● 02.06.11

● Links 6/2/2011: Wine 1.3.13 Released, Camp KDE 2011 Announced, Debian 6.0 “Squeeze” Released

Posted in News Roundup at 1:56 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Today’s IT world is dominated by Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Android and a handful of other operating systems – but what about in years gone by? We look back at five operating systems that enjoyed their own (often brief) limelight before fading away.

Desktop

• Therefore, do not give Linux to your mother or father. They might end up loving it, learning what they never could and, worst of all, putting an unsuspecting technician accustomed to Windows to shame.

Kernel Space

• ALSA 1.0.23 was released in April 2010 as a major update to the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, but it’s finally been outdone by ALSA 1.0.24. The ALSA 1.0.24 update is also very significant and delivers on quite a number of sound card / audio processor driver improvements.

Applications

Instructionals/Technical

Wine

• The Wine development release 1.3.13 is now available.

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

• We are excited to announce Camp KDE 2011 which will be held April 4 and 5, 2011 in San Francisco, California at the Hotel Kabuki. Camp KDE is co-located this year with the Linux Foundation’s Collaboration Summit which takes place April 6 and 7.

• Held annually in the United States, Camp KDE provides a regional opportunity for KDE contributors and enthusiasts to gather and share their KDE experiences. Co-location with the Collaboration Summit will allow Camp KDE attendees a unique opportunity to learn from and share their experiences with members of many other successful open source software projects.

• One thing we already know is that we feel we’re on the “right” track with activities now and will spend a significant investment of our resources in 4.7 to fleshing them out further.

GNOME Desktop

• GNOME seems to be out to revolutionize (kind of) the desktop paradigm with version 3.

• Ubuntu has just published a new alpha version of what will become Ubuntu 11.04, so I used that for a quick test.

Distributions

• I can’t say when commercial games will break 3 or 4 GB, but it’s coming.

New Releases

• From now on, there will be no codename

• SalixLive Fluxbox 13.1.2 is now ready and completes the collection of Salix Live CD 13.1.2 series.

• As in the Salix Fluxbox standard edition, the Live CD edition offers a functional, reliable and responsive desktop environment that is fully equipped with modern and powerful tools, while its minimalistic Window Manager is designed to stay completely out of the way.

Red Hat Family

Debian Family

• I’ve had this handy countdown graphic on Click for the past couple of weeks. Not that Debian is in the habit of setting release dates, but this particular image came about after the project itself announced that Feb. 5 or 6, 2011 would be the target date(s).

• After 24 months of constant development, the Debian Project is proud to present its new stable version 6.0 (code name “Squeeze”). Debian 6.0 is a free operating system, coming for the first time in two flavours. Alongside Debian GNU/Linux, Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is introduced with this version as a “technology preview”.

• After two years of development, Debian 6.0 is released. It comes with your choice of KDE, GNOME, Xfce, LXDE, and lots of your favorite applications. Debian runs on all sorts of computers including 32-bit PCs, 64-bit PCs, PowerPC, SPARC, MIPS, Intel Itanium, and ARM processors. This release also includes two new Debian GNU/kFreDebian versions.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• OpenStack – the open source “infrastructure cloud” project founded by Rackspace and NASA – has released a second version of its platform codenamed Bexar.

• Bexar includes updates to both halves of the project: OpenStack Compute, for serving up on-demand access to readily scalable processing power, and OpenStack Storage, a similarly scalable storage platform.

• A good looking 3D interface is a primary focus of the new Ubuntu desktop (Natty Narwhal) but Canonical has assured that a 2D fall-back will be available

Devices/Embedded

• Computer Lab International (CLI) released a new Ubuntu-based Linux operating system for its MT2300 and ST6800 thin clients, which use Via Eden C7 processors clocked to 500MHz and 1.6GHz, respectively. The OS features Firefox, the CLI Device Manager, plus support for RDP, Citrix ICA 11, host terminal emulations, VNC client/server, and VMWare View4, the company says.

• Qnap Systems announced additions to its Linux-based Turbo NAS family of network attached storage devices for the home/SOHO market. The TS-x12 lineup includes the four-drive (up to 8TB) TS-412, the two-bay TS-212, plus the single-drive TS-112, each providing a 1.2GHz Marvell 6281 processor, 256MB of DDR2 memory, plus gigabit Ethernet and USB connectivity.

Free Software/Open Source

• Our customer was looking for centralized SCM, where all the revision control functions take place on a shared server, so we didn’t go through evaluations around which is the best approach (distributed or centralized).

• We easily jumped to the conclusion that Subversion could be a better option than CVS, given CVS status and known open issues, then we used SOS Open Source tools to look deeper into the Subversion project.

Web Browsers

• Google finally released Google chrome 9 stable, 2 weeks later than it’s promised release-date. We have summarized top 5 must-try features in google-chrome-logothe new chrome!

Chrome

• WebGL is a relatively new standard that emerged in 2009 with the support of the Khronos group. It provides a set of JavaScript APIs that wrap the functionality of OpenGL ES, allowing developers to render 3D graphics in the Canvas element. Mozilla and Apple have also adopted the standard and have their own increasingly mature implementations. Google officially supports WebGL with hardware-accelerated rendering in Chrome 9. To take the feature for a spin, you can try out some of the WebGL demos at the Chrome Experiments website.

Mozilla

• Hello, this is Rob Helmer from the Mozilla WebDev team. I’m here to introduce a project we’ve been working on for the past few months: Perf-O-Matic 2.0

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• The LibreOffice 3.3 solution is available in more than 30 languages, and offers strong support for standards such as Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office Open XML, Open Document Format, and PDF. This open source software also enjoys the support of a large global community.

• The interface in the LibreOffice 3.3 is familiar to Microsoft Office, but is also easy to personalize according to tastes. It will work on the go, but does not offer as much as other platforms in terms of cloud, mobile and collaboration capabilities.

• Yesterday was a great day in for us – our first new partner for 2011 was announced. Many people in the UK and in the international Open Source Community will be familiar with Simon Phipps , and his new work with new company ForgeRock.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• We’ve added a new project to our High Priority Projects list: Writing free software drivers capable of 3D acceleration for the PowerVR engine.

• A year of the Hurd: 2010.

• Originally published in GNU Status Reports: January 2011.

• From Olaf Buddenhagen, Arne Babenhauserheide, Thomas Schwinge: Yeah, that’s quite right: the GNU Hurd project is still alive!

Government

• The UK Cabinet Office has appointed a new government-wide CIO and is on the hunt for a an ICT director to drive open source and open standards within the public sector.

Licensing

• Diaspora, the hottest new open source project, is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License or AGPL. So are two other new, popular cloud applications, RapidFTR and ownCloud. Add to that popular forges Launchpad and Gitorious. According to Black Duck data, the number of AGPL projects grew 74% in 2010. The numbers and profiles of AGPL-licensed projects are becoming significant. So what is this AGPL thing and what does it mean to you?

Standards/Consortia

• The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) identified an initial set of five standards that it sent for consideration by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Technical Conference (FERC) for adoption as part of its Smart Grid Interoperability Roadmap. However, panelists at the FERC Technical Conference held today reported unanimously that the standards are not ready for adoption by the Commission.

Leftovers

• A man with a low IQ has been banned from having sex by a High Court judge who admitted the case raised questions about “civil liberties and personal autonomy”.

• Steam-engined vehicles are quaint, retro and obsolete … right? Well, maybe not. The current land speed record for a steam-powered vehicle currently sits at 148 mph (238 km/h), set by the British car Inspiration team in 2009. Now, Chuk Williams’ U.S. Land Steam Record (USLSR) Team is hoping to steal that title in its LSR Streamliner, powered by a heat-regenerative external combustion Cyclone engine – an engine that could someday find common use in production automobiles.

Defence/Police/Aggression

• The New York based Center for Constitutional Rights, which has represented detainess in lawsuits seeking their release, reacted angrily to the death, blaming President Barack Obama for a policy that allows their continued detention there without charges.

• Former U.S. President George W. Bush, under fire from human rights group over allegations of ordering torture, has canceled a visit to Switzerland where he was to address a Jewish charity gala.

• Bush was to be the keynote speaker at Keren Hayesod’s annual dinner on February 12 in Geneva. But pressure has been building on the Swiss government to arrest him and open a criminal investigation if he enters the Alpine country.

• Embattled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, whose regime has received billions in U.S. aid, has been in the global media spotlight of late. He’s long been “our bastard,” but he’s not alone.

• Let’s take a look at the other dictators from around the planet who are fortunate enough to be on Uncle Sam’s good side.

• The events in Egypt cannot help but remind me of Portugal. Here, there, and everywhere, now and before, the United States of America, as always, is petrified of anything genuinely progressive or socialist, or even too democratic, for that carries the danger of allowing god-knows what kind of non-America-believer taking office. Honduras 2009, Haiti 2004, Venezuela 2002, Ecuador 2000, Bulgaria 1990, Nicaragua 1990 … dozens more … anything, anyone, if there’s a choice, even a dictator, a torturer, is better.

• Hacktivists from the online group Anonymous have turned their attention to Yemen as part of their battle for greater net freedoms.

• The website of President Ali Abdullah Saleh has become inaccessible as Yemenis stage anti-government protests.

• The plan seems to be to continue the protests until Mubarak departs.

Cablegate

• The true scale of the theft of overseas aid money by corrupt foreign regimes is disclosed in leaked documents obtained by The Daily Telegraph. Tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money has been pocketed by their ministers and officials, much of it used to buy luxury goods.

• One of the crown jewels of secret pre-Gulf War negotiations was unveiled tonight when the notorious Glaspie Memo, or as it is now known 90BAGHDAD4237, was released by WikiLeaks.

• The cable, whose official title was “Saddam’s Message of Friendship to President Bush” details the meeting between US Ambassador April Glaspie and Saddam Hussein on July 25, 1990, just a week before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

• The meeting has long been a matter of speculation, as it had long been speculated that comments by Glaspie had led Saddam to believe that the United States was giving them the green light to invade Kuwait if diplomacy failed.

• The memo reveals indeed Hussein expressing concern about the Bush Administration’s position on Iraq owing to its participation in military exercises with the United Arab Emirates and pledges to “defend its allies” in the region. He complained the US pledges were making Kuwait and the UAE refuse to negotiate with Iraq. He also expressed concern about negative media coverage in the US, which Ambassador Glaspie assured him did not reflect US policy and singled out a Diane Sawyer report on “nuclear bomb triggers” for condemnation.

• Rather Glaspie assured Saddam of Bush’s friendship and expressed support for the negotiations being set up by Hosni Mubarak for the weekend of July 28-30. She also explicitly said the United States took no position on the border dispute between Iraq and Kuwait, though the summary also mentions that she made clear the US wanted the move solved peacefully. Hussein assured that no action would be taken against Kuwait if the negotiations showed some progress, which seemed to suit the US at the time.

• But the talks didn’t accomplish anything and by August 2 Iraq was invading Kuwait. Within hours the mutual friendship was completely torn up and US officials were railing against Iraq. A few months later the US invaded for the first time, sparking invasions, decades of enmity, sanctions which killed massive numbers of Iraqi civilians and, eventually, a full US occupation which continues to this day.

• Secret documents show that British ministers arranged to meet their Libyan counterparts to give them advice on how Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi could be freed.

• The revelation appears to contradict the previous Labour government’s claims that it did not “interfere” in the proceedings, and that the decision to free the convicted terrorist was taken by the Scottish government alone.

Finance

• After umpteen calls for restraint by ministers, weighing the public relations impact, and consulting colleagues and advisers, Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond has made his most difficult decision. The multi-millionaire is set to accept a £9m bonus, one of the largest in the world, and will be followed by the bosses of the other major banks. This shows that they are all in something together, even if it’s not what the rest of us are in.

• Mr Diamond canvassed close City friends before deciding to take the bumper bonus which he fears will reignite the row over bankers pay. Sources close to him said: “Bob’s been in a real dilemma as he can’t stand this country’s culture of banker-bashing and finds our attitude to bonuses extraordinary. But he is also aware of public opinion, so sounded out people about whether he should turn down his bonus again for the third year, take less or give some to charity.”

Civil Rights

• More than a dozen Indian students from among hundreds who have been scammed by a dodgy university in California have been radio-tagged with tracking devices in an action New Delhi described as “unwarranted,” and asked to be removed even as angry community activists said it is a violation of their rights and dignity.

• Authorities from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who interrogated scores of Indian students who were evidently conned by the sham Tri-Valley University in Pleasanton, California, left radio-tracking devices on the ankles of several victims. The students said officials told them the devices, fitted with GPS technology, were meant to keep track of their movements while the administration examined their cases.

Internet/Net Neutrality/UBB

• After watching yesterdays sitting of the Industry Committee with the CRTC in the hot seat answering questions about the UBB debacle one can only conclude the the people charged with making these decisions about it are woefully inept at being able to do so.

• CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein told the Industry Committee that they were delaying implementation of UBB for 60 days so that they can once again review the situation after a large public outcry and requests for delay from two of the initial applicants for UBB itself, one of which being Bell Canada.

• When the government surprisingly listened to a public outcry this week and ordered the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to review its recent decision on Internet-billing issue, a lot of people were left wondering what just happened.

• Perhaps the primary concern I’ve heard expressed – and the most understandable on a human level – is that if we’re not vigilant, “bandwidth hogs,” a group of monstrous e-gluttons, will waste all of our precious Internet with their ravenous downloading, surfing and streaming of what we should all assume to be content of questionable taste.

• Just a couple of comments on the proposed CRTC cash-grab for Internet usage.

• First, I find it troubling that the media is constantly referring to this proposed metering of Internet usage as having “Internet users” up in arms. The use of the term Internet users like we are some kind of subset of society comparable to “smokers” is extremely deceiving. Everyone, today is an “Internet user.” From the telecommuter earning his or her living on the Internet, to the journalist confirming facts for a story, to the grandmother who uses Facebook to stay in touch. The Internet has become part of the fabric of all of our lives. Internet user is us.

DRM

• They very much want to find out the “identity of the Fail0verflow Defendants and third parties who are illegally distributing the circumvention devices” and try to connect them with Hotz. But I think I see some serious privacy issues associated with Sony’s requests, as I’ll show you.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• Jason Kilar, the chief executive of Hulu is heading for a showdown with News Corp, Walt Disney and NBC Universal, the media companies that own the online video site, after he criticised their traditional television business model.

• As record labels, digital music stores, and music subscription services continue their struggle to convince music fans to pay for music, Google’s YouTube — itself a major repository of recorded music — claims that giving away music for free generates as much money for copyright holders as charging for it, with profound implications for freemium digital music services such as Spotify and the much-rumored Google music service.

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