, let me know of your findings!

Applications

• As a music-playing application for the Gnome Desktop, Rhythmbox really has its bases covered. Besides playing back music, it can fetch lyrics and art, load up many kinds of media players including iPods, access online music stores and support a wide variety of plug-ins. The only area in which Rythmbox is deficient is in ripping, but there are many other programs that take care of that.

Instructionals

Games

• So when Dave Burke from Hemisphere games emailed me to let me know that his game “Osmos” had been ported to Linux, it got my attention. As requested, he sent me a link to download it and give it a try. And as most always with Indie guys, it comes with no form of DRM.

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

• KDE Community Ships Third Translation and Service Release of the 4.4 Free Desktop, Containing Numerous Bugfixes and Translation Updates

GNOME Desktop

• After the presentation Kal from the Evince hall of fame, proposed me to create with Xan a weekly comic strip about GNOME.

Distributions

• After about an hour or so of automated downloading and installing in pacman, I was rewarded with a beautiful state-of-the-art desktop that nearly puts Windows 7 to shame. Its file management and multimedia applications have all the function and polish of Mac OS X, and its desktop widgets are in a class all their own. From a side-scrolling menu, you can select widgets to view folder contents, CPU load, network connections, battery status, and more. Additional widgets can be downloaded by clicking a button from the widget browser.

Mandrake/Mandriva Family

• I find PCLinuxOS to be the big small distro. While it has a modest development team, the final product has always felt quite solid and polished, beyond the normal expectations of limited resources. What more, the distribution managed a fine balance between speed, usability, familiarity, and luring in new users, not an easy task.

• [...]

• By all standards and benchmarks, PCLinuxOS is a great success. It’s a beautiful, polished, simple, easy to use distribution, with great performance and stability, especially on older machines, a well balanced array of programs, and no big problems at all. Subtle yet important improvements from previous versions are evident, with fewer wizard windows bugging you on your way into the live session or during the installation. Let’s not forget old problems, which were solved in this release, a critical sign of progress.

• PCLinuxOS 2010.1 KDE 4 Edition now available for download. Linux kernel updated to 2.6.32.12-bfs. Linux kernel-2.6.33.2 also available from our software repository, KDE SC Desktop upgraded to version 4.4.3. Added support for Realtek RTL8191SE/RTL8192SE WiFi cards. Added support for Microdia webcams. Added vim console text editor. Added udftools. Fixed cdrom ejection when using the Copy to RAM feature. Fixed KDE new widget download. Updated Nvidia (195.36.24) and Ati fglrx (8.723) drivers. Updated all supporting applications and libraries from the software repository which include security updates and bug fixes.

• Those of you who did install PCLinuxOS 2010 KDE, go ahead and update, totally recommended!

Debian Family

• Yoper Linux 2010, codenamed ‘Dresden,’ is finally here after a significant amount of testing. The custom-built Linux distro focuses on speed and the latest version is no different. Yoper Linux 2010 comes with an optimized Linux kernel 2.6.33 aimed specifically at desktop users. It’s available in four desktop environment flavors, for all tastes and systems.

• [...]

• Yoper Linux 2010 comes with four desktop options, all of the popular choices with the notable exception of GNOME. You can get Yoper Linux 2010 with KDE4, KDE3, LXDE and XFCE. There are five ISOs available, one for each desktop environment and an SLIM CD version that doesn’t come with a graphical interface.

Ubuntu

• Download, burn, boot (a nice, fast boot!), and 20 minutes later I had a perfectly working Acer Aspire 4736Z running with Lucid Lynx. Sound, resolution, internet (including wireless!), webcam, and pretty much all my peripherals working out of the box. Well done. Kudos to the fact that I didn’t actually install it, but left it to my rather technologically illiterate mum.

• In line with its newbie-friendly tradition of providing a way to do everything via a graphical user interface, Ubuntu provides a way to do a distribution upgrade by clicking a button at the top of the Update Manager. Since version 10.04 was released on April 29, it was once again time to see how well the upgrade went. Here are screenshots of the entire process. (Click the images for larger versions.)

• A condensed selection of highlights follow.

• * Maverick will not be coming with the GNOME Shell interface by default but will be available to download via the repos. * RGBA transparency will more than likely be enabled by default * Missing those indicator tooltips in Lucid? Well, they won’t be returning for the Meerkat.

• [...]

• Ubuntu 10.04 LTS codenamed “Lucid Lynx” is released and is easily the best Ubuntu release ever. With its groundbreaking innovations and improvements, Lucid has become the distro of choice for many. We have already seen how to install 13 stunning Bisigi themes in Ubuntu Lucid. Here is some more eyecandy coming your way. Collection of 16 beautiful made-for-lucid wallpapers from around the web.

Variants

• The other key improvement is a new Backup Tool, which offers features like incremental backups, compression, and integrity checks, says the Mint team. Users can now identify installed software, save the selection as a list, and then restore the selection on a different computer or on a new version of Linux Mint, says the team.

• Lubuntu 10.04 uses Chromium as its default browser and is based on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS which was released last week. Other lightweight applications included in the distribution are the Sylpheed email client, Gnumeric spreadsheet, Abiword word processor, Pidgin instant messaging and Leafpad text editor. The developers do point out that although Lubuntu 10.04 is based on the LTS (Long Term Support) release of Ubuntu, it is not an LTS release. Full details of the applications used and release notes are available and Lubuntu can be downloaded directly (ISO image download, 530MB) or via bittorrent.

Devices/Embedded

• While all the above was expected, the shocker is that the Z6xx has been launched with support for three flavors of Linux — Android, Moblin 2.1, and MeeGo — but nary a mention of Microsoft Windows. This arguably represents the biggest rift in the “Wintel monopoly” since the IBM PC was first launched in 1981 with Intel’s 8088 CPU and Microsoft’s MS-DOS/PC-DOS operating system.

• Providing a comprehensive Linux networking software solution that delivers a 7-10x packet processing performance improvement compared to standard Linux networking stacks, it allows OEMs to develop multi-core-based products that achieve the best cost-performance, integration and energy efficiency in the industry. Because 6WINDGate is fully compatible with standard Linux APIs, developers can migrate standard Linux applications onto new platforms based on 6WINDGate without having to redesign or rewrite their existing software, thereby easing the transition from single to multi-core platforms.

• “By packaging a powerful Scatter-Gather DMA Engine, a PCIe Bridge with Linux drivers, the Lancero Design Kit streamlines the engineering design task of adding high bandwidth peripherals into embedded systems.” said Norman McCall, president of Microtronix.

• The product’s Software Developer Kit (SDK), with IPv6 support, is an integrated embedded hardware and software suite that provides a validated set of Linux-based applications, an extensive software library, a board support package (BSP) and device drivers that allow designers to create custom tailored products.

Phones

• Motorola has been making Linux-powered smartphones since well before Google Android was conceived. The Linux OS was used on devices such as the Motorola Ming A1200, a powerful device which still has a loyal fan-following. Recent leaks show what may finally be the successor to the Motorola Ming.

Nokia

• Nokia and Intel’s Meego operating system is gaining momentum but not on shop shelves yet.

• It uses Nokia’s Maemo operating system, which is based on Linux, and it has some clever features – there is a terminal program, which allows you to type in Linux commands, and a TV output cable in the box. It’s designed around applications – it’s easy to add new ones, put them on the home screen and run them simultaneously without the phone slowing-down much.

Android

• Android 2.1 will go a long way to put the Xperia X10 on the same playing field as other smart phones. However, we can’t help but think it may still be a little too late for most people. Keep an eye out for minor updates in the interim as they’re already scheduled for the next few weeks.

• Or perhaps Android will make its lasting mark in a different arena altogether such as playing the role of the embedded brains for household appliances or for industrial controllers? This is of interest to me, personally. Though I have to question that notion about once a day when I pop the battery in my Nexus One due to phone call lockups. Yikes.

• T-Mobile announced a new version of its HTC-manufactured MyTouch 3G smartphone featuring a QWERTY keyboard, Android 2.1, and an updated T-Mobile UI layer with a voice-command “Genius Button.” The mid-range MyTouch 3G Slide offers a 3.4-inch touchscreen, WiFi, Bluetooth, a five-megapixel camera, and 8GB of preinstalled memory, says the company.

Tablets

• Aigo is readying three Android-based tablets incorporating the Nvidia Tegra 2 SoC, led by an HD-ready 7-inch Aigo N700 model, says ChiniTech. Meanwhile, Compal is prepping some uCLinux-based “APA0x” PMPs (portable media players), and all signs point to HP abandoning its Windows 7 “Slate” in favor of tablets that run its newly acquired WebOS platform.

Free Software/Open Source

• Today the lack of reporting standards puts a burden on vendors, but the industry is addressing this. I’m co-chairing the Software Package Data Exchange working group of FOSSBazaar, part of the Linux Foundation. We are developing a standard way to describe all of the licensing information that applies to a software package. This will provide guidance to and ease the burden on suppliers, and ultimately make it easier for everyone to do the right thing. More on that in a future blog.

BSD

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• The Arch Hurd folks keep making good progress: their count of available packages keeps increasing, and one of their team reported the first instance of Arch Hurd running on real hardware (and uploaded a photo as evidence).

Releases

• The Spacewalk project has released version 1.0 of its system management software. The software no longer depends on HAL and, in Fedora 12, uses Tomcat 6, which comes with this distribution.

Open Access/Content

• Last week, Internet luminaries from around the globe descended upon Raleigh, NC for the WWW2010 conference. The theme for 2010 was openness, and that (along with its proximity to Red Hat HQ) made this year’s events particularly exciting.

Leftovers

• Naugatuck Police used craigslist to make a slew of prostitution arrests, and one of the men they nabbed is the director of the Derby Parking authority, police said.

• A small business owner is suing Google Sweden for defamation, alleging that Google has long presented search results to blogs that portray him as a paedophile. Additional Google links have identified his company as one that has engaged in shady transactions.

Science

• Martian gullies were once hailed as evidence of liquid water on Mars. Now a new theory backed by experiment explains how they are formed by the flow of sand

Security/Aggression

• According to a notice published in the Official Journal of the European Union (Ojeu) on 23 April 2010, the council has lowered the annual value of lots for network control and camera systems from £100,000 and £300,000 to £60,000 and £220,000 respectively.

• While the top two are the usual pro-surveillance posters intended to reassure but which actually carry a sort of creepy Orwellian ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ feeling to them – the bottom picture is a baffling as it is saddening – and situated, as I am reliably informed by the photographer, in the Campsie Fells in Scotland, several miles from the nearest urban area.

• Keyholespying As community safety budgets have tightened, there have been numerous stories over the past 12 months about councils and police forces handing-out CCTV cameras to their residents in a bid to stop crime.

• A member of staff has been suspended after medical records belonging to patients at a secure hospital near Falkirk were found in a car park.

• A computer memory stick containing the sensitive information was found by a 12-year-old boy outside an Asda store.

• A further example has emerged to reinforce this point. The Miami Herald points out that the would-be “Times Square bomber” was placed on the “No Fly List” – presumably, given what he’d just tried to do, his presence there was a high-profile priority for law enforcement across the country. But still he was allowed through security and boarded the plane, before he was arrested.

• Arizona encourages police to emulate “the toughest sheriff in America.”

Finance

• Divisions among Democrats emerged Tuesday on the details of Wall Street reform legislation.

• Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said White House opposition to his amendment allowing for an audit of the Federal Reserve was inconsistent with President

• I wanted to post this clip from Joel Sucher’s documentary, “A Tale of Two Streets,” showing my friends Eric Salzman and Rich Bennett (of MonkeyBusinessBlog fame) talking about the “French School” on Wall Street. In light of the “Fabulous Fab” story, it’s pretty hilarious.

• The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago failed to halt speculative real estate lending that led to losses at banks in Indiana and Michigan that were later closed, the central bank’s inspector general said.

• Demonstrations against tough new austerity measures in Greece claimed their first fatalities on Wednesday with three people reported to have died inside a bank building set ablaze by protesters. The reports came as workers across Greece went on strike over deep spending cuts and new taxes aimed at staving off economic collapse.

• World stock markets fell further Wednesday while the euro slid to a fresh 13-month low as three people died in a blaze at an Athens bank during rioting against austerity measures imposed as part of an international bailout package for heavily indebted Greece.

• It’s an open secret on Wall Street that many big banks routinely — and legally — fudge their quarterly books.

• Portugal, striving to avoid becoming the next victim of Europe’s debt crisis, was put on standby for a credit rating downgrade on Wednesday even as the government managed to raise some euro500 million ($654 million) on the bond markets.

• Last week’s hearings before the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations “exposed an unnerving ignorance of fundamental principles of market economics by folks who have a hand in remapping rules of finance that will be with us for a while,” writes James Glassman, J.P. Morgan Chase’s chief economist. Glassman then goes on to bash Michigan’s economy for a while (because Carl Levin is from Michigan, and, ah, what’s the point?) and declare “now that the financial reform debate is in the final innings, it’s time for the grownups to step in.”

• Remember Nietzsche? “God is dead.” Let’s translate that 19th century Germanic philosophy into modern economics. In Adam Smith’s 1776 capitalism, God was the Invisible Hand, a mysterious force running the economy from the shadows.

• Flash forward to 2010: Capitalism is dead. The economy has a new Invisible Hand, the Goldman Conspiracy of Wall Street bankers.

• Then have a sit down with Warren Buffett and start co-authoring OpEds on why the Glass-Steagall Act separating investment banks from insured mom and pop funds at commercial banks must be restored. If you have any trouble finding an argument for this, just lay all those recently disclosed internal emails end to end and observe the narcissistic, sociopathic culture you’ve created out of the uber-testosterone Wharton School boys.

• The White House and the Federal Reserve are fighting hard against these common-sense measures to cap the size of banks and audit the Fed.

• The Times clearly sets forth the case for immediate efforts to cut the banks down to size, so that their failures will not be able to sink our economy.

• Investment banker Sam Zamarripa, spokesman for the financial industry’s front group “Stop Too Big To Fail” (STBTF) announced that his group is funding a third series of television ads set to air in the Washington, D.C. cable media market. The ads try to trick people into opposing the financial reforms currently being considered by the Senate by misleadingly claiming the current legislation provides for “unlimited executive bailout authority.”

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• So many companies (and individuals) get up in arms over a bit of criticism, assuming that anything they don’t like must be illegal. On top of that, they regularly blame the owners of the websites where that criticism occurs, rather than whoever actually created the criticism. Usually the courts see through this stuff, but sometimes companies are able to get around all of that with some quick lawyering. In a particularly egregious example, the investment bank Houlihan Smith got upset at the websites 800notes.com and Whocallsme.com, both run by Julia Forte as forums where people can discuss telemarketing practices (we’ve pointed out how Forte has been fighting other misguided legal attacks in the past as well). As with many companies that find people criticizing themselves on Forte’s website, Houlihan Smith demanded that she remove comments. She responded by pointing out that company representatives are free to respond to the complaints in the comments.

• A civil liberties watchdog has challenged Facebook’s legal claims that an unauthorized third-party site that helps users login automatically violates criminal laws.

• The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is urging a federal judge to dismiss Facebook’s claims that criminal law is violated when its users opt for an add-on service that helps them aggregate their information from a variety of social networking sites.

• Privacy groups gave an overwhelming thumbs down Tuesday to proposed legislation by Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) that for the first time would mandate the length of time online consumer information could be kept.

• Privacy advocates and business groups drew early battle lines on Tuesday in the debate over a new bill to rein in Web advertisements that are based on consumers’ online shopping habits and Internet browsing histories.

• Tess, tell your mother that your legal threats do not scare me. You are one step above Lindsay Lohan in my book.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• Already in the UK, satellite and cable companies apply DRM to their proprietary High Definition products, such as recorders and receivers, restricting the supply to the market and what their chosen devices can usefully do for their customers. Now the BBC are making the same plans for their future HD channels.

• Currently, Ofcom are considering whether the BBC should be allowed to apply a form of DRM to the programme guide and subtitles – in order to gain control of the vast majority of UK devices; and to exclude any software or hardware device that does not subject itself to control. Of course, the problems are not just about fair dealing rights in copyright.

• That labor unions such as the Communications Workers of America, advocacy groups including the National Coalition of African American Owned Media and competing media companies are making noise in Washington about the impact that cable giant Comcast’s proposed takeover of General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal would have on the media landscape is hardly a surprise.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• Once again, Canada appears near the top of the US government’s 2010 “Special 301″ piracy watchlist. And once again, the Canadians are angry about being classed with China and Russia as the worst places on earth for intellectual property law.

• The current internet — perhaps the greatest tool for content creation ever is not a tenable delivery system for content creators. Of course, that’s easily debunked, because more content is being created today thanks to the internet and the fact that it’s a very efficient delivery system. The fact that thousands upon thousands of content creators have embraced the internet, used it to help create, promote, distribute and share their music — and as a way to build better, more efficient business models? According to Carnes and the SGA, that’s “not tenable.” Weird. Someone alert everyone else on the internet.

• 50 Cent talks about what he believes what will save the music industry’s sales slump in tonight’s Fuse network broadcast of “50 Cent: The Lost Tapes.”

• On the program, 50 talks about battling Internet piracy.

• van Eijk, who does a nice job differentiating between the recording and music industries, goes on to note that despite Sweden’s reputation as a piracy hub, total revenues from recorded music, live concerts and collecting societies remained roughly static between 2000 and 2008 (something we’ve pointed out before). The study also touches on how the content industry has set the price far higher on movies and video games than people say they are willing to pay (though what people say they’ll pay and what they’ll actually pay obviously can be quite different). While the recording industry was busily suing customers, exploring nastier DRM solutions and trying to desperately hold on to the past — everything changed around them — and “reinvention of the business model” is now the only way forward, concludes van Eijk:

ACTA

• Australia’s sudden decision to sign a European cybercrime treaty could lay the groundwork for aspects of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), according to Electronic Frontiers Australia.

• Last Friday, Attorney-General Robert McClelland and Minister for Foreign Affairs Stephen Smith announced that Australia would accede to the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime.

• And, of course, the rationale for all of this? It’s based on studies that our own government now says were bogus.

• La Quadrature du Net has sent a letter to the Members of the European Parliament who have yet to sign written declaration 12 regarding ACTA, urging them to do so.

Digital Economy Bill

• The politicians that have understood these questions have not been exclusively from one side of the debate. Bill Cash and John Redwood, as well as David Davies, stood up for our arguments; Labour MPs including Tom Watson, Eric Joyce and Mark Lazarowicz took a stand; Liberal Democrats including Nick Clegg have been highly critical, as well as Greens Caroline Lucas and Adrian Ramsay.

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