● 08.07.10

● Links 7/8/2010: OLPC XO Laptops, Growth of Free Software

Posted in News Roundup at 6:15 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• As a private school, GHCA would not have been able to afford a typical Microsoft or Apple lab. However, with Linux we were able to get the most modern hardware at the time. Even better yet, that hardware is still more than fast enough even though it is 5 years old, thanks to Linux!

Audiocasts/Shows

• Riak, a highly scalable, fault tolerant, no SQL database.

• Guests: Mark Philips, Community Manager, and Andy Gross, VP of Engineering of Basho

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

• Now that the Linux 2.6.35 kernel was released a few days ago, Linus Torvalds has begun pulling in new code for the Linux 2.6.36 kernel as the various developers begin submitting pull requests of their new work. Dave Airlie, the maintainer of the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) code in the Linux kernel, overnight sent in his first Git pull request of his DRM tree. This pull request brings many new features for Intel, ATI, and NVIDIA/Nouveau graphics hardware.

Applications

• Overall, Xiphos has a very user-friendly and simple interface. I found it to be very intuitive and very easy to learn. I was able to completely navigate around the program after only 2 minutes of playing with it. Xiphos has my highest recommendation. I would give it a 9/10 rating:

• * very easy to install. * very easy to use. * simple user interface. * great modular installation system.

• Xiphos was written using the GTK toolkit, and has versions for GNU/Linux, Unix, and Windows. You can download the latest version here: http://xiphos.org/

• The team behind open-source Flash alternative LightSpark pushed out a new bug-fix release a few days ago.

• Seeing as we’re a few releases in, I felt now was a prime time to see just how well LightSpark performs against its proprietary counterpart – particularly so I have a benchmark which to compare future releases against.

• Now, you don’t need to be remotely “on-the-ball” to predict that LightSpark won’t out-whoop the real Flash plug-in, but if users are considering taking a performance hit by switching they might want to know exactly how big a hit it will actually be…

Instructionals/Technical

Wine

• Scores: Counter Strike: Source

• * 1680×1050, Wine – 44.16fps * 800×600, Wine – 48.59fps * 1680×1050, Native – 54.02fps * 800×600, Native – 56.22fps

• Team Fortress 2

• * 1680×1050, Wine – 43.88fps * 800×600, Wine – 49.58fps * 1680×1050, Native – 50.56fps * 800×600, Native – 58.47fps

Games

• Until August 12th, Machinarium (and its soundtrack) will cost only $5. It usually goes for $20. The game is available for PC, Mac, and Linux. In Machinarium you play as an unassuming robot traveling through a beautifully detailed world mechanical malcontents. We grabbed this game from Steam a while back, and can testify to its quality and challenging puzzle-based gameplay.

• The award-winning puzzle platformer, And Yet It Moves, was released for the Linux platform today. Indie studio Broken Rules brings the award-winning downloadable PC and Mac game that will have players physically rotating environments to overcome various obstacles and challenges to the Free Operating System. The game won the 2007 Independent Games Festival Student Showcase, was nominated for the 2007 EUROPRIX Top Talent Award and qualified as a finalist during IndieCade 2008. Download the DRM-free game as RPM or Debian package, or as a Tarball. The game will be on sale for $9.99.

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

• So that was my first contribution to KDE: a changeable number of pieces, a randomizer, and a color chooser.

• KDE 4.5 will be released in the next days with the most polished Kate/KWrite and KatePart during the KDE 4.x series.

• A lot of work went into fixing bugs and cleaning up old code for this release. Many important aspects where redone, just to enumerate a few:

• * encoding detection & handling * the text buffer * the undo/redo system (thanks Bernhard) * search/replace (thanks again Bernhard) * handling cursors and ranges * improved spell checking (thanks Michel) * improved indentation (thanks Milian) * speed improvements (Milian too) * better JS scripting (Dominik) * porting of KDevelop to new interfaces (David Nolden)

• The upstream bugs are mostly driver related bugs. The number does not reflect reality perfectly as some driver crashes are set to duplicate. So we see that we have more crashes in drivers than crashes we fixed!

GNOME Desktop

• This is a GNOME Shell theme based on the Ubuntu Lucid theme called Ambiance.

Distributions

• Tomato Linux

• Kickstart your old router with a little tomato juice. Tomato Linux is a small distro customised to be installed on Broadcom-based routers such as the Linksys WRT54G/GL/GS routers. Once installed Tomato can be administered through a web interface, Telnet or SSH. But more importantly it adds a bunch of new features to your router, including bandwidth monitor, QoS controls, DynamicDNS support, multiple wireless modes as well as the ability to manage the signal strength of the router. And, because it’s essentially an embedded Linux version, there are all manner of extra things you could configure your router to do. It also works like a bomb. I ‘ve been using it on my home router for the past year.

Red Hat Family

• Shares of Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) are trading very close to calculated resistance at $33.99 with the current price action closing at just $33.25 placing the stock near levels that make it difficult to buy.

Fedora

• Here is an outline of the topics covered:

• * MeeGo Spin status * Upcoming FUDcons – Zurich and Tempe * Deadline for dealing with open Board tickets * fedoracommunity.org domains – how are they going & shall we approve the open requests * Community Working Group idea from Rex * start.fedoraproject.org * Vision for Fedora

Debian Family

• Computing-wise, I’ve taken a break from the JamVM/OpenJDK port for a couple of days while I play with my latest toy : a cheap mini-netbook based on a Chinese MIPS clone. It’s branded CnMbook, but it’s available (or was) under dozens of names.

• [...]

• The cost? 65 quid off ebay for an ex-display model as you can’t buy them anymore, the ARM9 WinCE machines having completely replaced them.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• It can be a big question for some, “to Wubi or not to Wubi” ? So what is Wubi? It is an officially supported Ubuntu installer for Windows users that can bring you to the Linux world with a single click. Do you really want to install Ubuntu inside Windows? Let me list out the pros and cons of using Wubi as well dual booting. and to make things more interesting let us throw in the Virtualization option (Sun VirtualBox or Vmware Player) in the mix. You can then decide whats the best option for you.

• The point is that Canonical has established itself as a big player in the F/OSS world, and to make the F/OSS world better for everyone in it – including Canonical – it’s important that everyone contributes; not just to marketing or UX design or whatever, but to the fundamental engineering. The argument isn’t ‘Canonical doesn’t contribute to $FOO so they’re a bunch of losers, nee ner nee ner!’, it’s ‘Canonical doesn’t contribute to $FOO and it would really be better for everyone if they did’.

• Today, one day after reaching the third Maverick milestone, Alpha 3, I am happy to announce the birth of a new testing project and team in Ubuntu: the Desktop Testing Team.

• Every time we release a new Ubuntu milestone, testers are encouraged to install the new milestone and play around with it, filing bugs as they go. We want to go a bit further and use a more methodological approach for those people that love testing and want to help improving Ubuntu that way.

• Ubuntu’s ambitions don’t stop with moving some window buttons and making everything purple – the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Belgium saw the announcement of Unity, a completely new desktop interface aimed at instant-on computing.

• What’s got us really excited is that fact that the creator of the fantastic Gnome Do, David Siegel, is working with the design team. Naturally, we wanted to find out some more…

Flavours and Variants

• Although this release is filled great stuff, the one single thing that caught my eye more than anything is the way cutting edge features have been used to improve the users experience. One I’m concerned about is that it’s built on the older Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope which Canonical will no longer support in October because of its age. Definitely worth trying if you have a Netbook-like device.

• Okay, if you skipped down from the top or you need a refresher about the points I made, here is the Cliff’s Notes version:

• * Several experienced people within the project have left recently and not enough new people have replaced them * Many things are not accomplished because of limited resources (i.e. people) * Even without prior developer experience you too can contribute to Ubuntu Studio * Long term commitment is unnecessary, just fix one thing or a couple * If you are not helping then it probably is not getting done

• I believe that about sums it up.

Devices/Embedded

• I recently stumbled across this interesting device from Entourage Systems. At first glance when closed, the enTourage eDGe may appear to be a typical netbook, but it is actually a combination of an e-reader and a Tablet computer running Android.

Phones

• Analyst group ABI Research has predicted that Linux will account for over 62 per cent of the market for non-smartphone mobile devices by 2015. “The number of Linux-oriented initiatives recently seen in the mobile industry indicates that Linux will be a key technology in the next generation of netbooks, media tablets, and other mobile devices,” commented the report’s author Victoria Fodale.

Nokia/MeeGo

• All in all FAM is an excellent application and it is much faster the default application manager. In fact the only real draw back to FAM currently is that it does not support installing applications from the Ovi Store as of yet. Also worth mentioning is that unlike the default application manager FAM supports portrait mode when you tip your device into a vertical position.

Android

• Most smartphone users I know will never turn back to a conventional mobile phone again. They just derive too much productivity from it. It’s hands down the most efficient way to maintain a communications line to your contacts in the smallest form factor possible. Voice calls, texting, emails, instant messaging; they’re all available at your fingers with the right smartphone.

• [...]

• This is a significant step. While previously, cheap mobile devices often meant crappy software loaded inside, with Android, what you’re getting is probably just as good as you can get with any other manufacturer. Sure, you’ll probably be limited by crappy hardware, but the basic features of what I expect of a smartphone will be there. I do not need a top-of-the-line AMOLED or SLCD screen to view my calendar. I do not need a Snapdragon or Hummingbird CPU to check my email. All I need for it is to be decently made and cheap.

Sub-notebooks

• As expected, the folks at OLPC are starting to offer XO Laptop models with more traditional looking keyboards. The new model is called the XO-1.5 HS and it’s aimed at high school students, while the original XO models were designed for younger children.

Free Software/Open Source

• Computers without programs are like boat anchors. They are cold, heavy and just sit there like a lump of steel, which of course they are. It is the software which controls the movement of electrons through the computers memory. It is the software which transforms the computer from a cold silent box to a whirring, warm window into a greater world.

Events

• That engagement may be one reason that people were positive and participatory at the recent Apache Lucene EuroCon-our Lucene and Solr user conference in Prague-compared to some of the commercial vendor user conferences we’ve heard about where frustrated users end up yelling at the vendors.

Growth

• Open source software may be looking at a bumper year in 2010, as a new survey showed companies are looking to invest.

• This conclusion backs the findings in this week’s poll of eWEEK Europe UK readers, a clear majority of whom (40 percent) stated that their organisation’s backed, whenever possible, an open source strategy.

• The Accenture survey was of 300 large organisations with annual revenue in excess of $500 million (£315 million) in both the private and public sector.

SaaS

• I spent sixteen years of my life working for Digital Equipment Corporation. While that company is now gone, some of its innovations and technologies live on in Intel and ARM processors, and in various parts of different operating systems. If this was not true, I would be very depressed. However, even more technologies (both hardware and software) could have survived if those technologies had been “Open”, and that is what Google is doing.

• So I, for one, encourage Google to keep innovating, and putting those innovations out as FOSS. While some may not become products immediately, many more will be available for discussion and use in other ways that even the Google engineers may not have envisioned.

Databases

• When Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems — and by association, MySQL — plenty of open source pundits expressed concern. After much silence there are at least two signs Oracle plans to show MySQL customers and partners some love. Here’s the scoop from The VAR Guy.

Oracle

• On August 3 Nexenta hosted a conference call to announce a new open source project called “Illumos.” Illumos is an open source alternative to a critical part of the OpenSolaris distribution free from the binds of Oracle. Still several days short of the deadline set by the OpenSolaris governing board to Oracle, perhaps this announcement makes it all moot.

• The effort is headed up by former Sun and Oracle Solaris developer Garrett D’Amore. He said that Illumos is not a fork of OpenSolaris, but more of a code base that perhaps Nexenta, Belenix, and SchilliX can be built on one day. Most important to D’Amore and Illumos supporters is that the code base will live on and be free from the control of any corporate entity.

• [...]

• With the days counting down to the probable disbanding of the board and the constant threat of losing access to the source, Illumos might be all that remains of OpenSolaris sooner or later. Several distributions are based on OpenSolaris now, and its loss could have spelled disaster for those systems. That’s why most of them as well as several current and former OpenSolaris developers have committed to Illumos. Other community partners include Joyent, berliOS, Greenviolet, and Everycity.

CMS

• The most notable improvement to Drupal’s user interface are overlays. Usability lab tests observed that many users coming from other CMS systems were accustomed to a dedicated back end for administration and content creation, and found it difficult to distinguish the administration layer from the rest of the website.

• The final line-up has been announced for DrupalCon Copenhagen, this year’s annual European gathering for fans and developers of the popular open source content management system. Running from 23-27 August, alongside the usual ‘State of Drupal’ address from project founder Dries Buytaert, keynote speakers include Rasmus Lerdorf, author of the original PHP scripting language, and HTML5 expert Jeremy Keith.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Eben Mogen of the Software Freedom Law Center recently gave the keynote address at the LibrePlanet conference hosted by the Free Software Foundation.

Openness/Sharing

Open Hardware

• With the growing popularity of Open Source Hardware, Liquidware announces the first 100% Open Source Hardware and Open Source Software Scientific Calculator. Based on Linux, Arduino, and the BeagleBoard design specifications, the Open SciCal X101 brings modularity and customization handheld scientific calculators and research aids.

Programming

• I hate git. I really do. The people who designed the plumbing never stopped to think how any of it would be used, and the user interface is a bunch of ad-hoc bolted on independent bits that have nothing to do with each other.

Leftovers

Security/Aggression

• Today I am happy to report that this action had a bigger impact that we hoped for!

• * Delo — probably the most serious Slovenian daily newspaper was very keen on publishing our open letter in the readers’ letters section in the printed edition. * Dnevnik — the other major daily newspaper has also published the open letter under readers’ letters in both the printed form and online.

• [...]

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• In 2007, Science (subs. req’d) published research that “predicted a permanent drought by 2050 throughout the Southwest” — levels of aridity comparable to the 1930s Dust Bowl would stretch from Kansas to California. And they were only looking at a 720 ppm case! The Dust Bowl was a sustained decrease in soil moisture of about 15% (”which is calculated by subtracting evaporation from precipitation”).

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• The EFF has put up a new page for a project which it calls the SSL observatory. They have spent months collecting information about SSL certificates across the net; as one might expect, they have found some interesting things.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• Regulators halted closed-door negotiations about net neutrality rules with phone, cable and Internet companies on Thursday after reports of a side deal between two participants, Verizon Communications Inc and Google Inc, surfaced.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• The ACA2K project has been examining the relationship between copyright and access to learning materials in Mozambique, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Senegal, Morocco, Egypt and South Africa. The project, which began in 2008, is supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and South Africa’s Shuttleworth Foundation, and managed by the Wits University LINK Centre in Johannesburg.

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