● 10.13.11

● Links 13/10/2011: Humble Synapse Bundle Shows Linux Generosity, Ubuntu 11.10 Out

Posted in News Roundup at 7:39 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

• Nobody can deny it: many articles have been written about why GNU/Linux didn’t make it, hasn’t made it, and will never make it on the desktop. If there were another time dimension besides past, present, and future, we would probably see articles explaining why Tux does not work in there, either.

• Many reasons have been given: Linux is too stiff/ too flexible; Linux is too ugly/too beautiful; Linux is too weak/too powerful; Linux is too outdated/too ahead of our times; Linux is too cheap/ too expensive (yes! some people even have the guts to say this!); Linux is too fragmented (fragmentation: the quality of dazzling users with choices), too exotic, too dangerous (kids! don’t try Linux at home!), too difficult to learn, has weird application names; is linked to communism, anarchy and to the devil. Does Satan use Satanic Linux?

Server

Audiocasts/Shows

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

• The Linux 3.1 kernel should be released any day now after going through nine test releases, which will be followed by the opening of the Linux 3.2 kernel merge window. Here’s some of the DRM improvements to look forward to in this next major kernel release.

• With Kernel.org still being restored, David Airlie’s DRM repository is temporarily hosted in its alternate location at git://people.freedesktop.org/~airlied/linux.git. Listed below is a portion of the Direct Rendering Manager changes that are part of his drm-core-next branch and being queued up for pulling into Linux 3.2.

Applications

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• The Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle, whereby gamers can pay what they want for a collection of multi-platform and DRM-free games, has ended this evening. This latest bundle has pulled in over one million dollars from more than two hundred thousand purchases.

• Swing Swing Submarine has started a new contest to celebrate release of their game Blocks That Matter on Linux.

• Unigine Corp announced the release of OilRush build 0.81 to the pre-order beta testers earlier today. This new public build succeeds OilRush build 0.80, which was released nearly one month ago with massive performance improvements, improved network synchronization, initial Steam integration, Linux RPM packages, and greater AI speed, among other changes.

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

Distributions

Gentoo Family

• Sabayon 7 was recently released bringing lots of updates and improvements. The announcement said, “If you really enjoyed Sabayon 6, this will be even more fun and cute. There you have it, shining at full bright, for your home computer, your laptop and your home servers.” This Gentoo-based everything-but-the-kitchen-sink distro is maturing like the proverbial bottle of wine. It’s getting smooooth.

Red Hat Family

Fedora

• While the Red Hat / Fedora Project infrastructure has not been compromised, it’s been decided that all users of the Fedora Account System must change their password and upload a new SSH public key prior to month’s end. For users not changing out their password and SSH key, their accounts will be marked inactive.

• Wifi works, though bluetooth functionality apparently missing in action. The laptop at work also has issues with bluetooth coming and going at random days, and is using Fedora 16 too, so now I’m baffled and scared. A geek needs his teeth blue and functional. Halp?

• The Fedora Project has posted an announcement advising current users of the Fedora Account System to change their password and SSH public key before 30 November or risk their accounts being marked as inactive.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Ubuntu 11.10 is now available for free public download. Word on the street is that this iteration of the open source operating system will feature “management and orchestration tools” that DevOps practitioners need to embrace cloud computing. Ubuntu 11.10 introduces Juju (previously codenamed Ensemble) for service deployment and orchestration across multiple cloud infrastructures, large-scale bare-metal deployments, and workstation-based service prototyping.

• The graph below is from Google Trends. It tells the story of Ubuntu rising from obscurity and the predictable releases pushing the “buzz” higher and higher. 11.04 has had the weakest showing in recent releases and the drop after the release doesn’t seem to be a good sign either. It will be very interesting to see how the release fairs tomorrow.

• Now you can install Adobe Flash 64 bit in Ubuntu using the Canonical Partner repository. Earlier Ubuntu 64bit users had to install the 32bit version of flash which was included in a ‘plugin wrapper’ so that it works on 64bit version of Ubuntu. With the recent release of Adobe Flash 11, 64 bit Adobe Flash 11 has been made possible. 64bit Ubuntu users can install Adobe Flash 11 from the Ubuntu partner repository in the Ubuntu Software Center.

• Ubuntu 11.10 launched today at 2pm. If you want to download and install the free Linux operating system, it’s live now at www.ubuntu.com.

• Ubuntu 11.10 aka Oneiric Ocelot is now available for free download. Announcing the release of Ubuntu kate Stewart quotes Victor Hugo on Ubuntu mailing list, “There is nothing like a dream to create the future.”

• If you look at the home page of Ubuntu.com, you will notice a laptop with four images. The bottom left image seems to be the image of Steve Jobs.

Devices/Embedded

Phones

Android

• Drupal continues to rack up successes among large developer communities, with x.commerce joining Twitter, which made the move last month. X.commerce is a new division of PayPal that serves as an open, central meeting place for over 700,000 developers for eBay, PayPal, Magento, and other eBay properties.

Free Software/Open Source

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• It only took GNU RCS (gnu.org) 16 years to go from version 5.7 to version 5.8. GNU RCS 5.8 is now available in Portage thanks to the hard work of Mr. Ian ”idella4″ Delaney.

Public Services/Government

• The project SWOI has started classes on and employing Free and Open Source Software (FLOSS) in middle and upper secondary schools in Poland, it was announced on 4 October 2011.

• SWOI is the ‘Implementation strategy for the use of open and free software as an innovative model for supporting the development of pupils and students’ key competences in the field of ICT’. The first group of students’ work began in the ‘Circles of Interest’ activity. Under the supervision of ‘Guardians’, the participants explore the secrets of free and open source software.

Licensing

Openness/Sharing

Open Hardware

Programming

• Those of us who love Linux and other free and open source software are already well-acquainted with the many benefits of FOSS: flexibility, security, customizability and freedom from vendor lock-in, to name just a few.

• Quality, of course, is another big one, at least in part because there are typically so many people around the globe constantly improving the code.

• There may also be another reason behind that superior quality, however. Specifically, it was recently suggested that volunteer programmers actually write better code than paid ones do.

• The Apache Subversion (SVN) open source version control system is out with its 1.7 release today. The new SVN 1.7 release adds new features such as HTTPv2 and WC-NG that improve performance and make version control more efficient for developers.

• The SVN 1.7 release comes at a time when the open source Git version control system is gaining in popularity. Git’s popularity is something that SVN backers are aware of and taking steps to bring some popular capabilities of Git into SVN.

• “Subversion is no longer the disruptive upstart that it was in 2005. It is now deployed in the largest and most traditional organizations, and it’s now in the mainstream,” David Richards, President and CEO of WANdisco told InternetNews.com

• With 3 projects back in 2001, the Eclipse Project has grown to become an awesome, can’t-do-without IDE for developers of almost all programming languages. Currently, it has 273 projects, more than 50 million lines of code and committers from almost all continents and more than $800 million in R&D.

Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

• Richie was jointly honoured with several awards during his lifetime, along with Ken Thompson, including the Turing Award in 1983, the Hamming Medal in 1990, the (US) National Medal of Technology in 1999 and, most recently, the Japan Prize for Information and Communications in 2011.

Hardware

• AMD’s most impressive FX CPU that launched this morning is the FX-8150, which is an eight-core CPU with a base frequency of 3.6GHz, a 3.9GHz base Turbo frequency, and 4.2GHz for its maximum Turbo frequency. Yes, a Bulldozer 8-core CPU that can operate naturally above 4GHz. These CPUs also come unlocked for those wanting to push the hardware even further. The AMD FX-8150 has 8MB of L2 cache and a TDP of 125 Watts. What makes this top-end CPU interesting as well is the price tag, which is only $245 USD.

Security

• What a farce. Microsoft has put up a web page which purports to “evaluate your browser security”. In fact what it does it look at what specific browser you are using, and then take a few cheap shots at Firefox and Chrome. For an early morning laugh, I just tried it on Opera and got “We can’t give you a score for your browser”. Translated, that means “this don’t know squat about browser security, this is not a ‘security test’ it is a browser identification string scan”.

Finance

• Wall Street banks often boast that they hire the best and the brightest. Now, scrambling to bolster profits, they have become full-time headhunters for some of their biggest hedge fund clients, a role that is rife with potential conflicts.

• The top financial regulator in Massachusetts on Tuesday asked many of Wall Street’s biggest banks for more information on their hedge fund recruiting services.

Civil Rights

• It has been discovered that German police are using malware to spy on suspects’ computers. The particular case in question involves a suspect whose computer was deliberately infected as he passed through an airport. It was a trojan for that other OS.

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