● 05.23.12

● Links 23/5/2012: printerd, Mageia 2 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 3:16 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

• Earlier this month, at a conference dedicated to Ubuntu, Google developer Thomas Bushnell — who works under CIO Ben Fried — detailed the company’s use of Goobuntu, which has long been an open secret but was rarely discussed in public. According to Bushnell, Goobuntu is based on the LTS (long-term support) releases of Ubuntu, with modifications made to improve security and stability. Fried confirms that Google is currently using the “Lucid Lynx” version of Ubuntu (10.04), but that the company is moving to the “Precise Pangolin” release (12.04).

• Back to basics computing the Ordissimo way offers users a simple range of applications that have, the company claims, been hugely simplified to reduce the number of mouse clicks necessary to perform basic tasks.

• Dell’s PC division constitutes 20% of its stock by our estimates. Looking ahead, another potential source for sales is the open-source Linux based Ultrabook, which is aimed at capturing the web and mobile design market share dominated by Macbook. For this earnings report, we however expect a slight fall in PC sales due to seasonality, but guidance on ultrabook trends could spark investor interest.

Kernel Space

• Red Hat developers Tim Waugh and Richard Hughes have announced what they call a “modern print spooler” for the Linux desktop. The printerd daemon is PolicyKit-enabled and uses D-Bus to communicate with other applications. Waugh points out, that as a design decision, printerd will only accept PDF files as input.

• It’s been a “calm” release cycle, according to Linus Torvalds, but the 3.4 Linux kernel released on Sunday still has plenty of interesting new features. Top of the bill? A X32 application binary interface (ABI) that will help provide better performance for applications that don’t really need huge chunks of memory or 64-bit variables.

Graphics Stack

Applications

• OpenVAS is a framework that includes services and tools for scanning and the complete managment of vulnerability.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• Gamers are not exactly the first group that comes to mind when one thinks of Linux users. Yet eRacks, a PC vendor specialized in open source systems, recently launched a new line of high end desktops, called AresPro, aimed at gamers and other customers with specific needs for powerful computers. Here’s the scoop, and its meaning for the open source channel.

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• In the wake of the announcement of the first ever KDE powered tablet, quite a few interesting things are happening in the background. One of them is the formation of a professional Partner Network for devices such as the Vivaldi tablet. Let’s look at this Partner Network in more detail.

Distributions

• Rock musician and software developer Dick MacInnis, announced a few days ago the availability of the new Dream Studio release which is based on Ubuntu 12.04.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

• Mandriva, the company behind the GNU/Linux based distribution with same name, recently announced that they are giving the control of the distribution to the community. CEO of Mandriva SA, Jean-Manuel Croset, wrote, “After reviewing all your messages, suggestions, ideas and comments, Mandriva SA took the decision to transfer the responsibility of the Mandriva Linux distribution to an independent entity.”

• The development raised questions about the role Mandriva fork Mageia will play in this community controlled Mandriva. Mandriva clarifies that there will be active collaboration between the two teams. For their server product, Mandriva will collaborate with the Mageia community.

• We’re the Mageia community, and we are very happy to announce the release of Mageia 2!

• The Mageia team has announced the release of Mageia 2, the community-driven fork of Mandriva.

• I am jumping the gun a bit and upgrading my Mageia 1 installation on my personal / business SOHO desktop PC tonight, May 21st, to Mageia 2. Officially Mageia 2 is not due to release until May 22nd. But the online repository for Mageia 2 is in place at my preferred mirror and I know that it is basically ready to go right now. So, I am upgrading. Ironically, I am starting this article from my soon-to-be-retired Mandriva 2011 install on the SOHO router / Bacula backup server. I have X and fluxbox installed on here just for occasions such as this where my main PC is being serviced. I am publishing this and will update as I go, so any of you that follow this site via RSS can make comments if you wish while this is being written.

Red Hat Family

• While the so-called Information Age has been touted since the public opening of the Internet nearly 20 years ago, the real dawn of the Information Age is just about to start.

• That was the central theme of this morning’s Open Source Business Conference keynote from Jim Whitehurst, President & CEO Red Hat, who also told the audience that open source is setting off the explosion of new innovation.

Debian Family

• Last month, Stefano Zacchiroli was re-elected as leader of the Debian GNU/Linux project for a third term, the first leader to earn such a mandate. Only the founder, Ian Murdock, has headed the project for anything approaching three years.

• Debian is the biggest volunteer project of all distributions, has the most ports and provides, arguably, the best distribution; its package management tools are the stuff of legend. It serves as the basis for some of the better known and more widely used distributions, like Ubuntu and Knoppix, and also functions as some kind of conscience of the FOSS movement.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• My mother in law, Sue, has what can be best described as a dog-earred mess of a laptop. A reasonably modern Lenovo Thinkpad with Windows Vista, it was painfully slow to use, crammed with all manner of bloatware and pre-installed rubbish that came with the machine and the applications she installed, and likely hiding some spyware, viruses and other uglyness.

• Now, I am not a fan of Windows at the best of times, but this was beyond software preferences: the machine was barely usable. Sue though, being the trooper she is, gritted her teeth and just got on with it, going about her business as usual.

Flavours and Variants

• There’s been much attention focused lately on Canonical’s recently released Ubuntu Linux 12.04 “Precise Pangolin,” but it’s by no means the only popular Linux distribution out there with a major update in the offing.

Devices/Embedded

• The Raspberry Pi $35 Linux computer, which is equipped with a 700MHz processor, 256MB of RAM, an SD card slot, two USB ports, an Ethernet jack and both HDMI and RCA outputs, will soon feature support for a camera add-on. The current prototype features a 14-megapixel camera that can be connected directly to the Rapsberry Pi through its CSI pins.

• A blog post published by the Raspberry Pi foundation offers the first look at an experimental camera module that is designed to plug into the organization’s popular $35 Linux computer. The camera component, which will likely be available for purchase later this year, is relatively small. The foundation says that it is “ideal for some robotics and home automation applications people have been wanting to build.”

• Couple of days ago, WonderMedia (subsidiary of VIA Technologies, which in turn is a subsidiary of Formosa Plastics) announced its latest SoC processors, the 800MHz WM8950 and the faster 1.2GHz WM8850. We’re not sure why exactly the higher number part is the lower-performing one, but we’ll leave that one to you to figure out.

Phones

• After we have seen Tizen OS in action on a Samsung slate a few days ago, today we are bringing fresh news about this fresh platform. As probably know, Intel, Linux Foundation, Samsung, Sprint and many other big names of the telecom industry are involved in the Tizen Project.

• At the Open Source Business Conference 2012, the president of mobile data synchronization software company Funambol explained how open source software, such as Google Android, came to dominate the mobile space.

Android

• Google announces completion of its deal to buy Motorola Mobility and enter the hardware market. The marriage will likely bolster Google’s Android-based smartphone business and Xoom tablet business but maybe not its OEM business. The extent of its success will also be determined by its support in the greater open source community, especially among open source developers, in the Software-as-a-Service era.

• Google has cleared the final hurdle standing in its way of acquiring Motorola Mobility. The government of China has given the pair its blessing, but one of the conditions regulators set was that the Android OS must remain open for at least the next five years. Google will have to file a report with China’s Commerce Department every six months.

• Some readers may remember that back in February we discussed the planned Google acquisition of Motorola Mobility and concerns over the possibility that Google’s Android might not remain an open-source platform. The promising news today for Android enthusiasts is that as part of the recent agreement for China to approve the giant search company’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility, Google has said it will maintain a 5-year free and open source plan.

• With the final nod from China, Google has closed the acquisition of Motorola Mobility this morning. Motorola will be run as a separate company, just the way YouTube is run as a separate company. So, there is no fear of Motorola getting an edge over competitors. On the contrary Google recently announced that they will give partners early access to Android to be able to bring products to the market in time. Motorola will remain a licencee just like other Android partners.

• Randall, Randall, Randall. AT&T’s CEO has a habit of getting himself in hot water when he talks about his company’s network, and with his latest remarks about Android, he’s managed to make himself look like a fool yet again.

Free Software/Open Source

Events

• I started thinking about the value of information here in San Francisco at the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), held May 21-22. It’s the first day of a two-day conference, and some of the leading experts in open source are here presenting, learning, networking and more. During the opening remarks by John Amato, Vice President & Publisher, Computerworld, and Matt Asay, Vice President Business Development, Nodeable, we discovered that about half the attendees are new to the conference, which is great for open source.

• From the 23rd of May through the 26th is the LinuxTag conference that once again is happening (the 6th time) at the Berlin Messe. This trade show and conference that’s sponsored by the likes of Microsoft, Oracle, and Nokia usually has some interesting booths and sessions.

• The EU are pushing Reuters on opening access to their RIC codes, with open access one option, it will be interesting to see how this pans out. It raises a much bigger question though; will Reuters try to use open source as a way to shore up its diminishing trading room status?

• In their Call for Papers (CfP), the organisers of the Open Source Monitoring Conference (OSMB) have asked potential speakers to submit presentation papers for the network monitoring conference, which will take place on 17 and 18 October in Nuremberg, Germany. This event is the seventh of its kind and is organised by German IT firm Netways.

• Open source continues to make big strides, and leads in key growth segments including cloud, big data, mobile applications and enterprise mobility, according to a survey published yesterday.

• The board is happy to announce that this has occurred, and Simon Phipps is the new President. Alolita Sharma and Martin Michlmayr are again Treasurer and Secretary, respectively, continuing their long service to the organization. The board congratulates them on their selection and thanks them for their future service.

• Software defined networking (SDN) is triggering a major change in the way network administrators think about their networks. With SDN, the data and control planes can be separated enabling more programmable and flexible networks. One of the primary technologies behind SDN is the open source OpenFlow protocol. While the protocol can be supported on multiple types of switches from vendors big and small, it also requires a controller to actually manage and direct OpenFlow. That’s where startup Big Switch Networks comes into play.

• Registering a USB vendor ID normally costs around $2,000 USD while a block of MAC addresses costs $1,600. With there being large sums of IDs left under the OpenMoko Inc company, they’re looking to freely dispose of them for worthy open-source causes.

• The part of my job I enjoy the most is meeting interesting people and companies from all over the world.

• One such company is Allevo in Romania. They have decided to open source their core business.

• Reviewing HijackThis is like talking to an old friend for the first time after a lengthy communications hiatus. I lost track of the program’s development shortly after Trend Micro took it over. Not that I or my repair colleagues ever stopped using it–it’s too darn handy when it comes to spotting malware and removing detritus from your system. Now, Trend Micro has placed the program in open source, so perhaps development will continue beyond the version 2.0.4 that it’s been stuck at for a while.

• OpenFlow and its part in the growing SDN ecosphere started out life as a Stanford University research project in 2008.

• This is my first guest post here on Noobpreneur.com and I wanted to start with something that is really close to my heart.

• William Davis, Editor of the Bangor Daily News in Maine, USA, discusses how his 50,000-circulation daily newspaper moved from an outdated content management system (CMS) to using web-based tools that has improved its online efficiency.

• Mr Davis says that in the old way of doing things, the print CMS didn’t talk to the website or support links. Furthermore, the paper’s bureau-based reporters couldn’t access the CMS, so they would email their stories to editors, who would edit them and add copy-and-paste links, and then any changes would start the process over again.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• Mozilla Spaces, the initiative to create open working spaces for open web and open source developers to gather in and work together, has officially launched the London Mozilla Space. Situated near Covent Garden, the new space is attached to Mozilla’s new offices where a number of the non-profit’s employees can work. The open space includes six meeting rooms, a larger meeting area with a “Splendid Bar”, Wi-Fi, and a space for storing bicycles.

SaaS

• ownCloud has announced the version 4 of its community edition – adding innovations and enhancements that make the popular project even more flexible, secure and innovative.

• ownCloud 4 adds innovative features like file versioning, – which actively saves files, allowing users to “rollback” to previous versions – and a new API — giving developers an easy, stable and supported way to develop applications on top of ownCloud capabilities.

Databases

• When developing Hive-based applications, developers always have to deal with different HiveQL queries to perform basic CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete) and other operations on Hive table data. The queries also vary from one application to another. For applications where multiple types of Hive tables are used and many of them are created on the fly during the execution of the application, managing a table’s lifecycle and querying data dynamically become very difficult. Developers have to hardcode various HiveQL queries for each operation. This makes developing, managing and maintaining the application very difficult.

CMS

• Students from around the world will be working on open source coding projects that may be used by content management (CMS) software Joomla, as part of the Google Summer of Code.

• There are eight separate student projects, each being worked on by a different student, that have the potential to be incorporated into the open source Joomla platform and core.

Education

• Seneca Professor Chris Tyler has been named among the first Industrial Research Chairs for Colleges by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

• The $1 million renewable five-year grant recognizes Seneca’s expertise and establishes Tyler as a research leader in open source technology for emerging platforms. In this new role, his research will focus on foundational software for new energy-efficient computing platforms, ranging from the revolutionary $35 Raspberry Pi computer to large data centres, with industry partner Red Hat Canada. Emerging ARM computer systems have the potential to reduce energy, space, and cooling requirements by 90 per cent or more.

Healthcare

• 3M Health Information Systems will release a public version of its Healthcare Data Dictionary as open source software, making it free and available worldwide.

Funding

• Take Eclipse, for example. The Eclipse Foundation organizes the code base, polices the license, and builds a community around its code. Its funding comes from members and sponsors, who are all free to extend the code base to make their own products.

Project Releases

• The recently released update to Lightspark, version 0.5.7, improves the graphics capabilities of the open source Flash player implementation for Linux. According to lead developer Alessandro Pignotti, this has been done by adding support for the BitmapData copyPixels method, soft mask­ing and mem­ory usage pro­fil­ing, features that are all used by graphics-intensive Flash games.

Public Services/Government

• OneBigVoice is an online platform for activists, politicos, and the everyday citizen to raise awareness of the things that matter to them. Through the site, organisations can raise funds for advertising campaigns, provide information on issues, and allow communities of interest to participate, as well as local politicians.

Openness/Sharing

Open Data

Open Access/Content

• Open-source textbooks, long considered a promising way to cut costs but still not widely used, could become more readily available and easily vetted as a University of Minnesota project expands.

• The University of Minnesota is hoping to pioneer a project that would see professors being paid in order to review open source textbooks. The university would offer $500 for each review in order to vet the books, and professors who adopt the books for teaching will also receive $500. Faculty members are welcome to submit their own reviews, but won’t be compensated for the effort.

Open Hardware

• MAKE’s Hardware Innovation Workshop takes place May 15-16, at PARC in Palo Alto. The Workshop is a one-and-a-half day intensive introduction to the business of making and the makers who are creating these businesses.

• Founded in March, the OSRF has now announced its board of directors. Current directors include Professor Wolfram Bungard, who leads the Laboratory for Autonomous Intelligent Systems at the University of Freiburg; Ryan Gariepy, co-founder and CTO of Clearpath Robotics; Brian Gerky, Director of Open Source Development at Willow Garage; Helen Greiner, co-founder of iRobot and currently CEO of CyPhyWorks; and Sam Park of South Korean robotics company Yujin Robot.

Programming

• Past participants have helped improve everything from popular web frameworks to browser add-ons and even operating systems. Summer of Code is also not a half bad way to get yourself on Google’s radar — the company looks at the results of the program to help it “identify potential recruits.”

• NVIDIA today announced that LLVM, one of the industry’s most popular open source compilers, now supports NVIDIA GPUs, dramatically expanding the range of researchers, independent software vendors (ISVs) and programming languages that can take advantage of the benefits of GPU acceleration.

Leftovers

Hardware

• Confused, mentally ill or just failing in facility due to advancing age, M$ is clearly not adapting to a new reality but trying to create a comfortable hallucination in which it alone can save mankind from ARM… Reality is that mankind must be saved from M$ by real innovation and unfettered imagination stimulated by FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software).

Security

• Canonical announced a few hours ago, May 21st, in a security notice, that a new Linux kernel update for its Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) operating system is now available, fixing two security vulnerabilities discovered in the Linux kernel packages by various developers.

Finance

• An investigative report published Sunday by the New York Times provides a glimpse of the predatory practices of major Wall Street banks that played a central role in the financial meltdown and global economic crisis.

• The article, headlined “Testy Conflict With Goldman Helped Push AIG to Precipice,” documents the role of Goldman Sachs, the biggest and most profitable US investment bank, in pushing the insurance giant American International Group (AIG) to the brink of bankruptcy.

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