● 09.22.11

● Links 22/9/2011: Red Hat Net Up 69%, Kororaa 15 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 8:06 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

• Once Windows installation is done, I booted my Linux Mint (Debian) 201109 Live USB stick. I know that Mint (and Ubuntu) always include gparted on their live media, so I can use that to reallocate the disk partition(s). I’m sure that there are plenty of other disk management tools that can be used for this, depending on what distribution you prefer. In this case all I had to do was delete the D: partition and recreate it as an Extended Partition, then make the necessary logical partitions within that for the various Linux distributions I plan to install. That whole process took less than 5 minutes. Then I went ahead and installed the new Linux Mint 201109 Gnome distribution. That was an absolutely routine installation, it took about 15 minutes and at the end it booted up to the installed Linux system with no problems of any kind. Everything works, including wired and wireless networking, Bluetooth, dual monitors (with an external monitor on the VGA port), sound, touchpad, everything. It took about another 5 minutes to install the latest updates, and the system was ready to use. I tried the obvious Fn-key functions, such as volume up/down/mute and brightness up/down and they work just fine. I even used the Fn-sleep keys to suspend the system, and that worked; press the power button and it is ready to use again in about two seconds. I added the CPU Frequency Monitor to the panel, and verified that frequency stepping was working automatically.

• Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols points out in a recent article that the resounding butt-kicking that Android and Chrome are laying on the digital world these days doesn’t bode well for the Linux desktop. Vaughan-Nichols links to a blog post by Jason Perlow that says that, essentially, we are entering the post-PC era in which, while the x86 may be dead, personal computing across different-sized hardware will continue.

• I can see this and generally have no qualms with that, however I think this sales pitch for a brave new world of tablets and smartphones goes overboard. Arguably, what Perlow describes doesn’t sound like post-PC, but rather PC-plus-(fill in your additional hardware here).

• Linux’s success in the non-desktop realm is hardly an accident and I am neither belittling it nor taking this for granted. On the contrary: Linux’s superiority in servers, supercomputers and mobile provide resounding proof that it is a successful operating system, to the point where “the year of the desktop” has now become laughable since it is no longer the standard by which Linux’s success should be gauged (if that was ever the case in the first place).

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

• Instead of the LGPLv2, Kristian Høgsberg is now looking at moving the “wayland-demos” code from the GPL to the MIT license.

Applications

Instructionals/Technical

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

• Strange enough, announcement did not stop votes. Other way round, number of votes almost doubled during last month! Is it a good reason to make another announcement of voting results? Yes, it is.

• Over at his blog, Sebastian Trüg is raising money for Nepomuk. Short version of this story–please give what you can to an important KDE project and a valuable KDE contributor. Background and details below.

Distributions

New Releases

• I’m proud to announce the release of version 2.0. This brings the past three years of new feature additions, with significant enhancements to almost every portion of the system. The changes and new features are summarized here. This is by far the most widely deployed release we’ve put out, thanks to the efforts of thousands of members of the community. We also have hundreds of customer systems that have been running 2.0 in production for months and years in some cases. More than 108,000 unique IPs have downloaded snapshots in 2011 from snapshots.pfsense.org alone, not counting downloads from the mirrors.

• CAINE (Computer Aided INvestigative Environment) is an Italian GNU/Linux live distribution created as a project of Digital Forensics Currently the project manager is Nanni Bassetti.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

• Mageia was celebrating its first anniversary yesterday.

• A year! That was fast! Just like my daughter, baby Mageia is “a proud, promising and exciting toddler!”

Red Hat Family

• –Second quarter deferred revenue of $813 million, up 25% year-over-year

• –Second quarter operating cash flow of $77 million, up 20% year-over-year

• Red Hat Inc. (RHT: News ) reported that its second-quarter net income rose to $40.0 million or $0.20 per share, from $23.7 million or $0.12 per share, in the year ago quarter.

• Love it or hate it, Red Hat commands a significant share of the world’s enterprise Linux revenues. This week on the Linux Planet, updated versions of Red Hat’s enterprise clones were released, even as Red Hat moved forward with its own plans.

Fedora

• “The first stable release of Kororaa 15 (codename “Squirt”) has been released and is available for download, in 32 and 64 bit with KDE 4.6 and GNOME 3.” This is second release of the Fedora-based distribution since development resumed in late 2010. Kororaa, once based on Gentoo, aims to provide a “complete, easy to use system for general computing.” It tweaks Fedora “to make the system ‘just work’ out of the box.”

• Chris Smart proudly announced last evening, September 20th, the immediate availability for download and upgrade of the highly-anticipated Kororaa Linux 15 operating system.

• Dubbed Squirt, the new Kororaa 15 OS is now based on the Fedora 15 release, it features both KDE SC 4.6 and GNOME 3 desktop environments, and it is available for download (see download links at the end of the article) for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Audacious is a versatile music player for GNOME that has a low memory footprint and a clean GTK interface. It also comes with a Winamp-like interface that supports Winamp 2.x skins.

• Close the Windows

• While Windows works just fine, it does take up a lot of resources. And that can make an old machine run slowly. Consider replacing Windows with a Linux operating system such as Ubuntu. That often will pep up that slow machine.

• And, unlike with Windows, the operating system is free. You can read about it and download it at www.ubuntu.com/.

• There’s another reason to try this. You may find you prefer Ubuntu for all your machines.

• Use the old machine to get familiar with how it works first and then, if you like what you see, move away from Windows entirely.

Flavours and Variants

• That basically ended my time with Linux Mint GNOME. I really like the concept of update packs and the thorough testing of them, because it brings much-needed stability to what is otherwise a good rolling-release model. My small gripes about Compiz not working initially, inconsistent GTK+ theming, and Mozilla Firefox not getting the latest updates remain, but they’re relatively minor. Of course, it’s great that this is otherwise functionally and visually identical to the Ubuntu-based Linux Mint GNOME, yet it manages to be so much more lightweight and snappy. (Seriously, this was worlds more responsive than Linux Mint 11 “Katya” GNOME.) The gripes I mentioned might mean that a user considering this should make sure they have a technically-inclined friend to help them out in times of need, but otherwise, I can basically give it my highest recommendation, and I could see myself installing this on my computer and using this regularly. In fact, it is one of the contenders for replacing Linux Mint 9 LTS “Isadora” once its support runs out. It may partially be due to my fondness for Linux Mint in general, but I really like this a lot. You can get it here.

Devices/Embedded

• Control4 announced a seven-inch tablet, meant for portable control of its Linux-based Control4 home automation, surveillance, and music-server system. In addition to the Control4 7″ Portable Touch Screen, the company also announced a “Control4 MyHome — Android” app.

Phones

Android

• On Sept. 22, Pantech will start selling an Android 2.3 smartphone on Verizon Wireless’ 4G LTE network for just $100, following rebate and two-year contract. The Pantech Breakout is equipped with a 1GHz processor, an 8GB microSD card, a 4.1-inch, 800 x 480 touchscreen, as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0, says Verizon.

• HTC announced an mid-range Android smartphone for Verizon Wireless that appears to be marketed at women. The “Rhyme” is equipped with a 1GHz processor, 768MB of RAM, 4GB of flash, five-megapixel and VGA cameras, plus accessories including a free docking station, headphones, and a “Charm” device that flashes a light to indicate an incoming call.

• I recently had a chance to play with an Android Bluetooth Sound Box with Hands-Free and would like to share my opinion with you all.

• A new Android handset from LG has shown up in Korea, with the images and specs shared in a leak by SlashGear. The dual-core, 1.2GHz smartphone uses Android 2.3 and gets a four-inch 800×480 touchscreen much like the Optimus Black. The model number, LG-SU880, is also revealed by the spec sheet.

• We’ve seen the 1.5GHz dual-core HTC Ruby in the wild a few times already, and now the first press shot of this impressive handset has come to light. Tipped for release on T-Mobile as the HTC Amaze 4G — it will apparently also see an international launch under another name (possibly just Amaze, a la Sensation/Sensation 4G) — Ruby was originally thought to be a codename for Sprint’s HTC Arrive (7 Pro) Windows Phone, but subsequent photographs revealed it to be a high-end Android device.

• If Google is able to go ahead with its plans to buy Motorola Mobility, it will mean big changes in store for the Android world. Whether those changes are hurtful or helpful to the OS as a whole is up to Google. Will the Android creator take its OS in a more proprietary direction? Or will Google’s acquisition actually make for a stronger, more diverse ecosystem?

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• Asus has begun shipping its Eee Pad Slider Android 3.2 tablet in the U.S. for $479 with 16GB storage and $579 with 32GB. The Slider is equipped with a 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, 1GB RAM, 16GB flash, a 10.1-inch, 1280 x 800 display, dual cameras, and all the other standard Honeycomb features, but adds a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.

Free Software/Open Source

• This week we interviewed Ken Elkabany, CEO of another company with a business model on top of scientific open source software: PiCloud. PiCloud allows running any Python code on an auto-scaling, high-performance cluster in a server-less cloud. That includes SciPy code. We hope this kind of interview inspires scientist and developers to turn into FLOSS entrepreneurs. Enjoy the interview and leave your comments!

• With the release of OpenIndiana version oi_151a, the developers of the Solaris 11 compatible operating system have followed up their first release with one that replaces Oracle’s OS/Net operating-system and network component with the Illumos kernel. This new edition of OpenIndiana also includes emulation and virtualisation support through the inclusion of the open source QEMU emulator and the KVM kernel-based virtual machine.

• As smartphones and tablets become increasingly popular with consumers, they’re also becoming a common work tool for employees. A recent study by Dimensional Research found that 87 percent of enterprises allow employees to use personal devices for work. In addition, 80 percent of those companies allow employees to use personal smartphones for work.

Events

• Oracle and Apache have had a somewhat ‘interesting’ relationship in 2011.

• On one hand, Oracle donated OpenOffice to the Apache Software Foundation. On the other hand, Apache resigned from the Executive Committee of the Java Community Process.

Databases

• The open source MySQL database became the popular success that it is today, due to the fact that it is open source. MySQL is freely available and in the beginning, all of its features were too.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

Project Releases

• It’s been 3 months since my last blog post, and I have so much to say. I have been working harder than ever before on OpenShot, and regret that I have not had more time for writing blog entries. I have new details on our next release, version 1.4, a request for translations, a GKT3 update, details on a new Daily PPA, enhancements to www.openshot.org website, an announcement about a new OpenShot video editing library, and more! Let’s just call this… an information explosion for OpenShot fans. =)

Openness/Sharing

• Two weeks ago, in the wake of tropical storm Irene’s devastating flooding in Vermont’s Mad River Valley, local residents organized a MRV Flood Relief initiative. What began as a self-organized volunteer effort to match needs and help offered in our communities, using telephone, handwritten posters, and a Mad-River-Valley-Hurricane-Irene Facebook page created by the Chamber of Commerce, quickly grew into a coordinated project based in downtown Waitsfield’s Masonic Lodge. Now, two weeks later, in an effort to more effectively provide daily coordination for ongoing flood relief efforts in 10 central Vermont towns, Mad River Valley flood relief headquarters has launched a new open source web site.

Leftovers

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• There are many unfortunate outcomes to Peak Oil. One of the more serious is the world’s transition back to coal. Expensive BTU from crude oil has influenced the energy adoption pathway of the Developing World for ten years now, pushing the five billion people in the Non-OECD towards coal. My work has documented this shift for some time. But, I have paid less attention here at Gregor.us to the effect this paradigmatic change will have on our climate.

Finance

• In February of this year John Williams, head of research at the San Francisco Federal Reserve, gave a speech at Stanford in which he asserted the US economy had finally recovered, with 2011 real GDP expected to expand by 4.00% and then by 4.5% in 2012. (see: The Fed’s John Williams: recovery has achieved “liftoff”, Reuters 4 February 2011). Unfortunately, at the very same moment Mr. Williams was speaking in Palo Alto, data on California food stamp participation and employment was sending out a warning that America’s largest state was going back into recession.

Censorship

• Today ORG and a number of other groups had a constructive meeting with Ed Vaizey to discuss approaches to copyright and enforcement. The meeting was organized by Dominque Lazinksi of the Tax Payers Alliance after a Twitter storm following ORG and other group’s exclusion from the website blocking meetings.

• The draft as it stands is not, in ORG’s view, sufficiently precise and reasoned to be backed by us. While it gives plenty of indications of the approach Nominet might take, we feel the final document needs to be very precise, as well as robust and well-argued in order to convey truly useful advice to Nominet’s Board.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• It was very heartening to see the Lib Dems reject the Digital Economy Act as a broken and anti-liberal measure at their Conference yesterday. The main speakers included Julian Huppert, Neil McGovern and Bridget Fox, all making powerful points in favour of a more balanced approach to copyright enforcement.

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