● 06.26.12

● Links 26/6/2012: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 is Coming

Posted in News Roundup at 9:03 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• There’s a new report/presentation on the current status. Some things have not changed. Some things have. Here’s an outline of the current status:

• * 10500 PCs have migrated to GNU/Linux, * 33000 employees, * 1000 IT workers, * 15000 PCs total,

• I stumbled upon web stats for the e-mail system of a French mathematical laboratory. They get hits from all over the world but most are from France. Interestingly the number 1 UserAgent is X11/Linux. In the top 15 UserAgents there are 4 representing 19.85% share. That other OS is there of course and also MacOS but GNU/Linux is tops.

Desktop

• The original Transformer was a unique concept put forth by ASUS in an effort to gain ground against the then-ubiquitous iPad. With its attachable keyboard, the tablet gained a fair amount of attention and performed well sales-wise to boot. But, although it had a “wow” factor with its keyboard accessory, some felt it lacked the build quality and style of its competition. So, ASUS went back to the drawing board, and the sequel device has all the advantages of the original with its detachable keyboard. It’s wrapped in a thinner, lighter, better-looking case that’s every bit as stylish as anything else on the market, and it adds kick-butt performance to boot.

Audiocasts/Shows

Kernel Space

• So, I don’t know what’s up but the pronouncement of GNU/Linux’s failure on the desktop or anywhere else are greatly exaggerated. There are still huge roll-outs taking place and every major and many minor OEMs are only too glad to ship GNU/Linux PCs if anyone wants them and many do. They usually ship no-OS so that folks can install what they want, too, and Many certify their hardware to work with Linux.

• This is the third profile in our 30-week series that features a different Linux kernel developer each week. Last week we featured Thomas Gleixner, after beginning the series with Linus Torvalds. The profiles we publish throughout the rest of 2012 will help illustrate how these developers do their work, providing important insight on how to work with them and what makes them tick.

Graphics Stack

• Unfortunately there aren’t any AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz benchmarks under Linux to deliver at this time. For whatever reason, AMD still isn’t too enthusiastic about seeing their latest-generation GPUs benchmarked under Linux. This is quite a change from generations ago, but whatever, the PR departments and upper-management at these major graphics companies seem to be ignorant when it comes to Linux (e.g. NVIDIA loses huge GPU order to the tune of ten million cards).

• It seems that recent comments made by Linus Torvalds and the loss of deal from China have made the people at NVIDIA take Linux more seriously and amend their attitude towards it. Recently an Nvidia employee asked in the Kernel Summit mailing list what could be done differently to make the Linux support better.

• The recent outburst by Linus Torvalds seems to have received a positive reaction from NVIDIA, as the company recently mentioned that they would take Linux more seriously, as they were important. Stephen Warren, an NVIDIA employee also sent out a mailer to the Kernel Summit mailing list asking for a different approach for better support towards Linux. As reported, Warren mentioned that, “In a Google+ comment, Linus noted that we have mainly been contributing patches for Tegra SoC infra-structure details. I’m curious what other areas people might expect me/NVIDIA to contribute to. I assume the issue is mainly the lack of open support for the graphics-related parts of our HW, but perhaps there’s some expectation that we’d also start helping out some core area of the kernel too? Would that kind of thing help our image even if we didn’t open up our HW?”

Applications

Proprietary

• We all know now that Steam is really coming to Linux. According to Gabe Newell, you can expect it this year. The ‘Steam-engine’ picked up additional locomotion yesterday when it brought developer David White on board. This is of course after being influenced my Michael Larabel, founder of Phoronix.

• Last month, Michael recruited Forest Hale, known mostly for the Dark Places game engine that powers Xonotic, an amazing and fast-paced first-person-shooter that is well known on the Linux platform. Michael Larabel is quickly becoming the center of the universe on all things Steam for Linux.

Instructionals/Technical

• Linux is, and always was, one of the most powerful operating systems on the planet. From Android to Ubuntu, Linux’s versatility has made it quite popular with developers, system admins, hackers, and of course, end users. Though simple to use and learn, Linux’s untapped prowess can be used to accomplish many tasks in your daily life. From running a garden sprinkler to rocking a baby’s cradle, Linux is just about as awesome as Chuck Norris.

• There has been many comments on my previous post about the new x32 ABI; some are interesting, others are more “out there” — the feeling I get is that there is quite a bit of cargo culting, with people thinking “there has to be a reason why is is developed, so it’ll be good for me!” without actually having the technical background to judge the usefulness of all this.

• So in the same spirit with which I commented on ccache almost exactly four years ago (wow, I have been keeping a blog for a very long time, haven’t I?), I’ll try to debunk a few of the myths and misconception around this new ABI.

Wine

• CodeWeavers kicked off the start of a new week by releasing CrossOver 11.2.0, which is based upon Wine 1.4.1 and supports new Microsoft software under Linux and Mac OS X.

Games

• Add to that my time nowadays for me is better spent actually gaming rather than scouring the net for Linux gaming related news, now I have a family my winding down time is needed more than ever and constantly tinkering with Linux to get stuff to work just isn’t for me right now.

• I will always be a Linux fan and user (I will be keeping a partition open for it ready for the day my very odd type of nvidia Optimus is supported – it’s not the usual type that The Bumblebee Project works with).

• The website and Linux for me have always been a hobby and if someone wants to carry it on as admin and owner send me a personal message and we can work out the details.

• While Xonotic 1.0 is still a ways bit out, this open-source game derived from Nexuiz is certainly shaping up to be one of the best open-source first person shooters available.

• Xonotic is built off the success of the open-source Nexuiz game, which was visually rich to begin with and raised the bar for open-source gaming. In the two years since the Nexuiz fork, Xonotic has raised the bar even higher.

Desktop Environments

• Chromebooks are one of a dozen kinds of thin clients that are rapidly being put into service. Almost all smart thingies use cloud services much of the time. Millions of terminal servers and their clients work in organizations of any size with buildings full of people needing IT. It’s just too expensive to do IT any other way. Many thin clients need next to nothing for service and servers can be managed by the hundreds by a single human. Wintel wants to sell you a hard drive, a licence and a powerful CPU for every seat because that’s their business model, not yours. You want the best IT for the lowest price, right?

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• For those not up to speed on the features of the Qt 5.0 tool-kit, the feature list documentation was updated last week.

• The Qt5 feature-list was updated on the Qt-Project.org Wiki last week. Below are some of the key features for those that haven’t been paying attention to the Norwegian tool-kit as it prepares for its major release in August.

• The Calligra suite, which is a set of 8 applications comprising of Office, Graphics and Project management softwares for the KDE desktop has released a new testing version this week. The 2.5 beta version contains a lot of changes and features and hopefully a stable version will be released within a month.

GNOME Desktop

• Gnome-Shell in 3.6 will release a new face, with two major changes. First one and most controversial is the removal of the categories and the second one is the addition of a new application discovery button.

• We tried to reach the designer of Gnome-Shell Jakub Steiner who pushed the new Shell design in Git to explain us the changes, but he replied that the work is still very preliminary, things are maybe going to change and so he can’t be interviewed just yet. Fair enough and we will try to talk to him again when Shell features will be freezed.

• Gnome 3.5.3 is around the corner and a lot of hype is currently going on featuring this release. Here we bring to you the most noticeable changes implemented this week.

Distributions

• GNU/Linux is the greatest global and collaborative effort in the history of computers. Everyone should be able to use it, and to help in the development of it no matter what disabilities or special abilities one has. This week we talk with Mobeen Iqbal from Vinux Project, who gives us an insight on how a distribution for the visual impaired is developed and loved by its users. Enjoy!

• AUSTRUMI is a small Linux distribution aimed at lower-resource computers. It always reminded me of Puppy Linux, not so much in appearance (or even operation), but in philosophy and feel. It’s blinding fast on modern machines, it offers a customized light-weight window manager and popular applications, and it’s still a two-minute download. Like Puppy, it might have a few other things you might not expect.

• I first reviewed AUSTRUMI back in 2005, and followed its development for a couple of years before it dropped off my radar. The team hasn’t put out a press release or release announcement since 2007. In trying to fill in some of the blanks, I found it seems AUSTRUMI hadn’t disbanded or stopped production, they just forgot to tell folks. In fact, a user known to most only as Prashanth reviewed version 2.2.9 extensively last March.

• Ulteo Open Virtual desktop is an Open Source alternative to Presentation Virtualization solutions such as Citrix XenApp, or Ericom PowerConnect or Quest vWorkspace. We looked at Ulteo back in 2009 and that post has consistently featured amongst various top 10 lists of posts on the site. So we know you are interested but there were limitations in the Version 2 of Ulteo that made it suitable for a only a small number of use-cases. Ulteo have taken our views into account and responded to customer feedback and Ulteo OVD 3 can now provide a viable alternative in the general marketplace – not just for those enteprises who actively adopt Open Source.

• Marc Poirette proudly announced last evening, June 24th, that the PureOS 5.0 Linux operating system is available for download.

• Powered by Linux kernel 3.3.6 and based on the latest Debian Testing packages, PureOS 5.0 comes now with the GNOME 3.4.2 desktop environment, providing both GNOME Shell and GNOME Classic desktop sessions.

New Releases

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

• A few days ago I wrote about my first impression of Mageia 2 KDE from a Live run. I can’t say that it was without issues, but they were not the major ones.

Gentoo Family

Red Hat Family

• For the last several years, I’ve been asking Red Hat when Btrfs would land in Red Hat powered Linux distributions. Now I know the answer.

• Tim Burke, Vice-President of Linux Engineering at Red Hat, told me that currently Btrfs is still considered to be a tech preview in the recently releases RHEL 6.3 update. He added that Red Hat is currently focusing its Btrfs efforts on RHEL 7, where the Btrfs filesytem will be a more integrated component.

• Needham & Co.’s Scott Zeller today kicks off coverage of Red Hat (RHT) with a Buy rating and a $63 price target, writing that “field discussions in our data center software coverage have made increasing mentions of open source alternatives as companies consider their architectures for “data center refresh” and a move to cloud computing for public as well as private cloud buildouts.”

• Red Hat has released new versions of its Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and data services platforms – JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform 5.3 and JBoss Enterprise Data Services Platform 5.3. Both of them are leading open-source software for enterprise data management that make it easier for organizations to use data intelligently and develop integration solutions effectively.

Fedora

• Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee had a meeting last Monday regarding features to be included in Fedora’s next release codenamed Spherical Cow. The meeting was held on freenode IRC channel – #fedora-meeting. Here is a brief summary of accepted and rejected features.

• While Fedora releases tend to be ambitions on new Linux features and always living on the edge of the latest upstream code, the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee is taking additional time to decide whether to have 256 color terminal support by default in Fedora 18.

• The plan of this Fedora Project feature is to “Enable terminal programs to use the enhanced color capabilities of modern terminals by default.” Basically to change the default color pallette from 8 to 256 colors.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• While there’s still over three months to go until Ubuntu 12.10 “Quantal Quetzal” will be officially released, for many computers this release will be faster than its predecessor, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

• In the ongoing battle of the Linux distributions, new survey findings show that businesses favor Debian and Ubuntu over Red Hat distributions for file servers, including RHEL and CentOS. Among those using Linux on file servers, 67% of respondents use Debian distributions, while 54% use Red Hat. The survey of 100 small and medium business users, sponsored by Symform, was designed to identify the most common distributions among Linux users interested in additional data backup, particularly cloud-based solutions. While this survey focused on file servers, it aligns with other research that indicated Debian is also the most popular Linux distribution on web servers.

• I’ve noticed something lately. Since Ubuntu 12.04 was released, and I migrated over from Linux Mint, I’m working much more efficiently. This isn’t really so much a surprise to me, but to many of the detractors who assume Unity a very unproductive desktop… well, I can officially say they are wrong.

• As we reported earlier Ubuntu teams are hosting an online application development showdown event to attract new developers. The first week of the event has successfully conducted and two more weeks still to go, so if you missed it you still have a lot of time to follow the event in the coming weeks.

• Ubuntu offers one of the most complete Linux computing experience around, but bringing it to a phone is an unusual concept, nevertheless Redmond Pie’s ‘how-to’ on bringing Ubuntu to your S3 explains the process of replacing Android with the desktop OS. The process seems simple enough, but its not for the faint hearted. There are a few things you need to have done before you start the process which we’ll brief you on. If you’re still happy, then Ubuntu-up your S3 to your heart’s content.

Flavours and Variants

• Artyom Zorin proudly announced yesterday, June 18th, the immediate availability for download of the Zorin OS 6 Core and Ultimate Linux operating systems.

• Being designed for Windows users, and for those who hate the GNOME Shell and Unity desktop interfaces, Zorin OS 6 comes with a unique desktop environment, called Zorin Desktop.

• As I promised, here’s the third Mint review this spring. I really like Mint 13 Maya so far, and it’s being introduced into my sacred production setup as we speak. In fact, this review is a revolution of a kind, since it marks a first change in my operational system array since CentOS was added there, which too marked another milestone, the previous such drastic step being never.

• I am going to show you how Mint Maya behaved on my LG RD510 laptop, which comes with 4GB of RAM and a proper graphics card in the shape of Nvidia 9600M GS. We will also see how Mint runs from an external disk connected to my even mightier i5-powered HP laptop, but that’s later. For now, let’s elaborate on my recent experience. Of course, you will get all the little details and whatnot. Follow me.

• It was due to having Agoraphobia that I spent most my time gathering as many tips and tweaks that I could find to make my system run as lightweight as possible while having only 1gb of RAM. I wasted a lot of time and went through a lot of heartache trying to make a window out of what’s really a box.

Devices/Embedded

Phones

Android

• Google TV is fast becoming popular and Sony is brining Google TV to Europe with the NSZ-GS7. Google TV will be available to buy in UK from July 16. Pre-orders begin today (June 25) online at www.sony.co.uk. The device will be available in US on July 22nd for $199.

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• The Nexus 7 is what Google is calling its upcoming Android tablet, according to documents leaked just before the device’s expected debut at this week’s Google I/O Conference. The device, built by Asus, will be a seven-inch slate that costs as little as $200, according to the report. It will ship with the next-gen version of Android, Jelly Bean, and feature an Nvidia processor.

• Smartdevices Inc. announced the immediate availability for download of a firmware for its SmartQ T20 tablet device.

• The SmartQ T20 tablet comes with the Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) mobile operating system by default. It boasts the following hardware specifications: dual-core 1.5 Ghz ARM Cortex A9 CPU, full HD playback through PowerVR SGX 540 GPU, 1 GB of RAM, 16 GB of internal storage, 1280×800 10.1″ capacitive multi-touch screen, built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, USB ports, HDMI port, headphone jack, 2MP front-facing camera, 5MP rear facing camera and accelerometer.

Free Software/Open Source

• Virgin Atlantic’s IT director, David Bulman, has called upon the airline industry to work collaboratively on open source applications that create an emerging standard for re-use and allow passengers to avoid downloading multiple tools.

• SourceForge has announced that Allura, the software that powers the popular project hosting service, has been submitted to the Apache Software Foundation Incubator for consideration, the first step in the process of becoming a top-level Apache project. With this move, the organisation says that it hopes “to draw an even wider community of developers who can advance the feature set and tailor the framework to their needs.”

• Why do corporations give away code under free and open source licences? What benefits do they derive and what are the pitfalls that can doom these code give-aways? And how do they make a real community grow around these projects? Richard Hillesley looks at the difficulties and rewards to giving away code.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• By now, even your grandmother is using Firefox 13, so belated is my little review here. But it’s only been about two weeks since it was birthed, and I have let everyone else get the first-story first-click glory. Now, I will give you a very reasonable tour of the latest release.

• Is it important enough to merit a separate article, you may ask? Well, the significance and scope of change is definitely less than what it used to be in the era of longer-term major number editions, but the particular version comes with some useful tricks. Firefox 13 is a gradual upgrade, worth its own little space in the blogosphere. Follow me.

• If you’ve been using Firefox 13, you may have noticed how a particular new feature can expose your private browsing history. Specifically, the browser presents a thumbnail tab view of recently visited sites generated by taking snapshots as you surf from site to site. These thumbnails are aggregated on a page that effectively calls out all the sites you’ve visited. This feature even applies to SSL-protected sites, according to some users, and should be addressed by Mozilla. There are signs that the uptake of Firefox 13 is also going slower than planned.

SaaS

• Eucalyptus continues to update its private cloud software — delivering version 3.1 today. And CEO Marten Mickos continues to refine his management style at the open source company. So how has Mickos adjusted his approach at Eucalyptus vs. his previous role as CEO of MySQL, the open source database now owned by Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL)? Here’s the update.

• CEO of cloud software company Eucalyptus, Marten Mickos, has announced that the next release of Eucalyptus will exist only as one edition, ending the company’s open source/enterprise versions which gave it open core styled product differentiation. Eucalyptus 3.1 will bring the company’s full range of technologies into one version and the source code will be available through Github. All new development activity will occur on Github too, with defect and feature tracking made publicly available making it easier for any community member to follow the progress of an issue.

• The role of open source firms has been to consolidate a set of rapidly occurring changes in a class of commercial software, frequently adding their own updates to the code and then commoditizing them in the marketplace. The Apache Web server did that. The JBoss Application Server under Marc Fleury’s team of developers did it.

Databases

• Two former Facebook developers have created a new database that they say is the world’s fastest and a video to demonstrate its superiority compared to MySQL.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Oracle says it intends to enable the next version of its JavaFX Rich Internet Application (RIA) technology to be natively packaged for various platforms. The process will be enabled by an application which can package exe and msi (for Windows), dmg (for Mac OS X) and rpm and zip (for Linux systems).

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• GCC 4.7 was released a few months back, but have changes in the trunk code-base — for what will eventually become GCC 4.8 — resulted in any major performance changes yet?

• GCC 4.8 will likely not be released until early 2013, but it’s worth seeing if there’s any performance changes early on in case the change is a regression or other issue. Plus GCC 4.8 will be competing with what will likely be LLVM/Clang 3.2 or LLVM/Clang 3.3.

Project Releases

• Support for capturing from multiple interfaces at the same time is one of the most notable improvements in the major update to the Wireshark network protocol analyser. Version 1.8.0 of the open source, cross-platform tool – used for network troubleshooting, analysis, development and education – also includes support for GeoIP IPv6 databases, and now allows users to add, edit and save packet and capture file annotations.

Public Services/Government

• A two million euro, three to four year framework contract for providing open source support was awarded to open source specialist Alter Way, system integrator Capgemini and Java specialist Zenika by Disic, the central IT department for the French government. The three will provide support for no less than 350 open source tools used by 15 of the 22 ministries in France.

Open Hardware

• “It is unclear why iCub should do any better than a nonphysical counterpart — i.e., a software program designed to engage in conversation with a human trainer and learn from him to speak in a manner similar to language acquisition by infants,” noted Ai Research President Yaki Dunietz. “It will be interesting to see how a bot who also possesses a physical body learns to speak better than a bodiless one.”

• [...]

• DeeChee is designed on the open source iCub platform, which is available for anyone to create similar robots for a variety of types of research, including language acquisition.

Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

Hardware

• Well, of course a keyblet is a fusion between a tablet and a keyboard. While the keyblet is presented by Microsoft as an innovation, we will see that it is not the case and that it will fail to offer a great experience both for PC/keyboard users and for touch-screen devices *touchlets?*.

• First it was Fedora, which revealed its strategy late last month. Then, this week Canonical spoke up in turn with its own plans for Ubuntu Linux.

• The two distros are taking pretty different approaches. Here’s an overview of what they’ve each said.

• The division M$ has wrought in the ranks of OEMs and GNU/Linux distros has a very simple solution. OEMs can refuse to install M$’s key and the world will be at peace and “8″ will not boot on any PCs.

Security

• Trojan.Milicenso may arrive on a compromised computer by various means, such as malicious email attachments or visiting websites hosting malicious scripts. The latter often unintentionally occurs when a user clicks a link in an unsolicited email. We have also encountered quite a large number of samples that appear to be packaged as a fake codec.

• It’s been five years since IPS vendor Sourcefire acquired ClamAV’s intellectual property and personnel resources. Since then, the open source antivirus project has prospered under Sourcefire’s guidance and is now complemented by commercial antivirus tools for consumer and enterprise marketsbased that are based on ClamAV.

• It goes without saying that antivirus software can’t catch everything. But, does it catch 10% or 90% of the malware targeted at Windows users?

• In a recent user group presentation, malware expert David Perry, of Comodo, said there are between 200,000 and 300,000 new viruses discovered every day (here “virus” is a generic term encompassing dozens of types of malware). They are built from kits and most circulate in the wild for a very short time, perhaps only a day. In other words, by the time they are detected, they’re often out of circulation.

Intellectual Monopolies

• BBC Radio 4 reported in its headlines this morning that the Agriculture Biotechnology Council had published a new report “Going for Growth”, which calls for GM to be put at the heart of agricultural development in the UK. The BBC failed to point out that the misleadingly named ABC is actually a GM industry lobby group that represents BASF, Bayer, Dow, DuPont (Pioneer), Monsanto and Syngenta.

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