● 09.07.11

● Links 7/9/2011: Linux World Domination, China Picks IBM’s GNU/Linux Mainframe

Posted in News Roundup at 4:12 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• In essence all Linux systems are the same. They all have the same tools, they all pretty much have the same desktops and they all can be configured, adjusted, tweeked or modified to look and operate in just about any manner. The only real difference is the ease of which this can be done.

• It was circa 1999 (and we were partying like it was). I was new to the whole tech-reporting gig, but not so new to Linux. I, along with every early adopter, thought, nay KNEW, Linux was bound for world domination. It wasn’t a matter of if it was a matter of when. Even though, in the early days, the fledgling operating system struggled with hardware support and couldn’t seem to keep pace with the competition. Even with its faults, we all still knew it was destined for greatness on a level no proprietary system could ever dream of.

• Here are three reasons to use Linux for your home use:

• Arch Linux is great. I can run Ubuntu but I rather keep that in my Macbook Pro where I can run it inside of VirtualBox.

• Leading recruitment specialists, GCS, have moved their GRIP Recruitment Software infrastructure from a Microsoft Windows Server to a Linux Server platform to enable greater performance, flexibility and cost savings.

Server

• NSA’s label-based approach to security resembles another open source project NSA developed and released in 2000, called Security Enhanced Linux (SE Linux). With SE Linux, administrators can create policies that dictate, in fine-grained detail, what actions each program on a computer can execute. Red Hat has integrated SE Linux into its Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution.

Audiocasts/Shows

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

• There is less than one week to go until the 2011 X.Org Developers’ Conference begins in Chicago, United States. The tentative schedule has been published on the X.Org Wiki. Among the topics to be discussed are the Nouveau driver, GPGPU computing, OpenGL 3.0 support, the Low-Level Virtual Machine within Mesa, and much more.

• In preparing for XDC2011 Chicago, the X.Org developers’ summit that begins in just ten days that I have organized, the schedule is being worked out at the moment. One of the items that is set to be talked about at XDC2011 during the Nouveau driver discussion is TimeGraph. This is an open-source GPU command scheduler that sounds fairly interesting.

• Next week at XDC2011 Chicago there will be a rather unique discussion taking place that’s quite different from what normally goes on at this annual X.Org Developers’ Conference. There is going to be a moderated panel discussion (tentatively titled “Contributing to X.Org and Open-Source”) about contributing to X.Org, the Linux kernel, Mesa, and open-source software in general. For those not residents of the Chicago area, this session will be broadcast on the Internet.

Applications

• There was a time when I, like many, covered my Linux desktop in all manner of Screenlets, gDesklets and widgets. I grew out of this, but ‘PlexyDesk‘ – a new widget-toting project, may just light those creative fires on my desktop once more…

• One popular question many new programmers such as myself, and old programmers a-like have, is what IDE should I use? The result is of course a different recommendation from different people as you would expect. You often will hear some of the following: “Netbeans, Eclipse etc…”

• Different Linux distros build in favorite cleaning products. For instance, Ubuntu has Computer Janitor. CentOS, Fedora and Red Hat Linux use Yum Clean to remove cached package data. But BleachBit goes beyond such distro-specific cleaning services to accomplish a more complete spit-and-polish session to Linux’s file structure in any distro.

• Linux is a superior audio production platform, and one of its shining stars is the Hydrogen Drum Machine. Hydrogen is an advanced software drum synthesizer that is easy to learn, and yet packed full of great features.

• The worlds of open source and freeware both include many outstanding applications for working with graphics and photos. These include standard fare such as image editors, but it’s also worth looking into more unusual graphics tools that you can work with for free. Whether you want to produce splashy graphical documents, enhance graphics on a blog or web site, create eye-catching logos, or more, check out this collection of five great, free graphics apps.

Instructionals/Technical

Wine/Windows/OnLive

• Nearly every day I hear about people who express interest in taking the leap into the Linux space. What would-be Linux users fail to realize is that there’s software that makes switching between the Linux and Windows worlds almost effortless.

• So in the interest of sharing this knowledge, I’ve put together this article to share different applications and technologies that can be helpful to blur the lines between the two platforms.

• We’ve been sitting on this a few days, and have put its author through extensive testing and re-writes in order to bring this to you. We’re fairly certain that the following instructions brought to you by OnLiveInformer community member: Dephyre will really excite those of you who have an affection for penguins.

Games

• Nemesys, a game studio run out of Budapest, is porting their game titles to Linux. The studio’s current titles include Fortix 2, A.C.S, and Ignite. Nemesys Ignite, in particular, is a very promising racing game that will surely roar things up for Linux.

• Nemesys is not to be confused with Namesys, the former company of Hans Reiser that developed the ReiserFS and Reiser4 file-systems.

Desktop Environments

• Twice a year, the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch host secretive retreats for an exclusive list of corporate America’s rich and powerful to strategize and raise money for their right-wing political agenda. Mother Jones has obtained exclusive audio recordings that shed some light on the brothers’ latest retreat, held at a resort near Vail, Colorado, in late June.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

• When the Apache Software Foundation was born back in 1999, its sole purpose was to support the development of the Apache HTTP server. One foundation, one project, more or less like the KDE eV and KDE until very recently.

• It looks like with Qt 5.0, V8 will become the JavaScript Engine for the Qt tool-kit as well as for Qt Script and Qt Quick.

Distributions

• If you’re a regular Linux User reader – and if you’re not, you should correct that forthwith – you’ll be familiar with Parted Magic as one of the utilities we include on our cover disc each month. The chances are good that you’ve never actually tried it, however – and if that’s the case, you’re missing a real treat.

New Releases

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• We have already posted some time ago about Nice Ubuntu themes for Maverick Users and this is updated for Natty users now.

• In case you are still not aware, Canonical (the team behind Ubuntu) has released the first beta of Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric. There are several new additions to the family, notably the revamp of the Ubuntu Software Center and the replacement of the Evolution with Thunderbird. Follow us for the full review and screenshots tour of the Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Beta 1.

• While the first beta of 11.10, called Oneiric Ocelot, is also a little rough at the edges and features some curious design decisions, the version of Unity here is more stable and it is faster than the version that shipped with 11.04. In other words, Unity is making progress, albeit slower than many would like.

• Seems Jono Bacon just can’t understand why users are still complaining about the drastic changes that came with Ubuntu 11.04 and the Unity desktop. He begins by stating emphatically that he’s no interface designer, but the problem isn’t the overall design so much. The issue for The Distro for Human Beings is that it actually doesn’t understand human beings.

Flavours and Variants

• While Mandriva decided to simplify their offering by keeping only the KDE version alive in the latest release, the Ubuntu family has officialy grown yet again. LXDE – Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment – is here to rescue old computers through Lubuntu. My aging Evo n800c Compaq laptop was craving for some attention and what better way to make its wish come true other than starring it in a Distro Hoppin` episode?

Devices/Embedded

Phones

• Rumor has it that Samsung is planning to buy Nokia’s MeeGo operating system, a week after Intel reportedly said it would back off development of the platform.

• Citing anonymous sources, German blog NetbookNews reported that Samsung was looking to buy the Linux-based, open source OS, which Nokia and Intel co-launched in February 2010.

Android

• At Baidu World 2011, Baidu, the company behind China’s largest search engine, has announced that it will produce its own fork of the Android 2.x open source mobile operating system. The new Baidu Yi (Chinese language) mobile application system is expected as early as November on a range of mobile phones and tablets that Baidu will develop with hardware vendor Dell, according to a report from Reuters.

• Yes, Android has a forking problem. Google forked its mobile, open-source operating system into two versions: Android 2.x for smartphones and Android 3.x for tablets earlier this year. It also doesn’t help Android any that there are so many different supported versions out in the market. But, what Amazon and Baidu are doing with their forthcoming tablets has nothing to do with forking Android.

• Amazon’s Android tablet is a seven-inch, Kindle-branded device that will feature a customized operating system and sell for $250, according to a TechCrunch reporter who claims to have spent an hour with the device. In other Android tablet news, Samsung pulled its freshly announced Galaxy Tab 7.7 from the IFA show in Berlin after Apple won a preliminary injunction against the tablet from a German court.

• Acer subsidiary Gateway has begun shipping a rebranded “A60″ version of Acer’s 10.1-inch Iconia Tab A500 Honeycomb tablet. Meanwhile Vodafone announced Smart Tab 7 and Smart Tab 10 Android 3.2 tablets, and Medion unveiled both a Lifetab P9514 10.1-inch Honeycomb tablet and an unnamed 4.3-inch Android smartphone.

• BGR has obtained photographs of the still-unannounced HTC Holiday Android phone, which may be AT&T’s first 4G LTE-enabled smartphone.

• VIZIO has announced a software update for their 8-inch VTAB1008 tablet today which includes improvements to battery life, overall speed, and universal remote compatibility. According to the press release, the update enables faster scrolling and UI gestures and improved graphics performance and comes quickly on the heels of the Hulu Plus announcement.

Free Software/Open Source

• We’re happy to announce a new open source resources section. To kick things off, we’ve added pages that highlight open source conferences and events, organizations, and projects and applications. It’s not much, but it’s a start. We have lots of ideas, and want to make this more robust and improve functionality. But for now, let’s see if this idea catches on.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• New versions of Firefox (6.0.2 and 3.6.22) and Thunderbird (6.0.2, 7.0 beta, and 3.1.14) are out. These releases remove trust exceptions for certificates issued by Staat der Nederlanden.

SaaS

• In February 2011, Eben Moglen gave a landmark speech to the Internet Society titled “Freedom in the Cloud”, in which he unpacked the problem. In the beginning, he said, the Internet was designed as “a network of peers without any intrinsic need for hierarchical or structural control, and assuming that every switch in the Net is an independent, free-standing entity whose volition is equivalent to the volition of the human beings who want to control it”.

Databases

• NoSQL is the talk of the town. And we have already covered what it is for in one of our previous blogs. Today I would like to share the NoSQL benchmark test results we have recently conducted. It will help you to understand if the soon to develop system is compatible to NoSQL, and which NoSQL product to select.

• In this article we will reveal the characteristics of Cassandra, HBase and MongoDB identified through multiple workloads.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Not being stopped by that knowledge, LibreOffice developers take a strong bite deep in the code base for improvements now and even better future LibreOffice development. I’m not only impressed, but also get more and more confident in the future of this project.

CMS

• Static sites have better performance than dynamic sites, but you lose a lot of features by giving up a content management system (CMS), right? Maybe not, if you have a framework like Octopress.

• Last week I looked at static sites and cloud services, but even Todd Hoff’s excellent coverage put me off a bit. Then I ran into the Octopress 2.0 announcement.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• The people and companies … who disregard the Internet “don’t be a dick” rule … need more incentive to comply. However, even they don’t lose the right to use the code permanently unless they decide to “be a dick” permanently. In those cases, it doesn’t matter how many copies of the code they get — each new license for each new copy would be terminated as soon as they attempted distribution outside the terms of the license.

Public Services/Government

• The Swiss Parliament’s control committee for the Federal Court is allowing the publication as open source software of Open Justitia, a document management system developed in-house by the court. The software will be made available under the GPLv3 licence soon.

• “There is a need for a flexible, high performance distributed key/value store that provides expressive, fine-grained access labels,” the developers stated on the proposal page submitted to Apache. “We have made much progress in developing this project over the past [three] years and believe both the project and the interested communities would benefit from this work being openly available and having open development.”

• Last week in New Zealand, the Ministers of Finance and Internal Affairs adopted a statement detailing a new Declaration on Open and Transparent Government. The Declaration has been approved by Cabinet, and directs all Public Service departments, the New Zealand Police, the New Zealand Defence Force, the Parliamentary Counsel Office, and the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service; encourages other State Services agencies; and invites State Sector agencies to commit to releasing high value public data actively for re-use, in accordance with the Declaration and Principles, and in accordance with the NZGOAL Review and Release process. More information on this statement can be found at the CC Aotearoa New Zealand blog.

• This article summarizes when the U.S. federal government or its contractors may publicly release, as open source software (OSS), software developed with government funds. This section is intended for non-lawyers, to help them understand the basic rules they must follow.

• This article was previously published in the Journal of Software Technology (aka Software Tech News), Vol.14, No.1, February 2011. It is part of “Open Technology Development (OTD): Lessons Learned and Best Practices for Military Software”, and thus is released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 (CC-BY-SA) License. A one-page summary of this paper is available from MIL-OSS, and the MIL-OSS 2011 conference had a presentation on releasing OSS.

Programming

Standards/Consortia

• Tim Berners-Lee, to his credit, did not invent the Internet. He did have one good idea. He was not the first person or even the twelfth with the same idea, but he did make it work. Yet most of the underlying work – the bringing together of dozens of communications systems with slightly or wildly varying protocols – was done before him. He just plugged it in, and for that, he gets most of the credit.

Leftovers

Security

Cablegate

• Negotiations over the natural gas deal between Egypt and Israel dragged out over 10 years because of “political concerns in Egypt,” a recently revealed Wikileaks cable said.

• A partial extract from cable number 05CAIRO4972 of a confidential document prepared by the US embassy in Cairo one day before the deal was signed said the US described the deal as “the most lucrative ever.”

• On July 1, 2005, then Egyptian Petroleum Minister Sameh Fahmy and Israeli Minister of National Infrastructure Benjamin Ben-Eliezer signed the agreement to supply 1.7 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually to the Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) starting October 2006.

• In online discussions attributed to PFC Bradley Manning, he says that he hopes his actions will spur “discussion, debates, and reforms” and that he “want[s] people to know the truth, no matter who they are, because without information you cannot make informed decisions as a public.” This is the classic definition of a whistle-blower (a person who tells the public about alleged dishonest or illegal activities/misconduct occurring in a government department).

• Unfortunately, the government is charging PFC Bradley Manning with “knowingly [giving] intelligence to the enemy, through indirect means,” under Article 104 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice — an allegation of treason and a capital offense. By this rational, scores of service-person-posted blogs, photos, and videos, would now be punishable by death—simply because they are accessible on the Internet. The charge against Bradley Manning appears to be about sending a message to other would-be whistle-blowers.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Wik­ileaks has its share of crit­ics – the or­gan­i­sa­tion is too cen­tred around Ju­lian As­sange and a per­son­al­ity-type cult ex­ists – but surely the vast bulk of in­for­ma­tion the group has re­leased since 2006 makes it a major force for good (not least be­cause it’s forced gov­ern­ments and many jour­nal­ists on the de­fen­sive about their in­sider tac­tics)…

• Dave the dolphin whistles, and his friend Alan whistles back. We can’t yet decipher their calls, but some of the time Dave may be calling: “Alan! Alan! Alan! Alan!”

• Stephanie King of the University of St Andrews, UK, and colleagues monitored 179 pairs of wild bottlenose dolphins off the Florida coast between 1988 and 2004. Of these, 10 were seen copying each other’s signature whistles, which the dolphins make to identify themselves to each other.

• Even by Romanian standards, the plot beggars belief. A hot-blooded young seductress masquerading as a journalist is order- ed by her masters in the Romanian Intelligence Service to lure the Swiss ambassador into bed.

• Once there, her task is to find out anything and everything she can about “Ceausescu’s Gold” – the millions of dollars Romania’s late dictator is believed to have stashed away in Swiss bank accounts just before his fall.

• Afternoons of passion in the Bucharest penthouse she would persuade him to buy her were to be followed by gentle probing as to the real intentions of ex-King Michael, the former Romanian monarch now exiled in the ambassador’s Swiss homeland.

• And far from keeping the affair discreet, the agent is to make sure that she and her consort – a married man with two children – are frequently seen together wining and dining in public and at diplomatic functions. Just for good measure, the exercise will be called “Operation William Tell”.

Finance

• The New York Department of Financial Services and Banking Department is including several stipulations with its approval of Goldman Sachs’ sale of its Litton Loan Servicing, LP, to special servicer Ocwen Financial Corp.

• ON A BRIGHT SPRING DAY in a wisteria-bedecked courtyard full of earnest, if half-drunk, conference attendees, we were commiserating with a fellow journalist about all the jobs we knew of that were going unfilled, being absorbed or handled “on the side.” It was tough for all concerned, but necessary—you know, doing more with less.

Copyrights

• In the wake of a proposed fee increase, universities across Canada have opted to leave contracts with once-popular copyright licenser Access Copyright. Many schools, including York University, the University of British Columbia and almost every school in the prairie region have abandoned their contracts with Access Copyright in favour of steering the waters of copyright legislation on their own.

• Hid Behind Scenes to Avoid Impression of Being a Bully

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