● 09.19.11

● Links 19/9/2011: Linux Mint Debian 201109, Knoppix 6.7.1

Posted in News Roundup at 5:45 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• The MCP runs Linux on a 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, with the help of 4GB of DDR3 RAM, says Harris. An optional H.264 video encoder is said to be available for video-intensive applications, supporting video capture, storage, and real-time playback capabilities. A removable 160GB, SATA 2 solid state drive (SSD) “provides ample storage for long duration video recording,” says the company.

• The Linux operating system is not just for nerds. Even though you may not realize it, chances are you probably have a version of Linux running right under your nose. It’s found its way into a multitude of devices, both large and small.

• Today, Sept. 17, 2011, is the 20th anniversary of the date when the first Linux kernel (version 0.01) was released and uploaded to an FTP server by Linus Torvalds in Helsinki. Although Torvalds had been working on the code since April, 1991 (recognized by some as the birthday of Linux), it wasn’t until September of that year that he released the first Linux kernel to the world. That early iteration consisted of a mere 10,239 lines of code.

Desktop

• When Steve Jobs unveiled the slim but powerful Macbook Air, it was as if a magician had pulled a flailing rabbit out of a hat. Everyone was amazed at how laptop technology had moved forward, and instantly the latest Macbook Air became a massive success.

• The Macbook Air might be an awesome product, but there are currently no alternatives for folks who don’t want to get converted to the Apple religion. But don’t get disappointed just yet; come Q4 2011, Intel will be bringing us the new revolution in computing called Ultrabooks.

• Touted as the direct competitor to Macbook Air, Intel’s ambitious project will leave no stone unturned to prove itself in the not-so-dead laptop market. While it is not confirmed as to which operating system manufacturers will be using, there is a high chance that Windows 7 will be the one.

• However, we here at TechSource believe that running Ubuntu 11.10 (or higher) on Ultrabooks might actually be more profitable.

• Userful deploys Linux in very large-scale “digital inclusion” projects — such as schools in second- and third-world environments — including the world’s largest, a 500,000 seat deployment in Brazil.

Server

• Her former terminal has an aluminium case that sings and must be positioned and burdened just so to minimize the noise. In the hot days of this summer it also put out too much heat so it is banished to the basement in a dark closet. In its place she will be using a tiny thin client about the size of a box of chocolates.

• A recent development between IBM and Canonical, predicts that soon IBM’s p mini-computers and blades; System Z mainframes will be certified for use with Ubuntu. It is most likely that minicomputers should be running on Ubuntu in the next month or so, while mainframes could well receive full support by end of the month.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Full Circle Side-Pod Episode Ten: Dancing in Bare feet

Kernel Space

• Last month I wrote a review on the OCZ Vertex 3 240GB solid-state drive, which was a very impressive Serial ATA 3.0 SSD. The performance of this solid-state drive was terrific and a huge improvement over previous-generation SATA 2.0 SSDs and over SATA 3.0 hard drives. All of that testing was done when the drives were formatted to the common EXT4 file-system type, but in this article are more benchmarks from the OCZ Vertex 3 as it’s tested with Btrfs and various mount options.

• The file system in Linux can be intimidating coming from other operating systems like Microsoft Windows. At first glance it may seem that there is no organisation to the files, but there is a method to this madness. After spending some more time with the file system in Linux, it will seem a lot more secure and organised.

• An OMAP driver developer at Texas Instruments wrote a rather lengthy post about a new low-level display framework.

Graphics Stack

• While AMD’s open-source strategy was announced on Phoronix on 7 September 2007, it was on 17 September of the same year that the Novell/SUSE developers did their first public release of their xf86-video-radeonhd driver. This was the X.Org driver created by the Novell Linux engineers in months prior for R500 and R600 GPUs. Here is some special reading — a letter that was volleyed from Novell to AMD that kicked off this entire process — to celebrate what would have been the fourth birthday of this open-source Linux driver.

Applications

• Xbox Media Center (XBMC) is one of those projects whose name makes less and less sense as time goes on. Sure, people still are using XBMC on an actual Microsoft Xbox, but for the most part, XBMC now is run on computers. In fact, recent versions of XBMC installed on an ION-based nettop makes just about the perfect media center. Version 10 (Dharma) introduced a fancy plugin system that allows XBMC to be extended beyond its built-in media-playing abilities. The next version, currently in development, will focus partially on recording as well as playback.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• Indie game studio Broken Rules recently previewed their upcoming Linux game Chasing Aurora in PAX Prime 2011. Broken Rules’ earlier award winning physics based game ‘And Yet it Moves’ was part of Humble Indie Bundle 3.

• The quadruple-A block-style story-based, sneaky-action pandora game Adamant Armor Affection Adventure is now GPLed. Along with it some other games for that platform by the same author (AAA for one ) were open sourced.

Desktop Environments

• Both Unity and Metro borrow heavily from the mobile world, and for that reason seem likely to appeal to an increasingly mobile-minded world of consumers. As I’ve said before about Unity, this is a good way to attract mainstream users, particularly when you’re trying to help them get used to something new.

• From the announcement, “This port comes as great news for the ps3 homebrew community which has been strugling with a complete lack of tools for easily developing application. With PSL1GHT (The unofficial PS3 SDK) and a port of the SDL as pretty much the only available libraries for the PS3, not much could be done without a huge waste of time in order to reimplement all the basic things. The initial port of the EFL was done in just a couple of days, where eina, eet, evas, ecore, embryo and edje were made available and a port of expedite and eskiss were successfully running on the PS3.The port was made using the SDL engine for evas, and while it worked, the performance wasn’t great.”

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

• After a very generous start to my fundraiser (thank you so much for your support) it is time I get into more detail about what you are actually supporting. Originally I wanted to do that by updating nepomuk.kde.org. I will still do that but it will take a little more time than anticipated. Thus, I will simply start with another blog post.

• Over the last couple of weeks the better part of the Kubuntu team has been working on bringing KDE SC 4.7.1 to Kubuntu.

• Especially the last week we started to backport it to Kubuntu 11.04. We’ll need some more time since 4.7.1 need a lot being backported to natty.

GNOME Desktop

• GNOME Shell is at the very beginning of its long treacherous journey. As we saw in our earlier post, it is now possible to easily install GNOME Shell in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneric Ocelot, whose final release is scheduled to happen next month itself. Meanwhile, I have been using GNOME Shell in Ubuntu Oneric beta for sometime now and one thing I am really unhappy about is its default theme. But third party GNOME Shell themes are already pouring in. Here is a collection of top 10 GNOME Shell themes(installation instructions towards bottom of this post).

• I like uncluttered desktops, and Gnome 3 offers about as clean a desktop as you’ll find without running E16. The only object on the desktop is the panel — until you reveal the launcher. But Gnome 3′s minimalist approach does not make it difficult to use. On the contrary, once you’re familiar with it, Gnome 3 is one of the most user-friendly desktops available.

Distributions

• Arch is really simple in the sense at the system level. I was able to create init scripts for Arch far more easily than on Gentoo for the same package. Arch however is not as configurable as Gentoo is. No distribution can match or even come close to Gentoo in this regard. It uses a unique system for this called USE flags. With Arch I can not have a custom KDE; but with Gentoo I have a large number of options as to what I want to have and what not. This flexibility of configuration in Gentoo comes at a price: every package is compiled on your system.

• According to Distrowatch, Chakra GNU/Linux is a Live CD distribution aimed at ease of use and originally forked from Arch Linux. Some of its features include a graphical installer, automatic hardware detection and configuration, the latest KDE desktop, and a variety of tools and “extras”.

Gentoo Family

• It’s been three years since LWN last covered Gentoo Linux, so checking in on Gentoo’s activities since then seems appropriate. Let’s start with a re-introduction to Gentoo. Gentoo is a source-based distribution that is unlike the more common binary distributions because packages are compiled on your machines rather than remotely on the distribution’s infrastructure. Source-based distributions allow for far more customization than is possible with binary distributions because you can not only control which packages are installed, but also which features of a given package are enabled (and consequently how many dependencies get pulled in).

Red Hat Family

• Red Hat, Inc. provides open source software solutions to enterprises worldwide. It also offers enterprise-ready open source operating system platforms. The company was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina.

• * 52 Week High: $49.00 * 52 Week Low: $31.77 * Book Value: $6.88 * Float Short: 2.06%

Fedora

• The Fedora Design Team Bounty is a type of blog post where we’ll outline a quick-and-easy design project that needs doing for the Fedora Community, outlining all the tools, files, and other resources you’ll need to complete the project. If you’re a designer and are interested in getting involved in the free and open source community, this is a good opportunity to get your feet wet!

Debian Family

• Good day, everybody! What better way to start my morning other than announcing a new release of Linux Mint Debian! Last time I tried it, there was only a GNOME version available, but now Xfce is here to party as well.

Derivatives

• The live distro, which runs on any PC powerful enough to run Windows XP, is based on Debian Live and runs directly from CD and/or USB Flash memory. No trace is left after using Tails, thanks to many features, such as independent operation of all software and all hardware drivers from the PC’s operating system, no permanent data storage and all the channeling of all Internet connections through the Tor anonymization network. “With Tails”, say the distro developers, “we provide a tongue and a pen protected by state-of-the-art cryptography to guarantee…basic human rights and allow journalists worldwide to work and communicate freely and without fear of reprisal.” The journalists of these pages humbly salute the valiant effort.

• Linux Mint can be a bit difficult to keep up with these days. One is based on Ubuntu, another on Debian. The newest Debian-based version comes with GNOME or Xfce while the Ubuntu-based counterpart is available in GNOME or LXDE. 32- and 64-bit versions are available for both. Today brought a new release: Linux Mint 201109 Debian (GNOME & Xfce).

• Knoppix 6.7.1 has been released. The latest version of the popular live CD/DVD Linux distro that started it all, comes with a lot of bleeding-edge software, along with all of the things you’ve grown accustomed to.

• The latest release comes with updated packages from its Debian upstream, picked from the testing and unstable repositories. It brings the latest Linux kernel, modern browser options and the latest LibreOffice 3.4.3.

• Once upon a time the daddy of this distribution, Klaus Knopper, started a trend with his pioneering Knoppix live CD as rescue and repair tool. It was known for incorporating extensive hardware detection that required minimal to no configuration at boot to arrive at a fully working desktop. Nowadays nearly every Linux based project also has a live CD or hybrid live and install image to offer, and Knoppix has been out of the limelight for a while. It’s still around though and has some unique points to offer, as I’m about to find out in this review of Knoppix 6.7, which was recently released to the world on 3rd August 2011 with the 2.6.39.3 kernel.

• As a heavily KDE leaning distribution Knoppix was also one of the first to ship with KDE 4 when it debuted, where it allowed for an early view of things to come. The DVD came with a variety of desktops including GNOME, Fluxbox and IceWM which could be enabled through entering cheat codes at the boot prompt. These days, ever since 6.0 was released, LXDE has become the default on the CD, with more environments and window managers available on the DVD. Besides, Klaus Knopper also issues special versions to coincide with the annual CeBIT and LinuxTag expos and conventions, so there are usually three releases a year to keep the system up to date with the ever changing requirements of hardware detection.

• This tutorial shows how you can set up a Mepis 11 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge. Mepis is a Linux distribution based on Debian Stable.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Canonical announced that lots of new games, books and magazines will be available in the Ubuntu Software Center for all Ubuntu users.

• While Canonical is preparing the final version of the upcoming Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) operating system, many developers submit their interesting apps in the Ubuntu Software Center.

• Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 beta has been released with new user interface and all new plugin system.

• The entire interface is divided into four categories – Overview, Tweaks, Admins and Janitor. Plugins can be installed for all of these categories, though in this release they are available for Overview category only.

Flavours and Variants

• PinguyOS is the distribution made for everyone, the out-of-the-box functionality of PinguyOS makes this distribution a perfect choice for Linux newcomers. The massive list of hand-selected applications ensures that users get the best possible experience no matter what they plan to do. Though if you prefer a minimalistic interface, or if you are picky about your applications, PinguyOS may not be the right choice for you. The polished interface is highly functional and easy to navigate. And I feel that the Conky system monitor is a tool that is missing on most distributions. So if you want a full featured distribution that holds nothing back try PinguyOS 11.04 today.

• In what we can now call it a tradition, we celebrate the Software Freedom Day by publishing our latest release: Trisquel GNU/Linux 5.0 STS, codename Dagda.

• Today we publish both the standard GNOME based, and the lightweight, LXDE based Trisquel Mini editions. Current Trisquel 4.5 users can upgrade using the update-manager application, without the need for reinstallation. Advanced installations -server, RAID/LVM, encrypted, etc- can be done using the netinstall images. Two more editions, one based on KDE and other using the educational environment Sugar are on the way.

• 1.1, and now 1.2 are based on the perennial Ubuntu 10.04 LTS edition

Devices/Embedded

Phones

Android

• As each alphabet progresses, it comes with a delectable treat to water your mouth. I don’t know if tasty names are the reason why Android is getting popular, but they certainly make it more interesting.

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• The Dutch company Medialine anounced several 10.1-inch Honeycomb 3.2 tablets & adds several features the iPad doesn’t have.

Free Software/Open Source

• OpenIndiana is a continuation of the OpenSolaris operating system. It was conceived during the period of uncertainty following the Oracle takeover of Sun Microsystems, after several months passed with no binary updates made available to the public. The formation proved timely, as Oracle discontinued OpenSolaris soon after in favour of Solaris 11 Express, a binary distribution with a more closed development model to début later this year. OpenIndiana is part of the Illumos Foundation, and provides a true open-source community alternative to Solaris 11 and Solaris 11 Express, with an open development model and full community participation.

• At this year’s Black Hat Conference, crypto expert Karsten Nohl of SRLabs demonstrated the degate tool that can be used to take a closer look at applications stored on smartcards, such as credit cards and SIM cards.

• Today is Software Freedom Day, and that means fans of free and open source software around the globe are celebrating all the ways it improves our lives.

Web Browsers

Chrome

• The Google Chrome developers at Google proudly announced a few minutes ago, September 16th, the stable release and immediate availability for download of the Google Chrome 14 web browser for Linux, Windows, Macintosh and Chrome Frame platforms.

Mozilla

• Firefox bookmarks are accessible for all users of a computer system if one user account is used instead of individual user accounts. This can be a issue if you want to protect data from being seen or accessed by other users. But even if there are multiple user accounts, chance is that some may have access to your Firefox profile folder. A system administrator for instance would have that access.

Databases

• Oracle has added additional commercial extensions to the enterprise edition of its open-source MySQL database, further differentiating it from the community version available to anyone at no charge.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• LibreOffice is one of the winners of InfoWorld BOSSIE – Best of Open Source – Awards 2011.

Openness/Sharing

• We’re starting a new project – open source drug discovery for malaria. Initially the participants are my group at the University of Sydney and the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), but naturally as an open project we need to expand beyond this. If you’re reading this, you can join us. Check here for what’s needed at the moment.

Programming

• Despite many assertions that “Perl is dead,” it’s very much alive – particularly Perl 5, which is and will be in widespread use for quite some time. It may not be getting as much attention as JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, Python, and whatever the language du jour is that Google wants to put out – but it’s not going anywhere.

Leftovers

• Nowadays, the phenomenon of trolling other people online is considered a bad thing. But it has not always been so. Trolling was a noble cause once, perpetrated by Usenet veterans, who would pull simple and innocent general ignorance type of jokes on unsuspecting newbies. There was much rejoicing and a handful of tears, but in the end, people learned through whimsical, violent allegories.

Finance

• Blowing the whistle on government or corporate malpractice takes great courage and involves a high sense of civic duty, as whistleblowers often put their lives on the line in order to inform society on behaviour that is against its citizens’ interest as well as the basic principles of democracy and human rights. Because of the possible consequences of such an act, it is important to have the feed-back of prominent whistleblowers who share their experience, thoughts and advice with potential whistleblowers and society as a whole, as anyone can find themselves in the uncomfortable seat of government or corporate crime witness from inside. Also, because they are often the victims of smear campaigns, at Liberté-info we like to give whistleblowers the opportunity to be heard without the bias and censorship that can surround economically motivated media outfits. Plus this is #OccupyWallStreet day, a good occasion to talk about global financial crime.

Civil Rights

• A Guardian journalist who was researching prices at a Tesco supermarket was threatened with arrest for writing down prices as he walked around. The security guard who questioned him claimed that it was illegal to write down prices at Tesco’s. The manager later allowed as how it wasn’t illegal, merely against store policy.

DRM

• The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) is a free trade agreement currently under negotiation that could require member countries to enact strict copyright and patent legislation that hurts free software users and developers. Our license compliance engineer Brett Smith talked about the FSF’s opposition to these terms with negotiators last weekend; in this blog post, he shares his perspective on the event.

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