● 04.22.11

● Links 22/4/2011: Planning for GNOME 3.2

Posted in News Roundup at 5:25 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Canonical has taken the wraps off a morale-boosting deal that has seen German insurance giant LVM Versicherungen convert 10,000 PCs to use Ubuntu Linux across the company’s operations.

• [...]

• The official release made no mention of the operating system being displaced but Techworld understands these were running older versions of Windows in recent years.

• The new iteration of the classic computer won’t run Windows (although the company claims you’ll be able to install it if you so choose). Instead, the Commodore 64 runs a version of the Linux operating system on an Intel processor, and boasts 2GB of memory and a modern Blu-ray or rewritable DVD optical drive.

Audiocasts/Shows

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

• On April 20th, Nvidia launched version 270.41.06 of its graphics driver, which brought initial support for Xorg Server 1.10 and support for the upcoming Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) operating system.

Applications

• You encounter so many different video and audio formats both on your computer and on the Internet that you often need a software to convert media to make it compatible with your preferred software or hardware media players. The sheer amount of formats available sometimes makes this a difficulty process, considering that you need to find software that supports all the formats on your computer.

• Surprisingly, Linux doesn’t offer that many good IDE’s (Integrated Development Environments). I believe this is because back in the day most Linux programmers took out good old Notepad (or gedit in this case), and started coding from that.

• Many users are already familiar with the advantages that Screenlets can offer, so I decided to seek out which ones were essential to the productivity and aesthetics of any desktop. Screenlets are small community created Python applications that can add style and functionality to your Linux desktop. Screenlets are easy to use, easy to create, and there are hundreds available to download. After extensive testing I found this select bunch of Screenlets particularly useful, many are included by default. More information about Screenlets and coming updates can be found at the bottom of this post.

• Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is considered to be the fundamental protocol of the web. This simple request/response protocol is used for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. The web consumes a large portion of internet traffic.

• With HTTP, a client makes a request for a resource to a server, and the server delivers messages with additional content such as images, style sheets and JavaScripts. HTTP dictates how these messages are displayed and transmitted, and how web servers and browsers should respond to various commands.

Proprietary

• Coke or Pepsi? Kirk or Picard? Betty or Veronica? The great battles of the marketplace tend to be duels, and few people gripe if you leave out RC, Sisko, or Cheryl Blossom. The “Browser Wars” are no different, with “IE vs. Firefox” having replaced “Netscape vs. IE” long ago, and other options are often forgotten. Opera has been one of the strongest alternate browsers for a long time, and it was my browser of choice prior to Firefox. Opera 11 (free) continues the Opera tradition of doing something different instead of a minor reskin of someone else’s codebase, and delivers a plethora of features that are actually designed to be usable, not to pad out a checklist.

Instructionals/Technical

• I wanted to experience the thrill of browsing anonymously, or to a navigation system that does not easily reveal the information on the connection you use. The choice of which software to use is gone on Tor, but only because it is the most famous. Personally, I proceeded to download the latest version of TOR available for my GNU/Linux directly from its site.

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

• A few weeks ago, I upgraded to KDE 4.6.1 in Fedora 14 from KDE 4.5. The first login after reboot dumped me into Gnome. What the heck was going on? Apparently, in GDM, the entry had changed from KDE4 to KDE Plasma Desktop. Once I logged in that way, I was able to see the new KDE. The biggest change I saw was that notifications looked much nicer. It’s hard to quantify in what way they looked nicer, but something they changed about the appearance is makes it more appealing to my eyes. Also, the way it animates really helps a lot. For example, when two of my contacts sign into IM networks at the same time, the second notification is smaller so that my desktop is not overwhelmed with notifications. If I mouse over the second one, it grows and the first one shrinks.

• Plasma Active is an extremely awesome project and I am really looking forward to work on it and have my first own Plasma powered tablet. Of course KWin will be the Compositor and Window Manager in Plasma Active. And this is pretty awesome and very interesting for our future development.

• The Marble development team has released version 1.1 of the KDE Education Project’s virtual globe application, which is similar to Google’s Earth application. According to the developers, the update is special as a number of the new features were developed as part of Google Code-in (GCI), leading the developers to decide to “get it out between the usual KDE application releases” – KDE 4.6 includes Marble 1.0 by default.

• Marble 1.1 features the addition of a new map creation wizard that supports three different kinds of map themes; maps made from one large source image, maps which are accessible from tile servers like OpenStreetMap, Google Maps or Ovi Maps, or those accessible via Web Map Service (WMS) servers. However, the developers consider the map creation wizard to be a “technical preview”, noting that it version 1.2 of Marble will improve its usability and include “additional features that could not be introduced in Marble 1.1 while keeping the library binary compatible at the same time.”

• For four days, starting on Friday April 15th, about half a dozen souls gathered in the hive01 headquarters in Stuttgart. The goal of this very first ownCloud sprint was to discuss, plan and of course hack on the web services project.

• To kickoff we had a brainstorming session and discussion of the topics that were to be dealt with over the following days. We extensively debated fundamental things concerning the future directions of ownCloud.

GNOME Desktop

• It was a movement started by the KDE group around 3 years ago — radically redesigning how the Linux desktop looks. Since then, Ubuntu — the most popular flavor of Linux out there — latched on and announced it too will radically alter how the computer interface will look.

• Through all the retching changes, the ‘conservative’ linux user always had the predictable and most popular ‘skin’ of Linux — Gnome — to fall back on. It was the default on most flavors (distributions) of Linux — till this week.

Distributions

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

• Ms. Susan Linton described her impressions on the second beta release of Mandriva 2011 here. There are some additional comments here. Can you guess what the common denominator is? In my case, I don’t like the Rosa launcher, either. I’m also a bit sad because the netdrake seems to be gone, along with the desktop cube effect. However, I’d like to focus this entry on the new features…

Red Hat Family

• I’ll continue to work at Siemens IT Solutions and Services AG until approx. mid of June and start working at Red Hat at 1st of July.

Fedora

• The Fedora 15 beta from the Red-Hat sponsored Fedora Project has dropped squarely into a moment of uncertainty and upheaval for the Linux desktop.

• The planned new Unity interface for Ubuntu 11.04, that replaces GNOME, is rough start. And while GNOME 3 – Fedora’s new default desktop – is considerably more mature than Unity, it’s still a radical break with the past that’s already bringing out the dissenters.

• It’s enough to make even the most diehard of GNOME fans retreat to the stable, if somewhat foreign, world of KDE. But not Fedora. Fedora is bravely diving into the GNOME 3 waters, even serving as one of the GNOME 3 live demos. Indeed most users will likely get their first taste of GNOME 3 from Fedora, which looks to be the first major distro to ship a final release with GNOME 3.

Debian Family

• April is raining Ubuntu and its family and open source world seems over loaded on Debian distros, what with Canonical adopting a bi-annual release this month forwards. Debian and its derivatives appear to be the flavour of the month but there are far too many Linux distros that are apt for Summer.

• Let us look at three distros that are non-Debian Grandchildren. First is the Xange, a true blue blood Fedora with the elegance of KDE. Fusion Linux distro, which runs every application, meant for desktops without requiring new installations is a Fedora that retains its popularity rating for its high-compatibility capability. Third, fuddle around with the Fuduntu on your lappie or netbook and enjoy a summer of flashy, elegance and fuddly distros.

• Meike Reichle is a Debian developer since 2008 but has been involved for longer than that, in particular in Debian Women. She’s a great speaker and shared her experience in a Debconf talk.

• She’s also part of the Debian publicity team and managed the live coverage of the last release on identi.ca. Enough introduction, learn more about her by reading the interview. My questions are in bold, the rest is by Meike.

• [...]

• Debian press work is mainly about providing an official and coordinated point of contact to anyone wanting information from or about Debian. The press team answers all sorts of inquiries (the most popular one is is of course always the next release date) and makes sure all important events and developments within Debian receive the attention and recognition they deserve. Debian is a diverse project where every sort of contributor is free to voice his or her opinion in any way. We don’t have NDAs or prescribed terminology. That’s one of the things I love about Debian but also something that makes us difficult to handle for conventional media. They want official statements, in generally understandable terms, at appointed times. That’s what the press team takes care of. Almost all of the press work is done in the publicity team, which coordinates using IRC, Mail and SVN. The publicity team also publishes the Debian Project News, which are very popular among our users and developers. Press work is also an area of work that offers lots of possibilities for non-technical contribution. http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Publicity lists a number of possibilities for contribution and, like most Debian Teams, we’d be more than grateful to get some more helping hands and happy to introduce interested newcomers to our work.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• In a posting to the Sounder mailing list earlier today, Ubuntu Linux maker Canonical announced that the long running mailing list would be shuttered. The decision followed a recent heated political discussion on the list and a proposal to close the list the Community Council by Alan Pope.

• Even though the Sounder list might seem like an insignificant (and out of place) part of the community, I see this as yet another step that Canonical is taking against the very community that’s made Ubuntu so successful. With the debacle that is Ubuntu’s switch to Unity already polarizing users and driving many away and now the closing of a social list, it’s slowly becoming obvious that Canonical is taking a step away from the happy community project that could take over the desktop and taking one towards corporatism. The community, unless it tows the corporate line, doesn’t really matter to them anymore and that’s truly sad since it’s that very community that helped put the company where it is today.

• I have found myself explaining multiple times over the past few weeks how to get Ubuntu Natty with Unity working in Virtualbox virtual machines, there seems to be a common misconception that it doesn’t work (it does) and a common perception that it is not obvious how to do it (perfectly valid). So this is how. Firstly install a fairly new version of Oracle VirtualBox on your host operating system (I am using Ubuntu 10.10, I expect others including Windows would also work). The open source edition of Virtualbox might also work, but I am using the Oracle edition, not the OSE edition from the repositories.

• [...]

• Set up a new virtual machine, give it say a gig of ram and 32MB video ram

• Canonical has released details of the new version of its Linux-based Ubuntu operating system which has taken design inspirations from tablet and smartphone interfaces and brings the new Unity interface to all platforms.

• A big change in the server update is the addition of the Cactus distribution of OpenStack. The open-source cloud platform has been incorporated alongside Eucalyptus into the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC). The move, revealed alongside the release of OpenStack’s Bexar version in February, puts a rival to Eucalpytus into the heart of UEC.

Free Software/Open Source

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• You might think that Flock failed simply because the idea, or execution, wasn’t good enough. I’ve written about Flock a number of times since 2005, and it might be hard to remember now — but there was a time when a “social browser” seemed like it might be a good idea. Flock tried to simplify interacting with social tools like Flickr, del.icio.us, and WordPress. This was long before Facebook and Twitter, which helped speed Flock’s demise.

SaaS

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• I like the ReadWriteWeb spin a lot but of course Oracle disinvests. Apparently they also axed their upcoming Cloud Office offering. As a computer users I just want to use my word processor (with a nice interface) and LibreOffice suits me best. It all about choice after all. My colleague Charles-H. Schulz wrote on behalf of the document foundation:

• The development of TDF community and LibreOffice is going forward as planned, and we are always willing to include new members and partners. We will provide as many information as we can with the progress of the situation. We are currently making every possible effort to offer a smooth transition to the project.

• Red Hat can’t be serious. The leading Linux vendor can’t really be planning to develop a brand-new programming language and SDK to compete with Java — can it?

CMS

• Way back in September 2010 I launched the Design 4 Drupal Core (D4DC) project – the initial goal was to define a better process for adding new themes to Drupal core. This grew out of the Drupal 7 process which was essentially a code race between Bartik and Corolla. It was clear to me this process could be improved. In the commercial world we always select the design first (as opposed to an entire theme), so I started making the argument that any new core theme would have to be selected based on the design – then coded into theme.

Project Releases

• With today’s release of Firewall Builder V4.2, NetCitadel continues to demonstrate its leadership in the firewall configuration management market.

• Unlike many firewall analysis applications that only allow users to view and analyze firewall rules, Firewall Builder actually generates configuration files that can be loaded onto the firewall using the built-in installer. Even the most complex firewall rules are simple to configure in Firewall Builder letting organizations focus on their security policies instead of searching for commands.

Government

• A consortium of university computer science departments has warned Australia’s federal government that all future computerised voting systems should be made open source to ensure that no votes will be miscast.

Standards/Consortia

• The document as we know it — static and one-sided — has disappeared.

• Documents today are no longer stand-still and no longer offer only one view. The old model doesn’t work for today’s social and always-connected business. Business communication has evolved to become more fluid, dynamic and collaborative and is now an integral part of business processes. And the concept of a document (whether that be text, spreadsheet, presentation or a hybrid approach) is still one of the critical outputs of many businesses.

Leftovers

Copyrights

• Today, the registrar of our domain, a division of Go-Daddy, froze our domain name (imslp.org) due to a complaint issued by the Music Publisher’s Association of the UK, who made two assertions in their complaint:

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