● 02.23.12

● Links 23/2/2012: No More Adobe Trash on GNU/Linux, New Mageia Coming

Posted in News Roundup at 5:41 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Just because you had what it takes for a good Linux-related job a decade ago, it doesn’t mean that you have what it takes today. The Linux landscape has changed a lot, and the only thing that’s really stayed constant is that a love of learning is a requirement.

• What employers want from Linux job seekers is a topic I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, but this post by Dustin Kirkland got me to thinking about just how drastically things have changed in a very short time. The skills that were adequate for a good Linux gig in 2002 may not be enough to scrape by today.

• Google is working with Adobe to keep its proprietary Flash player alive on Linux. The two companies have been working closely to develop a single modern API for hosting plugins within the browser (one which could replace the current Netscape plugin API being used by the Flash Player).

• Adobe today said that it would stop offering direct downloads of Flash Player for Linux, telling users to move to Google’s Chrome browser, which bundles Flash with its updates.

• Today’s demotion of Flash Player on Linux to Chrome-only was the second time in the last three months that Adobe has withdrawn some or all support from a version of the popular media software: In November, Adobe announced it was abandoning development of Flash for mobile browsers, including the new Chrome for Android.

• Adobe has issued a statement this morning that they will effectively be abandoning Flash Player support on Linux. After Flash Player 11.2 they will no longer be providing updates for Linux users but just maintaining the 11.2 release. Google is expected to take over with a Flash Player implementation based upon a new API, but only for Google Chrome-based web-browsers.

• Hitting my inbox this morning was Adobe and Google Partnering for Flash Player on Linux. The statement is brief but basically it says Google and Adobe have been working to develop a modern API for web-browser plug-ins. The result of this collaboration is PPAPI (codenamed “Pepper”) and is designed to be work for different web-browsers and operating systems. The Pepper Plug-In API is something that Google has been working on for at least the past three years to replace NPAPI (the Netscape Plug-In API).

• Linux is dead on the desktop…and it died long ago. Who hasn’t heard that?

• Apparently, the 1,500 school children whose happy faces could not hide the illusion of using a laptop for the first time didn’t. They just received their own Linux-powered computers…wow! That’s a lot of dead computers!

• True…1,500 dead PCs is far too modest to worry about…but the total number of Linux computers that the government will give to students for educational purposes is 25,000! Whoa! Now, that is more than enough to call it a zombie apocalypse!

Server

• A set of open source designs for the RECS Compute Box, a high density server developed by German start-up Christmann Informationstechnik, will also be created. It is hoped that these designs will allow other projects or commercial data centre operators to build on the research conducted by the CoolEmAll project.

Audiocasts/Shows

Kernel Space

• The Btrfs and MD code offers new ways to change RAIDs while keeping data intact. Ext4 filesystems can now be expanded more quickly. The kernel also gained a driver for an upcoming storage device interface.

Graphics Stack

• When running some tests on the latest Mesa 8.1-devel Gallium3D code-base for the “R600″ Radeon Gallium3D driver, I was surprised by some of the results.

• Coming up in the next few days will be benchmarks of Radeon Gallium3D using Mesa 8.1-devel compared to the recently-released Mesa 8.0.1 and the previous releases of Mesa going back for as long as the R600 Gallium3D driver has functioned. While Mesa 8.1 has just been in development for about one month, there’s already some interesting improvements for at least Radeon Gallium3D.

Applications

Instructionals/Technical

Wine

Games

• About 10 years ago I decided I didn’t feel comfortable running a proprietary operating system on my computer anymore and made the leap to Linux, and like many converts, I had to give up PC gaming. I moved over to the next best thing, joining the legion of console gamers, but once and awhile there would be that one big PC game that I would miss out on.

• The OnLive MicroConsole promises to change all that. With this device, it’s now possible to play some of the hottest titles on the PC…without the PC. For those of us running free and open source operating systems, this little device can get you back in the game (literally), and it even runs Linux!

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

• Plasma Active looks so nice in so many of the details, but there is one place that sticks out like sore thumb an which we really haven’t been able to get replacement artwork for: those icons in the upper right corner.

• The Home icon is nice enough and looks like it belongs. It won’t be there on all Plasma Active devices either: on Spark we have a Home hardware key and so will probably be using that exclusively instead of an icon in the panel.

• In the middle of cold January, the team behind DigiKam met in Genoa, the sunny old port city in northern Italy. DigiKam is the award-winning KDE photo management application. Participants started gathering in the evening on Thursday 12 January, getting together over dinner to form new friendships and to find out how people’s lives were going. The next day, real work started.

Distributions

New Releases

• François Dupoux proudly announced last night, February 21st, a major release of his popular SystemRescueCd Linux-based operating system for rescue and recovery tasks.

• I am announcing the release of ConnochaetOS 0.9.1. This is a maintenance release. The ConnochaetOS 0.9.0 ISO was downloaded 20,000 times. The Free Software Foundation examined every package very closely and said, that we meet the FSF’ criteria at this point. So we consider that the ConnochaetOS project is a success.

• The DragonFly 3.0 release is here! This release was delayed from our regular schedule for tracking down what appears to be a AMD CPU bug. As a pleasant side effect, the giant kernel lock has been removed from much of the system and this release performs significantly better on multi-core systems than previous DragonFly versions.

• DragonFly 3.0.1 is now available! This release has superior multiprocessor support compared to previous versions. Speed has improved significantly. Binary packages from the 2011Q4 release of pkgsrc are available. Check the release notes for details.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

• The Mageia development team has announced the arrival of the first beta of version 2 of its Mandriva Linux community fork. This beta 1 release is aimed at developers and testers, and is based on the current stable 3.2.6 Linux kernel, which will be upgraded to Linux 3.3 before the final release.

Red Hat Family

• Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that the Cornell University Institute for Biotechnology and Life Science Technologies is using Red Hat Storage, formally Gluster, technology to manage data-intensive research projects. With Red Hat Storage Software Appliance, the department is experiencing cost-effective, highly available and scalable storage, and using it for such projects as DNA sequencing. It has delivered flexibility and reliability that has allowed the Institute to achieve the growth needed to continue its research programs, while increasing researcher productivity due to the high availability of the data.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• A representative told Linux User & Developer that there are currently no plans to release Ubuntu for Android on the Android Marketplace, but that they are in talks with phone manufacturers to include it with specific devices.

• LINUX VENDOR Canonical will show off a Motorola Atrix 2 running its Ubuntu for Android Linux operating system to mobile phone vendors at Mobile World Congress (MWC).

• Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux distribution is arguably one of the most popular consumer friendly versions of Linux available, and the firm will tip up at MWC with a Motorola Atrix 2 smartphone that when placed in a dock can run a full-blown desktop Ubuntu Linux installation. According to the firm, smartphones will be able to ship with Ubuntu for Android this year.

• Canonical announced last evening, February 21st, the Ubuntu for Android product, allowing users to connect a multi-core Android phone to an Ubuntu desktop.

• As part of the on going work to improve the Gnome Control Center, there has been an update today which brings some new features.

• People in FOSS circles don’t like to talk about that kind of thing openly; making money is fine if it is done quietly, but pointing out that developing free or open source software can also be as crassly commercial an activity as, say, the activities of Microsoft, is considered to be, well, not kosher.

Devices/Embedded

• This week a new Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix has been launched providing a complete software environment for the new $35 Raspberry Pi computer which will soon be launched.

Phones

Android

• Samsung is using Wind River’s Android testing software and expertise to speed its smartphone development and test for Android software quality, performance and compliance.

• Wind River Framework for Automated Software Testing (FAST) for Android and Wind River User Experience Test Development Kit are currently in use to rapidly and efficiently test Android software for Samsung smartphones. A global leader in high-tech electronics and digital media, Samsung Electronics is a top smartphone manufacturer worldwide.

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• Even though Amazon’s Appstore has far fewer wares on its shelves than Google’s Android Market, many developers of top apps have found Amazon’s platform to be more lucrative, according to a recent study. The hot-selling Kindle Fire seems to have played a part in driving Appstore sales. The curated nature of Amazon’s Appstore may also appeal more to users willing to pay a buck or two for their software.

• Huawei‘s 10-inch MediaPad 10 tablet wasn’t expected to show itself until MWC 2102 next week, but that hasn’t stopped the Android 4.0 slate from sneaking out for a quick pre-show flaunt. The tablet – which reminds us of HTC’s Flyer with its combination of brushed metal and white plastic inserts – has been previewed by Hi-Tech Mail, who confirm the 8-megapixel camera and solid build quality.

Free Software/Open Source

• Ford (and other automakers) envision future cars with high tech infotainment systems galore where car dashboards could have downloadable app’s just like todays smart phones and tablets. With the OpenXC platform Ford is creating a channel for open collaboration with 3rd party application developers, allowing them to use cars like the Ford Focus to prototype their gizmos.

• I have been using OpenOffice.org and lately LibreOffice for years with no ill effects and plenty of benefits like working well with PDF and using proper open standard file-formats. The only problem the VA will have if it switches over is what to do with the bulk of archived documents in M$’s various formats. My recommendation is to convert as many of them as possible to PDFs and leave them as archives. They rarely have to modify old documents. They should be able to do that using their present software and some “print” function. The cost of the migration would largely be the cost of processing those archives. That cost should be chalked up as a mistake of the past because it will not be an on-going cost.

• Inspired by the success of the open source development model, criminals are creating similar community models and, in doing so, opening up a new avenue for malicious software and malware incubation, industry insiders warn.

Events

• COSCUP is the largest Free software event in Taiwan and based on my experience from attending last year I can certainly say that it is one of the most well organized and vibrant F/OSS events in the world. It’s in the same category level as FISL in Brazil or Linux Conf Australia in my mind.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

SaaS

• Enterprises are finding business-changing ways to put the power of Hadoop, an open source Apache project for storing and processing large amounts of data, to good use. They are using Hadoop and Big Data to reduce risks, better serve customers and even change the Internet.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

CMS

• Joomla is one of the most widely used open source content management systems available today. Though it’s not as popular as the MIGHTY WordPress, we are yet to discover the hidden treasures that lurk beneath. I am going to discuss the Pros and Cons of using Joomla in this article, so the next time you’re planning to invest on your online presence, you should have an idea where to spend and why!

Healthcare

• In this entry I will briefly talk about how GNU Health can help the professional in making the best decision, and how to minimize mistakes.

• I will focus in prescription writing and how we’re incorporating DS (Decision Support) to GNU Health.

• GNU Health uses the WHO (World Health Organization) essential list of medicines by default, so you already have a very nice and updated set for your daily practice.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

Public Services/Government

• NASA has released an RFI (Request For Information) asking for help reimplementing the nasa.gov web site using open source software and open standards. With 600,000 unique visitors and over 1.29 TB of traffic a day, 140 different web sites and applications and over 700,000 web pages, the task is large. As the first stage of an acquisition process, NASA has therefore published the RFI looking for companies that, according to Nick Skytland, Open Government Program Manager at Johnson Space Center, are “visionary, that get open source, cloud computing, and citizen engagement using the latest online technology”.

• Obviously security, supportability, and interoperability are among the factors the VA must take into consideration, so the department is only soliciting white papers right now. “The white papers should merely be focused on the per seat cost for services/tools provided, current state of the technology in terms of Office productivity suite benefits, supportability, security, ease of use, and interoperability with Microsoft based products,” the announcement says.

Openness/Sharing

• How confident are you in your knowledge of open source geospatial software? How about a quick introduction or refresher? Executive Editor Adena Schutzberg offers 10 points that are important to understand about open source software.

• From the beginning, Civic Commons has been a dynamic community initiative. What began in January 2010 as a simple wiki of open government policies and practices (originally called “OpenMuni”, domains for which were simultaneously and independently obtained by Code for America and OpenPlans), grew into a partnership between the two organizations to support the growing open government technology movement, and is now an open community of civic hackers, government technologists, entrepreneurs and many others.

• Regular Hypebot readers know how excited I get about Cash Music. It’s hard to imagine anything closer to what this blog is about than a non-profit group building free tools that help musicians to market and sell music online. That’s exactly what Cash Music is; and for one of the first time’s ever, they’re asking for help via a Kickstarter campaign.

Programming

• Sonatype Nexus Professional 2.0 for “component intelligence” in repository management

• Kotlin, the JVM-targeted programming language introduced last summer by development toolmaker JetBrains, is now open source. The Prague-based maker of the venerable code-centric Java IDE, IntelliJ IDEA has been developing Kotlin since 2010, and will continue to be a major contributor.

Leftovers

• You have to hand it to Microsoft. Their latest attacks on Google Apps are at least an attempt at comedy, but when you peel back the humor, what you have is just good old-fashioned Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD), YouTube style.

• I won’t discuss the irony of Microsoft going off on Google services using Google’s own YouTube channel. That’s fairly rich in itself, but as we shall see, Google has opened itself up to these attacks with its own behavior.

• Late last week, the Washington Post reported that The Smithsonian had acquired “tapes, documentation, copyrights, and over 50,000 lines of code from V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, who both the Smithsonian and the Washington Post insisted was the “inventor of e-mail.” There’s just one problem with this: It’s not actually true. Lots of internet old-timers quickly started to speak out against this, especially on Dave Farber’s Interesting People email list, where they highlighted how it’s just not true. As is nicely summarized on Wikipedia’s talk page about Ayyadurai, he was responsible for “merely inventing an email management system that he named EMAIL,” which came long after email itself.

Health/Nutrition

• Isabel Salas reported to the non-profit Cornucopia Institute (Cornucopia) the difficulties she faced when her infant daughter reacted badly to a set of additives present in most baby formulas: DHA and ARA oils. Containers of formula containing these additives say things like, “Our formula is proven in clinical studies to enhance mental development” and “as close as ever to breast milk.”

Finance

• CDS are a form of derivative taken out by investors as insurance against default. According to the Comptroller of the Currency, nearly 95 percent of the banking industry’s total exposure to derivatives contracts is held by the nation’s five largest banks: JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, HSBC, and Goldman Sachs. The CDS market is unregulated, and there is no requirement that the “insurer” actually have the funds to pay up. CDS are more like bets, and a massive loss at the casino could bring the house down.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald are pushing for radical changes in Wisconsin’s current mining law to benefit a single out-of-state company.

• Gogebic Taconite, based out of Florida, has proposed a massive twenty-one mile long iron-ore strip mine in some of the most beautiful and pristine land in the northern part of the state. Walker and the GOP are promoting the mining bill as the most important “jobs bill” of the session. Since Governor Walker’s austerity budget kicked in on July 1, Wisconsin has lost jobs for six straight months, the worst record in the country.

Censorship

• Hanno alerts us to the news that Techdirt has apparently been deemed harmful to minors in Germany. The German Media Control Authority has apparently been pushing internet “youth filters” to protect kids from dangerous things online. So far, it has officially approved two internet filters. Hanno got his hands on one and discovered that Techdirt was one of many blocked sites (Google translation from the original German) — as the filter declares that Techdirt has pornographic images and depictions of violence. We do?

• One of the things I’ve never liked about copyright is its potential to be the functional equivalent of censorship. Sometimes this censorship comes about because an author didn’t get permission to create his work in the first place (see: Richard Prince, JD California). While this unfortunately turns judges into cultural gatekeepers, it’s been deemed a necessary balance between copyright law and the First Amendment, and harm to the public is arguably lessened by the fact that we don’t know what we’re missing; because the censored work is never able to reach and impact us, we’ve only lost the potential of its cultural contribution.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• Hockey may be Canada’s national pastime, but criticizing the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) surely ranks as a close second. From the substitution of Canadian commercials during the Super Bowl broadcast to Canada’s middling performance on broadband Internet services, the CRTC is seemingly always viewed as the target for blame.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

ACTA

• Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland sent a letter to his fellow leaders in the EU Friday urging them to reject ACTA, reversing Poland’s course with the controversial intellectual-property treaty, and possibly taking Europe with them.

• “I was wrong,” Tusk explained to a news conference, confessing his government had acted recklessly with a legal regime that wasn’t right for the 21st century. The reversal came after Tusk’s own strong statements in support of ACTA and condemnation of Anonymous attacks on Polish government sites, and weeks of street protest in Poland and across Europe.

• The European Commission just announced its intent to ask the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for an opinion on the conformity of ACTA with fundamental freedoms. Beyond the obvious intent to defuse the heated debate currently taking place, this move aims to make the ACTA discussion a mere legal issue, when the main concerns are political by nature.

• So the European Commission thinks that tens of thousands of people on the streets somehow don’t reflect the wider community — presumably unlike the small band of negotiators and lobbyists behind closed doors that drew up ACTA in secrecy for years, who do represent the European Union’s 500 million people.

• And the Commissioners are just shocked that the opponents of ACTA, who have been denied any meaningful transparency about what was being agreed to in their name during those now-concluded negotiations, are desperately trying to make their voices heard by the only institutions left that can listen: the EU nations that haven’t signed ACTA, and the European Parliament that must still ratify it.

• Of course, other parts of De Gucht’s statement are pretty questionable. He talks about how the EU Council “adopted ACTA unanimously” leaving out that they did so by hiding it in an agriculture and fisheries meeting. He talks about how ACTA “will not change anything in the European Union” but is merely about “getting other countries to adopt” stricter laws. However, some EU countries have already noted that they would have to change their laws to comply with ACTA.

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