● 05.09.10

● Links 9/5/2010: KDE Updates, LinuxCon 2010 Preview

Posted in News Roundup at 4:24 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

• Taking a break from Mumbuntu blog posts. I mentioned this on the latest epsiode of the Ubuntu Podcast that we released yesterday. I see Fab from Linux Outlaws has blogged about his geekbox.

• Three hotkeys are fitted on the chassis, just above the keyboard. The Assist button helps you diagnose and solve any issues you may have with the laptop, while the Web button lets you boot up a secondary, Linux-based operating system for browsing the web without starting up Windows 7.

Server

• An “ultra-fast” link between the datacentres of the London Stock Exchange and Turquoise has gone live, gearing the dark pool trading venue for a big-bang Linux migration.

• Traders with hosted systems at the LSE are now able to access Turquoise on the free fast link, ahead of Turquoise’s migration to the Millennium Exchange platform, which is Linux and Sun Solaris Unix-based, with Oracle databases. Turquoise currently runs on the Java-based Tradexpress platform from supplier Cinnober.

• Today large ERP implementations are running on enterprise Linux. ERP applications by their nature are mission-critical as enterprises depend on ERP applications for their business models. Many enterprises right from Verizon, Hilti, Banco Pastor, YPF globally to Indian Express, Carnation, Great Offshore, Hikal and Sheela Foam in India run their SAP, Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft etc. on Linux.

• According to Drew, the website for the ARM Linux Internet Platform is “running on a Marvell-based very small cluster of chips”.

• “We switched it in about six months ago — it’s going OK,” Drew said. “It’s one of these things where you don’t know what you don’t know until you try it.”

• The trial is giving ARM an idea of the performance, power management and cooling implications of running a website off the company’s low-powered architecture, Drew added. He noted that “a lot more” had to be done on creating a LAMP (Linux Apache MySql Perl/PHP/Python) open-source software stack for the architecture.

Kernel Space

• The benchmarks may be flawed due to the following assumptions which is not ideal setup for Ubuntu

• Reasons

• 1. Compiz is enabled by default in Ubuntu, whereas the games in Windows disable Aero to gain that extra FPS. I doubt if the games in Ubuntu disable compiz before running

• 2. Biggest flaw is cpufrequency is controlled by Ubuntu to run as ondemand instead of utilizing full processor power. The ideal Ubuntu Setup would be to run all the cores with cpufrequency governor performance. Windows 7 by default runs in full gear and kudos to it. But that does not answer this question, why the benchmarks were done when running ondemand governor in Ubuntu Lucid?

• How do I assume cpufrequency has something to do with performance, well I will try to prove it ( though you may try for yourself by changing cpufrequency to run with different performance governors and check simple benchmarks)

• As of this writing, the current kernel prepatch is 2.6.34-rc6. A couple more prepatches are most likely due before the final release, but the number of changes to be found there should be small. In other words, 2.6.34 is close to its final form, so it makes sense to take a look at what has gone into this development cycle. In a few ways, 2.6.34 is an unusual kernel…

• Datalight announced support for Linux version 2.6.33 with its flash file system. The software offers improved mount times and faster writes over standard Linux flash file systems such as UBIFS, YAFFS, and JFFS2.

Instructionals

Games

• A group of independent game developers are selling the “Humble Indie Bundle” until Tuesday, May 11, allowing buyers to set their own price on the five-game package. The bundle includes World of Goo, Gish, Lugaru HD, Aquaria and Penumbra Overture. All games are available for Windows, Mac or Linux, and are DRM-free.

K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

• Anyone following the commits in the kde svn repo will notice that there has been some action on the mobile front in KDE PIM over the last few months.

• [...]

• This project is the result of a collaboration of KDAB, (my employer) with Intevation, crypto specialists G10Code, and interaction specialists Apliki known to KDE for recent usability testing work on KMail icons.

• German developer Klaas Freitag says Kraft is aimed at small companies, driven by a boss and maybe a few people. He started working on the software in 2005 after having worked on similar applications for many years. He says, “The KDE platform under C++ is the most effective platform to build native GUI applications I have ever worked with, and KDE has a strong, friendly, open, and helpful community that’s fun to work in.”

• Konsole is the app that probably almost every KDE developer uses on a daily basis, but there hasn’t been much development on the user interface front during the last releases. The two brave souls Robert Knight and Kurt Hindenburg are busy triaging and fixing bugs. So to say Konsole is more maintained than developed due to a simple lack of manpower. Nonetheless some recent changes may be worth blogging about.

• On startup, you are presented with a big upper part which contains icons for the available media modes, right now: local music, local pictures and local video. The bottom part is covered by a thin panel which holds an exit button (do not ever touch this or god will kill a ladybug and you will cry in shame!) Also, this panel shows you small icons for modes that are currently active in the background. Clicking on these will fast forward you to that mode.

Distributions

• Not sure how to run a class? The Fedora wiki has a few suggestions. Classes are a good way to provide a question and answer session on everything from how to file bug reports, to explaining how to package software or do testing.

Ubuntu

• Last word is ubuntu 10.04 is refined product with three year LTS support from ubuntu its seems a great option for home and even Enterprise. Its neatly packaged and is amazingly fast you also have the standard compiz 3D Desktop affects which adds the glamour and the standard administration and configuration options which are fairly easy to use. Overall undoubtly the best Linux desktop ever.

Variants

• Ubuntu 10.04 LTS has just been released and, with it, the big number of distros based on it start pouring in. Ultimate Edition is an Ubuntu-based release that aims to be, well, ultimate, packing in as much functionality and apps as possible. Ultimate Edition 2.6 bundles proprietary drivers, to get things running out of the box, and plenty of packages for the power users. If you like flashy themes, as many Compiz effects as your graphics card can handle and having everything plus the kitchen sink pre-installed, then this is the Linux distribution for you.

• My overall impression of Easy Peasy has been very good. It installed quickly and easily on a very old netbook, it left me about 1 GB of free space out of a 4 GB disk, and it seemed to work flawlessly. The combination of EasyPeasy and the original EeePC reminded me of what netbooks were really all about when they first appeared. While 1 GB of space is not a lot, it would be easy enough to put a 4, 8, 16 or whatever GB card in the SD slot for your own documents, files, photos and such. If you still have one of these laying around somewhere, it might pay you to dig it out, load a very nice modern Linux distribution on it, and use it as a very small, very light, very portable netbook.

Devices/Embedded

• QNAP Security, a world class manufacturer of Linux-embedded, stand-alone Network Video Recorder (NVR) solutions is pleased to announce its participation at IFSEC 2010.

• According to various reports in the media, there has been a rise in the number of Wi-Fi-cracking kits being sold online in China, which include USB adapters, a Linux operating system, password-breaking software and a detailed instruction booklet.

Nokia

• January 2010 — Opens a version of its software store for its flagship N900 model which runs the Linux operating system. The Linux Maemo operating system is seen as key in its rivalry with the iPhone.

• February – Says to merge its Linux Maemo software platform, used in its flagship N900 phone, with Intel’s Moblin which is also based on Linux open-sourced software.

Android

• The mobile application for Android got updated today with the ability to snap a picture of some words and instantly translate them into the language of the owner.

• It’s not too surprising that Android 2.0 and 2.0.1 numbers have begun to shrink, especially considering the fact that Motorola recently released the 2.1 update for it’s popular Droid (also known in Europe as the Motorola Milestone) devices – one of the few phones to include the 2.0.x branch of Android. By comparison, the first smartphone to use Android, the T-Mobile G1, will not officially run versions later than 1.6 for technical reasons. Although Google says that it simply doesn’t have enough internal memory, unofficial releases of Android 2.1 are available online.

• Wang said that next up is audio support: “We’ve already laid the groundwork for audio support on the 3G and gotten it working in our homemade bootloader, so support for audio in Linux/Android will be coming in a few days.”

Sub-notebooks

• But first, let’s try to define the smartbook. By some definitions it is simply a Netbook that runs Linux and uses processors based on a design from U.K.-based ARM, as opposed to Windows software and Intel chips, respectively. By another definition, it is all of the above but also an always-on, always-connected device, just like a smartphone. The latter definition is the one we’ll use here because it’s the original definition as provided by Qualcomm–a major smartbook player–and the closest match to most first-generation smartbooks. (Another definition includes tablets but we’ll leave that out of this discussion.)

• Indeed, smartbooks remain a murky product category because no major device maker has announced one yet in the U.S.–at least as defined above. And on Wednesday, Ian Drew, the chief marketing officer at ARM, expressed dismay at the lack of products, according to a report from ZDNet UK. That report cites, among other reasons for the delays, the current lack of Adobe Flash optimization for smartbook operating systems.

Free Software/Open Source

• Drupal is a free and open source content management system written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. It’s used as a back-end system for many different types of websites, ranging from small personal blogs to large corporate and political sites, such as whitehouse.gov. It is also used for knowledge management and business collaboration.

GNU

• The Emacs 23.2 release is out.

• Main features of the new release include downloading of remote packages (for projects hosted on smalltalk.gnu.org), a new browser based on GTK+, a callgraph profiler and incremental garbage collection. This version can also run the Iliad web framework (http://www.iliadproject.org/).

Open Access/Content

• For the last several years, the US’ National Institutes of Health has implemented a Congressionally mandated open access policy. Within a year of the publication of any work that’s derived from NIH funding, the papers have to be sent to the NIH in digital form so that they can be made available online for anyone to examine. Although there have been sporadic attempts to reverse the policy, it has been considered so successful that the US Office of Science and Technology Policy requested public input on an extension of the rules to all federally funded research. Now, a consortium of US research institutions is putting its weight behind an effort to turn the potential OSTP policy into law.

Standards/Consortia

• Right now nobody’s interested in a mobile solution that does not contain the words “iPhone” and “app” and that is not submitted to a closed environment where it competes with approximately 2,437 similar mobile solutions.

• Compared to the current crop of mobile clients and developers, lemmings marching off a cliff follow a solid, sensible strategy. Startling them out of this obsession requires nothing short of a new buzzword.

• Therefore I’d like to re-brand standards-based mobile websites and applications, definitely including W3C Widgets, as “HTML5 apps.” People outside our little technical circle are already aware of the existence of HTML5, and I don’t think it needs much of an effort to elevate it to full buzzwordiness.

Leftovers

Science

• “The American people — even before they are born — are bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures,” they wrote in a letter to President Barack Obama at top of the report.

• “The panel urges you most strongly to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase healthcare costs, cripple our nation’s productivity, and devastate American lives.”

• A White House spokesman indicated he had not yet seen the report and the National Cancer Institute declined comment.

Environment

• A web tool originally set up to keep track of political violence in Kenya is being used to monitor the fallout from oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.

Finance

• But more than a day after a nearly 1,000-point drop in the Dow, the government had not publicly pinpointed the reasons.

• After one of the most wild days on Wall Street, Nasdaq canceled trades of 296 stocks whose prices fluctuated the most.

• At around 2:45 p.m. ET on Thursday, trades of a number of stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange were slowed for about a minute due to excessive volatility. During that short time, those stocks were opened up to electronic markets like the Nasdaq.

• The finger-pointing continued Friday between the Nasdaq Stock Market and the New York Stock Exchange in the wake of Thursday’s 1,000-point intraday stock market plunge — despite calls from both sides for a stop to all blame-finding.

• What Paulson jammed into Abacus was mortgages lent to borrowers with low credit ratings, and mortgages from states like Florida, Arizona, Nevada and California that had recently seen wild home-price spikes. In metaphorical terms, Paulson was choosing, as sexual partners for future visitors to the Goldman bordello, a gang of IV drug users, Haitians and hemophiliacs, then buying life-insurance policies on the whole orgy. Goldman then turned around and sold this poisonous stuff to its customers as good, healthy investments.

• Where Goldman broke the rules, according to the SEC, was in failing to disclose to its customers – in particular a German bank called IKB and a Dutch bank called ABN-AMRO – the full nature of Paulson’s involvement with the deal. Neither investor knew that the portfolio they were buying into had essentially been put together by a financial arsonist who was rooting for it all to blow up.

• The situation is particularly acute in Greece, where massive debts have forced the government to propose widely unpopular cuts in salaries, bonuses and pensions coupled with significant tax hikes. Interest rates have soared, and deadly riots have broken out in Athens.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• Blogs and personal web pages, such as on MySpace and Facebook, provide a broad stage to spread potentially defamatory statements. Thus, care must be taken when posting content on social media. Postings can take just seconds to compose and frequently little thought is given to what is being stated and its consequences, especially where such communication may reach an audience of millions, virtually instantaneously.

• Flickr. Diigo. Evernote.

• Everybody wants me to work on my machine but then synchronize my data to their site for safekeeping and social functions. I can understand this for situations where I want others to see my photos or my links, but what happens when I have ten or twenty of these services, all of which have separate interfaces, separate logins, separate passwords, and separate liklihoods to still be around in 5 years?

• The South African media’s concerns about Fifa restrictions on coverage of the World Cup have gone unheeded by the soccer world body for two years, veteran newsman Raymond Louw said on Friday.

• Media groups Avusa, the Independent Group and Media 24 are now trying to “engage in a constructive way” with Fifa, through their lawyers, over the terms and conditions for accreditation.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski claimed power to regulate companies that provide Internet access, opening a fight with cable and telephone companies and sparking opposition from Republicans.

• First of all I will continue to boycot DRM’ed devices. The main motive for Digital Restriction Management promotion is financial. If we do not give them money, they will have to stop to threat us like that. I am a customers, not a prisoner. Secondly I will continue to explain people why they should not give money to people who want to control their data.

Intellectual Monopolies

• The company was sued by independent record label Blue Destiny Records last year, which claimed that Google — along with Microsoft’s (NASD: MSFT) Bing — was violating copyrights by linking to unauthorized content hosted on RapidShare.

ACTA

• An attorney for Google slammed a controversial intellectual property treaty on Friday, saying it has “metastasized” from a proposal to address border security and counterfeit goods to an international legal framework sweeping in copyright and the Internet.

• The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, is “something that has grown in the shadows, Gollum-like,” without public scrutiny, Daphne Keller, a senior policy counsel in Mountain View, Calif., said at a conference at Stanford University.

• Both the Obama administration and the Bush administration had rejected requests from civil libertarians and technologists for the text of ACTA, with the White House last year even indicating that disclosure would do “damage to the national security.” After pressure from the European Parliament, however, negotiators released the draft text two weeks ago.

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