● 08.24.10

● Links 24/8/2010: Red Hat Takeover Rumour, Fedora 14 Alpha is Out

Posted in News Roundup at 11:13 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• CloudNAS is mounted directly into the Linux filesystem. It’s possible to use the CloudNAS system to encrypt (using AES 256-bit) but it’s not convenient.

Server

• Screven said that there is one team that does development for Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM, not two different teams, and they are maniacally focused on performance. Thanks to paravirtualization for drivers for both Linux and Windows on Oracle VM, Screven says that the overhead imposed by the Oracle VM implementation of the Xen hypervisor can be as low as 5 per cent of CPU capacity, while other hypervisors are burning as much as 20 per cent of CPU.

• Purdue says its power saving mode can reduce power usage by 10 to 35 percent, with the largest benefits available in AMD systems. The software employs the Linux kernel’s Frequency Scaling driver, and was written for RedHat Enterprise Linux 5.0.

• On the other hand, many of the largest data centers — such as those run by the big Web companies — mostly run on Linux or similar operating systems; and run their own proprietary software. Such companies tend to be extremely cost conscious, and note that power often costs much more than the hardware itself. So if Smooth-Stone can prove it really can save a lot of energy while still providing the performance these firms need, that may provide a good market opening. From there, it will have to turn to the more mainstream providers of server-based software.

Google

• A Chrome rival noted the paper trail aspect of the new registration fee, too. “Someone pointed out the $5 registration fee for Chrome Extension Gallery creates a paper trail, which is a good point,” said Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox, in a Twitter message Thursday.

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

Applications

Proprietary

• With the new software release for Linux, Cuelux is now a multi-platform lighting software package; Cuelux was already available on Mac OSX and MS Windows (with both 32 bit and 64 bit drivers available).

Instructionals/Technical

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

• Well, if you look at what GNOME 3 is attempting — we did that with the KDE Platform 4. Clean up the technology and introduce new interface and infrastructural technologies. They however took a very different approach. We redesigned our infrastructure but tried to build a familiar desktop on top. The current, default Plasma desktop, while fundamentally much more flexible, still follows the traditional panel setup. GNOME introduces GNOME Shell, a much more revolutionary desktop interface, but with far less flexibility. Of course these differences make sense — the GNOME developers had an entirely different vision with their Shell than the Plasma Developers. GNOME wanted to offer the best user experience possible, according to their design. Plasma is a technology to build user experiences… The Plasma Netbook and Plasma Mobile interfaces are examples of those and you could build a GNOME Shell like interface in a reasonably short time. Someone might do that at some point…

Distributions

New Releases

• An updated Parted Magic has released. Parted Magic 5.3 comes with several updated packages, but also brings some changes. Parted Magic is no longer released as a USB Zip file version and a GRUB4DOS ISO is no longer being made available.

• The 5.3 maintenance update is based on the 2.6.34.5 Linux kernel and features various adjustments that improve overall memory usage and several updated packages, including the latest 7.0 release of the open source TrueCrypt disk encryption tool. Other package updates include version 2010.8.8 of the NTFS-3G read/write driver, FreeType 2.4.2 and version 1.17.1 of the BusyBox tool collection. The UNetbootin utility for creating LiveUSB systems has been updated to the latest 471 release.

• Lunar Linux 1.6.5, codenamed “Mare Ingenii,” has been released, the latest version of the source-based Linux distro. The new release brings a new Linux kernel and support for the EXT4 filesystem as well as hybrid ISO.

• Trinity Audio Group Inc.’s audio operating system and professional music recording software, designed for the Pro Audio crowd, releases it’s most mature version to date. Linux’s open source component makes it possible to offer free updates for life. Newest version 4.0 available as free upgrade for all existing customers.

• The following Linux-based operating systems have been announced last week: Trinity Rescue Kit 3.4, Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS, Parted Magic 5.3, Lunar Linux 1.6.5 and Frugalware 1.3. In other news: Canonical announced that Ubuntu 10.10 will support gestures with multi-touch; the Debian Project celebrated its 17th birthday; the KDE Project announced the KDE Plasma Mobile Tablet edition; Mark Shuttleworth announced Ubuntu 11.04 a.k.a. Natty Narwhal; the GNOME Project released the first beta version of the upcoming GNOME 2.32.0 desktop environment; Canonical uploaded the Ubuntu 11.04 release schedule; Google launched Linux video and voice chat plugin for GMail; RHEL 3 gets three-year optional support program. The weekly ends with the video clip of the week, the latest updated Linux distributions, and the development releases.

• Tor 0.2.2.15-alpha fixes a big bug in hidden service availability, fixes a variety of other bugs that were preventing performance experiments from moving forward, fixes several bothersome memory leaks, and generally closes a lot of smaller bugs that have been filling up trac lately.

Red Hat Family

• Shares of Red Hat Inc. (NYSE: RHT) are higher on the session by 2.21%, currently trading at $33.26. The stock has been moving largely higher over the past six months and is nearing its 52-week high of $33.99.

• The Hatters continue to report strong profits and revenues, thus continuing to stoke the takeover talk.

• Given the recent surge in high-tech mergers and acquisitions, such as the $1.5 billion battle between Dell and HP over 3Par, and big firms looking to diversify, why wouldn’t Red Hat be a promising target?

Fedora

• As always, Fedora continues to develop and integrate the latest free and open source software. The following sections provide a brief overview of major changes from the last release of Fedora. For more details about other features that are making their way into Rawhide and set for inclusion in Fedora 14, refer to their individual wiki pages that detail feature goals and progress. Features for this release are tracked on the feature list page.

Debian Family

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Today we are very proud to announce the Ubuntu Developer Summit event for Ubuntu 11.04, where the entire Canonical development team and members of the Ubuntu community gather together to share knowledge, discuss and design the next version of the Ubuntu operating system!

• “The Ubuntu Developer Summit is the seminal Ubuntu event in which we define the focus and plans for our up-coming version of Ubuntu. The event pulls together Canonical engineers, community members, partners, ISVs, upstreams and more into an environment focused on discussion and planning.”

• Jorge O. Castro, External Project Developer Relations for Canonical, will be speaking about Low-Hanging Fruit of the juicy software variety. Jorge works with getting really hard bits to integrate with Ubuntu, recently and namely Google Voice with video support. He will show us how we can all help by packaging and bug fixing. Yummy.

• Next will be the outstanding Amber Graner of Ubuntu User magazine. She will discuss how it is possible to contribute to Free software, even if you are not a developer. Amber knows because she has done it all without compiling a single code or hacking a single kernel. You go girl.

Devices/Embedded

• The Unison Operating System offers an ultra tiny embedded POSIX environment for ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller (MCU) based development that is also Linux compatible.

• IGEL Technology today announced that it has integrated the IBM 5250 client into its Linux thin client firmware to provide IBM users direct access to IBM Power Systems™ such as the AS/400, iSeries and System i™.

• IGEL added 5250 support to its Linux distribution, called IGEL Linux, in April with IGEL Linux release 4.03.1. IGEL Linux is available on all five major thin client offerings, including its UD2, UD3, UD5, UD7, and UD9 series. The company gets its terminal emulation technology from Ericom.

• RoweBots is providing its Linux compatible RTOS named Unison for Actel’s SmartFusion FPGA mixed signal FPGA devices.

• The Parrot iPhone Drone aka AR.Drone is a very clever quadricopter that is controlled by your Apple smartphone (iPod Touch & iPad), the AR.Drone has a very powerful Linux platform computer that can detect targets, which gives you a great gaming experience.

Phones

Nokia/MeeGo

• Pictures have surfaced in a Chinese forum that reportedly show a prototype Nokia handset. Rumored to be the N9, the device closely resembles the N8 but has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The most compelling aspect of this leak is that the device appears to be running the MeeGo Linux platform rather than Symbian.

• Nokia recently confirmed that its first MeeGo-based product will launch this year, but the company hasn’t officially revealed any specific details about the form factor or other characteristics. It’s possible that the leaked photos of the alleged N9 handset offer the first real look at Nokia’s upcoming MeeGo product.

• Nokia and Intel said on Tuesday their venture to create a new cellphone software, seen as crucial for Nokia to re-assert itself as the leading producer of high-end handsets, had made a solid start.

• Amid much talk of paradigm shifts, Heikki Huomo, director of the University’s Center for Internet Excellence, co-founded by Nokia, said: “We are starting the research and we believe we are able to find new use paradigms beyond the current use paradigms.”

• At first glance the N900 seems impressive. It has a 600MHz Arm Cortex CPU, 256MB of ram and 32GB of onboard storage, with a high resolution, crystal clear 3.5in screen. Naturally, it also has all the basics for a smartphone of this calibre, which means 3G, Bluetooth 2.0, USB connector, and 802.11g wi-fi. The N900 even has a built-in FM transmitter for listening to your music over your car stereo wirelessly. But does this combination make for a decent phone and a usable netbook?

Android

• Until now, Milestone owners could do nothing but to envy Droid users rocking the Froyo upgrade; however, according to Motorola’s recently published timeline, the former device is now slated for the same dessert party in Europe and Korea in Q4 — specifically, “beginning at the end of this year,” which could well mean the majority of users won’t get the update until 2011 (!). Meanwhile, said upgrade is still “under evaluation” for Canada, Latin America, Mexico and Asia-Pacific sans Korea.

• In the fifth spot, sales of smartphones based on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile stayed at 3.1 million units, with market share dropping from 9.3% to 5%.

Sub-notebooks

• I won’t be using it much, because “social networking” is not a significant part of my personal activity. But I will keep it in mind for systems I prepare for others. If you do use Facebook, Twitter, and such, and you want to use Linux, Joliclouc might be just what you are looking for.

• No idea on pricing or a roll out date, but the progress reports seem to indicate that “sooner” is a better bet than “later”.

Tablets

• Remember the $35 tablet that the Indian government promised to deliver? While it is a good year away from its targeted delivery date (which can change at a moment’s notice, mind you), Bangalore-based Allgo Embedded Systems has come up with a prototype of their own tablet which is touted to cost approximately $50. Yes, the STAMP tablet will be Android- or Linux-powered (to keep the costs down, and with the rising popularity of the open source operating system, why not?) while featuring a 7″ touchscreen display.

• WHY HAVE ONE when you can have five seems to be Archos’ approach with the announcement today that it will showcase Android-based “Internet tablets” with screen sizes from 2.8-inches to 10-inches.

Free Software/Open Source

• GNU/Linux is probably the biggest thing ever happened with Open Source. Richard Stallman, founder of Open Source movement, spearheaded a project to build a “complete Unix-compatible software system” based entirely of free software(free as in freedom).

• Project was called GNU(GNU is Not Unix). During the same time Linus Torvalds built a Kernel(which is otherwise known as the heart of an opearting system) and made it Open Source. He named it Linux. The Linux kernel and GNU tools(libraries, compilers, text editors etc) combined to become GNU/Linux operating system(popularly known as ‘Linux’).

• AdroitLogic Private Ltd. announced today that it is open sourcing the code of its Enterprise Service Bus the UltraESB, under the GNU Affero General Public License. The UltraESB first announced in January, becomes the first Open Source ESB to claim support for Zero-copy proxying of requests with Java Non-blocking IO and Memory Mapped files to support extreme levels of performance.

Oracle

• When Oracle sued Google over its use, or as Oracle would have it, Google’s misuse of Java intellectual property in Android, the first questions were why and what did Oracle hope to gain?

• My only pet theory is straightforward and simple: Oracle wants to skim big-bucks from Android. But, even if a miracle happens and Oracle wins every one of their claims, we’re still talking years before Oracle sees a single red-cent.

• [...]

• 3) MeeGo: MeeGo, the Intel-Nokia open-source Linux for devices, doesn’t have the cash to give Larry Ellison a big present, but this group owes him one too. I think that MeeGo, which uses the traditional Linux desktop development tools instead of Android’s Java-based interface, now, has a real chance to get some of the smartphone market. Before Oracle’s lawsuit, the best I’d hoped for MeeGo, given Android’s popularity in smartphones, was to carve out its own niche. I thought it might do well, for example, with car entertainment and navigation systems. Now, I think it has a real shot in phones as well.

• 4) Patent Litigators: Some people have said that Oracle is acting like a patent troll. I disagree. Patent trolls sit on patents and wait for someone to mistakenly spend money building something from a forgotten idea and then jump on them to rip them off for millions. Oracle makes billions by actually creating software; it’s just that the company would like to make a few hundreds of millions by jabbing Google in their soft IP (intellectual property) belly as well.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Software freedom activist and founder of the GNU Project Richard Matthew Stallman will deliver a lecture on ‘Free software and your Freedom’ at the St. Joseph’s College of Engineering and Technology (SJCET), Pala on 9 September 2010.

Project Releases

• After 9 months of development, Inkscape 0.48 is out. This version of the SVG-based vector graphics editor brings a new Spray tool, multipath editing, superscripts and subscripts in text, as well as numeric control of text kerning, tracking, rotation and more, several new extensions for web developers and first take at adaptive user interface.

• OpenSSH 5.6 has just been released. It will be available from the mirrors listed at http://www.openssh.com/ shortly.

• The open source community has worked hard to develop apps with professional-level features. One of the shining examples is Inkscape, a free drawing application that uses X11, a way to run Linux apps on the Mac without a lot of trouble. When you start Inkscape, X11 loads automatically. The menus do not match the Mac’s normal user interface but when you save files, they are saved to the Finder.

Leftovers

Security/Aggression

• Sweden’s prosecution service was urged to investigate if an employee had colluded to smear the founder of the Wikileaks website just days before he planned to use the country’s internet infrastructure to publish confidential US military material.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig used by BP, has accused the British oil firm of withholding key data including computerised records and digital measurements. BP denies the accusations.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• Every content industry bounds into digital media vowing not to make the same mistakes of the music industry, an industry which spent a decade setting the global standard for “doing it wrong”. Ironically, the music industry has been slowly getting its act together – with a few exceptions – in recent years, while the books business, the film studios and the TV companies have doddered in, acting like they want to make it as hard as possible for anyone to enjoy their content and giving the impression that they really hate their customers.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• That seems to undermine the claims that of course people knew it was illegal, doesn’t it? Not surprisingly, the Sherman interview is chock full of other bizarre statements. Even just this one little quote is pretty funny with him trying to somehow redefine the lawsuits as a successful PR strategy. Of course, if they were actually successful in educating people, then wouldn’t there be fewer people accessing unauthorized music today than when they started? Of course, the exact opposite is true. The rest of the article is filled with similarly laughable attempts by Sherman to pretend that the RIAA’s strategy over the past decade has been successful, rather than a complete disaster that has helped the major record labels speed up their own demise.

• Teachers and students across Canada are trying to stop what they say is an attempt by private industry to cash in on research in the digital age, the consequences of which, they say, could radically redefine how research is conducted in and outside academia.

• The case will be heard this fall in front of Canada’s Copyright Board and is expected to highlight the complexities of updating an analog-era copyright law to cover works for an academic community that’s adapting quickly to the digital era.

• Obviously, this seems to go beyond just Google’s book search, in showing that greater access can certainly lead to greater revenue and profits for those who embrace it. Definitely another worthwhile paper to read on the subject.

ACTA

• The Recording Industry Association of America said on Monday that current U.S. copyright law is so broken that it “isn’t working” for content creators any longer.

• RIAA President Cary Sherman said the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act contains loopholes that allow broadband providers and Web companies to turn a blind eye to customers’ unlawful activities without suffering any legal consequences.

• “The DMCA isn’t working for content people at all,” he said at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum here. “You cannot monitor all the infringements on the Internet. It’s simply not possible. We don’t have the ability to search all the places infringing content appears, such as cyberlockers like [file-hosting firm] RapidShare.”

• The 10th round of negotiations on the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) was held in Washington, D.C. from 16 – 20 August 2010, and was hosted by the United States of America. United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Deputy United States Trade Representative Miriam Sapiro welcomed the delegations and thanked them for all of their work in the negotiations.

Clip of the DayPandora: Internet on TV with Mouse, Keyboard and 3G 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

----------

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.