● 04.11.11

● Links 11/4/2011: CentOS 5.6, Fedora 15 Beta RC1

Posted in News Roundup at 12:10 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

• For each episode, we provide the show in both mp3 and ogg audio formats, and we post extensive show notes. You can download any episode from the direct links below, or you can play it in your browser with a flash player. You can also receive the podcast automatically if you have software like iTunes, Amarok, Rhythmbox or gPodder.

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• April 10: #135 – Listener Feedback

Kernel Space

• The actual anniversary isn’t until August of this year, but heck, making noise about Linux throughout spring and summer doesn’t sound like a bad idea. So the Linux Foundation made this nifty little dry-erase animation…

• The Linux Foundation is kicking off a year long celebration of the 20th anniversary of Linux and they want all community members to participate. Here’s how: submit a video that demonstrates the impact of the operating system on computing, business and/or culture over the last 20 years, today or into the future. The videos will be judged by community rankings as well as celebrity judge, Linus Torvalds.

• In a way, Linux got its start before Linus ever sat down to start work on the kernel. Specifically, the foundation that made the kernel possible was kicked off in September of 1983 when Richard M. Stallman announced the GNU Project with the words “Free Unix!” to a Unix “wizards” newsgroup. The announcement may also have included the first recursive acronym (GNU’s Not Unix) and set off a bunch of confusion about what Stallman meant by free.

• PCI compliance is all about protecting your core servers, and you can’t be careful enough when you go about this. Protecting your servers is all about guarding key components from the rest of your online systems, and most important of all, perhaps, is isolating the server that you use for crucial credit card data from the rest of the systems on your network. This is really the heart and soul of PCI compliance. Now I’m sure that the team you have in charge of security and PCI compliance has set up a Linux based system for your core servers. However, it’s very unlikely that every system on your network uses Linux. Under such circumstances, every system that does not use Linux is a potential threat to the security of your network and to integrity of your PCI compliance.

Applications

• Who says good software has to be expensive … or cost money at all? This week on Upgrade Your Life, Yahoo! News’ Becky Worley shows how to save hundreds of dollars, with free alternatives to pricey PC and Mac software packages.

• Recently, I setup a bootable Linux USB key, to act as a portable OS. On the laptop I’m using as my test machine, boot to USB is unavailable in the BIOS. I was happy to find “Plop Boot Manager,” it is a great program that allows me to boot my test machine (an old Dell laptop) from my Linux USB key. The following is from the Plop web site:

• “The Plop Boot Manager is a small program to boot different operating systems. The boot manager has a builtin ide cdrom and usb driver to access those hardware without the help/need of a bios. You can boot the operating systems from harddisk, floppy, CD/DVD or from USB. You can start the boot manager from floppy, CD, network and there are many more ways to start the boot manager. You can install the boot manager on your harddisk. There is no extra partition required for the boot manager.”

• The importance of security should never be underestimated. The consequences of losing data can be disastrous for any organisation. For example, the loss of a single unencrypted laptop may have huge repercussions. This could include breaching data protection legislation with the risk of a significant fine, a loss in the confidence of an organisation, as well as the risk that sensitive data may fall into the hands of a competitor or third party with malicious intent.

• Test it out in a terminal to make sure it works OK. Please note that it will take a wee while to launch if the VM isn’t already running. Once it’s running, it will launch immediately. Once it’s working OK, you can create a launcher in your favourite dock or launching app. I won’t be able to explain how to do that for the countless number of launchers out there. But almost all have a field to put in the command to be run when you click the launcher icon. Put the above command (customised for your situation of course) in that “command” field.

Proprietary

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• Project Bossanova has high hopes to develop “the first 3D game built especially with Linux as the first priority. It will set the standard in gameplay, graphics, compatibility, community integration and more.” In addition, they plan to have the game, now announced as RunServer’s MMT, to be open-source. This is an MMOPRG game and it’s being built using the Unigine Engine.

• Project Bossanova itself is not a game but they’re simply trying to focus on and sponsor a game who’s primary focus is on Linux support. The game they chose is RunServer’s MMT, which was first shown off at the Game Developers’ Conference 2009 in Moscow. It’s built using our favorite game engine, the Unigine Engine. RunServer also integrates their own middle-ware code.

• This game is about exploring the consequences of being able to move in four spatial dimensions. It plays like a regular three-dimensional platformer, but at the press of a button one of the dimensions is exchanged with the fourth dimension, allowing for four-dimensional movement.

• Think about a two-dimensional character living on a horizontal, flat two-dimensional plane. To this character, height would be a foreign concept. A number of actions we three-dimensional beings take for granted feel like absolute magic to this two-dimensional character.

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

• Both Sebastian and Marco have now blogged about Plasma Active, and we’re working on getting more presentable information on what we’re working towards put together.

• In a nutshell, Plasma Active is about getting the KDE Platform with Plasma providing a compelling user interface ready for and available on hardware devices outside the usual laptop and desktop form factors. While we continue to do a pretty good job on our traditional turf, we have work ahead of us if we wish to realize the dream of covering as much of the device spectrum as possible.

• The KDE team has just announced on April 6th the second maintenance release for KDE Software Compilation 4.6. This is a minor update, focusing on bug fixing and translation updates.

• KDE Software Compilation 4.6.2 is the second in a series of monthly bug fixing releases to the KDE Software Compilation 4.6 series and it brings various translation updates and improvements. Everyone should update their existing KDE SC machines running version 4.6.1 or earlier (see a short tutorial below).

• Face recognition has been one of the most requested digiKam features, and the latest version of the photo management application provides this functionality.

• As the name suggests, the face recognition functionality can be used to find photos containing faces and attach face tags to persons in photos. This lets you quickly locate all photos of a specific person using digiKam filtering capabilities.

GNOME Desktop

• Released just a few days ago, GNOME 3 is the latest major version of the GNOME desktop environment. If you are currently running a GNOME-based Linux or BSD distribution, you are probably using version 2.30 or 2.32, but that should change in the upcoming release cycle when many of the distributions will be shipping with GNOME 3 as the default. So while we wait, this article will attempt to give you an idea of what to expect. Rather than discuss the difference between old and new GNOME from the development angle, the article presents information from a lay user’s perspective. Can I find my away around the new desktop without consulting a manual or documentation?

• Following the release of GNOME 3.0, the world has been celebrating GNOME 3 here and there starting from April 6th: 141 registered GNOME 3 release parties spreading over 47 countries according to this wiki page. Being on the GNOME.Asia committee for 4 years already, I am happy to see that 43% (61 parties) of the release parties are from Asia (in 15 countries), India actually organizing the most (20% i.e. 29 parties in total), followed by Greater China (9% i.e. 12 parties in total). That makes me feel that all those efforts and time spent on GNOME.Asia are starting to bear fruit.

Distributions

• slackToday we have a guest article By: Guillermo Garron from Go2linux, i really like his site so if you don’t know it i really suggest you to go and ckeck it.

• Linux-based distributions like Fedora, Ubuntu, and openSUSE have completely revolutionized the traditional desktop. However, there are some distributions that don’t quite match the standards that these Distrowatch-toppers have set. Here’s a look at 3 such Linux distributions, that you’ll never want to try.

New Releases

Red Hat Family

• We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of CentOS-5.6 for i386 and x86_64 Architectures.

• CentOS-5.6 is based on the upstream release EL 5.6 and includes packages from all variants including Server and Client. All upstream repositories have been combined into one, to make it easier for end users to work with.

• I recently wrote about Linux distributive which was derived from Red Hat once Red Hat became commercial. But Fedora is not the only derivative in there! As long as Red Hat is still open source software, anyone can use their source code for own purposes. That’s the way how CentOS was born.

Fedora

Debian Family

• Do I have bad karma to run Debian? I have 6 posts about Debian so far, and only one of them relates to full success, where I was able to run a full-power Debian on my laptop. Maybe I myself and Debian are just creatures of different worlds and we cannot live together?

• Do I have bad karma to run Debian? I have 6 posts about Debian so far, and only one of them relates to full success, where I was able to run a full-power Debian on my laptop. Maybe I myself and Debian are just creatures of different worlds and we cannot live together?

Canonical/Ubuntu

• The ubuntu desktop never stops to amuse and never stops to innovate. The ubuntu unity packs in with load full of features and one never stops to wonder how much thought have been gone into come up with all those ideas, if only some efforts was also put into the planning and implementation of those nice ideas. Many times I felt that the developers are are so immersed with developing features that they fail to step back and think how to go about the implementation and thus fail to attain the best possible implementation of those features. Instead of as a feature many of these innovations appear to be as an annoyance or a bug.

• Finally one Canonical employee and community member ‘Jorge Castro’ replied well to the above Unity usability myth. He also made a screencast of his desktop running Natty to demo how Unity will do multitasking well.

• Meanwhile Ubuntu fans have created another Ubuntu derivative. Unlike other Ubuntu based distros which are painted with some other theme flavor, this one sports the DE most of the community wants. It is an unofficial Ubuntu derivative which is going to ship with the stock Gnome 3.0. So, users now have the choice to use the official Unity Ubuntu or unofficial Gnome 3 Ubuntu.

• Have an idea for a great Linux application that’s missing from the 30,000+ downloads in the Ubuntu repositories? Or just interested in learning some programming pointers? If you answered yes, the latest and greatest Ubuntu App Developer Week, which starts Monday, April 11, 2011, is for you. Keep reading for details…

• Ubuntu App Developer Week, will take place in online in the #ubuntu-classroom and #ubuntu-classroom-chat IRC channels on April 11-15, 2011 from 16:00 to 21:00 UTC each day.

• David Planella of the Ubuntu Community Team at Canonical says “Our goal is to give all attendees a taste of the wide variety of tools on the Ubuntu platform that can be used to create awesome applications, and to showcase some applications that have been created and explain how they were put together.”

Flavours and Variants

• It’s been awhile since I had the time to install another distribution and really put it through it’s paces enough to write a full review of it. After crying wolf about a lack of information on the Elementary OS website, I felt I owed it to their team to give the disc a (free) download and put their OS through it’s paces.

• Just over 2 weeks ago, I wrote about how Linux Mint is moving the Xfce edition to a Debian base. Well, a few days ago, they released the official Linux Mint Xfce 201104. For those of you who didn’t read that post, in short, Linux Mint Xfce is now Debian-based instead of Ubuntu-based. The developers had a few things to say about this: (1) the desktop will be faster and lighter on resources (114 MB of RAM at idle, 177 MB of RAM with Mozilla Firefox, LibreOffice Writer, and LibreOffice Calc open all at the same time), (2) the Xfce edition will now include more mainstream applications like Rhythmbox instead of Exaile, and (3) the Xfce edition, being based on Debian Testing, will be a rolling-release branch. All these things sounded very exciting to me, so I decided to try it out.

Devices/Embedded

• Following several months of use, and one major firmware update, DeviceGuru is now ready to relate our experience with using the D-Link Boxee Box. Despite seeming a bit more like a late-stage beta than a fully-released product, the device has gradually taken over command and control of our non-DVD TV watching experience.

Phones

Android

• It was only a matter of time before AMD followed Nvidia’s lead and finally jumped onto the Android bandwagon, as the company is now recruiting engineers to create chipset drivers for Android. According to unnamed sources, the nation’s second largest CPU manufacturer is now looking to offer notebook and tablet partners chipset solutions supporting Google’s popular mobile platform.

Free Software/Open Source

Events

• The 5th annual Linux Collaboration Summit is happening this week in San Francisco. This summit gathers core kernel developers, distribution maintainers, ISVs, end users, system vendors and other community organizations for plenary sessions and workgroup meetings to meet face-to-face to tackle and solve the most pressing issues facing Linux today.

• The Linux Foundation kicked off the 5th Annual Linux Collaboration Summit with four announcements: the formation of the new High Availability working group, the release of the Carrier Grade Linux 5.0 specification, Yocto Project Release 1.0 availability, and the 20th Anniversary Video Contest.

Databases

• Nearly three years ago, when open source hacker Brian Aker created a fork of MySQL it did not look like anything that was much needed – at the time Sun owned MySQL and the popular database software looked to have a bright future.

CMS

• As (Free/Open Souce Software) user generated news website continues to gain ever increasing authority in political circles, the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has entered his views on the Alternative Vote pre-referendum poll on http://www.blottr.com, and put forward his position for readers.

Project Releases

• After nearly three years of development the fourth generation of the Horde open source e-mail and groupware suite was released this week bringing with it a more modern code base and social networking features.

• The core of Horde includes the Horde Application Framework, and PHP Web application framework that is used to develop the family of groupware applications for messaging, time keeping and contact management, among others.

• Horde 4 makes more use of the PHP Extension and Application Repository and installing and updating Horde apps has been simplified with its own PEAR server.

Openness/Sharing

Open Hardware

• ARM and its licensees are striving to expand their overall market presence by tackling Intel’s x86 in servers and client desktop and laptop computers. Intel has responded by attacking ARM on its own turf: handsets, tablets, and the like.

Programming

• Today, we’re going to learn how to write a script that you can run from the command line that will actually do stuff. It’s a very simple script, so don’t expect anything spectacular. I was wondering what I could use as an example script for this lesson when I remembered a question someone at LinuxQuestions.org asked the other day about how to tell which users are currently logged into a Linux system. Let’s make a little script to give us that information.

Leftovers

Defence/Police/Aggression

• Almost anyone who wants to come to the U.S. — either as a visitor or a resident — has to physically visit a U.S. consulate in their country of origin to apply for a visa and undergo an interview by an Embassy officer. In Mexico, those applying for U.S residency can only do so at one location: the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juárez — where over 3,000 people were killed in 2010 alone.

Finance

• Ian McGugan has a good review of Bill Cohan’s huge new book on Goldman Sachs which includes an intriguing quote about how Bob Rubin “encouraged a culture of undisciplined risk taking” — something which goes directly against the reputation he’s spent many years cultivating. It comes from Chapter 15, which starts in the dangerous year of 1994 and which is full of juicy gossip about the very human frailties of the people running Goldman.

• There’s something endearing about Lloyd Blankfein. Born in the Bronx in 1954 and reared in a Brooklyn public-housing project, he hawked hot dogs at ­Yankee Stadium, dodged gangs, studied hard and didn’t know much about how the other half lived. “I always thought that a prep school was what some people went to after high school to prepare themselves for ­college,” he later said. At Harvard, he was “shunned” by the social clubs, worked in the cafeteria, watched “Star Trek” and hit the books. He went on to Harvard Law School, smoked too much, got fat, got married and got a job.

• More than three decades later, through dint of hard work and shrewd judgment, Mr. Blankfein is at the helm of Goldman Sachs, the most powerful bank on what’s left of Wall Street—a position that has made him a wealthy man. In any normal ­estimation, his story would be something to ­emulate, even ­celebrate.

• The Good: Wide access to associates and ex-employees; Cohan offers the most human portrayal of the firm yet.

• The Bad: For all Cohan’s research, no surprise explanation of how Goldman makes so much money year after year

• The Bottom Line: Goldman Sachs may be only slightly smarter and faster than rivals, but that may be all that matters.

• As more and more Americans face mortgage foreclosure, banks’ crucial ownership documents for the properties are often unclear and are sometimes even bogus, a condition that’s causing lawsuits and hampering an already weak housing market. Scott Pelley reports.

• Wall Street has always been a dangerous place. Firms have been going in and out of business ever since speculators first gathered under a buttonwood tree near the southern tip of Manhattan in the late 18th century.

• Despite the ongoing risks, during great swaths of its mostly charmed 142 years, Goldman Sachs has been both envied and feared for having the best talent, the best clients and the best political connections, and for its ability to alchemise them into extreme profitability and market prowess.

Privacy

• The latest craze in hiring an IT person is by a prospective employer looking at an applicants Facebook or LinkedIn page. Lovely idea to get the feel of how a person is socially but for the most part is a failure when you’re in search of a specialist for your network. The same is true for an Audio Technician, or any other “geek” type job.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

ACTA

• India will not accept any attempt made by groups of countries to discuss intellectual property rights outside the multilateral forum of the world trade organisation, commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma has said.

• Responding to questions on India’s position on the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a new intellectual property treaty being framed by a group of developed nations, the minister said a few countries cannot get together and try to change what is and will always be a multilateral regime called the TRIPS agreement.

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