● 10.09.11

● Links 9/10/2011: Kororaa 15 “Squirt”, Android 4.0 Expected Soon

Posted in News Roundup at 6:03 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

• The Intel “i915″ Gallium3D driver continues to advance thanks to love from Google. A new Intel employee is now even contributing to this unofficial driver too.

• Over the summer we have seen a number of changes to the Intel Gallium3D driver that supports the older i915/i945 era hardware. This driver is not officially supported by Intel, but Google’s after it for use in their Chromebooks as their netbooks can do better since this Gallium3D driver has faster CPU-based code generation of vertex shaders than the classic Intel DRI driver. The work has mostly been done by Stéphane Marchesin, the former Nouveau driver project lead who is now part of Google’s Chromium team.

Applications

Proprietary

• Today I found myself with Picasa for Linux (3.0 beta) not allowing me to login to web albums, even if I could login without problems from the web browser.

• After googling a bit, it seems that Picasa 3.0 does not work anymore due to some Google+ related changes. On the other hand it looks like Picasa on Linux is abandoned ie: 3.0 vs 3.8 on Windows.

Instructionals/Technical

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

• The KDE project has released the second point update to version 4.7 of its KDE Software Compilation (KDE SC). According to the developers, the maintenance update to the Linux and Unix desktop contains a variety of translation updates and bug fixes; as expected, no new features have been added.

GNOME Desktop

Distributions

Red Hat Family

• Red Hat has acquired Gluster, a company that uses software to tackle storage problems in a new way.

• We had the opportunity to talk to Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat, about the acquisition, how Gluster’s product works, and what it means to be steering a company into the $1 billion revenue mark.

Fedora

• I’ve been swamped these past couple weeks. I mean, I’ve been absolutely, completely, and totally bogged down by work. I had 4 problem sets to do, on top of my recently-started UROP and other work-study stuff I’m doing, so I seriously had no room to breathe, until now. I briefly thought about starting work for next week tonight, but then I realized that whatever sanity I had left at this point would go out the window if I worked any more. I needed a break, so what did I do instead of working? I wrote this review! (This is my pre-emptive excuse if some people may feel that this is not thorough enough, or whatever. Yeah, yeah, sue me.)

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Ubuntu’s YouTube channel has uploaded a new video introducing the latest version of Ubuntu which is 11.10. The video gives and overview of some of the new features of Ubuntu 11.10 but lacks the quality and professionalism. It doesn’ show all the new features of Dash, which include refined search.

Flavours and Variants

• Not only for Windows, but also for Linux the hour of truth comes near. October-November are months with new releases and upgrades. Let’s forget about Windows 8 for now; it’s still an early Beta. However Ubuntu 11.10 and Linux Mint 12 will come out soon. So are updated desktops: Gnome and KDE to name but two. It’s no secret that I am still not convinced that the Gnome based Gnome 3 shell and Ubuntu’s Unity desktops are matured enough to compete with either Windows 8 Beta or Apple’s OSX. What’s more, I still don’t like either of the two. So do many more Linux-users. The one UI fails this here, the other is messy there, which isn’t inspiring and inviting me to even test these releases. I am running Mint 11 for now and will continue to do so with its ‘old’, but for me far more productive, more flexible Gnome 2 desktop, better suited to run production software.

• Zorin OS also comes with a Zorin Look Changer which allows easily changing the layout of the desktop to match the look of Windows XP and Linux GNOME in addition to this default Windows 7 look. In a Zorin OS video presentation I’ve also noticed Mac OS X, but it wasn’t present in my install. Perhaps it is available for install from repositories or as part of a Premium version.

Devices/Embedded

• iSign Media Solutions announced a Linux-based device designed to send out marketing messages via either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Including an integral web server and the ability to communicate with digital signage PCs, the “Smart Antenna” is an all-weather device that draws five Watts of power over an Ethernet cable, says the company.

Phones

Android

• India is one of the champions of making cheap stuff. Tata’s Nano, the world’s cheapest car, is now dethroned by Aakash, one of the cheapest Android tablets. India created quite a buzz with the launch of $35 Android tablet which had the backing of the Indian government.

• The HRD minister of India Kapil Sibal is now aiming at $10 tablet. The minister has reportedly invited companies to make a cheaper Android tablet. With low income a majority of Indians can’t buy expensive $500 tablets, thus being left behind. Given India’s next to chaotic power outage situation where you don’t even get electricity for 24 hours a day, a tablet may keep users well connected.

• Apple is not the only champion of creating hype about its products before they are launched. Unfortunately, iPhone 4S release was a major disaster as hype-mongering sites were calling it the iPhone 5 and some even said it had a bigger screen. Lesson: don’t listen to the hype created by Apple fans, it’s mostly vapor.

• Android apps will now be able to run on Apple’s iPad and a host of other non-Android devices, courtesy of new software from the crew at Myriad Group.

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• E-Fun announced the sixth, highest-end member of its Nextbook family of Android tablets. Running Android 2.3 on a Rockchips RK2918 Cortex-A8 processor, the $300 Nextbook Premium 8 offers an eight-inch, 800 x 480 capacitive display, 4GB of internal storage, a microSD slot, Wi-Fi, and a front-facing camera, and a Kobo eBook Store app, says the company.

• AMAZON’S Kindle Fire was always going to set the tablet world ablaze. Even before it starts shipping in November, though, it has managed to reignite the debate over the relative merits of open versus closed software. Supporters of openness trumpet it as a way to promote ideas and competition, leading to greater consumer satisfaction and optimal prices. Closed systems, goes the argument, remove choice and ramp up prices. If only it were that simple.

• For a start, the distinction between open and closed is fuzzy. The Fire, for example, relies on Google’s Android operating system (not the latest, tablet-spec version 3, but an earlier one designed for smartphones). Android is open—in the sense that anyone may view, modify and employ the source code in free or commercial applications without a license (other than that which comes at no cost with the code). Modifications to the code may have to be distributed publicly, depending on the specific license in question. (Android is a melange of code from many open-source projects and licensing terms for the ingredients vary.)

Free Software/Open Source

• While Oracle Solaris has Intel KMS/DRI2 support, the Solaris port of this Intel Linux driver code isn’t yet part of the open-source Solaris distributions.

Events

Web Browsers

Chrome

Mozilla

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Java has long been a hit with enterprise developers, with Java EE powering the back ends of enterprise applications in data centers around the world, while Java application servers and servlet containers enable countless Web applications.

• For client-side development, however, Java hasn’t fared nearly as well. There have always been Java technologies aimed squarely at the client: Java applets debuted with the first release of the platform, and Java ME was an early hit with cellphone vendors. Various toolkits and frameworks have been released over the years for building rich, GUI-based Java applications for the desktop.

Programming

Leftovers

Copyrights

• If you went through a publisher and agent, assuming you could find a publisher and agent willing to talk to you, you’d only earn $1,875.00. Why would you give away $6,875.00 to someone else when you could do it yourself, including hiring a cover artist, an editor, etc. There are places that charge a flat rate of less than $100.00 to do this for you if you can’t do it…

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