● 07.24.11
● Links 24/7/2011: Acer Puts Linux on ARM Notebook, Apple Copies Linux-based OS
Posted in News Roundup at 5:25 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux
Desktop
- The – we suppose we have to say “smartbook”, the moniker once given to ARM-based netbooks but sadly much out of favour in these tablet-centric times – will run Android 3.2 Honeycomb, according to company chairman JT Wang, speaking this week in Asia, Digitimes reports.
- It’s rather obvious that GNU/Linux is not that other OS but people seem to feel an OS that is not that other OS is somehow faulty. He wrote that it took him a year to get his system working as he wanted. It took me installation time. I think I installed five machines from scratch in two evenings. It was my first installation and the machines were ancient Pentium Pros. In 2000, they were slow, but I did not notice any of the problems the authour felt were important:
- * NO CRASHES – Amen. We both loved that. That’s what drove me to GNU/Linux and it was like entering the Garden of Eden. This feature alone justified the bit of adjustment required and returned blessing many-fold. * graphics – mine worked immediately with two lines changed in X11F86.conf (or something like that). His was faulty on a newer motherboard. * fonts – that other OS was using 800×600. GNU/Linux could do 1024×768 if I recall. He thought the fonts were “ugly”. I have no idea what he meant. Mine were fine.
- It will be very interesting to see the Chrome browser and the Lion OS march forward together, partly because Lion incorporates a number of ideas built into Google’s Chrome OS, which features the Chrome browser as its desktop interface. We covered this mimicry effort from Apple, where Lion allows for Chrome OS-like cloud-based treatment of data and applications here.
- As Google officials noted when announcing Chrome OS: “In Chrome OS, every application is a web application. Users don’t have to install applications. All data in Chrome OS is in the cloud.”
Audiocasts/Shows
- IBM to contribute Symphony, we look at changes in Ubuntu 11.10, Zuckerberg closes off Google+ account so he can’t be tracked and Fab reviews the Motorola Xoom tablet.
Kernel Space
- As part of the HID (Human Interface Device) pull for the mainline 3.1 kernel is a Nintendo Wii Remote driver that makes it possible to use the Wiimote as an input device “out of the box” on future versions of Linux. There’s also been additions to the sysfs interface for setting and reading the four LED states of the Wiimote, which can be used for other purposes.
- After not being updated for a few mainline kernel release cycles, the real-time (RT) Linux kernel has been updated against the Linux 3.0 kernel release.
- Thomas Gleixner announced the Linux 3.0-rt1 kernel on the kernel mailing list yesterday, which integrates the RT patch-set atop the vanilla kernel.
Graphics Stack
- Nvidia 275.21 has been released. Version 275.21 adds support for GeForce 540M and also fixes a handful of problems.
Applications
- One thing I like about these open source program is that they don’t try to do everything. For example nowadays with Photoshop you can actually do pretty much all your design and illustration in there. But why is that? I personally prefer tools that does one thing, and one thing well. I guess that was the idea behind all the tools of the Adobe creative suite but the goal got lost in translation and now every tools try to do everything.
- The gimp is a great example of a tool that does what it does, and well! It’s a really solid image retouching and photo editing software. It a really mature open source project with a huge community of users and developer. It’s intelligently built and can be extended with Scheme or python script!
Instructionals/Technical
Wine
Games
- The game features 54 tracks in 8 sceneries, 7 cars and a Track Editor. It focuses on closed rally tracks with possible stunt elements (jumps, loops, pipes). The game and editor both run on Windows and Linux. The Windows installer has all tracks included.
- Currently our second ever (I think) game spotlight, I have decided to make a little post about Balanced Annihilation Reloaded.
Desktop Environments
- Ahead of the Berlin Desktop Summit, several GNOME and KDE developers have begun a mailing list battle…over a name. In particular, that with GNOME 3.0 their control panel areas is called “System Settings”, which is precisely what the KDE developers call their system control area too.
K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)
- While it is well known that I’m a huge Gnome (classic) fan, I recently dipped into KDE grounds, again.
Distributions
- Breakin is a distribution to run diagnostics on systems to find hardware issues or component failures. Put together by Advanced Clustering Technologies, Breakin is a Linux-based live CD that tests memory, the CPU, hard drives, (supported) temperature sensors, and looks for any Machine Check Exception (MCE) errors generated during the tests.
New Releases
- Today, we are going to release the 50th update of IPFire 2.9. Because of that fact, a more detailed report:
Red Hat Family
- Last week I found out some interesting information when I took an initial look at two of the most popular RHEL-based Linux distributions, CentOS and Scientific Linux (SL). The next obvious step is to install the two, side by side, and continue this comparison. To be clear, I’m not running benchmarks of any sort on the two operating systems. I have no doubt that they will perform consistently enough to make that exercise un-interesting. What I’m looking for is what makes these distributions different, and anything that would make me particularly like or dislike one of these distributions.
Debian Family
Derivatives
Canonical/Ubuntu
- Sergey “Shnatsel” Davidoff posted today that Alpha testing has just been revolutionized. Sounds exciting, huh? It really is. Glimpse allows users to test new or unstable updates without risk of breaking their current installs.
Free Software/Open Source
- I believe that if we want an open society based around principles of equality of opportunity, social justice and free expression, we need to build it on technologies which are themselves ‘open’, and that this is the only way to encourage a diverse online culture that allows all voices to be heard.
- But even if you agree with me, deciding what we mean by ‘open’ is far from straightforward:
- Does it mean an internet built around the end-to-end principle, where any connected computer can exchange data with any other computer and the network itself is unaware of the ‘meaning’ of the bits exchanged?
FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
- I’m happy to announce the succesful GNU Health Academia at the United Nations University, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, during the last week of June. Digg this article
Licensing
Leftovers
Intellectual Monopolies
Copyrights
Reader’s Picks
PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
- A steady stream of almost identical bills — bills to defund unions, require Photo ID’s make it harder for democratic constituencies to vote, bills to privatize schools and public assets, bills to enshrine corporate tax loopholes while crippling the government’s ability to raise revenue, bills to round up immigrants — were introduced and passed. An almost identical set of corporations benefited from these measures.
Censorship
Civil Rights
- This [Eisenhower and Kennedy administration] “Keynesian Consensus” never questioned the fairness of the initial capital/labor split, but it at least offered workers a share of the fruits of future economic growth. … The upward redistribution has remained as hidden as possible. The forms it has taken [bonuses, bloated salaries, stock options, consulting fees, sumptuous conferences, palatial offices, original artwork, retinues of superfluous support staff, hunting lodges, private corporate dining rooms, golden parachute retirements] – defy exact categorization. Some would appear as profit, some as interest, some as dividends, realized capital gains, gigantic pension programs, retained earnings, or owners’ income, with the remainder deeply buried as “costs of doing business.”
Intellectual Monopolies
- [IV] and the other patent trolls (and burnt-out companies like Microsoft that are becoming a new kind of patent troll by default) have realised that it is not actual, on-the-ground, expensive innovation that counts, but the piece of paper from the USPTO assigning nominal “ownership” of that innovation. He and his company have learned how to game the system
Copyrights
- “Aaron Swartz has been charged with many federal crimes for downloading many articles from JSTOR. The only wrongdoers here are JSTOR and the journals it hosts. They ought to make the articles available to the general public, with freedom to redistribute. And if they don’t do this voluntarily, society should impose it.”
- [Aaron's intentions are unclear] Some folks, including the FBI, have made the claim he was planning to redistribute the data. Others have pointed to his past research analyzing influence in academic writing. … There are many, many research applications, including mine, that are still not possible with approved means of accessing data. This essentially means that if you want to understand the collaborative nature of a specific field or follow the trajectory of and idea across disciplines, a reference librarian can’t help you. Instead, you have to become a felon.
- It is because of a wave of severe copyright enforcement legislation like ACTA, HADOPI, the Digital Economy Act, La Ley Sinde and the US PROTECT IP legislation that hackers are angry. Not just because the proposals are in themselves unjust and unfair, but because of the way that they are being brought in. … drawn up at secret meetings of key politicians and representatives of powerful industries.
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