● 12.19.11

● Links 19/12/2011: Linux Kernel 3.2 RC 6, Razor-qt 0.4.0

Posted in News Roundup at 11:16 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Server

• The servers run a hardened Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system.

• LinuxForce, Inc. announced today the availability of LinuxForce Cluster Services℠, a new IT (Information Technology) service offering. LinuxForce Cluster Services℠ design, provision, and maintain redundant, high availability (HA) clustered servers. HA servers are needed by organizations to assure a reliable system for delivery of critical business applications whether on-site, colocated, or “in the cloud”. LinuxForce’s advanced approach to implementing HA server clusters protect valuable data and assure continuity for virtualized systems while minimizing overall costs and maximizing performance without burdening existing staff.

Audiocasts/Shows

Kernel Space

• Linus Torvalds announced last evening, December 16th, that another Release Candidate version of the upcoming Linux kernel 3.2 is available for download and testing.

Applications

• The Nightingale development team has published the first release of its open source media player and re-launched the project’s web site. Nightingale was forked from the cross platform Songbird player after its developers announced that they would be dropping support for Linux, citing prioritisation issues.

Proprietary

• DFT Digital Film Technology has announced that its Flexxity suite of software applications (Dailies, Playout and Archive) now includes native support of ProRes files on the Linux OS.

Instructionals/Technical

• Android and Linux, despite being kernel cousins have love hate relationship. There is no client for Linux to manage your Android devices. Yes, it’s true that Android devices don’t need an iTunes like to pry on what you put on your devices, you can just drag and drop content. But what if you want to sync your contacts? Well since you are either way using a Google account so you can sync those contacts with your email client easily. In a nutshell and in a majority of cases you actually don’t need a client for Android, in Linux.

• Ever since we started this blog, we’ve talked about Linux at great length. We’ve provided tips, tutorials, hacks and even some spicy gossip from the magical Penguinland. While that may suffice your geek cravings, the information falls quite short if you’re trying to learn about Linux in greater detail. For learning Linux, you’ll need a deeper knowledge and understanding about the system and its functions. And what better way to learn Linux than by filling your shelf with some great books on the topic?

Games

• Season 2 for fun Linux platform game No Time to Explain has just been released. The second part takes the crazy fast paced platforming action to new heights and is bigger than ever.

Desktop Environments

• We are glad to announce the release of Razor-qt 0.4.0, after a months of development since the last release…

• The Razor-Qt desktop was just updated to version 0.4.0 after being in development for months. This release improves stability of the lightweight desktop, introduces several new components, offers new translations, a new theme, new panel plug-ins, and much more. The new Razor desktop components are azor-runner, razor-config, qtxdg, and Razor own menu.

• Most Linux distributions use one or more mainstream desktop environments. To be honest with you, I prefer KDE. My next preference is XFCE, followed by GNOME. And LXDE brings up the rear of the mainstream desktop environments for me. Every user has his own preferences, of course. That’s why arguments over Linux distributions and desktop environments will never end. People will always have differences of opinion.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

• Plasma Active, the KDE project that aims to create an open source user environment for tablets and mobile devices has had its second release. Earlier this year, they released Plasma Active One, their first preview release of many, that showcased their new Contour UI and activities.

Distributions

• Back in March 2011, LWN examined package signing (or the lack thereof) in the Arch Linux distribution. Things have advanced considerably since then. Allan McRae has now posted the fourth in a series of articles about the adoption of signed packages in Arch.

New Releases

• The Chakra Development Team has announced the release of Chakra 2011.12. Chakra is one the most popular Arch Linux forks. This version is Linux 3.1 and KDE 4.7. With this release KDE is updated to 4.7.4, kernel to Linux 3.1.4. The sound group has been rebuild/updated, latest networkmanagement and mesa-stack are also included. Chakra is now offering a DVD and CD version.

• The SystemRescueCd and GParted Live developers have each released new versions of their Linux distributions for administering and repairing systems. Both of updated distributions include the recent 0.11.0 release of the open source GParted partition editor and new kernels, as well as other changes and package updates.

Red Hat Family

• Red Hat, Inc. (RHT) provides open-source software and services to the enterprise computing market. It is the most recognized open-source brand in the world. Their most popular solutions are Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, JBoss Enterprise Middleware and their Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) operating systems. Much of the company’s revenue is generated through subscriptions and in the training of these products.

• Equities research analysts at Stifel Nicolaus raised their price target on shares of Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) to $56.00 in a research issued note to investors on Thursday. They currently have a “buy” rating on the company’s shares.

Fedora

• Dan Horák announced a last evening, December 15th, the immediate availability for download of the Fedora 16 operating system for IBM System z (s390x) 64-bit systems.

• Chris Smart announced the availability of Kororaa Linux 16 which code name is “Chum” on 16 Dec,2011. The Kororaa is originally based on Gentoo Linux but after 2010 it is based on Fedora Linux. The main aim of this Linux is to provide the easiness and user-friendly packages.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Canonical announced a few hours ago, December 15th, that it will remove all Sun JDK (Java Development Kit) packages from the Canonical Partner repository.

• Puppy Linux is a tiny distribution that is geared towards older PCs and giving them a second life. Puppy Linux can be run from a Live CD or USB (for faster performance) or just install it onto your system.

• The software programs that come part of Puppy Linux are those that are specifically picked out to ensure that resources are not wasted while providing a productive machine. The programs that are part of Puppy you will not usually find on a distribution such as Linux Mint or Ubuntu which are geared towards more modern systems but that does not mean they are any less useful.

• When I decided to start a blog and write about Linux, I never thought that I would see this. Since this surprised me somewhat, I decided to share it.

• Six months ago I wrote about a weekend project to install the SqueezeServer Squeezebox media server on an aging PC (a Hush PC based on a 1.2 GHz Via system with 40GB hard disk and 1 GB of memory) running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

• This is an update. I have spent the last few months tweaking the setup and buying additional Logitech Squeezebox devices, allowing me to stream music throughout the house with the same song playing in different rooms, or each room playing different music.

• Dear People From The Future Use gtk-theme-switch2 to change from Oxygen-Molecule to some other theme, Oxygen-Molecule caused me massive CPU usage for Thunderbird and *some* other GTK software. Oxygen-Molecule-Flat works fine.

• Ubuntu 11.10 has some jagged edges and documentation isn’t easy to locate, but Canonical is certainly dreaming big with this latest update, dubbed Oneiric (dreamy) Ocelot.

• Canonical is showcasing a new effort to reach out and touch hardware manufacturers… an effort that coincides well not only with its ongoing desktop PC push, but perhaps also Canonical’s latest drive to target the mobile device market.

Flavours and Variants

• Pear OS is a new Linux desktop distribution based on Ubuntu Desktop with the graphical installer. Its development started in early August 2011 by David Tavares (from France), and on August 15 2011, Pear OS 1.0, the first version marked “stable,” was released. The latest edition, release on December 14 2011, is Pear OS Linux Panther 3.

• Though a Linux distribution running the GNOME 3 desktop, Pear OS’s desktop is fashioned after Apple’s Mac OS X, and each major version’s code name is taken from the Mac OS release with a corresponding version number. So, “Panther,” the code name of Pear OS Linux 3, is taken from the code name of Mac OS 10.3. If you have not been following Apple’s flagship operating system, each Mac OS edition is named after a big cat. Like all reviews published on this website, this one is based on test installations of the 32-bit edition of Pear OS Linux Panther 3 (a 64-bit edition is available too) in virtual environments and on real hardware.

Devices/Embedded

• Linaro, the open organization focused on improving Linux on ARM, has formed the Linaro Community Contributor Process and Team. Linaro Technical Leads now have the opportunity to nominate any individual who has made sustained contributions over a significant period of time as a Community Contributor of Linaro.

Phones

Android

• Yesterday Google made available Galaxy Nexus in the US and today the company started rolling out Android 4.0 to its Nexus S phones.

• The Google + page of Android posted that “We’re rolling out Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, to GSM/UMTS Nexus S devices over the coming month, starting today.”

• File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a popular and time-honored method of transferring files to and from remote network sites and devices. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and uses separate control and data connections between the client and server applications. The FTP client connects to the FTP server, and enables the user to send and retrieve files from that server.

• Released with a GNU GPL license (see notice below), this is the application only. The distribution package contains the version 1.0 application .apk, source code, and all resources in an eclipse IDE workspace. There is a user’s guide.

Free Software/Open Source

• Last week, IBM announced that it was taking Enterprise Generation Language (EGL) into the open-source realm with the debut of Eclipse EGL Web Developer Tools version 0.7, which is built on an open, extensible compiler and generator framework. ( You can download it and get more information here.)

Web Browsers

Chrome

• Chromium OS Lime logo Following nearly a one year delay, web developer and hacker Liam “Hexxeh” McLoughlin has released new builds of Lime, a customised Chromium OS-based operating system. Chromium OS is the open source branch of Google’s Chrome OS, the company’s minimalist Linux-based operating system that is built around the Chrome web browser.

SaaS

• The file sharing, synchronization market led by Dropbox is a popular target these days. For many companies, it’s a chance to horn in on a growing market and carve out a piece of the pie for themselves. For open source projects, it’s a chance to return control of personal data to the user. For the folks behind ownCloud, it’s both.

Business

• Career so far I founded LinuxIT 12 years ago with the aim of it becoming the UK’s leading authority in the application of Linux and open source by offering the complete, integrated technology and service solution.

Funding

• There are still a few days left for funding deals to be announced in 2011 but it is already clear that 2011 will be a record year. $672.8m has been invested in open source-related vendors in 2011, according to our preliminary figures, an increase of over 48% on 2010, and the highest total amount invested in any year, beating the previous best of $623.6m, raised in 2006.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Hello, it’s Andrew the FSF campaigns intern. My internship is coming to a close, so I’d like to share with you what I’ve done this fall.

• Today is a good day. I just distributed ucommon 5.1.0, and a second api and utilities snapshot for what will eventually become GNU Bayonne 3.0. I think GNU Bayonne will become strategic to our goals in 2012, along with GNU SIP Witch and the GFC client. We have already discussed internally an outline and possible goals for 2012 development in GNU Telephony, and I have made preliminary plans to attend LibrePlanet2012 in March.

Project Releases

Public Services/Government

• The localized Linux distro of the German city Munich LiMux has reached another milestone.

• The Australian Government Information Office (AGIMO) has reported a healthy level of open source software (OSS) use within government agencies during the past year.

• The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is to pilot a new computing scheme over the next 12 months.

• As part of the government’s plans to adopt open source technology, 1,000 desktops are to be installed in the department to replace the current set-up. The DWP currently uses computers running Windows XP, Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer 6.

Openness/Sharing

Open Access/Content

• Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg announced Tuesday that he will push for legislation to create an online, open-source library to reduce the cost of course materials for college students across the state.

Open Hardware

Programming

• One of the most striking findings was how often API programs were started in secret, nurtured by the true believers in a clandestine way, slipped into production, and then brought to the awareness of senior management after the API was shown to be a success.

Leftovers

Security

• A hacker has published code for potent cross-site scripting attacks that he claims go beyond the usual cookie stealing and phishing for users’ private details.

• Linux security boffin Andrew Griffiths has launched series of educational hacking challenges that hone skills in privilege escalation, vulnerability analysis, exploit development, debugging and reverse engineering.

Finance

• But what singles Goldman Sachs out for special opprobrium isn’t the culpability it shares with other investment banks for helping to create the financial crisis and then get bailed out with taxpayer dollars. It’s the fact that Goldman Sachs figured out, before any of its Wall Street colleagues, that the housing boom was a house of cards and the entire mortgage-backed security market was headed for a crash. Goldman wasn’t caught by surprise by the revelation that the mortgage securities it was creating were toxic junk. Quite the opposite. But instead of sending up an alarm bell and using its political influence and lobbying muscle to try to fend off the coming disaster, Goldman Sachs simply liquidated the positions in which it would be vulnerable to a downturn and started betting, instead, on the likelihood of disaster. As the Senate report acidly notes, in December 2006, “when it saw evidence that the high risk mortgages underlying many RMBS and CDO securities were incurring accelerated rates of delinquency and default, Goldman quietly and abruptly reversed course.”

• Obama did not explain what Wall Street behavior he found least ethical or what unethical Wall Street actions he believed was not illegal. It would have done the world (and Obama) a great service had he been asked these questions. He would not have given a coherent answer because his thinking on these issues has never been coherent. If he had to explain his position he, and the public, would recognize it was indefensible.

• [...]

• I have explained at length in my blogs and articles why:

• • Only fraudulent home lenders made liar’s loans • Liar’s loans were endemically fraudulent • Lenders and their agents put the lies in liar’s loans • Appraisal fraud was endemic and led by lenders and their agents • Liar’s loans could only be sold through fraudulent reps and warranties • CDOs “backed” by liar’s loans were inherently fraudulent • CDOs backed by liar’s loans could only be sold through fraudulent reps and warranties • Liar’s loans hyper-inflated the bubble • Liar’s loans became roughly one-third of mortgage originations by 2006

• [...]

• As a criminologist, I do not favor sentencing criminals to the fates they richly deserve.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• As Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s new policies restricting protest in the Wisconsin capitol take effect in advance of the anniversary of 2011′s historic labor uprisings, the controversial governor has enlisted a new spokesperson to sell the rules, a 28-year old protégé of Karl Rove and new political appointee of the governor.

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

----------

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.