● 05.17.12

● Links 17/5/2012: “Bio Computer” Runs Linux, Raspberry Pi Grows

Posted in News Roundup at 8:53 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

• Now is as good a time as any to say goodbye to Linux on the desktop as a focus, and to emphasize the power and ROI gained from using Linux and Open Source solutions on devices.

• Thanks to ongoing advances in multi-seat Linux development, manufacturer Plugable was able to base its machines on Fedora, rather than proprietary software, though it also works with Windows Multipoint Server. By doing away with licensing costs, Plugable founder Bernie Thompson says the company can ensure an attractive price. The Kickstarter effort is in place to help the company realize “economies of scale” necessary to drive the cost down.

Server

• HP has unveiled its first public cloud services in a late answer to rivals Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, Microsoft and Verizon’s Terramark.

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

• Following up on the performance comparison earlier this month of comparing Intel Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge graphics between Windows and Linux, up today are the results of a comparison of Windows 7 to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS when using a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 “Kepler” graphics card.

Applications

Proprietary

• Skype’s presence on Linux has never been really all that accepted… many in the community resented its proprietary nature, and only grudgingly installed it if they had to. As Michael Larabel recently pointed out on Phoronix, the Free Software Foundation is trying to shepherd free-software Skype replacement projects, but with little success thus far.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• Thus, in direct practical terms, this development can do both harm and good. It might encourage GNU/Linux users to install these games, and it might encourage users of the games to replace Windows with GNU/Linux. My guess is that the direct good effect will be bigger than the direct harm. But there is also an indirect effect: what does the use of these games teach people in our community?

Desktop Environments

• Newly released Ubuntu based distribution Hybryde allows you to switch between desktop environments without even logging out, and comes with Unity, KDE, and LXDE by default

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• Version 0.9 of the Kdenlive open source video editor has been released, bringing usability enhancements and improvements to the effects workflow. According to its developers, the effect stack has been completely rewritten and now allows users to adjust parameters for multiple effects at the same time. These can then be grouped and the groups can be saved for use on other video clips.

GNOME Desktop

• The GNOME Shell Window Buttons extension has been updated for GNOME Shell 3.4 and is now available in the WebUpd8 GNOME 3 PPA.

Distributions

New Releases

• Today we are pleased to announce the general availability of the 32 bit and 64 bit releases of OS4 Workstation 12.1.1. In this release we include a host of security and bug fixes as well as application updates.

Red Hat Family

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• With the x32 ABI for Linux finally coming together, Ubuntu developers are making plans to support this interesting ABI in the future.

• The Linux x32 ABI is intended for x86_64 hardware, but rather than simply targeting x86_64, it attempts to blend the best of IA32 and x86_64. With x32 there is a 32-bit pointer size rather than 64-bit, which drops the memory usage and could yield performance improvements, while still allowing the x32-compiled code to take advantage of 64-bit registers, a larger register file, and other x86_64 features.

• Mark Shuttleworth is the founder and former CEO of Canonical, the commercial company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution. Today he holds the position “Lead Product Design”, a role in which he shapes desktop and cloud product strategy. I spoke with him recently by phone about the increasing role of Linux in the enterprise, and the shift from traditional enterprise computing to cloud computing.

• Customizability has always been one of Linux’s best defining features, and the newly released Ubuntu Linux 12.04 “Precise Pangolin” is no exception.

• I’ve already written about a few different ways to tweak Ubuntu’s Unity desktop generally, and last week one of those tools–Ubuntu Tweak–was updated to support the latest iteration of Canonical’s popular Linux distribution.

• Hands up if you have used Linux in one of its various incarnations for the desktop. Well if you are reading this blog, chances are you have done that. Like many other geeks and aspiring geeks I have dabbled with using Linux specifically Ubuntu and I must say after the initial novelty of using something other than Windows, or Mac OS for that matter, I have been rather casual about it.

• It is hard to estimate how many Linux boxes are out there -speaking about Desktop. Statistics shows 1%-5% of all computers run Linux. An average would be 3%. This can be true, this can be false, but it doesn’t really matter a lot as it is low number anyway. What really matters is the growth of Linux.

• It’s not very easy to find Ubuntu pre-installed PCs as Microsoft still dictates the traditional PC market.

• System76 is one such company which offers Ubuntu only PCs. The company has launched two new laptops pre-loaded with Ubuntu 12.04 — 14.1″ Lemur Ultra and 15.6″ Pangolin Performance.

• With the release of Ubuntu Linux 12.04 “Precise Pangolin” less than a week ago, there’s still plenty of excitement and discussion about this latest iteration of Canonical’s popular Linux distribution.

• Move forward to April 2012 and Ubuntu 12.04 – codenamed Precise Pangolin – has been released. As we noted in our post detailing the new features themselves, there are lots of them. And, quite frankly, they have worked incredibly well. That’s not to say it’s perfect, as such, but it’s a vast improvement, which is what I like to see.

• Smartphones and the technology that powers them continue to evolve at an incredible rate. Year after year, phones have continued to close the power gap that separates them with their traditional PC counterparts. Taking advantage of the latest in mobile processors, Canonical is set to release Ubuntu for Android. The OS effectively turns your phone into a full Ubuntu desktop computer when docked and connected to a monitor, meaning the day your smartphone could act as your primary computer is drawing nearer.

• Having just launched Ubuntu 12.04, Canonical is bullish about its future, with Chris Kenyon, its VP of sales and business development forecasting that the firm’s operating system will ship on 18 million machines in 2013. According to Phoronix, Kenyon claimed that will amount to five per cent of worldwide PC shipments.

• Linux has the tendency to get no love from the major video game publishers. Well today we get news that the Free to Play games Lord of Ultima and Command and Conquer Tiberium Alliances are coming to the Ubuntu Software Center. The titles run in your default browser and installing the games through the Software Center adds handy Dash launchers in the Dash and Unity Launcher.

• The easiest way to install Ubuntu is to use the Wubi installer from within Windows. You won’t have to partition your hard disk and it can be easily removed if you change your mind.

• Six months have passed since the last release of Ubuntu, and that means it’s time for a new version – complete with a new smarty-pants zoological codename (the “Precise Pangolin” this time, better known as a scaly anteater).

• This release is more significant than most. As the “LTS” indicates, this is a long-term support release, meaning it will receive updates and patches for a full five years, while more experimental releases continue to appear to a biannual timetable. The idea is to encourage businesses to install Ubuntu without fear that it will quickly become obsolete – indeed, this version ups the ante on that front, as previous LTS releases offered only three years of support on the desktop.

• One of the big advantages of Wubi is that it is much easier to remove Ubuntu installed in this way than it is if it was installed with the traditional partitioning of disks.

• Ubuntu is a very popular operating system and a Linux distribution. A large percentage of the Linux user base across the globe use Ubuntu. And many of the power users of a computer use Ubuntu as their primary operating system, including me and many of my friends. The freedom you get when you are using Ubuntu and the speed of the operating system, the ability for you to customize it the way you want, all of these factors add up to the fact that it is one of the best Linux distro there is. And support from the Ubuntu community is simply awesome.

• When Canonical launched its Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix back in February, it was based on Ubuntu Linux 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot,” which was then the most current stable version of the free and open source operating system.

Flavours and Variants

• Clement Lefebvre, father of the Linux Mint project, uploaded a few minutes ago, May 16, the Release Candidate version of the upcoming Linux Mint 13 operating system.

Devices/Embedded

• A Raspberry Pi enthusiast has managed to get Windows 7 on the cheap Linux computer using Citrix XenDesktop, a sign that the device could bring savings to businesses, according to the foundation behind the device.

Phones

• He noted how Linux is running beneath the shiny apps and interfaces of just about every smart phone and how, therefore, every vulnerability found in Linux has direct implications for the “computers in our pockets.”

• OpenMobile says it is looking for device manufacturers to add its proprietary software to their future Tizen devices so they can run Android applications. The company showed Facebook and Guitar Hero running on an Exo PC at the recent CTIA conference, though not apparently under a Tizen UI. A video of the apps running was recorded by The Handheld Blog.

Android

• It was all the way back in August when Google announced plans for its biggest acquisition ever, agreeing to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. Since then, shareholders and regulators around the world have signed off on the arrangement, but China has remained the sticking point for Google to move ahead with the final deal. One thing that every analyst agrees on once the deal goes through is that it will kick Google’s true, long-term strategy surrounding the Android mobile OS into high gear. Now, there are reports coming in that imply that Google’s long-term Android strategy may include some surprises.

• For the third year in a row, mobile open source software projects have more than doubled in number, with the current count at around 18,000, up from around 8,000 in 2010. The rise of mobile computing in the enterprise, coupled with the Android’s rapid adoption worldwide, contributes to the trend as developers race to be the first to market with mobile innovations.

• Of the trio of Huawei’s Diamond-class smartphones announced at Mobile World Congress in February, the dual-core Ascend D1 got the least amount of buzz.

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• At about $125 or less, the Zenithink C71 is already one of the cheapest tablets available that can run Google Android 4.0. But today Pandawill is selling the tablet for even less.

Free Software/Open Source

• Given time and the efforts of some very bright and altruistic people, an open source solution can be highly competitive. The good news for Sugar and its customers is that they have been down the curve with their open source solution. As open source rises in prominence, established players face painful changes, but for new entrants like Sugar, there is little or no transition.

• FuseSource advanced its “Integration Everywhere” strategy with Fuse ESB Enterprise 7.0 and Fuse MQ Enterprise 7.0, two new open-source integration and messaging platforms announced at its CamelOne 2012 conference.

• For many, the name Apache is synonymous with the most successful open source project of all time – the Apache HTTP Web Server. The Apache Web Server has dominated the web server landscape for the majority of the Internet Era, even as rivals (open source and otherwise) have attempted to make in-roads.

• The Apache Software Foundation has declared the first quarter of 2012 a quarter of “unprecedented growth” – it now has 104 current top-level projects (TLP) and 51 projects in the incubator, the largest number for either count. Jim Jagielski, the ASF’s president, said the “success can be attributed to Apache’s longstanding commitment to providing exceptional Open Source products, each with a stable codebase and an active community”.

Web Browsers

Chrome

• Google plans to give multiple mobile-device makers early access to new releases of Android and to sell those devices directly to consumers, said people familiar with the matter. That is a shift from Google’s previous practice, when it joined with with only one hardware maker at a time to produce “lead devices,” before releasing the software to other device makers. Those lead devices were then sold to consumers through wireless carriers or retailers.

Mozilla

• Clearly, loyalty for Firefox is obviously high among Linux users–which I suspect is why there’s been so much vocal opposition to Mozilla’s plan.

SaaS

• As part of our ongoing focus on open source cloud, we talked with Eucalyptus CEO Marten Mickos about the commoditization of hypervisors, what’s driving his company’s growth and its plans to release Eucalyptus 3.1 soon, marking the company’s shift to a much more open development model. The interview is presented in two parts. Yesterday’s post covered the open cloud, the role of APIs and where open source cloud computing is headed.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• On announcing the release of GIMP 2.8 the developers claimed that the update introduced ‘important changes to the user interface’. Is this the case or are there still issues to be found? 2.8 is available on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X, making it widely available and it is of course still completely free and open source. The new release has been in development for three years, meaning GIMP 2.8 boasts 36 notable improvements to it’s interface and a number of updates beneath the surface supporting these. At times I have avoided using GIMP because it was cumbersome and disorganised, so I am interested to find out if my opinion will change with the new release.

Programming

• Nvidia has continued its series of almost consecutive product announcements and updates this week by announcing the Nsight Eclipse Edition IDE for programmers. Nvidia is looking to develop GPU-accelerated applications on Linux- and Mac OS X-based systems.

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