● 01.21.12

● Links 21/1/2012: Linux 3.3, GNOME Shell 3.2.2

Posted in News Roundup at 10:46 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Who are you, and what do you do?

• I run a blog and co-host an audiocast which highlights diversity in the computing world. I emphasise FOSS solutions [and] champion the plethora of choice in today’s market.

• I run these projects as hobby and it’s as far removed from my real job as is probably possible.

• After the control systems of American military drones became contaminated with Windows USB viruses in 2011, there has been a shift of these control systems to adopting Linux operating system, published TheRegister on January 12, 2012.

Server

• This formerly obscure Web server is gaining popularity with businesses. NGINX is now the new number two Web server, largely because it promises a fast, light, open-source alternative to Apache. Here’s why it’s attracting so much attention.

• Linux is poised for continued growth among new and existing users thanks to lower total cost of ownership, technical features and security, among other reasons, according a recent Linux Foundation survey.

Kernel Space

• Linux 3.3 can change the size of ext4 filesystems faster and supports ACPI 5.0, LPAE for ARM processors, Ethernet teaming and hot replace for software RAID. Meanwhile, Linux 3.1 has reached the end of the line, and the Linux Ate My RAM web site explains why Linux often appears to use all of the RAM.

Graphics Stack

• There is some exciting news to break today on Phoronix… Coming up at FOSDEM (the Free Open-Source Developers’ European Meeting in Brussels) will be the formal announcement of an open-source, reverse-engineered graphics driver for the ARM Mali graphics processor. OpenGL ES triangles are in action on open-source code. Will this be the start of fully open-source ARM graphics drivers for Android and Linux?

• Nvidia Optimus is a technology available for notebooks, used to increases battery life by switching the dedicated GPU off when it’s not needed and then switching it on again when it’s needed. When the dedicated GPU is off, the integrated graphics chip is used.

Applications

• Linux may not have a ton of super advanced photo managers, but it has a few solid programs, the best of which is easily the near professional-grade digiKam.

Instructionals/Technical

• As a thought experiment, [Linus] imagined a null byte represented an electron. /dev/zero would have an infinite supply of electrons and /dev/null would make a wonderful positive power supply. With a very short program (named mosfet.c), [Linus] can use Linux pipes to control the flow of electrons between /zero and /null. [Linus] used mosfet.c with a very short shell script to create a NAND gate. From there all bets were off. He ended up creating a D flip-flop, 4-bit adder and a counter.

• In last week’s Weekend Project, we learned what the Arduino platform is for, and what supplies and skills we need on our journey to becoming Arduino aces. Today we’ll hook up an Arduino board and program it to do stuff without even having to know how to write code.

Games

• Linux gaming has been on rise in last couple of years, specially after coming of Humble Bundles, Desura being launched last year, Amnesia and Oil Rush supporting Linux, new big games announced based on Unigine engine, id Tech 4 Engine source being available, work done by icculus.org and Trine, Dungeons of Dredmor, Steel Storm, Red Eclipse, Xonotic, Retro Blazer, ToME, Dead Cyborg and numerous other games that have been actively supporting Linux as a gaming platform.

• Desura game client has been open sourced. Work for open sourcing the client was going on for a long time but the progress was slow as lead developer ‘lodle’ was on a holiday break.

• Just few days back, he got back to work and since then efforts to open source the client got back on track. All the needed work has been done now and after sorting out all the remaining issues, Desura has been open sourced as Desurium just 4 hours back.

Desktop Environments

• I saw a post on the Xfce blog Tuesday or Wednesday about changing versioning scheme of the next Xfce release. I saved the URL knowing that I’d want to write about it. Just thank goodness that a storm blew in and caused my computer to shut off. Otherwise, I might have never seen the Update 2. Dirty rats.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

• GWENVIEW Just like Dolphin 2.0 will meet icon animations, Gwenview will get some animations and transitions of its own. The following video demonstrates both Gwenview’s and Dolphin’s. This video also demonstrates the new QML based device notifier.

GNOME Desktop

• Developer Owen Taylor has released version 3.2.2 of the GNOME Shell, an update which fixes a number of bugs in the GNOME 3.2 control panel. These include several which have previously caused problems with the recently launched extensions web site at extensions.gnome.org. The new version allows extensions to be reliably uninstalled from a web browser – something which had previously been problematic – and allows extensions to be installed using WebKit-based browsers like Epiphany and Chrome.

• Bendy Bus will listen for D-Bus method calls and property changes made by your client program, and execute transitions within the FSM as coded in your FSM description file. These transitions may, for example, change the FSM’s state, change data stored in the FSM (technically making it a nondeterministic DFSM, but that’s immaterial), emit D-Bus signals, throw D-Bus errors, etc. Why do I say it’s a nondeterministic FSM? Because you may specify several transitions between the same pair of states which are triggered by the same (for example) D-Bus method call. Bendy Bus will randomly choose one of the transitions to take. For example, if your client program calls a frobnicate : string → string D-Bus method, you could code one transition which successfully replies to the method call with a string return value, and another transition which simulates a failure in the D-Bus service by throwing a D-Bus error instead.

• So, after a few strives during the last year, the multitouch Xorg patches were posted and merged to master last month, making multitouch available in the upcoming Xorg release. This turns the multitouch GTK+ branch into a suitable candidate for GTK+ 3.4…

• The Gnome team has announced the release of Gnome Shell 3.3.4. The new version comes with fixes and improvements. It has fixed the new-workspace drop indicator that sometimes getting stuck. It has added ‘browse’ for labels for dash items – once a tooltip is showing it can switch to other items without a delay.

Distributions

New Releases

Red Hat Family

• Although the European debt crisis is raging on halfway across the world – out of sight of most Americans – the impact could hit home. And in a big way. As my colleague, Karim Rahemtulla, pointed out in September 2011, “The reality is that a European crash – even a slowdown – would have a devastating impact on U.S. growth.”

• Just as I thought the storm has passed, there comes another upgrade for CentOS, this time version 6.2. My CentOS 6.1 box is working fabulously after a rather painless procedure that took only about fifteen minutes to complete. The one problem was the Nvidia driver, which was not installed for the latest kernel, so I had to grab it and install it again.

Fedora

• Fedora is a great OS. Its Linux as it should be free and usable, at the cutting edge but completely stable. But it still lets a lot to be wanted such as the non free software, libraries which are essential in day to day life. Few nitty gritties installed and the make a wonderful environment to work and play.

• I tend to measure the success of an tech event (such as FUDCon) not by how many people show up or what talks were given, but by the work that happens in the days and weeks after the event. By that measure (along with the traditional measurements), our recent FUDCon event was a huge success. I have also been inspired by the friends in our community who have publicly posted their post-FUDCon to-do lists, so that we can all have insight into the work that FUDCon helped bring to light.

• Rather that give a day-by-day account of my own FUDCon activities, I want to just highlight some of the the things that resonated with me at FUDCon.

• First, I was impressed with the Virginia Tech campus. It was a beautiful location for the event, and the amount of space we had was absolutely fantastic. Thanks again to Ben Williams and the Math Department at VT for their awesome support.

Debian Family

• The Debian Project is happy to announce that as in previous years it will be represented at this year’s Free and Open Source Developer’s European Meeting (FOSDEM) in Brussels, Belgium on the 4th-5th February. Debian will be present with a booth in the K building, ground floor, members of the project will be available for questions and discussion, and various Debian-branded items will be on sale.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Does Oneiric have you down? Is your hardware not up to snuff? Well, what are you going to do about it? Ubuntu 10.04 is almost 2 years old now, but you can teach it the electric slide even if all it know how to do is the funky chicken. Here is a short and simple guide for bringing Ubuntu 10.04 into 2012.

• Following our previous articles, Ubuntu Spotify Scope, Ubuntu DeviantArt Scope, Ubuntu SSH Lens, Ubuntu Binary Clock Lens, Ubuntu YouTube Lens and Scope, Ubuntu Calendar Lens, Ubuntu Web Sources Lens, Ubuntu Gwibber Lens, Ubuntu Books Lens, Ubuntu Cities Scope, Ubuntu Grooveshark Scope, Ubuntu Calculator Scope and Pirate Bay Torrents Lens for Unity, today we are introducing the Ubuntu Flickr/Shotwell Photos Lens for the Unity interface.

Devices/Embedded

• Not long ago we published a story about Raspberry Pi, a $35 Linux-based single board computer that is still in development. Now, a Model B version of the device is being demoed and it shows off the small computer’s AirPlay streaming capabilities.

• We wanted to keep the fact that XBMC is running beautifully on Raspberry Pi at least moderately quiet until Gimli and Davilla from XBMC had unveiled their demo at Scale 10x this weekend. Now they have done, so we can all talk about it: here’s some video showing how you can use your Raspberry Pi as a media centre. A $25/$35 media centre the size of a pack of playing cards.

Phones

Android

• SOPA- I’m against it. Yeah, I’m talking about the Stop Online Piracy Act. It’s a U.S. bill, but if you think you’re fine because you live outside U.S., think again. This bill covers all foreign countries, so if you copy a song off the internet, you could land in jail for a couple of years. It is just another one of those reasons that will keep you up at night. And since both parties- Republicans and Democrats are in favor of it, you might want to start losing your sleep as of now.

Free Software/Open Source

• Open source benefits to businesses are pretty obvious, even if only recently recognized. It costs less, and often works better, than its commercial competitors. Developers have long preferred open source products to their commercial counterparts. In fact, this developer preference is why we are seeing the surge in enterprise open source usage. Why do developers prefer open source so strongly?

• For those less than impressed by Corel releasing some professional-grade Linux photography software earlier this month, Adobe still not providing native Linux clients for their popular applications, and haven’t been fond of the major open-source photography programs out there, you may want to try out Darktable.

• For those that haven’t heard of Darktable previously, it’s an in-development open-source photo workflow program. The software can also fully support RAW images and provides a virtual lighttable and darkroom for those interested in photography.

• More and more companies have turned to the Web to transact business. And, of course, if you are going to sell on the Web, the right shopping cart can mean the difference between red and black ink. When shopping for your own e-commerce shopping cart software the most important aspect to consider is how well the cart software meets your business objectives. An e-commerce shopping cart has to be customizable to fit your business needs and branding, be flexible enough to scale as your business grows, be secure and support industry standards and provide solid integrate with payment gateways.

• The University Hygienic Laboratory is in the midst of a groundbreaking collaboration of open source software and public health laboratories at the lab’s three Iowa locations.

Events

• Yesterday was the beginning of some SCALE presentations and the first of the parties while today the popular US open-surce event gets kicked off by Greg DeKoenigsberg (formerly of the Fedora Project) keynoting about cloud computing. For those interested the schedule can be found online. Among the talks I’ll be checking out today and potentially writing about or tweeting about include: Qt Project, Chris Mason’s Btrfs, Consolidating Linux and Open-Source Projects on ARM, PandaBoard, and FUSE with in-kernel meta-data caching.

• For security researcher, software hacker and activist Jacob Appelbaum, the equation is clear. Anyone working on surveillance or censorship technology is part of a serious global problem.

• “When someone says that they are in favour of internet filtering, what they’re actually saying is that they’re in favour of you being ignorant and them having power to be your master. I reject that,” he told the Linux.conf.au 2012 (LCA) conference in Ballarat yesterday.

• Appelbaum is one of the key developers of The Tor Project, software that enables its users to communicate anonymously on the internet, and he’s represented controversial whistleblower site Wikileaks.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• From Facebook posts to redirected Wikipedia searches to water cooler conversations, you could hardly miss the many discussions and signposts about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP bill (PIPA) this week. Many sites on the web went dark in protest, and Mozilla reimained one of the most active organizations opposing the proposed legislation. As we posted here, the bills drew widepsread opposition in the tech community due to online censorship concerns, and Mozilla put up an online page months ago urging people to contact U.S. politicians in opposition to SOPA and PIPA. Now, Mozilla has clarified that its activism efforts reached a whopping 40 million people.

Semi-Open Source

Public Services/Government

• The NASA Open Government Initiative has launched a new Web site to expand the agency’s open source software development. Open source development, which invites the public access to view and improve software source code, is transforming the way software is created, improved and used. NASA uses open source code to address project and mission needs, accelerate software development and maximize public awareness and impact of research.

• In 2009, the White House issued the Open Government Directive, which requires federal agencies to take specific steps to achieve milestones that are transparent. NASA’s Open Government Plan has been recognized as one of the best. NASA was among several federal agencies recognized with two leading practices awards from the White House for achievement above and beyond the requirements in the “Participation and Collaboration” and “Flagship Initiatives” categories of the Open Government Directive.

• Open source development, which invites the public access to view and improve software source code, is transforming the way software is created, improved and used. NASA uses open source code to address project and mission needs, accelerate software development and maximize public awareness and impact of research.

Openness/Sharing

• The FLOSSBOK concept is based on a similar project, known as SWEBOK, sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society, that was used to develop a body of knowledge for software engineering. The SWEBOK project is now more than a decade old and in its third revision. It’s easy to see that the FLOSSBOK effort has a long way to go to match the extensive content found in that document. While I have some significant disagreements with the SWEBOK content, it’s important to notice that there is a sizeable community around that project.

Open Hardware

• “The FLORA comes with projects at launch, the FLORA addressable and chain-able 4,000 mcd RGB LED pixels and premium stainless steel thread.

• “The FLORA has built-in USB support. Built in USB means you plug it in to program it, it just shows up. No additional purchases are needed! Works with Mac, Windows, Linux, any USB cable works great. Currently the PCB comes with a mini B connector but future versions may change to microUSB. Either will work great.

Leftovers

• The Kangeroo Group, a lobby group that emerged as an MEP round table in the early stages of the European Parliament and chaired by Karl von Wogau, finally moved its office out of the European Parliament buildings. It was quite odd to have a lobby platform with a letter box address inside Parliament which covered up as an MEP group.

• When you read articles about cloud computing or Enterprise computing, you rarely see the term ‘UNIX’ anymore. You see plenty of rhetoric about Linux and Windows but UNIX seems to have left the building, for good. And, by ‘building,’ I mean data center. However, that’s not the case. UNIX is alive and well in the world’s Enterprise data centers. It just doesn’t grab headlines like it used to. Does the fact that UNIX isn’t a newsworthy buzz term mean that it’s on its last legs as an Enterprise operating system. Certainly not. Commercial UNIX might have lost its “coolness” but it hasn’t lost its place running your business-critical applications and services.

Security

• The French blogger “Gu1″ has discovered that versions 1.11 and above of X.org’s X Server contain an interesting vulnerability that enables users to gain access to a locked computer. Simultaneously pressing the Ctrl key, the Alt key and the * key on the numeric keyboard disables a user’s screensaver and unlocks the computer; we were able to reproduce the problem on a Fedora 16 system that hadn’t been updated to include Fedora’s recent patch.

Finance

• Groans and grimaces inside a 200 West Street skyscraper can mean only one thing – yes, it’s Goldman Sachs bonus day.

• Thursday is “Compensation Communication Day,” the name Goldman gives to the day when its employees learn how big – or how small – their annual bonuses will be.

• Many Goldman employees are dreading this year’s big reveal, and for good reason. The firm announced on Wednesday that its revenue in 2011 was down significantly, probably bringing bonuses down with it.

• Perhaps the clearest window into a nation’s soul is its criminal justice system. Criminal law is legislated morality: certain acts are so vile, we exile the perpetrators to prison. But not every criminal. America will never have enough resources to catch and prosecute all criminals. As a result many guilty go free without ever being pursued, simply because the government decided spend its limited resources elsewhere. Looking at whom the government prosecutes, therefore, is an easy way to see law enforcers’ priorities in action.

• Sadly, when it comes to the Financial Meltdown perpetrators, scrutiny reveals those priorities are deeply distorted. Our law enforcers chose to become the protection detail of our wealthy-beyond-dreaming-crooks-in-chief, while throwing the book at their guilty but less destructive subordinates.

Privacy

• This really is privacy and data protection week! In Brussels there is the Computers, Privacy & Data Protection conference and the Commission is soon adopting its proposal for a reform of the European Data Protection legal framework (which I wrote about here).

• So today, a blog on how I want to ensure privacy and user control when you’re browsing online: in particular, a standard known as “do not track” (DNT) that I hope will have a big role to play for the future of online privacy.

Civil Rights

• Yesterday was a defining moment for the global Internet community. The effects of the massive online blackout in protest of U.S. Internet blacklist legislation, SOPA and PIPA (H.R. 3261 and S. 968), were felt around the world as countless numbers of websites, including Google, Wikipedia, Mozilla, Reddit, BoingBoing, Flickr, Wired, and many others joined in the global action against over-broad and poorly drafted copyright laws that would break the fundamental architecture of the Internet. To quote [pdf] last year’s landmark Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Opinion: “…Censorship measures should never be delegated to a private entity, and [..] no one should be held liable for content on the Internet of which they are not the author…” The massive opposition from both companies and individuals around the world demonstrates how much these and similar laws would hurt business and innovation, and most importantly, restrict online free expression.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• The CRTC has written to Rogers Communications to advise that its investigation has concluded that the company violated the Internet traffic management rules (better known as net neutrality rules). The letter notes:

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• The five cases I mentioned above involved anti-competitive acts. The four cases I mentioned two years ago also involved anti-competitive acts.

• Two years ago I saw the industry making anti-competitive acts. Now we have SOPA. They can take down any website, and if they mess up and take down the wrong site, you can’t sue them, they are golden. But they can sue you. Does that sound fair?

• The White House appeared to brush back a suggestion from the Motion Picture Association of America on Friday that the president step in on negotiations over controversial online piracy legislation.

• MPAA Chairman and former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) suggested Thursday that the White House would be the perfect place to convene a summit between Hollywood and the tech industry, which are at odds over a pair of online piracy bills that were shelved by congressional leadership Friday morning following massive protests earlier in the week.

• Seldom, even in the acronym-focused world of American politics, have truth and lyricism been so Cirque-du-Soleil-contorted as they have been in the naming the of PROTECT IP Act, or the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011.

• The best part of any internet news story is when the social media power user and sometime Gawker contributor Katie Notopoulos starts searching for it on Twitter. Like the SOPA-driven Wikipedia blackout, which sure freaked out high school kids—and their teachers.

• Ok. So then you condemn SOPA and PIPA, right? Since those are attempts to silence people. But here’s the thing: “free speech” issues are about government censorship. Such as passing a bad law that allows the government to take down websites. Having some people protest you may be annoying, but it’s not a free speech issue (other than, perhaps, in arguing the protesters’ rights to free speech. Trying to regain the high ground on this issue is pretty transparently ridiculous by the MPAA — and simply calls much more attention to who’s actually trying to stifle free speech by passing bad laws that allow for censorship.

• Over at News.com, Molly Wood is suggesting that DOJ did this all on purpose — including the timing of the release — in order to provoke just such a response. This serves multiple purposes for the government. It gives them the chance to make the (obviously bogus and laughable) argument that the wider protests were done by this same group. But, it also gives DOJ and law enforcement the chance to go even further, and use this as an excuse to crack down online and put people in jail. It also gives a (again, bogus) reason to pass far-reaching cybersecurity legislation. The end result could be a lot worse.

• There’s a lot of understandable enthusiasm about today’s array of anti-SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), anti-PIPA (Protect IP Act) demonstrations and protests.

• But there’s a real risk as well. When the big home page banners come down, and the site “blackouts” are lifted, the urge for the vast majority of Internet users to return to “business as usual” will be very strong.

• Perhaps you’ve signed an online petition or tried to call your Congressman or Senator today, and you’ve probably already heard that DNS blocking provisions (at least for the moment, pending “further study”) were announced as being pulled from SOPA and PIPA several days ago.

• The Entertainment Software Association no longer supports the Stop Online Piracy Act, the controversial anti-piracy bill that was shelved earlier today in the House of Representatives after a week of fierce online protests.

• Consumer group Public Knowledge on Friday accused the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and its head, former Sen. Chris Dodd, of trying to intimidate lawmakers into supporting a pair of controversial anti-piracy bills.

• In recent days, Dodd and other top Hollywood figures have threatened to cut off campaign donations to politicians who do not support their effort to crackdown on online copyright infringement.

• “Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,” Dodd said on Fox News on Thursday.

• All over the free world, government laws and court decisions are limiting our access to free Internet. Not that these measures are very useful, most of us hackers are able to circumvent them within minutes. But in essence, these counter measures are simply work-arounds – they do not eliminate the root cause.

• Really I find what happened with the megauploads take down stunning. Bear in mind that there were at least some legitimate files stored on those servers: for example, a lot of xda-developer files were distributed through megauploads.

• I want to elaborate on the previous post. The point of the SOPA/PIPA as well as the meguploads take down is that there is no accusation that the site operators were pirates, merely that pirates used their site to distribute pirated material. For the sake of argument let’s just accept the law that piracy is illegal. People can easily use social networking sites such as facebook, and cloud storage sites such as dropbox to exchange links to pirated files and make them available. Nor can the site operators easily police their sites; the technical difficulties aside (and they are significant) there is also the issue of user privacy if the operators go poking around in files and postings.

• The last post might leave you wondering: if closing down small start up domains prevents competition, why were the big guys against SOPA/PIPA? That is the difference between a growing innovative industry and a dying industry. Music, movies and books may be thriving, but studios and publishing houses are dying. So: what is the last refuge of the desperate? Government protection – read SOPA/PIPA.

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