● 12.14.11

● Links 14/12/2011: Pear OS 3.0, $99 Linux Tablets

Posted in News Roundup at 4:24 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

• A thorough performance look at the Intel Core i7 3960X “Sandy Bridge” Extreme Edition processor will be published very soon, but in this article are some benchmarks of using Gallium3D’s LLVMpipe driver on this six-core processor with Hyper Threading.

• AMD proudly announced last night, December 13th, the immediate availability for download of the AMD Catalyst 11.12 video driver for Linux platforms, brining initial support for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 operating system.

Applications

• In the 2 former articles of this series we have saw OCSInventory and Fusion Inventory 2 software that can create an asset inventory with your computers hardware and software, they both work with agents on the remote machines that send the information on a central server, where you can see, manage and query these information.

• There’s quite a lot of changes for FFmpg 0.9 since the 0.8 series. Among the changes is a native Dirac decoder, MMSH seeking support, support for reading MPO fils, a libass filter, FLB sample-rate change support, many ARM optimizations, libspeex encoding support, hardware accelerated H.264 decoding for Google Android, libswresample support, and much more. There’s also many bug-fixes as part of this new release.

• I somehow never discovered the existence of Scribes until recently. I thought I had tried every word processor and text editor that existed in Linux. But my experiences in using Scribes the last few weeks to enter research notes and create writing drafts has convinced me of its power and usefulness.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• The first thing I found interesting was that Kris is using the project funding platform Kickstarter.com to raise the funds for developing the game. The way I understand Kickstarter to work is a project idea is proposed, a donation goal is set, and if the goal is met within the time threshold, the project is successfully Kickstarted. People that donate to the project, known as “backers”, are given all types of incentives depending on the amount they donate. Check out the incentives for this project. Donations start at $1.

Desktop Environments

• I am using XFCE as my Desktop Environment, and that includes XFWM – XFCE’s own window manager. I could have used another one, but I find XFWM to be quite good.

• I did look briefly at what other WMs are out there, and what I pretty much ended with was that a Compositing window manager would be best (XFWM is one), and not just for fun visual effects. Actually, if that’s what you’re looking for Compiz might be what you want to give a try. But I’m not really looking for all those visual effects, and XFWM offered what I needed, so I didn’t see the need to look for anything else.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

GNOME Desktop

• Here’s the second to last batch of the 2011 GNOME User Survey feedback. The last dump of the GNOME feedback will come in the next day or two so that we can then move onto publishing the rest of the results of this survey for the other questions.

• I first it tried with a beta version and spent less than 3 weeks total using it. I figured that it was beta and that the fact that the ‘shutdown’ option was missing and the configuration options missing were due to the unfinished state. Also the worst feature was the use flow, the steps needed to get anything done. Having to disrupt your work flow to go to the activities window and then go to applications to start an application was ridiculously cumbersome.

• Light Themes Evolved initially started as an Ambiance theme modification for Nautilus Elementary. Later on, it became a full package that brings fixes and improvements to both Ambiance an and Radiance themes.

Distributions

New Releases

• · Announced Distro: Ultimate Edition 3.0 · Announced Distro: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 · Announced Distro: Chromium OS Lime 1404.0 · Announced Distro: CentOS 6.1

Red Hat Family

• GlusterFS was introduced back in 2007, as an open source network-attached storage system that used Ethernet or InfiniBand RDMA to pool together multiple storage volumes into one colossal pool. It became a cloud storage system in 2009, meaning that it added the elasticity and self-service provisioning necessary to qualify for the official “cloud” moniker. And although it was designed for enterprises, that didn’t stop some very clever coders from reworking it into a locally-mountable cloud storage store, now called HekaFS.

• While CentOS, Scientific Linux, and Oracle Linux Server are all derived from the same upstream source (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), how does the system performance compare between these RHEL derivatives? Here are some benchmarks of each of the 6.1 releases for Oracle Server, CentOS, and Scientific Linux, as they all do not perform the same.

Fedora

• The security features in Fedora make it one of my favorite Linux distributions. And that is partly why it is in my list of the top 6 KDE distributions of 2011, even though it takes some tweaking to get it to the it just works state. I will take the security advantages of an operating system over any user-friendliness weaknesses, provided those user-friendliness weaknesses are not show stoppers.

Debian Family

• The release of Java update 29 from Oracle marks not only security updates, but a change to the licensing, removing Debian’s ability to distribute the non-free JVM. The clause in the Java license under which we were able to distribute Java, the DLJ, has been removed. As a result, the sun-java6 package is no longer suitable for the archive, and has been removed, as documented in Debian Bug #646524 [2]. Sylvestre Ledru suggests [3] that sun-java6 installs be migrated to openjdk, the open-source alternative, using the following command: apt-get –purge remove sun-java6-jre && apt-get install openjdk-7-jre

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• If Mark Shuttleworth has his way we will soon be seeing Ubuntu devices everywhere – from telephones to tablet PCs to desktops – and perhaps even on our televisions.

• In a recent blog post, Ubuntu chief Shuttleworth listed some of the work being done towards creating Ubuntu TV. Although still in the early days of discussion with just a few mock-ups available, ambitions for Ubuntu TV are very much in line with Shuttleworth’s apparent new focus on “Ubuntu everywhere”.

• Patrick Wright proudly announced a few days ago, on December 7th, that Canonical’s Platform QA Team have started to execute boot speed tests using the daily ISO build of the Ubuntu operating systems.

Flavours and Variants

• The Pear OS 3.0 operating system has been released earlier today, being based on Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) and the GNOME 3 desktop environment.

Devices/Embedded

• Aldebaran Robotics have launched a new version of their popular robot Nao – Nao Next Gen. Nao is an autonomous, programmable, medium-sized humanoid robot running a custom Linux OS.

Phones

Android

• Google announced on Monday that more than 10 million applications have been downloaded from Android market! To celebrate this milestone Android market is featuring 10 paid applications for 10 days at a cost of only 10cents! 4 days have already passed which means that there will be 60 more apps for 10cents! So you’d better check every day the 10 billion Apps page. On today’s deals you can find Talking Tom Cat 2, ADWLauncher EX and a few more games! I wonder what the next applications will be!

• Rory Cellan-Jones has blogged about Google’s Android catching up with Apple in the year 2011, and the projection that it’s going to surpass the iOS app store’s number of downloads – which stands at 18 billion now – in the next few years.

• Want to know if Carrier IQ, the dialer- and location-sniffing software installed in millions of phones, is being used by the FBI for law enforcement investigations? The FBI won’t reveal much about the controversial application. And why not? Because, the Bureau says, doing so might interfere with law enforcement investigations.

• Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is reportedly backing the Android-x86 open source project, which on Nov. 30 posted early Android 4.0 code for x86 processors, starting with AMD Brazos chips. Meanwhile, Intel — which signed a separate pact with Google to develop authorized Android-on-Atom ports, including an Android 4.0 release it now says is ready — is reportedly spurning the effort.

• Logic PD announced a modular prototyping and demonstration platform for Android, showcasing the company’s customization and integration services as well as components from third-party partners. Aimed primarily at long life-cycle customers, the “Catalyst” platform is built around a seven-inch multitouch “proof-of-concept” device loaded with wireless radios, running Android 2.3 on TI’s DaVinci DM3730 Cortex-A8 processor.

• Mathematically, if they treble cumulative downloads every year the progression will go like this:

• * 2012 – 30 billion * 2013 – 90billion * 2014 – 270 billion * 2015 – 810 billion

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• If you thought you’d lost hope in getting your hands on a $99 HP TouchPad, here’s your second chance- and probably your last. HP will be making available a batch of refurbished 16GB and 32GB TouchPads beginning December 11th at 6 p.m. Central Time through HP’s eBay Store. HP will also be bundling a case, charging dock, and wireless keyboard for $79, all of which will be available in the laptop section of the store.

• HP has set a limit of 2 per customer and can only be purchased via PayPal. A 90-day warranty is all you’ll get on these puppies since they’re refurbished, so you’ll have to treat them nice. HP will be delaying the public announcement of the sale when it begins at 6 p.m., so that employee’s can get first dibs.

• Ainol Electronics has begun shipping what it claims is the world’s first Android 4.0 (“Ice Cream Sandwich”) tablet. Now available in China for only $99, the Ainovo Novo7 comes with a MIPS-based, 1GHz Ingenic JZ4770 XBurst processor, seven-inch capacitive multitouch screen, dual cameras, an HDMI 1.3 port, a microSD slot — and a testimonial from Google’s Andy Rubin.

• Stream TV Networks is shipping an upgraded version of its seven-inch eLocity Android tablet for $230. The eLocity A7+ is equipped with a “1.0-1.2GHz” Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, offers 4GB of internal storage, and improves the seven-inch capacitive screen to 1024 x 600 resolution — but aside from the much lower price is otherwise much the same, right down to its Android 2.2 operating system.

• Verizon Wireless announced 4G LTE versions of Motorola Mobility’s Xoom 2 tablets, running Android 3.2 — and eventually Android 4.0 — on dual-core 1.2GHz processors. The Droid Xyboard 10.1 and Droid Xyboard 8.2 respectively offer 10.1- and 8.2-inch IPS (in-plane switching) displays plus on-contract prices of $530 and $430, and both include 4G LTE networking as well as five- and 1.3-megapixel cameras.

• Fuhu announced it has begun shipping its “Nabi” Android tablet for kids, and says pre-order stock at Toysrus.com has already sold out. Running Android 2.2 on a dual-core 544MHz Cortex-A9 processor, the “Nabi” offers a seven-inch, capacitive 800 x 480 pixel screen, Wi-Fi, mini-HDMI, microSD, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 2.1.

Free Software/Open Source

BSD

• The last minute push of unique tests continues as Arendal is stressed prior to its release. Here are some benchmarks comparing Oracle Linux Server 6.1 (their derivative of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1) versus FreeBSD 9.0.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

Project Releases

• The libbluray project put out its first official release a few weeks ago. This open-source (GNU GPLv2) library is intended to support Blu-Ray disc playback by media players such as VLC and MPlayer.

• The libbluray 0.21 release is the first from the project and it happened on the 30th of November. This release hasn’t been widely publicized and I just happened to know about it this morning from an indirectly-related message on another mailing list. This project was born out of the Doom9 community and has been under development since 2009.

Programming

Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

Security

• Microsoft plans to deliver a festive hamper of 14 security updates next week, three of which are designed to tackle critical remote code execution flaws.

Civil Rights

• Early next year the government will introduce lawful access legislation featuring new information disclosure requirements for Internet providers, the installation of mandated surveillance technologies, and creation of new police powers. Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, the chief proponent of the new law, has defended the plans, stating that opponents are putting “the rights of child pornographers and organized crime ahead of the rights of law-abiding citizens.”

ACTA

• 100 years after Amundsen reached the South Pole in the Antartics our European member states sent ACTA on a mission to benefit the South. No, kidding?

• Sure, an Medicines Sans Frontiers representative once indicated ACTA may generate some serious effects on pharmaceutical supply for their emergency operations in the least developed nations and patients’ access to retroviral drugs etc. But these effect he argued would be rather negative.

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