● 04.05.12

● Links 5/4/2012: Early Look at GNOME 3.4, Mageia 2 Postponed

Posted in News Roundup at 6:38 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• SJVN is, of course, the well-known nickname and abbreviation for Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols, who has been covering technology as a journalist since… since longer than he cares to admit… and has been covering Linux and FOSS since the 1990s. This was basically a one-question interview: “How has reporting on Linux changed in the last 10 years?” After that, except for a couple of words requesting clarifications, we just let the webcam roll. (Note: if you know someone who would make a good Slashdot video interview victim, please put us in touch with them. Thanks.)

Audiocasts/Shows

Kernel Space

• Another noteworthy session from this year’s Linux Foundation Summit was two Oracle engineers talking about DTrace on Linux.

• Kris Van Hees and Elena Zannoni of Oracle were at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit to promote DTrace on Linux. Last year was when it was reported Oracle was bringing DTrace to Linux. In particular, they wanted to bring this Solaris technology from their Sun Microsystems acquisition over to their RHEL-derived Oracle Enterprise Linux.

• Sievers explained that it will still be possible to install udev independently of systemd. He added that this option will be supported in the long term because separate builds are required to ensure that initrds (initial ramdisks), which don’t include systemd, work correctly. Distributions that don’t use systemd can continue to build udev as before, but will have to use the systemd sources. With the addition of udev, systemd’s version will jump from 45 to 184 to ensure that its version number is higher than that of the last independent version of udev.

• Android is now back in the Linux kernel as of the recent 3.3 release. That doesn’t mean that Android however is a first class Linux citizen, according to developers speaking at the Linux Collaboration Summit this week.

• Once again, it’s time to take stock of the contributions to the Linux kernel. The Linux Foundation has released another report on the speed of Linux kernel development, as well as who’s doing the work and what companies are sponsoring development. Since tracking has began, nearly 8,000 developers from just shy of 800 companies have contributed to the kernel.

Graphics Stack

• Keith Packard spoke on Wednesday of the 2012 Linux Foundation Collaboration concerning Wayland and its backwards compatibility support for X applications.

• Here’s my notes from Keith’s talk concerning X/Wayland. Nothing from the presentation was particularly new or surprising, but largely summarized information from past mailing list discussions (covered in earlier Phoronix Wayland articles) and past conferences like X@FOSDEM 2012.

Applications

• Xnoise, a simple and fast media player for Linux, has reached version 0.2.0, getting a refreshed layout, support for dockable media sources, a redone application button and more.

• I am not sure how this happened, and the last thing I want to do is criticize an over-worked single developer, but the Linux version was DOA on the announcement page.

Instructionals/Technical

• In short, “The Linux Command Line” is more than a complete introduction — it’s a full education in 432 pages (not counting the index).

Games

• Skeltrack is a Free and Open Source Software library by Igalia for tracking the human skeleton joints from depth images.

• While most Linux gamers are currently eager for the imminent news concerning Valve’s Linux client efforts, there’s some more interesting news that I’ve learned this week as well: there exists a native Linux port of CryEngine 3.

• CryEngine 3 is the latest version of Crytek’s CryEngine, which was released in H2’2009. I have confirmation from a source this week that a Linux port does exist, which also means an OpenGL renderer. CryEngine 3 under Microsoft Windows uses a DirectX 9/10/11 renderer while this game engine has also been ported to the Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii U, and Microsoft Xbox 360 consoles.

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• Recently I have spent some time to make our window manager even more elegant. That is I decided to fix a few rough edges in our user experience offerings. All of these issues had actually been reported in our bugtracker as feature requests some time ago and listed as Junior Jobs, on the KWin ideas Wiki page and of course recently been added to the 4.9 milestone plan.

GNOME Desktop

• Last week Igalia released an important piece of software called Skeltrack which, to put it simple, allows to retrieve the human skeleton joints from depth images. It had a good coverage from many important news websites and blogs and I received good feedback with kind words and even use cases I hadn’t thought of.

• To anticipate the first question: No, the newly released GNOME 3.4 does nothing to change the general structure of GNOME 3. Nor does it install by default with any of the extensions that reproduce GNOME 2, although users can download many of them from the GNOME Extensions page.

• Instead, GNOME 3.4 is an incremental release, focusing on polishing the GNOME 3 release series without introducing any major structural or conceptual changes. Specifically, the new release begins the implementation of the design concepts summarized two months ago by Allan Day.

• On Wednesday of the 2012 LF Collaboration Summit, besides the X and Wayland integration talk, there was a second discussion concerning Wayland/Weston during a Tizen track. During this talk were a few tid-bits of interesting information revealed, such as an experimental GNOME 3.x desktop on Wayland.

• Keith Packard did the first Wayland talk at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, which was about X-Wayland and ensuring legacy X applications will be able to run within the Wayland Display Server by having a seamless nested X experience with the modified xorg-server being automatically and transparently started when needed. That talk was covered in full in this article (the Phoronix video is still coming soon).

Distributions

• Porteus grew out of the fan project that gave us the Slax Community Remix, a continuation of Slax 6.1.2, the last official Slax release for quite a while, dating back to August 2009.

• Surely you have heard of “Anonymous”, a group of hackers and activists that are quiet active in these days and so they have become sort of famous on the net, they have made ​​for fun a customized version of Ubuntu that uses LXDE desktop/OpenBox with Metacity, Cairo-Dock, Tor, and nurtured a series of excellent programs.

New Releases

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

• Mageia is nearly in its second iteration, and the Mandriva fork has gone a long way to establish its own identity while retaining the best bits

• Anne Nicolas has been chairman of the Mageia.Org Board of Directors since its first election a year ago. From the outside looking in, it appears she has performed professionally and skillfully. Apparent the board agrees, because she was again elected by secret ballot to its highest position.

Red Hat Family

• With expected expansion of their Littleton Road facility coming soon, Red Hat invited Congresswoman Niki Tsongas (D-Lowell) on Wednesday for a quick tour of the facility and a discussion about the future of the company here in Westford.

• “Red Hat represents a new kind of capitalism,” suggested Google+ blogger Alessandro Ebersol. Specifically, it’s an example of “the company that really helps society and gives back to society, not like the others (M$ and Apple), which only take advantage of society and give nothing back. I wish more companies were like Red Hat.”

• There is a recurring lament that there are no Linux distributions equivalent to Windows Small Business Server, no nicely-integrated Linux LAN server that doesn’t need a lot of tweaking. But there is one that is billed as a drop-in replacement for SBS, and that’s ClearOS.

• Linux is a flexible powerhouse in the server room, but is sometimes criticized for not being like Windows Small Business Server. This is a good thing, because making Linux worse doesn’t make sense. But the idea of SBS is a good one, a nicely-integrated LAN server that can be up and running with a minimum of fuss, and Linux does have one of those: ClearOS. Let’s take a look at ClearOS 6.2 beta 3, which is the current release.

Fedora

• The man page tell us: reduces fragmentation of extent based file. The file targeted by e4defrag is created on ext4 filesystem made with “-O extent” option (see mke2fs(8)). The targeted file gets more contiguous blocks and improves the file access speed.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• If you’re not familiar with Juju, I’d urge you to pay a visit to the Juju website to learn more, but in brief, I’ll explain: Juju is an orchestration service for Ubuntu. Using Juju allows you to deploy services rapidly, scaling up or down as you need. Each service is contained within a Charm, which is at it simplest a set of scripts that ensure that a given Juju unit does what it’s supposed to do at the appointed time (for example: install and config_changed are two of the most common hook scripts for a charm to have). We realised that in order to make our life simpler when testing our parallelisation work we could develop a pair of Buildbot Charms (one for the master, one for the slave) which when deployed through Juju, and given the right set of configuration options, would give us a working Buildbot setup on which to test Launchpad.

• As we move from “tens” to “hundreds” to “thousands” of nodes in a typical data centre we need new tools and practices. This hyperscale story – of hyper-dense racks with wimpy nodes – is the big shift in the physical world which matches the equally big shift to cloud computing in the virtualised world. Ubuntu’s popularity in the cloud comes in part from being leaner, faster, more agile. And MAAS – Metal as a Service – is bringing that agility back to the physical world for hyperscale deployments.

• Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution, has announced a new tool called Metal as a Service (MAAS) that is designed to simplify the provisioning of individual server nodes in a cluster. It primarily targets computing environments that have many physical servers.

• Lots of companies, even Microsoft, contribute to the Linux kernel. When you look at the top 20 list of who’s been contributing to Linux’s heart, you’ll find many familiar Linux names such as Novell (now SUSE), Red Hat, and The Linux Foundation. Who you won’t find is Canonical, Ubuntu Linux’s parent company. Some people wonder how Microsoft could do more for Linux than Canonical does. Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu’s founder, has a response to such claims: “Our focus is on the user experience, making things ‘Just Work.’”

• Here we are, just a matter of weeks away from the Ubuntu 12.04 release on 26th April 2012, and what a cycle it has been.

• Ubuntu 12.04 is a release that has been talked about within the Ubuntu community for quite some time. It marks our next Long Term Support (LTS) release, an important milestone for Ubuntu deployment in business, education and elsewhere, and an important checkpoint in delivering precision and quality in Ubuntu.

• Similar to the mixed boot performance results for Ubuntu 12.04, the power consumption results are also mixed. For some hardware, Ubuntu 12.04 is the most power efficient Ubuntu Linux release in recent history while for some other hardware the Precise Pangolin is continuing in a power binge.

• Previously the shortlisting and the final selection of the Ubuntu 12.04 wallpapers were announced. This selection however was not final and can change a bit. Finally, the official wallpapers for Ubuntu 12.04 have landed in an update today. It includes 14 wallpapers selected by the community and the default purplish wallpaper. Some submissions were replaced by others.

Flavours and Variants

• The Lubuntu developers are moving quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source community has to offer. The Precise Pangolin Beta 2 release of lubuntu 12.04 gives a preview of the next LTS version of Lubuntu.

• Bodhi Linux is a fresh, Ubuntu-based, Linux distribution that utilizes the Enlightenment desktop manager and only needs 1.2GB of space for a fresh installation. Bodhi is a semi-rolling release with two primary goals. Bodhi Linux aims to promote user choice and provide a minimal environment. I’ve used it for several weeks now and, although it took some getting used to, I have been impressed by several of the features of Bodhi Linux 1.4.0.

Devices/Embedded

Phones

Android

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• Well, anyway, lesson learned. I don’t think I will buy any DRM digital books ever again. The silver lining here is that the experience has reassured me that my beliefs are not crazy, that digital freedom is a very valid concern and us FLOSS folks aren’t just silly hippies.

• Motorola’s WebTop OS was expected to get some major overhaul with the next version. But if we look at the YouTube video of WebTop 3.0 beta, it leaves a lot to be desired. It is by no means a desktop OS. It seems to be nothing more than Android on a bigger screen.

Free Software/Open Source

• Bearing Point Consulting just published a study on the use of open source software in the automotive industry. It shows how open source is on the rise, no surprise.

Events

• After receiving a briefing from MITA and MARSEC-XL, I hopped over to London followed by a long-haul flight to the west coast, finally arriving in Silicon Valley a day later.

• Today, in downtown San Francisco the 6th Linux collaboration summit got off to a great start with an exceptional key note from Jim Zemlin the Executive Director of the Linux foundation. He showcased how Linux and its kernel is dominating all domains, ranging from desktops to enterprise servers, with 850,000 android phones being registered on a daily basis in comparison to the 30,000 windows phones. Since 2005, 8000 developers have contributed to the Linux kernel, resulting in 15 million lines of code, proving that the Linux project is the World’s largest collaboration software project.

SaaS

• The fifth release of OpenStack, code named “Essex,” debuted today, with enhanced quality, usability and extensibility across enterprise, service provider and high performance computing (HPC) deployments, the project announced. Essex is integrated in Canonical’s Ubuntu 12.04.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• In March Rob Weir put up a blog entry entitled “Where did the time go? (A look at the Apache OpenOffice timeline)”, showing the slow progress of Apache OpenOffice through the process of acceptance into the Apache fold. Richard Hillesley looks at the issues…

• You may have heard the rumors already although there is nothing official yet: There is an exciting new idea making the rounds in LibreOffice circles. LibreOffice made and continues to make amazing progress pushing not only the product, but also the project as a whole to new levels. While the development of LibreOffice at the Document Foundation is widely supported by a diverse set of contributors and supporters from all over the world, there is always more we could do, if we had more time and money.

Education

• Unschooling is an approach to education that follows a child’s innate curiosity and desire to learn. It is not based on the direction of a teacher or a set curriculum. It is self-directed learning. Unschoolers take a hands-on, community-based, real-world approach to education–everything and everywhere is a learning possibility. Unschoolers may use an open source textbook like those found at CK-12 Flexbooks, take classes online through a program like Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning, or continue on to in-person coursework at a local college.

Business

Semi-Open Source

• Any way you look at it, this month’s Netcraft Web Server Survey has some astounding numbers. The competition between Web servers is always interesting, but more so is the fact that the number of sites surveyed since April 2011 has more than doubled. Netcraft’s April 2012 survey received responses from 676,919,707 sites – more than double the number of sites from 2011, a mere 312,693,296.

BSD

Programming

Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

Security

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Worries over the safety of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” as a method to extract natural gas and oil from the shale bedrock, continues to grow across the world including Australia.

Finance

• The world’s major central banks — including the Bank of Japan (BOJ), the European Central Bank (ECB), and the Federal Reserve — appear to have finally won a major battle in the deflationary war that broke out five years ago in 2007. While the ultimate victor is yet to be determined, it now seems likely that a period of nominal growth could ensue for another two years, perhaps even longer.

• This will not be high-quality growth. And little of the growth will be real.

• Commodity prices will surely eat away at most, if not all, of any gains that may occur in global GDP. Additionally, while non-OECD growth actually has a chance of achieving some GDP gains in real terms, the prospects for the OECD are not as encouraging.

• When New York-based MF Global collapsed on October 31, 2011, its $41 billion in assets made it the eighth largest bankruptcy in U.S. history and the biggest financial firm to implode since Lehman in September 2008. Then Chairman and CEO Jon Corzine is connected to the head of one of his key regulators, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), through his former protégé at Goldman Sachs, Gary Gensler. He also knows the Fed’s William Dudley, a key member of the Fed’s Open Market Committee, from their days at Goldman Sachs. The Fed approved MF Global’s status as a primary dealer, a participant in the Fed’s Open Market Operations, less than one year after Jon Corzine took its helm. Corzine is also a former New Jersey governor, a former New Jersey U.S. senator and was a major campaign contribution bundler for President Obama.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• According to a statement Coke made to the Washington Examiner, “Our involvement with ALEC was focused on efforts to oppose discriminatory food and beverage taxes, not on issues that have no direct bearing on our business. We have a long-standing policy of only taking positions on issues that impact our Company and industry.”

Censorship

• WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange has made 75 official complaints over what he describes as the shoddy reporting of his long-running extradition battle, the online activist said Thursday. Assange itemized the complaints in a submission to Britain’s judge-led inquiry into media ethics, which is examining the standards and practices of the country’s scandal-tarred press. He said in a statement published by the inquiry Thursday that he had been subjected to “ongoing, widespread inaccurate and negative media coverage” and that Britain’s press watchdog had failed to protect him.

Copyrights

ACTA

• What he doesn’t consider is that the IPR lobby is willing to surrender ACTA but not the entire Article 207 TFEU process which is challenged by the ECJ ruling invoked by De Gucht. And finally, the upcoming IPRED+ is more interesting than the dossier which allegedly does not change anything.

• The EU Commission has made public the text of its own referral of ACTA to the EU Court of Justice. This initiative comes a week after the EU Parliament voted not to refer ACTA to the Court, which would have suspended the parliamentarian procedure for at least 18 months. The Parliament is expected to vote on ACTA this summer, and must continue to resist the Commission’s shameless technocratic tricks to save ACTA.

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