● 07.11.12

● Links 12/7/2012: OS4 12.5 Released, LibreOffice 3.5.5 Released, CETA Worries

Posted in News Roundup at 7:57 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• There’s been some talk recently about how we’re now beyond using the command line. Nonsense!

Desktop

• Windows may still be the default operating system on the vast majority of mainstream PCs thanks to Microsoft’s many longstanding OEM partnerships, but that’s not to say it hasn’t been possible for some time to buy desktop machines with Linux preloaded.

• No, indeed! Thanks to vendors such as System76, ZaReason, EmperorLinux and others, Linux fans have long been able to get desktops, laptops, netbooks and more preloaded with a variety of Linux distributions — and that’s not even counting several on-again, off-again efforts by Dell, Wal-Mart and others to sell Linux boxes on their retail shelves.

• Over the past few months, however — coinciding, perhaps, with Windows 8′s appearance on the horizon — there have emerged some very encouraging signs that consumers’ Linux-based options are going to be increasing soon.

Server

• The machine, called the PowerLinux 7R1, is a single-socket machine that complements the two-socket PowerLinux 7R2 rack and tower server, and the Flex System p24L half-width node for PureSystem modular servers.

• When Microsoft killed Windows Small Business Server (SBS) ahead of the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC12), The VAR Guy wondered: Can Linux somehow invade the small business server market in a big way? After a week of thought, The VAR Guy seriously doubts it. Here’s why.

Kernel Space

• In conjunction with a new version of X Server, Linux 3.5 will offer better support for hybrid graphics. The Radeon driver will be a bit faster and support HDMI audio transport on more graphics chips. The audio drivers will support the Xonar DGX and Creative’s SoundCore3D.

Graphics Stack

• Now that X.Org Server 1.13 RC1 is out there with the initial support for PRIME and other exciting features, dependent projects can also now move forward.

• This week Silicon Motion fired off an email to the X.Org developers with a patch that introduces 38,463 lines of new code for their open-source Linux graphics driver.

• While the patch is entitled new driver for siliconmotion, it appears to be extending the existing xf86-video-siliconmotion DDX driver as opposed to writing a new driver from scratch. The e-mail itself is a bit of a mess, but there’s a nearly 40,000 line patch that’s attached.

• Keith Packard announced earlier today, July 10th, the immediate availability for download and testing of the first Release Candidate of the upcoming XOrg Server 1.13.

• The final version of XOrg Server 1.13 will be available in September, and it will have features like support for PRIME DRI2 offloading, RandR 1.5 with support for provider object, support for GLX_ARB_create_context in OpenGL 3.0, new GLX extensions, DDX driver API improvements, USB GPU hot-plugging, better GPU hybrid support, and much more.

• There’s now open-source GPU-based 2D hardware acceleration support for the AMD Radeon HD 7000 “Southern Islands” graphics cards using the xf86-video-ati driver.

• This 2D acceleration for the half-year-old Radeon HD 7000 series graphics cards isn’t using traditional 2D EXA acceleration within the X.Org DDX, but the 2D is being piped over the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver using Intel’s GLAMOR.

• Just days after making a number of improvements to Mesa/Gallium3D, Marek is back this week so far with 22 patches to improve Gallium3D and specifically to benefit the AMD Radeon “R600g” graphics driver.

• Developed by a few developers, reportedly with Intel engineers, is a sliding layout effect for Weston. There are shortcuts on it above the background like launchers on the panel that can then be activated by a single click. These shortcuts can then be dragged to the trash for removing them. The layout/shortcuts can also be configured using the weston.ini configuration file.

Applications

• While I’ve never been giddy with praise over a project-planning application, GanttProject has enough going for it for me to consider using as a regular go-to planning tool. Its user interface is structured clearly so it is easy to understand. GanttProject lets you break down a project into a tree of tasks and assign available human resources to work on each.

Instructionals/Technical

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• Rekonq, the promising KDE WebKit-powered web-browser, is nearly ready for its version 1.0 release.

• One month after the Rekonq 1.0 Tech Preview release, Rekonq 1.0 Beta is now available, as mentioned on a Rekonq developer’s blog. It’s also been confirmed on the project’s mailing list.

• With the plethora of open source desktop environments available at the moment, it’s hard to keep track of all the different features sets. And since KDE, which has recently become my interface of choice, arguably enjoys less media love than alternatives such as GNOME and Unity, it seems only fair to highlight some of the feature changes in its next upcoming release, KDE 4.9. Read on for a look — and, just maybe, a few compelling reasons to give KDE a try.

• To be honest, I’ve always had a bizarre uneasiness describing myself as a KDE user, a hesitancy I owe mostly to KDE developers’ obsession with inserting the letter “K” wherever possible. That’s a trait I associate with a certain producer of oversugared donuts, not to mention products such as “krazy” glue. It doesn’t make me think of quality software.

• The KDE Team have released the second release candidate of KDE 4.9 Workspaces, Apps and Development Platform. This release mainly focuses on fixing bugs and further enhancing new and old KDE components. Development of KDE API, dependencies and new features have been omitted in this release.

GNOME Desktop

• You know this guy, right? It was hard to make a prologue for this interview because Allan talks for lots of things, but I highlight two of them. Do not compare Gnome3 with Gnome2, Gnome 3 is something completely new..

Distributions

• Today we are pleased to announce the next generation of operating systems and the most advanced release of OS4 to date, OS4 12.5. OS4 12.5 has been designed from the ground up to satisfy the needs of casual PC users all the way to the professional user. It is available in 32 and 64 bit releases..

• Roberto J. Dohnert informed us a few minutes ago that the OS4 12.5 Linux operating system was made available for download for both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms.

• Following up yesterday’s article about how Enlightenment is soon to be released, we will check out what Linux distributions you should choose to enjoy this magnificent window manager + set of libraries.

• The roadmap for ROSA Desktop 2012 has been approved. ROSA Linux is a line of Linux distributions published by ROSA Laboratory, a Linux solutions provider based in Moscow, Russia. The distribution is derived from Mandriva Linux.

Red Hat Family

Fedora

• The Fedora Project developers approved yesterday, July 9th, in a FESCo meeting the 256-color terminal support for their upcoming Fedora 18 operating system.

Debian Family

• Aside from bringing up the successor to Debian 7.0 Wheezy and Debian’s plans for UEFI SecureBoot support, Debian developers in Managua also discussed on Monday the size of this next Debian release and other release plans.

• Debian developers are working towards an official armhf image for the Wheezy release and they’re also gearing up for official 64-bit ARMv8 / AArch64 support in the “Wheezy + 1″ release.

• On Tuesday of this year’s DebConf in Nicaragua there were two sessions concerning the ARM architecture support within the Debian world. Both sessions were led by Steve McIntyre, the former Debian Project Leader and is currently employed by ARM Holdings out of Cambridge.

• Back in March it was shared that LLVM’s Clang compiler can build much of the Debian archive. This week at DebConf a status update was shared on using LLVM/Clang as an alternative compiler to GCC within Debian.

• Sylvestre Ledru’s presentation was entitled “Build Debian with another compiler” and was described at the Managua, Nicaragua event as “After extending Debian with two new kernels, Debian will soon be able to be built with a new free C, C++ and objc compiler called Clang. Based on LLVM, this compiler is now close to gcc on many different aspects (performances, build time, level of support of C and C++). This talk will present the current status of a clang-build version of Debian, the next steps and evolutions.”

Devices/Embedded

Phones

Android

• Amazon’s devices are not ‘generic’ Android tables or phones as you may want. They are portal devices, which means these devices give you a screen and processing power to consume Amazon content. It’s a walled garden just like Apple’s iOS.

• One of my biggest gripes with Amazon Kindle Fire is the way they block access to Google Play Store which has a far bigger number of apps as compared to Amazon’s own App Store.

• Which also means you are locked into Amazon devices unlike Google Android where you can pick the device you want and still have all that content that you bought from Google Play Store.

• The VTech InnoTab is an inexpensive, rugged tablet designed for children. It has a 5 inch color touchscreen display and it’s designed to run educational games, display eBooks, and play media files.

• Google is pushing out the Android 4.1 “Jelly Bean” upgrade on Wednesday, but only to customers who have the unlocked version of the Samsung-built Galaxy Nexus mobile.

• According to a post on the Nexus team’s Google+ page, owners of Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ devices should receive a prompt to download the update “over the next several days.”

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• The company — primarily known for smartphones — has had little success with tablets, but is apparently giving it another go.

Free Software/Open Source

• Wondering how you can recruit open-source contributors for your project? Here’s how.

• Donnie Berkholz, a council member and developer for Gentoo Linux as well as an analyst at RedMonk, has presented on the topic of recruiting open-source contributors.

• Following on from the release of the Moog Synthesizer Doodle code, Google has now released the JavaScript of its Turing Machine puzzle.

• Ecotrust this week released an open source software platform that the nonprofit group hopes will be used to support collaborative processes for complex decision making.

• The software, called Madrona, builds on Ecotrust’s 20 years of experience using mapping, database and other software tools to tackle complex topics like marine reserves and forest management.

• “Madrona is essentially a packaging of features into a single platform,” said Tim Welch, senior developer for Ecotrust.

Events

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• Regarding Fabián’s concerns about Ubuntu and Thunderbird, I can assure you that Canonical’s stance has not changed: we will continue to ship the brightest and best Free Software by default in Ubuntu. In terms of email clients, today’s choice is considered to be Thunderbird…at another time it may be another app.

SaaS

• Big Switch Networks is not even out of stealth mode and has not yet revealed its aspirations and products for software defined networks – SDNs, in modern parlance – and yet the company is nonetheless contributing to the open source efforts to build more flexible and virtual network infrastructure and hoping to build awareness ahead of its eventual launch.

• The OpenNebula project has announced the release of OpenNebula 3.6, code named “Lagoon” after the Lagoon Nebula (Messier 8). The latest stable version of the open source cloud computing toolkit brings performance improvements and better virtualisation management.

Data

• Software Defined Networking and Cloud computing are two of the biggest trends in networking today. They are now both coming together in the Floodlight 0.85 release. Floodlight is an open source Software Defined Networking (SDN) controller, backed by networking startup Big Switch.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

Healthcare

• OSEHRA, (Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent) the nonprofit dedicated to advancing open source electronic health records and accelerating innovation in health care information technology, announced today it has surpassed 1,000 authenticated users.

Business

Semi-Open Source

• Rod Johnson, who wrote the first version of the open-source, Java-based Spring framework, and later co-founded SpringSource, has left his position as SVP and GM of VMware’s SpringSource product division. Johnson joined the Palo Alto, Calif.-based virtualization company when it acquired SpringSource in 2009, where he then served as CEO.

• VMware plans to make a beta version of an upgrade to its Zimbra Collaboration Server available for download on Wednesday, with shipments in final form scheduled for later this quarter, the company said.

BSD

• With Debian Wheezy now frozen for its release sometime next year, here are some early benchmarks comparing the performance of Debian 6.0.5 “Squeeze” to the latest packages for the Debian 7.0 “Wheezy” release. For this Squeeze vs. Wheezy comparison, both Debian GNU/Linux and Debian GNU/kFreeBSD were benchmarked from an Intel 64-bit system.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• One of the long-advertised features of LLVM’s Clang C/Objective-C/C++ compiler has been that it offers more user-friendly diagnostics than the GNU Compiler Collection. Historically this has been true, especially against GCC 4.2 — the last GPLv2 compiler release. However, GCC developers have been working to improve this situation. With GCC 4.8, it looks like more of this work will come to fruition.

Licensing

Openness/Sharing

• Facing nearly 2 million new tuberculosis cases every year — more and more of them drug-resistant — India has a bigger stake in finding a better treatment for TB than any other country.

• Yet until recently, obstacles hindered Indian scientists’ efforts to conduct advanced research.

• The reason? India’s university professors are bogged down with teaching, and few have the laboratory facilities needed to do cutting edge work. And every year, more of the best minds are lured away by the pharmaceutical industry — which has little interest in TB, from which there is little money to be made.

Open Access/Content

• Forty years ago, John Holt wondered whether an educational revolution as profound as open education could survive unless it became part of a wider and deeper movement of social change. Until open source and the concept of an open education began to take hold, John Holt’s vision of an open education seemed to be a pipe dream.

Leftovers

Defence/Police/Aggression

• The Pentagon considers awarding war medals to those who operate America’s death-delivering video games

Finance

• This may be one of the most important stories ever ignored by the so-called “lame-stream, liberal” media. It’s unlikely you’re losing sleep over US trade negotiations, but the unfolding business agreement among the US and eight Pacific nations -the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – should cause every US citizen, from the Sierra Club to the Tea Party to get their pitch forks and torches out of the closet and prepare to “storm the Bastille.” The TPP negotiations have been going on for two years under extreme secrecy, no information has been made available to either the press or Congress about the US position. But on June 12, a document was leaked to the watchdog group, Public Citizen, revealing the current US position and the reason for the secrecy. The contents are surreal, shocking and prima facia evidence for how corporations have become the master puppeteers of our government.

• As the world’s most powerful investment bank Goldman Sachs is no stranger to fighting all sorts of battles, but the city of Oakland, Cailf. is challenging the firm like no one ever has before.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• The Internet Society welcomes the European Parliament’s rejection of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) as a strong message in favour of open and transparent processes in negotiations dealing with policy issues pertaining to the Internet. The vote followed widespread protests throughout Europe, with Internet campaigners claiming that it posed threats to online freedoms. ACTA was originally meant to address, among other things, the issue of online piracy and the sale or promotion of counterfeit goods via the Internet.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• On January 20, New Zealand police showed up in style at the mansion of flamboyant Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, swarming over the property and bringing along two police helicopters. They cut their way through locks and into the home’s “panic room,” where Dotcom was hiding in apparent fear of a kidnapping or robbery. They seized 18 luxury vehicles. They secured NZ$11 million in cash from bank accounts. And they grabbed a whopping 150TB of data from Dotcom’s many digital devices.

• Last week’s vote on ACTA – although hardly a surprise for those who’ve been following – was a reminder about the big debate currently going on, about how to balance intellectual property rights with Internet freedoms

• For me it’s about making it easier for artists to promote their work widely, and make a living from it: without constraining the immense innovation of the online world. And, for me, the current copyright system achieves all of those objectives poorly.

ACTA

• The European Treaties, however, provide for this loophole which was created for the WTO TRIPs agreement. I agree with Ante Wessels that the Article 207 process should not be used for bypassing national and European legislators. While the European Parliament disagreed with the adoption of measures in ACTA, De Gucht’s administration has other bilateral agreements in the pipeline to the same ends. They deserve the watchful eyes of concerned parties.

• Last week, the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to reject ACTA, striking a major blow to the hopes of supporters who envisioned a landmark agreement that would set a new standard for intellectual property rights enforcement. The European Commission, which negotiates trade deals such as ACTA on behalf of the European Union, has vowed to revive the badly damaged agreement. Its most high-profile move has been to ask the European Court of Justice to rule on ACTA’s compatibility with fundamental European freedoms with the hope that a favourable ruling could allow the European Parliament to reconsider the issue.

• My post yesterday on how the EU plans to use the Canada – EU Trade Agreement (CETA) as a backdoor mechanism to implement the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) provisions has attracted considerable attention with coverage from European media and activists. The European Commission refused to comment, stating that it does not comment on leaks.

• The EU – Canada trade agreement (CETA) contains the same draconian civil and criminal measures as ACTA, see Michael Geist. He recommends: “With anti-ACTA sentiment spreading across Europe, Canada should push to remove the intellectual property chapter from CETA altogether.”

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