● 11.15.11

● Links 15/11/2011: Mandriva Linux Powerpack 2011, Fedora 16 Reviews

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

Audiocasts/Shows

Kernel Space

• If you cycled the clock back a few years, you would find lots of people still debating whether Linux had the potential to dominate as a desktop operating system. Fast-forward to today, and it’s clear that Linux is in fact finding many of its biggest opportunities at the server level, in mobile devices, in embedded Linux deployments, and in other scenarios that lie outside the desktop computing arena. There are also more and more signs that the next frontier for Linux may be in cars, with big backers interested in the idea. And now, The Linux Foundation has announced its program for the first-ever Automotive Linux Summit taking place November 28, 2011 in Yokohama, Japan.

• In recent weeks there have been a lot of AMD Linux benchmarks of the latest-generation Bulldozer processor, namely the eight-core FX-8150. The latest unique look at the first-generation Bulldozer CPU under Linux is the KVM virtualization performance.

Applications

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• It’s looking like next year may be quite a positive year for Linux gaming with the likely open-sourcing of Desura, open-source Doom 3 code being in the wild, hopefully the Rage Linux client, and several games powered by the Linux-friendly Unigine Engine gearing up for release, among other Linux gaming announcements.

• In fact, there’s another new Unigine Engine licensee that’s using this visually-intense engine to create a new MMORPG.

• Denis Shergin, the CEO of Unigine Corp, tweeted over the weekend: “I’m so eager to tell you about a new mind-blowing MMORPG powered by @Unigine engine, but we have to wait. Hint: GSTAR Korea.”

Desktop Environments

GNOME Desktop

Distributions

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

• Following the Mandriva Linux free 2011 Mandriva is proud to launch the Mandriva Powerpack 2011, the full version of Mandriva Linux! Based on its new product strategy, Mandriva changes the release procedure, aiming for a one-year period between major releases. However, Mandriva will also release updated versions of its products on a periodic time on a 6-month basis.

Red Hat Family

• LINUX VENDOR Red Hat has said that its upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 (RHEL) will support all of the power saving features of AMD’s Bulldozer Opteron processors.

• AMD’s Bulldozer Opteron chips deliver a number of new features that the firm claims help it beat Intel’s Xeon processors when it comes to all-important power consumption. The problem is few operating systems actually make use of AMD’s power tweaks such as the C6 state, but Red Hat has confirmed that RHEL 6.2 will support all of Bulldozer’s power saving features.

• The new open-source project is focused on delivering an openly developed and freely licensed virtualization system.

• With OpenShift, Red Hat offers a compelling PaaS built on open source technologies that enables developers to quickly develop and deploy applications on the cloud. OpenShift provides built-in auto-scaling, supports a wide variety of languages, frameworks, middleware and clouds and is available free of charge. In August, Red Hat announced that it was the first to deliver Java EE 6 on a PaaS with OpenShift, powered by Red Hat’s JBoss application platform technology. Today, OpenShift expands upon its Java capabilities with the integration of several technologies that allow OpenShift to offer a fuller Java lifecycle for developers — developers can now code their application in an IDE, as well as build, deploy and scale it with OpenShift.

• Red Hat doesn’t just want to run your apps on its OpenShift cloud. It wants you to code, compile, tweak, and repeat the process on its cloud until you get the applications just right and get rid of that workstation or heavy laptop you lug around.

Fedora

• Desktop Environment is very important part of today’s Linux distribution which pretends to be used on desktop or laptop. There are some Linux distributions which give you only one Desktop Environment by default, being it Pardus with KDE or CentOS with GNOME. As opposite, there are distributions which are supplied with selection of different DEs available:

• Fedora 16 was released a few days ago and I was looking forward to this release. I used to be a Fedora user in the early days, when I had more time to play with my PC. Ever since I switched to Debian and then Ubuntu, I just fell in love with apt-get’s smart dependency resolution. I was finally out of the RMP hell. I did dabble with Fedora here and there, once in a while but 14 and 15 were both quite unstable for me. So, I distanced myself from Fedora.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

Flavours and Variants

• As we’ve stated in our previous article, Allison Randal from Canonical announced a few days ago the highlights for the upcoming Kubuntu 12.04 LTS and Lubuntu 12.04, as well as for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS and Edubuntu 12.04 LTS (presented in a separate article).

• Just a week or so after revealing that Linux Mint 12 would be taking a hybrid approach to introducing GNOME 3, the project behind the free operating system on Saturday announced the debut of a release candidate of the software.

• If a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, as Mary Poppins once sagely said, will a splash of Mint help users swallow GNOME 3?

• That, indeed, appears to be the question of the day now that the Linux Mint project has announced a hybrid desktop strategy for Linux Mint 12 that’s apparently designed to help ease users into the controversial new interface.

• “The future of Linux Mint is GNOME 3,” asserted Clement Lefebvre, Linux Mint founder and project leader, in a recent blog post. “The present of Linux Mint is a simple question: ‘How do we make people like GNOME 3? And what do we provide as an alternative to those who still do not want to change?’”

• Linux Mint 12 (“Lisa”) RC1 was released, based on Ubuntu 11.10 and Linux 3.0. RC1 offers the GNOME 3.2 desktop, but augments it with “MGSE” extensions that let users create a more GNOME 2.3x-like environment, and also supplies a desktop called MATE that’s claimed to be a GNOME 3.x-compatible version of GNOME 2.x.

Devices/Embedded

• Wind River announced a pre-validated stack built on Wind River Linux 4.2, aimed at development of home gateway systems for automation and multimedia. Wind River Platform for Gateways supports two ARM11-based processors — the Mindspeed Comcerto 1000 and the Cavium Econa CNS3xxx — and features software from DigiOn (DLNA), Makewave and ProSyst (OSGi for Java), Works Systems (remote management), and Skelmir (virtual machine technology).

• There’s a saying that you can never be too rich, or too thin. While that’s a bit of hyperbole, thin is definitely in when it comes to embedded Linux. Luckily, trimming the fat off Linux for embedded use is a lot easier than getting rich or losing that spare tire. Intel’s Darren Hart explained how he slimmed Linux down at the Embedded Linux Conference in October.

Phones

Android

• The face recognition unlock feature in Google’s Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” mobile operating system has been bypassed by a simple photo trick. A blogger recently demonstrated how easy it was to unlock the device. He took a photo of himself using another phone and held it up to the front facing camera on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the first smartphone to run Android 4.0, which was then unlocked.

• Google has just released source code for the latest version of Android, that is Ice Cream Sandwich. According to this Google Groups post by Jean-Baptiste Queru a.k.a JBQ, the code for Android 4.0 is currently being pushed to the servers and will take some time to complete. The release, which also includes the source code for Honeycomb, will enable manufacturers to start prepping their own devices for the big upgrade.

• “Hi! We just released a bit of code we thought this group might be interested in. Over at our Android Open-Source Project git servers, the source code for Android version 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) is now available.”

• Google has shut the mouth of its critics by releasing the source code or Android 4.0 aka IceCream Sandwich. Jean-Baptiste M. ‘JBQ’ Queru, software engineer from AOSP (Android open source project) wrote on Google group, “Over at our Android open source project git servers, the source code for Android version 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) is now available.”

• Winmate announced a rugged handheld computer that includes a 4.3-inch capacitive touchscreen and runs Android 2.3.4 on a 1GHz Cortex-A8-based Texas Instruments DM3730. The E430T offers IP65-level sealing, up to 512MB of RAM, five- and two-megapixel cameras, plus wireless technologies including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and 3.5G cellular.

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• Amazon began shipping its Kindle Fire tablet device Nov. 14, a day early. The $200, seven-inch Android tablet will compete against the Nook Tablet and Apple iPad, among others, for holiday dollars.

• HTC is likely to unveil a new Android-based tablet PC running on a quad-core CPU from Nvidia along with two new Android smartphones in February at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2012, according to a Chinese-language Commercial Times report.

Free Software/Open Source

• Adobe will move its Flex SDK to the Open Spoon Foundation. The vendor said that the “Spoon Project” was created from within the Adobe community, and that it will continue to maintain and develop the SDK. Although Adobe now advocates HTML5 as the best technology for enterprise application development, it has promised to continue contributing to the development of the Flex SDK.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• Linux users have always been happy with the sheer amount of choice available to them. When the mobile sector is considered, yes, it does lack in the field of choice when compared to the thousands of distros available for the desktop. Well, mobile users, its time for a treat. Mozilla Foundation’s Boot 2 Gecko project is said to be finalized by Q2 2012.

• Support for the HTML full-screen API was recently enabled in Firefox nightly builds. It allows Web applications to toggle the browser into full-screen mode and stretch a single page element so that it fills the user’s display.

• The feature will be especially useful for the HTML5 video element, making it easy for developers to add native full-screen playback to their custom HTML video player interfaces. It will also likely be useful for games and other kinds of content where fullscreen interaction is desirable.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Google has now filed a petition for a writ of mandamus with the Federal Circuit seeking review of the district court’s ruling on the Lindholm emails. The petition was filed November 4 and the matter is denominated In Re Google, 2012-M106. Oracle is required to respond to the petition no later than November 28.

• A writ of mandamus is an equitable remedy. Consequently, the Federal Circuit has discretion in considering the matter and responding to it. While Google certainly has a good faith argument for protecting the Lindholm email, there should be little doubt that they are swimming upstream in their continued attempts to suppress the email.

• Not surprisingly, Google disagreed (615 (PDF; Text]) with Oracle’s characterization that Google was refusing to produce witnesses for depositions. (See, Google Files Writ; Oracle Complains About Production of Witnesses) However, in the end it doesn’t make any difference because Judge Alsup has made the call. (617 [PDF; Text]) Google had offered to make two of the witnesses available to Oracle for deposition (Bray and Rizzo), but Google refused to produce the other five (Agarwal, Bornstein, Rubin, Swetland, and Yellin).

• Judge Alsup, in what appears to be a more and more frequent use of the “split the baby” approach, has granted Oracle the right to depose any three of the seven. Oracle may depose those three for up to two hours each, but only on their testimony related to the Leonard and Cox damage reports.

Social

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• It’s a fresh QEMU image of GNU (aka. GNU/Hurd), the extensible operating system designed to liberate users from the tyranny of sysadmins, professional kernel hackers, and other restrictions to Freedom #1.

Project Releases

• The Tomahawk developers have released version 0.3 of their open source media player. The cross-platform application has the ability to play any file chosen no matter its location. Version 0.3 has many additional features, including a global search bar which can search across all available sources.

Licensing

• AVM Computersystems had sought legal sanction to prevent Cybits from making changes to the code that is used in its routers, in particular code covered by the GPL in its popular Fritz!Box product.

• According to the Free Software Foundation Europe, this code comes from the Linux kernel and is thus open to modification, provided the changes are made available to anyone to whom the code is then distributed.

Openness/Sharing

• Classrooms of the future will be equipped with technology that supports the open source way – openness, transparency, collaboration and diversity. We may need to wait more than 10 years, but hopefully not!

Programming

• AMD’s Bulldozer Opteron 6200 series chips might be the firm’s first 16-core processors but the firm has done a bit more than increase its maximum core count by four, adding two new instructions. Both 4200 series and 6200 series Opteron processors have AMD-only FMA4 and XOP instructions, and the firm told The INQUIRER that popular compilers including the GNU C Compiler (GCC) already support these instructions.

• The International Obfuscated C Code Contest (IOCCC) has returned and announced the start of 20th competition; the contest had been on hiatus, with no results published for the last one, which was held in 2006. Now, the contest is back and, from 12 November 2011 to 12 January 2012, entries are being accepted in the competition to write the most obscure or obfuscated C program which will illustrate, perversely, the importance of programming style, stress C compilers with strange code, and demonstrate the subtleties of the C language. Although the competition is already open, online submissions will only be accepted from 1 December 2011 as the submission system is being upgraded.

Leftovers

Health/Nutrition

Finance

• M$ can afford to maintain share price by increasing dividends but they cannot stem the flow of mindshare to other technologies. At the moment, predictions are that ARMed thingies will continue to grow while x86 stagnates for years. At this rate, M$’s installed base will start to shrink shortly and it will do well to save 50% of shipments for itself within three years. With that kind of competition the monopoly will be truly dead.

Privacy

• W3C has published the first draft of a new Web standard that addresses online privacy. It establishes an official specification for the mechanism that browsers use to broadcast the “Do Not Track” (DNT) privacy preference to websites. The draft was authored by a new W3C Tracking Protection Working Group and could be ratified as an official standard by the middle of next year.

• Mozilla originally introduced the DNT setting in Firefox 4 earlier this year. The feature consists of a simple HTTP header flag that can be toggled through the browser’s preference dialog. The flag tells website operators and advertisers that the user wants to opt out of invasive tracking and other similar practices that have become pervasive with the rise of behavioral advertising.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• Around four decades ago or so, at the U.S. Defense Department funded ARPANET’s first site at UCLA — what would of course become the genesis of the global Internet — I spent a lot of time alone in the ARPANET computer room. I’d work frequently at terminals sandwiched between two large, noisy, minicomputers, a few feet from the first ARPANET router — Interface Message Processor (IMP) #1, which empowered the “blindingly fast” 56 Kb/s ARPANET backbone. Somewhere I have a photo of the famous “Robby the Robot” standing next to that nearly refrigerator-sized cabinet and its similarly-sized modem box.

• I had a cubicle I shared elsewhere in the building where I also worked, but I kept serious hacker’s hours back then, preferring to work late into the night, and the isolation of the computer room was somehow enticing.

• Even the muted roar of the equipment fans had its own allure, further cutting off the outside world (though likely not particularly good for one’s hearing in the long run).

• Occasionally in the wee hours, I’d shut off the room’s harsh fluorescent lights for a minute or two, and watch the many blinking lights play across the equipment racks, often in synchronization with the pulsing and clicking sounds of the huge disk drives.

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