● 12.16.11

● Links 16/12/2011: Kororaa 16, Puppy Linux 5.3.1

Posted in News Roundup at 1:20 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• The holidays are almost here, and for a lot of people that means gift giving. Getting gifts, of course, is the easy part. Finding the right gift is the hard part. If you’re shopping for your favorite Linux user, or you’re a Linux user shopping for others, we’ve got a bunch of fun ideas to help you round out the shopping list.

Kernel Space

• At the request of many Phoronix readers, here are some new Linux virtualization benchmarks. Being compared is the performance of KVM (the Kernel-based Virtual Machine) to that of HandelSpielVM on the Linux 3.0 kernel with a stock Ubuntu 11.10 for both the host and guest.

Graphics Stack

• Peter Hutterer has provided an update on the state of X.Org multi-touch support as he hopes to have this input feature ready for integration into the next X.Org Server release.

• Multi-touch has been a work in progress for a while after being delayed from the X.Org Server 1.11 release and is not part of X Input 2.1, but multi-touch as a feature of X Input 2.2 will hopefully be ready for X.Org Server 1.12. The original X.Org multi-touch implementation goes back to 2010 and even at that stage had undergone several revisions.

• Back at XDC2011 Chicago plans were laid by Intel OSTC developers to have OpenGL 3.0 support in Mesa before year’s end, but with three weeks left to 2011, will they make this deadline?

• The developers working on Mesa within Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center have been making steady progress on reaching this OpenGL 3.0 goal in Mesa. The OpenGL 3.0 specification is nearly three years old, but the Mesa/Gallium3D support has lagged behind as invasive infrastructure changes have had to be made, significant GL Shading Language (GLSL) updates, and other changes made. The latest upstream OpenGL specification meanwhile is OpenGL 4.2.

Applications

• Serious command-line users will definitely love tmux, a utility that allows you to split your terminal window into multiple screens.

• New Linux users may have been tempted to jump in with both feet after hearing about the customization options and security offered by the number one open source operating system. What they might not have realized, though, is that with freedom comes some very difficult choices—like which shell to use.

• The lightweight and flexible painting application MyPaint has officially made its 1.0 release. The milestone marks the end of a long, stable progression for the application. Consequently, there are not drastic changes from the 0.9 series, but there are several User Interface (UI) and feature improvements that new users and old pros alike will be glad to see.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• Oh my God! It’s the return of your old favorite classic, the Rock-n-Roll DOSBox Freak Show, in which I, in the name of truth, justice, and barfing butterflies, randomly snarf up abandonware DOS games from Internet archive sites, plug them into DOSBox, and report what they did to my brain! And those are often very funny things! Sometimes I discover a crusty old classic that curls my toes with joy, and sometimes I get a hoary old croaker that upsets me so terribly that I find myself in a therapist’s office showing her where on the doll the bad game touched me. Well, anyway, let’s strap in and fly though this…

Desktop Environments

• The Open Source Ecology project is developing tools for building sustainable communities based on the principles of DIY and closed-loop manufacturing

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

• Softpedia is the first to inform that the Amarok developers unleashed a few minutes ago, December 15th, the final and stable Amarok 2.5 music player and organizer software for Linux OSes.

• At the time, a version of the open source software called Plasma Active One had just been launched for tablets and other mobile devices, but it was compatible with only a limited range of Intel-based devices.

• Nokia has announced the release of Qt 4.8.0, its cross platform application and user interface framework. This release is not accompanied by a new release of the Qt SDK – version 1.2 of the SDK will follow in January 2012.

GNOME Desktop

Distributions

• Puppy Linux, the renowned champion of light weight Linux distributions, has reached version 5.3.1. Puppy Linux is one of those Linux distributions which focus on ease of use.

• Last week I posted about an open-source game in development called Pissed Off Penguins that is using Kickstarter to fund the project. Today I ran across another open-source Kickstarter project that I thought was worth sharing. The project, called Debate OS, is an Ubuntu spin focused on providing a debate environment for high school and college students.

• One of the distributions I’ve been wanting to check out for a while now has been VectorLinux. Recently, version 7.0 of VectorLinux was released, so I’m reviewing it.

Red Hat Family

Fedora

• Fedora 14 reached its end of life for updates and support on December 09, 2011. Now there will be no further updates, including security updates, for Fedora 14. If you are still using Fedora 14, you must upgrade to the latest version of Fedora which is Fedora 16. The Fedora Project wiki contains instructions on how to upgrade from a previous release of Fedora to a version receiving updates.

• It was a little while in coming, but it was worth the wait! It is my pleasure to announce the release of Kororaa 16 (codename “Chum”) which is now available for download.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• “The cloud” can be hard to visualize, not least because the hardware behind it is often an ambiguous collection of servers scattered somewhere across the ether of the Internet. But in Canonical’s vision, the cloud can be something as simple and concrete as a USB stick running the Ubuntu Cloud Live image, which makes the creation of private clouds quite trivial. I recently got a chance to play around with this neat tool, and here’s what I found.

• Ubuntu team picks some of the coolest apps every month. When there are more than 30,000 apps highlight cool apps can help users in picking the right apps. This month the team has selected 3 apps to highlight.

• The Ubuntu One team has announced that users can now stream music they have stored in Ubuntu One (U1) via the web. When signed in, Ubuntu One users can access the music streaming feature from the Music tab on the U1 dashboard; previously, users were only able to stream audio from U1 using an Ubuntu One app for Android and iOS devices.

Flavours and Variants

• Ubuntu is undoubtedly one of the most user-friendly GNU/Linux-based operating system. Yes, I agree that ‘user-friendly’ is a relative term. For a home user, who is not very well versed with technology, Ubuntu can be extremely easy to use and manage. However, Unity changed (?) something.

Devices/Embedded

• Ruben Vermeersch has posted a cool picture of a cigarette vending machine in Amsterdam running some GNU/Linux OS. It’s funny how one found that the dispenser was running GNU/Linux. There was a grub loading error resulting in black screen of death. A few months ago we noticed Brussels buses running Microsoft Windows, as it was showing the infamous blue screen of death.

Phones

Android

• It’s an irony that Linux-based Android tables don’t support Linux-based operating systems. Android 3.x+ uses MTP for mounting the devies on the PCs, which is not supported very well on Linux.

• Google has finally made available its ‘super-phone’ Samsung Galaxy Nexus from Verizon Wireless. Google today sent out emails to those who subscribed on its Galaxy Nexus to be notified when the phone will be available.

• WebOS the once coveted proprietary software that cost HP 1.2 Billion to acquire, is now Open Source software, after tablets running on WebOS failed miserably. Analysts ponder if WebOS entry, as free licensed software, will disrupt the just –consolidating-phase of Android OS.

• There has been no shortage of reaction to HP’s move to make the Linux-based WebOS open source software. Below, I offer some of my thoughts on the meaning for the different players affected.

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• Move over, Kindle Fire. Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich operating system has landed on a $100 tablet now shipping in China. The 7-inch tablet is also bound for the U.S. market.

• It’s Christmas time, for a Linux and Open Source user. The market is flooded with a wide range of gadgets which can be the ‘perfect’ gift for your loved ones. I am working on a list of top 10 Linux gadgets for this Christmas.

• Sony has introduced its Android tablet category in India with the launch of Sony Tablet S & P. In India, Sony has collaborated with local content developers to design unique applications for the Indian consumers. Priced at Rs. 33,990 and Rs. 36,990 for the 3G + Wi-Fi version, Sony Tablet S & Tablet P will be available across 500 stores in India starting Mid-January 2012.

• The Kindle Fire tablet is the top-selling and most wished-for item across Amazon.com, Amazon said. Among Kindle devices, however, Amazon did not break out how many of those 1 million devices sold were the Fire, the Kindle Touch, Kindle DX, and original Kindle e-reader.

• Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat, please put a penny in Android’s hat! Android tablets are going to be the hottest gifts this Christmas. If you are looking for gifting a tablet to your loved one here is the list of top 5 Android tablets.

• Archos is one of the first out of the gate, announcing an official update to ICS for their G9 tablet in Q1 2012.

• The 7-inch variation of the Toshiba Thrive has gone on sale this week, giving U.S. consumers yet another option in portable Honeycomb experiences. Available in either 16GB ($379) or 32GB ($429) models, the Thrive 7 includes a 1GHz Tegra 2 dual-core processor, 5-megapixel rear camera and 2-megapixel front-facing camera. Additional specifications include microSD card expansion, mini-USB, micro-HDMI, stereo speakers, and Wi-Fi connectivity. Announced back in September, this 7-inch tablet is much thinner and lighter than its bigger brother and features a display resolution of 1280×800 pixels.

• Ah, sweet revenge! After winning its court battle to lift the ban on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia, Samsung is making the most of the fondleslab injunction saga.

• Samsung Australia’s vice-president of telecommunications, Tyler McGee, told the Sydney Morning Herald that the case has turned the tablet into a household name in Oz.

• Kyobo Book Centre and Qualcomm have revealed the world’s first ereader to use a mirasol color e-paper display, the Android-based Kyobo eReader. Mirasol’s Mems technology has had us all drooling for a three weeks of battery life with daily use since their screen has no backlight and mimics light reflection in a butterfly’s wings to get its colors.

• Call it an early holiday gift or just making good on a promise, but Barnes & Noble has just released an expected software update for Nook Color owners that adds many of the features now found in the company’s step-up model, the $249 Nook Tablet.

Free Software/Open Source

• A telecommunications firm in Britain is supporting its Internet subscribers using the Ubuntu Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor, open source management software from Convirture and an approach to virtual machine clustering that shuns live migration.

• Just in time for its 10th birthday, the developers of Rockbox have released version 3.10 of their alternative open source firmware for digital audio players. Rockbox is mainly used on older MP3 players – including devices from Apple, Archos, Cowon, iRiver, SanDisk and Toshiba – and aims to be “considerably more functional and efficient” than the standard device firmware.

• For countless people who are about to start a new year unemployed, this year’s top resolution will be finding a job. We’ve reported before on how acquiring skills with open source technologies can be an effective differentiator or the job seeker. Just this past week, more evidence that this is true has rolled in, and in this post you’ll also find some of OStatic’s best collected resources for leveraging open source skills for employment.

• One of the biggest complaints that many people have about open source software is that there isn’t adequate documentation. On the Linux front, though, there is surprisingly rich information available for free online on moving from being a beginner to an advanced user. Whether you’re new to Linux, or a seasoned Linux administrator, you can find hugely helpful resources online, without paying anything. Here is our most recently updated collection of top free resources for Linux.

• A few people are saying KDE is a winner for 4.7. Folks seem to like that version. It might be time for me to brave away from 4.6, especially since my Aggregator has starting crashing lately.

• Another outlier even mentioned Slackware for remaining relevant. Well, his exact words were, “Slackware for continuing to be powerful, rock-solid and fast.” Gotta love the Slack. This same commenter also put Novell in the big loser column with, “Novell for selling their soul.” I’m not sure I agree with that. When I think of Novell selling their soul, I think more of the Microsoft deal than the Attachmate acquisition.

• Over the past year, we’ve been working on a number of projects to help those who want to more closely participate in the Linux community, but don’t know where to start.

• First, there’s the Linux Foundation Training program. We’ve continued to add courses as new needs arise, and have had the opportunity to give on-site training to many companies over the past year. While much of our content is on improving technical skills (e.g. “Developing Linux Device Drivers,” “Embedded Linux Development,” “Advanced Linux Performance Tuning”), we have also added courses on being more effective when working with open communities. “How to Participate with the Linux Community” is a roadmap of sorts for developers and managers who are comfortable with the technology, but need some guidance in understanding the Linux kernel community processes. (A related guide on participating with the Linux community is also available.)

Events

Web Browsers

Chrome

• This post is part of our ReadWriteCloud channel, which is dedicated to covering virtualization and cloud computing. The channel is sponsored by Intel and VMware. Read the case study about how Intel Xeon processors and VMware helped virtualize 12 business critical database applications.

Mozilla

• If you’re a Google Chrome user, you may greatly appreciate the fact that updates to the browser–which many observers predict will eclipse Mozilla Firefox in global market share next year–are automatically pushed. In other words, Chrome users get transparent updates, which differs from how Firefox and other browsers approach moving users to new versions. That’s going to change soon for Firefox users, and some Firefox users are likely to appreciate silent updates, while some others may not.

SaaS

• ownCloud, the open source file-sharing project which enables individuals to create their own local cloud, has evolved into a company. Former SUSE/Novell executive Markus Rex is joining the company as its first CEO and CTO. ownCloud has more than 350,000 users around the globe. The company is opening its a HQ in Boston, USA.

• I’ve been asked to provide a brief security analysis of the OpenStack open source cloud computing platform and whether our enterprise should pursue it as the basis for our cloud infrastructure build-out. My initial assessment is that, like with Apache and Linux, the open nature of the platform allows security flaws to be found and fixed quickly, which helps decrease the likelihood of exploits. Do you agree? What other OpenStack security points (pro and con) are worth considering?

• The astonishing speed at which the “big data” processing industry is evolving dwarfs anything we’ve ever seen with regard to software. Problems that stymied the best engineers just 18 short months ago are now commonplace tasks for modern data centers. Already, the systems envisioned by Google’s and Yahoo’s engineers are being prepared for the history books, as 2012 should bring forth the second generation of open source, scalable, big data processing.

Databases

• A year ago I posted a blog on The state of MySQL forks: co-operating without co-operating. (Also Giuseppe wrote about the topic at that time, and Peter Zaitsev covers it in his conference keynotes.) So I’ve been wondering if it would be good to write an update on the topic now, and in that case what to write.

• Sometimes it helps looking at particular examples to understand a general thing, at least my brain works that way. It just so happens that this might be a good approach to give a snapshot of how the MySQL forks are doing. So I will here focus on the recent announcements on authentication plugins – but not to focus on the feature itself, rather letting this be my 2011 edition on the state of the MySQL forks.

• The PostgreSQL developers have announced the release of version 9.1.2 of their open source relational database, a maintenance update that includes fixes for 52 bugs found in PostgreSQL 9.1. Bug fix updates have also been released for the 9.0.x, 8.4.x, 8.3.x and 8.2.x branches of PostgreSQL.

Education

• As an educator, trained Linux systems administrator, and technology director for a K-12 school district, I have been actively involved with NYSCATE (The New York State Association for Computers and Technologies in Education), a non-profit organization that works to lead the transformation of teaching and learning through technology. It’s been 20 years since I attended my first NYSCATE conference, and the conference’s open source presence has taken many different forms.

Business

• Platform-as-a-Service provider CloudBees has released Jenkins Enterprise, a version of its continuous integration (CI) software designed for use in businesses. The service goes beyond the open source Jenkins community’s Long Term Support (LTS) release and provides enhancements for large installations, resource management, and access rights management; to this end, CloudBees has developed a variety of enterprise plugins. Customers who purchase Jenkins Enterprise also gain access to the company’s other proprietary products.

Project Releases

• GIMP team has announced the release of GIMP 2.7.4. This release does’t bring any major changes and is mainly minor improvements and bug fixes release. Most improvements are related to user interface and usability. The GIMP team is now looking at version 2.8 and it is expected, depending on amount of bugs, that this could be the last version before 2.8 release candidates and 2.8 itself.

• The developers behind Icinga, which forked from Nagios two-and-a-half years ago, have released version 1.6 of the network monitoring software. This was quickly followed by version 1.6.1 released in response to a bug. Major changes in the new version include extended logging capabilities in the Classic UI and Core designed to make troubleshooting easier and increasing the performance of notifications. The developers have also added the ability to assign expiry times to acknowledgement, making use of an idea from a recent feedback poll.

• The TYPO3 Security Guide is available to view online or to download in DocBook or OpenOffice.org Writer format. Like the project’s other official documentation, the Security Guide is published under the Open Content License; the source code for TYPO3 is licensed under the GPL

• DNS service provider OpenDNS has announced a preview release of a new open source tool to improve internet security: DNSCrypt encrypts all DNS traffic between a user’s system and a DNS server. The tool is currently only available for the Mac, with a Windows version promised, and only works with OpenDNS’s own DNS service. Normally, DNS information is exchanged between client and server as plain text which makes it vulnerable to snooping or modification and man-in-the-middle attacks. By encrypting the exchange, OpenDNS hopes to make the “last mile” of DNS requests more secure.

Licensing

• Open source software (OSS), like any other software, is protected by copyright and its usage is governed under a license. As such, it is important enterprises pay attention to considerations, such as how much freedom they need with regard to developing on the source code or whether they plan to monetize the software, before deciding which license to use.

Openness/Sharing

• The Creative Commons project has announced the beginning of the process leading to version 4.0 of its license suite.

Open Data

• This first code that has been released concerns the tools needed to set up an automated process for publishing data on the platform; this Data Management System handles the submission and approval of data and the updating of the catalogues of data on the Open Government Platform. The next set of data that will come from India’s National Informatics Centre relates to providing web site access to the platform. The two countries are encouraging developers to get involved and provide feedback, new modules and capabilities.

Programming

• LLVM 3.0 was released last week as a major update to this increasingly popular open-source compiler infrastructure. With the release of LLVM 3.0 proper also came major updates to the Clang C/C++ compiler front-end and the DragonEgg GCC plug-in (here are the exciting LLVM3 changes). In this article is a look at DragonEgg for LLVM 3.0 that plugs into GCC to replace its optimizers and code generators with those from LLVM.

• The developers behind the jQuery plugins site have come clean – in a blog posting, they explain what happened to the jQuery plugins site. It went down around a week ago with only a message saying that the old site had issues with spam and was being reworked with a new submission process. In fact, what had happened was that, in an attempt to clean the spam using Drupal Views Bulk Operations, all the plugins were deleted, and all that they had was a year old backup. “In an ideal world, this certainly wouldn’t have happened exactly as it did. Sadly, it did” said the developers, who asked for forgiveness and “maybe even a hand” developing a completely new plugins site for the jQuery community.

• Five months after the arrival of 1.5, version 1.6 of qooxdoo has been released. Project Lead Andreas Ecker says that the update to the open source “Universal JavaScript Framework” includes a number of “substantial improvements” and new features.

• The 1.6 release of qooxdoo adds support for applications going offline. qooxdoo makes use of local/session storage and offline event technology and adds an offline event handler and offline data store to simplify using those facilities. This allows developers to create apps that can pre-cache data and will work without an internet connection; a feedreader demo app with offline support is provided.

Leftovers

• 2012 could be an especially interesting year for open-source software with continued advancements in the area of open-source drivers, prominent announcements, major software releases like GIMP 2.8 and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, and much more. Another event to look forward to next year is a new operating system release built atop the unique Genode Operating System Framework.

Science

• Intel [NASDAQ:INTC] and Micron has announced a new benchmark in NAND flash technology – the world’s first 20 nanometer (nm), 128 gigabit (Gb), multilevel-cell (MLC) device. The new 20nm monolithic 128Gb device is claimed to be the first in the industry to enable a terabit (Tb) of data storage in a fingertip-size package by using just eight die.

Security

• Devices running Microsoft’s Window Phone are susceptible to a denial-of-service attack that disables their messaging function, a tipster has told WinRumors.com.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Exxon Mobil has released its 2012 Outlook for Energy: A view to 2040 report. I actually find these industry forecasts helpful, especially for their nuanced contrast with comparable long-range reports from EIA Washington and IEA Paris. For example, I find Exxon’s view that oil will retain its role as the primary energy source—not to be eclipsed by either natural gas or coal—unrealistic. But this is the same view held by IEA and EIA. Where Exxon is more on track however, is in their call that growth in global coal consumption rises very strongly through the end of this decade. This is the call I would have expected IEA and EIA to make as well. Given current trends, I explained as much in Coal’s Terrible Forecast: Because it is coal, not oil, that is steadily growing in supply. And you can’t increase consumption of a resource whose supply has been flat, for the past six years.

Privacy

• Richard Stallman has declared Facebook and Google+ are mistreating their users. Furthermore, he points out Facebook performs massive surveillance with its tracking cookies.

Civil Rights

• SOPA has been making the rounds of headlines across the internet and print media this last couple weeks. It is a bill to criminalize “illegal” content online. So, someone posts a snippet of a song owned by a record company on your website, and you are now a criminal. You are not just a person with a legal dispute between you and someone else. The Federal Government is also standing between you and that someone else.

• This represents a dramatic shift in copyright law in recent years. At its inception, copyright law was designed as a civil matter. If a copyright holder felt their material was used illegally, the holder was granted the right to take any offenders to court, at their own expense, as one would do over a contract dispute.

• Criminal matters are intended to be those issues that threaten the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of the general public. For issues where the interests of only a few select entities are at stake, our once wise Constitutional legislators designated those issues as civil matters.

• The U.S. House of Representatives has set aside time today to discuss the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), as we covered here. Members of the House Judiciary Committee will debate the proposed legislation, and Judiciary chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) will reportedly try to address strong concerns from the technology community about the bill. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has said that the bill would: “….grant the government and private parties unprecedented power to interfere with the Internet’s domain name system (DNS). The government would be able to force ISPs and search engines to redirect or dump users’ attempts to reach certain websites’ URLs.” With the discussion looming today, many new organizations are coming out in opposition of the bill, or firming up existing opposition.

Internet/Net Neutrality

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

ACTA

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