● 05.22.12

● Links 22/5/2012: Google/Motorola Deal Secured, Chrome Passes IE

Posted in News Roundup at 4:32 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Server

• System maker Oracle has upgraded its version of the Xen server virtualization hypervisor with its own variant of the Linux kernel to bring it in synch with its Enterprise Linux server operating system distro.

Kernel Space

• Linux 3.4 follows the Linux 3.3 release by two months and is now officially “stable” after Linux creator Linus Torvalds pushed out seven release candidates.

• “I think the 3.4 release cycle as a whole has been fairly calm,” Torvalds wrote in his release announcement. “Sure, I always wish for the -rc’s to calm down more quickly than they ever seem to do, but I think on the whole we didn’t have any big disruptive events, which is just how I like it.”

Graphics Stack

Applications

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation recently mused on the topic of non-free games on Linux, and unsurprisingly he rejects them, even though admitting that they “might encourage users of the games to replace Windows with GNU/Linux”. His position has been consistent for decades. What’s important is teaching users about their freedom as software users, and making that a priority, and not so much increasing the Linux market share and mind share.

Distributions

Debian Family

• We are pleased to present our first release of siduction in 2012. siduction is released ~4 times per year and is based on the Debian Unstable repository.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• It appears that Mark Shuttleworth, father of the Ubuntu project, gave an interview to Jason Gerard DeRose, the lead developer of Novacut, an open-source video editor app for pro HDSLR users.

• The laptop is available with a 15.6″ 1080p Full High Definition LED Backlit Display (1920 x 1080) for a base price of $899. The base model is powered by 3rd Generation Intel Core i7 CPU i7-3610QM Processor and comes with 4GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz.

Flavours and Variants

• Last week the release candidate for Linux Mint 13 was made available, code named Maya. Based on the recent release of Ubuntu 12.04, Linux Mint 13 takes the core of Precise Pangolin and adds it’s own branding and desktop environments on top of it. It’s these additions, and more, that go towards making Linux Mint so great – and here are five fantastic reasons to look out for the next version of Linux Mint.

Devices/Embedded

• Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock lately, we’re pretty sure you’ve heard about the Raspberry Pi by now — a $25 credit-card sized PC that brings ARM/Linux to the Arduino form factor. As a refresher, the system features a 700MHz Broadcom BCM2835 SoC with an ARM11 CPU, a Videocore 4 GPU (which handles HD H.264 video and OpenGL ES 2.0) and 256MB RAM. The board includes an SD card slot, HDMI output, composite video jack, 3.5mm audio socket, micro-USB power connector and GPIO header. Model A ($25) comes with one USB port, while Model B ($35) provides two USB ports and a 100BaseT Ethernet socket. Debian is recommended, but Raspberry Pi can run most ARM-compatible 32-bit OSes.

Phones

• In the wake of Meego’s demise a new open source mobile operating system has emerged. Known as Tizen and backed by Samsung and Intel, the Linux-based OS recently hit the version 1.0 milestone and has even been paired with an official reference hardware platform. Unlike the alternative OSes that came before it, Tizen does not use the Qt application framework. Instead, Tizen apps are created using HTML5 and other web standards. It is intended to be used in smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, vehicle entertainment systems, and low-power notebooks.

Android

• Motorola Mobility announced in a Form-8K filed today with the Securities and Exchange Commission that now that the Bureau of the Ministry of the Commerce of China has cleared Google’s acquisition, the companies will finalize the transaction “within two business days.”

• To truly disrupt Android, other OS makers face an uphill battle. It is no longer 2009, when Android stepped into a mobile market hungry for options beyond the iPhone (then only on AT&T) and the aging BlackBerry and Windows Mobile ecosystems. The market is now well established and the only two players that currently mean anything are iOS and Android.

• Chinese handset manufacturer ZTE has confirmed that a security vulnerability is present in the Android-based ZTE Score M smartphone. The phone includes an application, /system/bin/sync_agent, with a hard-coded password that can, now, be easily found on the internet. The application, when run with the password, gives the user root access to the device and therefore could be used to completely take over a phone.

• It’s official, Samsung’s next superphone is destined for T-Mobile and AT&T. At least, that’s what industry interest group the Bluetooth SIG seems to think. Apparently the body has approved T-Mobile and AT&T flavors of the mighty Galaxy S III.

Free Software/Open Source

• More than 50 percent of all software purchased within five years will be open source, according to a survey released Monday by a collaboration of 26 open source companies.

• This year’s “Future of Open Source Survey” results signal a tipping point for open source software adoption in the enterprise and non-technical industries such as automotive, health care and finance. In the auto industry, for example, 59 percent of the companies surveyed use open source software and 35 percent said they’re evaluating it.

• Intended to simulate “in theatre” scenarios to stimulate team building skills and wider training and analysis initiatives, the work to test out as many as 400 use cases is being carried out in the Research Lab Simulation and Training Technology Center in Orlando.

• As the Open Source Business Conference gets underway in San Francisco, a survey shows that open-source software is contributing to development in some of the top IT trends of the day.

• Mobile computing, cloud computing and analyzing huge amounts of data are among the top IT trends in 2012 and are also the focus of the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) 2012 that begins May 21 in San Francisco.

Web Browsers

Chrome

• Well THAT was quick. Just six months after Google Chrome eclipsed Mozilla’s Firefox to become the world’s second most popular Web browser, Chrome finally surpassed Microsoft’s Internet Explorer on Sunday to become the most-used Web browser in the world, according to Statcounter.

• Chrome has passed Internet Explorer in browser share according to StatCounter’s latest numbers and Firefox’s recent downward trend appears to be over. Google’s open-source-based Chrome has been steadily gaining share according to StatCounter’s logs and, for the week just past, had a 32.76% share. IE on the other hand has been steadily declining since 2009, and in the same week took a 31.94% share.

Mozilla

• We here in the Linux blogosphere tend to be pretty good at that, but recently a surprising turn of events left us befuddled. Namely: Mozilla’s decision to leave Linux support out of the initial release of its upcoming Web Apps marketplace.

• Mozilla has been nothing if not a friend to FOSS over the years — indeed, it’s one of our very own best successes — and Linux users tend to be among its most ardent supporters.

SaaS

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Oracle has released version 3.1.1 of its Xen-based virtualisation solution, Oracle VM Server for x86, which uses the Linux 3.0-based Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 2 as its Dom0 kernel.

Openness/Sharing

Open Access/Content

Open Hardware

• Bring up the term open source to many people, and they’ll immediately think of community-driven software projects, but we’ve covered many open source hardware concepts here on OStatic over the years. And, last year, the official Open Source Hardware (OSHW) definition arrived in version 1.1. Recently, TED fellow Marcin Jakubowski delivered an address in which he discussed the open source blueprints for 50 farm machines, ranging from tractors to harvesters. You can get his thoughts in a video, but these farm-focused ideas are only a small part of the open source hardware scene.

Programming

• The Perl developers have announced that Perl 5.16.0 is now available, after twelve months of development following the release of Perl 5.14.0. The changes in Perl 5.16 are designed to improve the language without breaking any past software.

Leftovers

• Software giant Microsoft is offering to delete all the crapware which OEMs are forever installing on computers.

• Microsoft will do this for a fee. Sorting out your computer so it is bloatware free will cost you $99.

Finance

• Ultimately the particulars of J.P. Morgan’s losses are so much noise. What they point to is an economic system designed to self-destruct. Add increasing environmental degradation in the face of global warming to structural financial fragility and what capitalism appears to have created is a full-blown suicide machine. And to invert Mr. Haldane’s premise—the $60 trillion in lost production (minimum) was never going to go to us anyway. The trajectory since the 1970s had it going to corporate executives, bankers and machines (automation).

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