● 06.23.12

● Links 23/6/2012: Wine 1.5.7 released, Apple Racism

Posted in News Roundup at 11:22 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• The recent hubbub over Linus Torvalds’ comments towards Nvidia as well as Nvidia’s response to those comments have once again brought up intense debates between Linux users and the rest of the computing pack. Reading the comments on Engadget or The Verge for these news articles, I realized that the general public has some misconceptions about Linux and its ecosystem. I use Linux distributions every single day both on my phone and on the desktop. When I read such comments, I find it kind of funny, but also kind of sad that the Linux that I use so routinely and productively is getting this sort of rap. So here, now, are five misconceptions I think I see most commonly on the Internet regarding Linux and its ecosystem.

• Another interesting week has wrapped up here in Linuxland. openSUSE is still working on their developmental process, Debian 7.0 freezing soon, Ubuntu has UEFI plans of its own, and Red Hat stock has recovered some losses.

• As the dawn of the Windows 8 era approaches, there are more reasons than ever for longtime Windows users to consider switching to Linux.

Desktop

• In a recent interview Linus Torvalds, the mastermind behind the Linux kernel, said that the operating system is not as popular as Windows on consumer PCs because it doesn’t come preinstalled. Manufacturers sell the computers they make with an operating system on board, which most of the time is Windows. Why can’t it be Linux instead?

• I received an email from a reader, ‘mcinsand’, who has “been an exclusive FOSS user at home since 2004, after spending a year finding out that WinXPSP2 was simply unacceptable.

• If an OEM started actively marketing Linux, for the most part they’d just be pushing people who are already buyers from one OS to another, nothing more. Except for those of us who’re already part of the Linux installed base, and our numbers are relatively few, they wouldn’t be selling any more machines or making any more money. They would only be creating more logistical problems for themselves.

Server

Audiocasts/Shows

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

• Last month, AMD took the decision to suspend support for 2000/3000/4000 series Catalyst drivers and open source them. This had saddened many hardware owners and there was also a rumour going on that AMD may stop development of the binary Catalyst driver and focus solely on open-source drivers.

• The Chinese, who also developed the Loongson MIPS CPU, were looking to order at least ten million graphics processors. The problem is that the GeForce / Quadro driver from NVIDIA is only available for Linux x86 and x86_64 architectures, not MIPS or even ARM (only the Tegra driver is for ARMv7). NVIDIA refused to release the source-code to their high-performance feature-complete cross-platform driver to the Chinese, and it would cost them millions of dollars to port the code-base, so they went to AMD for their GPU order.

• The developers at the Nouveau project have published version 1.0.0 of their open source graphics driver for X.org’s X Server. About seven years into the project, this milestone means that the final part of the Nouveau driver has now left behind its pre-release status – the Nouveau 3D drivers have been part of Mesa 3D for some time, and the Nouveau DRM driver, which is being developed as part of the Linux kernel, left the staging area with Linux 3.4 in mid-May. At the time of writing, an official release email has yet to be issued.

Applications

Instructionals/Technical

Wine

Games

• Within the Phoronix Forums and elsewhere it has been brought up that using a low-latency kernel can improve the Linux gaming performance, but is this really the case? In this article are some simple benchmarks comparing the stock Ubuntu 12.04 LTS “generic” Linux kernel compared to Ubuntu’s low-latency flavor of Linux.

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• We have good news for KDE users who want better integration with social networking services such as Facebook, Twitter or identica. Soon you will have your favorite social networks at your fingertips thanks to Marty, a developer working on his Google Summer of Code project.

GNOME Desktop

Distributions

• The first and most recent time that I tried out Netrunner, it was in comparison with Linux Mint 12 “Lisa” KDE. At that time, I felt like although Netrunner had a few quirky design choices that I didn’t agree with as much, I felt like Linux Mint with KDE just felt too generic, while Netrunner made a conscious effort to improve the user experience of KDE. Now, Netrunner has come out with a new release based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS “Precise Pangolin”, and I am in search of something to eventually replace my installation of Linux Mint 9 LTS “Isadora” GNOME, so I am trying out this latest version now.

New Releases

Red Hat Family

• Linux continues to dominate the world of super-computers, according to a list published by top500.org. For the first time since November 2009, a United States supercomputer sits atop the TOP500 list of the world’s top supercomputers. Named Sequoia, the IBM BlueGene/Q system installed at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieved an impressive 16.32 petaflop/s on the Linpack benchmark using 1,572,864 cores.

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 6.3 became generally available today, ushering in a new era of virtualization scalability. The RHEL 6.3 update is the third major update to Red Hat’s flagship platform since RHEL 6 was initially introduced in 2010.

Fedora

• DNF is built atop Hawkey, which is a new package management library that in turn is built on libsolv for its back-end. The new API is said to be better unified, provides fewer restrictions on the client implementation language, and should yield long-term performance improvements. The API, however, isn’t yet stable and is more proof-of-concept. DNF development goals include using a SAT solver for dependency resolution, support to eventually use the same SAT solver as DNF within the RPM command, strict API definitions for plug-ins, strict API definitions for extending projects, a leander code-base than Yum, easier maintenance, and better performance while on a smaller memory footprint.

• Earlier today we posted about InitalExperience that will make configuring a breeze for new Fedora users. Now it seems that the Fedora team is also busy with giving a new look to their installer, Anaconda.

• A new proposal has been accepted to be included in fedora 18 that will allow software updates to take place while the system reboots. This decision is taken so that some critical system updates take place in a minimal controlled environment.

Debian Family

• We know no-one likes reading long mails on d-d-a, so we’ll keep this short: we’ll be stopping automatic migrations of packages from unstable to testing – aka freezing – on June 30th.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• In order to deal with UEFI, Ubuntu is dropping Grub 2 and plans to use Intel’s efilinux loader with some modifications to add a relatively simple menu interface. This will enable users to switch between installed operating systems.

• The bad news they share is that Ubuntu will not be using GRUB2 by default on systems where SecureBoot is enabled (i.e. all future PCs that are Windows 8 certified). Canonical has invested heavily in the GRUB2 boot-loader, but their move away from GRUB2 comes from GPLv3 concerns.

• Well, there we have it as the latest Apple Mac OS X vs. Ubuntu Linux benchmarks. Ubuntu 12.10 appears to regress when it comes to the disk performance, the OpenGL performance results for Intel Sandy Bridge graphics are mixed depending upon the test, and the computational tests vary depending upon the application under test when using each operating system’s default compiler.

Flavours and Variants

• Take a look at the new Linux Mint 13 from ReviewLinux.Com. Its GNOME desktop manager makes this an easy alternative to Windows 7 and beyond! Why pay for an OS when one can use Linux Mint to read your email or browse the web. The learning curve is not a steep one, you’ll pick Linux Mint up quickly and no more virus worries. Check out Linux Mint today plus visit ReviewLinux.Com for all your Linux needs.

Devices/Embedded

Phones

Android

• Details of an alleged HTC One XXL have landed online this week, pointing to an improved hardware experience for the company’s flagship Android smartphone. According to information obtained by German tech blog SmartDroid (translate), HTC is developing a variant of the XL which includes 2GB RAM and a quad-core CPU*, and LTE support. Said to feature a 4.7-inch display like its brethren, the XXL reportedly features a slightly different Adreno 320 GPU.

• The next version of Android is not going to be 5.0 as rumored by the press. The successor to ICS will be called Jelly Bean, as already known, and it’s going to be Android 4.1.

• Crushing all speculations and FUD spread by the anti-Android gang, Google has reiterated that they won’t be integrating Motorola and the inventor of cell phones will remain an independent company.

• Looking for some new games to play on your Android? The last year can only be referred to as haven time for Android gamers because hundreds of games were released. For some new excitement and action, here are three top games released in June that I think you will enjoy playing on your Android device.

• In the run up to the Google I/O developer conference, Google has rolled out an updated and redesigned Android Developers site. The company has also given application developers the ability to respond to reviews of their applications on the Google Play store. But, not all the news has come through official announcements as it appears an accidental leak has disclosed that the next version of Android, dubbed “Jelly Bean”, will be version 4.1.

• Leak: Galaxy Nexus Will Be the First Android Jelly Bean PhoneGoogle has managed to inadvertently let slip that the unlocked Galaxy Nexus will be the first handset to feature Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, through a slightly mis-timed Google Play product listing.

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• LG Electronics Inc. (066570), the world’s No. 4 mobile-phone maker, will sideline tablet computer development to focus more on smaller devices rather than compete head-on with Apple Inc.’s iPad.

• You can argue that tablets can never replace the form and functionality of a real, full-sized laptop, but you can’t argue that tablets are certainly cheaper to distribute if you’re planning to put one in the hands of hundreds of thousands of students in the country. That’s why Thailand has officially inked a deal that would bring an estimated one million tablets to its students ages 6 to 8 nationwide.

Free Software/Open Source

• The rise of open source is now being repeated by open endeavours in other fields, following a fairly constant pattern. First, somebody starts a small, personal project, often almost accidentally, and without any long-term plans. Crucially, they share that project online, and other people join in. Then, the project starts to grow and become quite useful. Later, it begins to rival commercial offerings, and companies start to attack it. Finally, it equals then surpasses those commercial offerings, and the companies find themselves in trouble.

• German social gaming company Wooga has thrown in the towel on its HTML5 project after seeing little return on the increasing amount of effort put into its “Magic Land Island” game.

Events

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• All of us who spend a great deal of time with digital devices have concerns about being tracked online, and these concerns are often especially pronounced among members of the open source community. In response to these concerns about online tracking, Mozilla delivered a Firefox extension not long ago called Collusion. You can get the add-on and watch a demo of it here, and we previously covered it here. It’s designed to turn the tables on online spies, allowing you to see who is tracking you. In an address focused on privacy delivered at TED, Mozilla CEO Ted Kovacs sang the praises of Collusion, and it’s gaining more traction with other Mozilla leaders.

• Canonical announced yesterday, June 20th, in a security notice, that an update for the default web browser in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Ubuntu 11.10, Ubuntu 11.04 and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS is now available.

• Today we are proud to launch a new Mozilla Webmaker app to the world. Meet Thimble, the new tool that makes it incredibly simple for anyone to create and share their own web pages and other projects in minutes.

SaaS

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• While some of the open source projects that Sun Microsystems created — and which I used to work with — have maintained a high profile, the one most associated with Sun in the minds of system administrators has been strangely forgotten. Whatever happened to OpenSolaris?

• You may have read, on the Apache OpenOffice blog, news that the project has had 5 million downloads in the first 6 weeks since the release of version 3.4. And as the above chart shows, the download rate has increased in the past two weeks, as we’ve started to roll out the upgrade notifications to OpenOffice.org 3.3 users.

Healthcare

• A recent study says allowing workers paid sick leave could account for healthier families and more than one billion dollars in savings — but the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker are fighting it.

Business

• In a fast changing global marketplace, businesses increasingly rely on technology that enables them to innovate and respond quickly to the evolving business environment.

Funding

• The Safecast project, which was co-founded by BoingBoing contributor Sean Bonner in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, has recently completed a successful Kickstarter funding round to create an open source Geiger counter. Safecast aims to supply residents of Japan with reliable, crowd-sourced radiation measurements.

BSD

Project Releases

• If you are a busy guy with a lot of tasks to keep track of, Nitro is the one of the best task management tools available for you. A new version has been released with some exciting features that we are going to cover in this story.

Public Services/Government

• Local and central government departments in the UK are favouring legacy storage systems from the likes of IBM and Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) as opposed to open-source storage, according to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

• The request was made by open-source software provider Nexenta Systems, and the revelation comes despite the government’s efforts over the past few years to cut costs and create a level playing field between open source and proprietary software vendors.

Openness/Sharing

Open Data

• Mapping the world’s radiation and air pollution data, using one volunteer with one gadget at a time — that’s the goal of the Safecast project, which this week closed over $100,000 on Kickstarter to deliver a limited run of its open source geiger counters to interested buyers. “I don’t think it’s an unreasonable goal,” to create comprehensive maps of this data from all over the world, says Sean Bonner, co-founder of Safecast, in a phone interview shortly after his team’s project was funded.

Programming

• It’s been talked about before, but it’s being attempted again to merge GDC into GCC. GDC is the compiler front-end for the D programming language.

Leftovers

• Apple was found to refuse to sell to people who speak Farsi, the language of Iran. They claim it’s to prevent export to Iran even though the person lives in Virginia, USA, and is a US citizen.

• Jobs’ Mob has been branded a bunch of racists after one of its stores refused to sell shiny toys to some swarthy types who were not speaking English.

• WSB-TV interviewed two customers who were denied the right to buy an iPad or an iPhone after store personnel heard them speaking Farsi. Farsi is the language of Ancient Persia and once was the lingua franca between merchants.

• The Apple staff apparently decided to refuse the sale because, in the opinion of its genius managers, the two must be buying the gear to sell to their evil terrorist mates in Iran. Apparently they even quoted laws that prohibit the export of products to Iran.

• The only problem is that the law does not forbid you selling technology gear to people in your own country or US citizens. The US happens to have a fair number of US citizens who are Iranian and so the move seems to be to blacklist them from owning gear using the made-in-China Apple logo.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• The media is indiscriminately using the term “job-killer” to describe government policies and programs, but without verifying or substantiating the claims, according to a new study. Use of the phrase by major media outlets has exploded since President Obama took office and rapidly circulates throughout the press with little or no fact checking of the “job killer” allegations.

Privacy

• Last week’s draft Communications Bill outlines how civil servants are again intent on surveilling the internet communications of innocent British citizens. Fortunately, Free Software provides several ways with which you can protect your privacy online, regardless of the measures that the Coalition may impose upon you or your telecoms providers.

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