● 05.31.11

● Links 31/5/2011: Pardus 2011.1, Openoffice.org Petition

Posted in News Roundup at 9:00 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Couple of days back, we reported that how a Fedora system running KDE SC4 was used for Animation production in BBC’s Doctor Who Series.

• Here is yet another instance where Linux systems are being used for production in entertainment industry. This time Rockstar games, who gave the world Grand Theft Auto series used Linux systems (OpenSUSE/SUSE Linux) in rendering real life facial expressions to the characters in their game L.A. Noire (released on May 17th). Again, KDE is used as the desktop environment. Though I am not able to identify which software (not seems to be native) is being run on the system.

• We all know that Richard Stallman has some very strong, serious and unconventional views on software freedom. Well, someone decided to ask him his view on dual booting Linux with Windows. His reply? “Defenestrate it.”

• Defen what? Well, I must also admit that I have never heard this word before. According to Wikipedia, “Defenestration is the act of throwing someone or something out of a window.”

Desktop Environments

GNOME Desktop

• Debates surrounding Linux desktop environments, especially the new Ubuntu Unity shell and the GNOME 3.0 Shell, tend to be very polarized. There also tends to be lots of trolling by users when such debates occur within our forums and elsewhere. But what do graphics driver developers — and those not out simply to rant — think of the new desktops? Well, Alex Deucher of AMD recently switched over to the GNOME Shell and he’s provided a list of issues he’s had with the experience thus far.

Distributions

New Releases

Red Hat Family

Fedora

• Ending out May, we have an interesting set of tests comparing the performance of Fedora 15 and Ubuntu 11.04. This is looking at the “out of the box” performance of both operating systems on three different systems. Not only is the actual test result looked at, but we also compared the power consumption of the two operating systems.

• [...]

• Overall, Ubuntu 11.04 has better disk performance than Fedora 15, but Fedora 15 has better graphics driver support and performance.

• This may turn out to be little more than a rumor, but Mark Terranova (aka markdude) posted that the Fedora Planet blog would soon be discontinued. This comes just a few weeks after the Fedora Talk service was retired.

• Red Hat stock has seen a lot of growth the last several years. It reached a recent high of nearly $49 a share in December 2010 and has remained in the 40′s all this year. It spent years floating around $20 for after rising respectably in 2005. It hit its lowest point since 2004 with the stock market crash of November 2008 trading at little over $9 a share. However, it’s been climbing fairly steadily since. The only worrisome spots came when players in higher management dumped large blocks of stocks a few times. All that to say Red Hat has done well for itself and isn’t exactly going broke.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Open source automotive infotainment development specialists, Pelagicore has adopted Canonical’s Ubuntu Core to build new embedded experiences based on broad architecture and open source technologies for in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems.

• Mobica is partnering with Canonical in the adoption of Ubuntu Core, a sub-set of Ubuntu technologies suited for the next generation of Internet-enabled embedded devices such as In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) systems, set top boxes, smart TV and digital devices for the home. Mobica, providers of high-end software development and integration services, is among a number of Canonical partners adopting Ubuntu Core to build new embedded experiences based on broad architecture and open source technologies.

• UBUNTU LINUX DISTRIBUTOR Canonical believes the Motorola Atrix is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to smartphones that are able to transform themselves into more traditional computing devices.

• The dual-core Atrix was launched in May and came equipped with the optional extra of a ‘Lapdock’ which, when used to dock the phone, could turn it into a regular netbook.

Flavours and Variants

• The live CD does not come with the proprietary codecs, however you can install them now from the link provided in the welcome screen and in the Linux Mint menu. You can otherwise upgrade to the DVD edition to have the codecs installed by default.

• Most distros (apart from chosen few who violate first type) satisfy both criteria. With small exception. There are too many things around us which are covered by non-free (of second type) license. Most famous examples are MP3 decoder and hardware firmware.

Free Software/Open Source

Web Browsers

• One of the early graphical web browser that got really popular was Mosaic, developed at National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Some folks from the team, along with SGI founder Jim Clark, decided that it’s worth a venture and formed a company, originally called Mosaic Communication and then later renamed to Netscape Communication.

• Remember when people used to argue about Internet Explorer versus Netscape? Seems like light-years ago, but that era was big enough for documentaries to be produced and books written about it. These days, IE’s market share is plummeting while Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari are all gaining ground fast. So the browser wars still exist, you just don’t hear much talk about it anymore.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• On April 15th, 2011, Oracle announced that OpenOffice.org, its free-license office suite, would become a community project. Since then, Oracle employees working on OpenOffice.org are in the process of being laid off, code contributions have stopped, and several mailing lists and their archives have ceased to be available. Effectively, after ten years of development, the OpenOffice.org project is dead.

• This situation is a major setback for free and open source software (FOSS). It means a loss of expertise and resources that will become increasingly difficult to reverse as time goes by, and weakens the efforts of the community to provide an alternative to the monopoly of Microsoft Office.

Education

• The consortium is moving away from a proprietary system, SirsiDynix’s Horizon Integrated Library System, to an open source software system dubbed BiblioOak and based on a framework called Evergreen.

Leftovers

DRM

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