● 07.12.12

● Links 13/7/2012: Android Grows Massive in Spain, City of Helsinki Hides Proprietary Dealings

Posted in News Roundup at 8:05 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• This year has already been a notable one on many technological fronts, but certainly one of the more exciting ones among them is the Linux-powered revolution that’s taking place in personal computing.

• If you kick in $35 to help get them get funded, in November they’ll send you a cool looking 8 Gig flash drive with their 200 megabytes of Jumpshot tools installed. Users boot their computer to the flash drive, and it launches a customized version of Linux, which connects with a Jumpshot internet service and proceeds to open a browser interface while it scans the computer’s hard drive for viruses crapware and signs of misconfiguration.

• ThreeGates today confirmed that it will be offering a Linux version of Legneds of Aethereus, its action RPG game currently in production. The game project has nine days left to raise the remaing funds and reach the $25,000 funding goal on Kickstarter. Other recent updates include a confirmed version for Macintosh, new digital rewards, a DRM-free version and more. To support the project, please visit: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/460738485/1886583818

Kernel Space

• For those interested in reverse-engineering USB keyboards (or other input devices), there’s a short yet effective guide by Julien Danjour for reverse-engineering a Logitech keyboard in order to provide Linux support.

Graphics Stack

• It looks like, thanks in part to an existing shoddy EXA 2D acceleration implementation, that the GLAMOR-based Radeon acceleration support for xf86-video-ati may work out quite well.

• On supported hardware/drivers — like Mesa 8.0 — the OpenGL support is basically limited to OpenGL 3.0 compliance. There’s some new OpenGL extensions now supported by this upcoming Mesa release, but it doesn’t meet the specification for GL3.1 or any newer revision. OpenGL 3.1 won’t be in Mesa until 2013 and there’s no realistic idea yet when OpenGL 3.2/3.3/4.0/4.1/4.2 (or any further OpenGL spec or the soon-to-be-released OpenGL ES 3.0) will be supported for this critical free software project.

Applications

• NitroShare is an application that works on Linux and Windows which can be used to easily send files to other computers on the same local network. It supports drag’n’drop, sending folders, file compression, comes with Nautilus integration and more.

• Open Recall is a space on The H for those things that are too small to package as news but are worth the linkage. Open Recall collates the interesting stories that didn’t quite make the cut. This edition is all about new apps for the Linux desktop.

Instructionals/Technical

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

GNOME Desktop

• While the GNOME 3.x Shell is working its way around to most major Linux distributions, within the BSD world, it’s still mostly a GNOME 2.30 world.

Distributions

New Releases

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

• Anne Nicolas broke the sad news yesterday of the passing of former Mandriva developer, Eugeni Dodonov. Dodonov died Sunday in route to the hospital after being found unconscious in the middle of the road. He was 31.

• The decision taken by Mandriva SA, the French company that produces the Mandriva GNU/Linux distribution, to base its workstation and server products on two different codebases is a pragmatic one, based on the state of the two codebases.

Red Hat Family

• The Open Source solutions provider announced the availability of Red Hat Storage Server 2.0, an open source storage scalable solution designed to manage unstructured data.

• Red Hat Storage Server 2.0 is the first system to combine the innovations of the open source community and the benefits of capacity and cost effectiveness of standard x86 servers built on-premises hybrid cloud environments.

• It helps to store larger data volumes within a single pool. This unified storage of files and objects simplifies the management of disparate data and gives users all the performance and scalability to cope with the explosive growth of unstructured data in an economical manner, with the assurance of centralized access to information.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

Devices/Embedded

• When it comes to top open source stories of 2012, it’s clear that one of the biggest is the proliferation of tiny, inexpensive Linux-based computers at some of the smallest form factors ever seen. The $25 Linux computer dubbed Raspberry Pi (shown here) has grabbed many headlines on this front, and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt recently pledged to give some of the units to U.K. schools along with training for teachers who can pass on Linux knowledge to kids. But the Raspberry Pi is only one of many tiny LInux computers being heralded as part of a new “Linux punk ethic.” Now others are showing up? Have you heard of the Oval Elephant?

Phones

• Amazon.com Inc. is working with component suppliers in Asia to test a smartphone, people familiar with the situation said, suggesting that the Internet retail giant, which sells the Kindle Fire tablet computers, is considering broadening its mobile-device offerings.

• Officials at some of Amazon’s parts suppliers, who declined to be named, said the Seattle-based company is testing a smartphone and mass production of the new device may start late this year or early next year.

Android

• Android: now four out of five phones in Spain http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/mobile-phones/9392178/Android-now-four-out-of-five-phones-in-Spain.html #linux #android

• on{X} uses the term “recipes” for its rules. Example recipes include turning the phone’s Bluetooth radio on when you arrive or leave a location; showing you the weather forecast everyday at a specific time if the anticipated temperature is below a set level; and texting someone when you arrive or leave a specific location. Recipes can be turned on and off at the phone.

• The entry-level 8GB version of Google’s new Nexus 7 media tablet carries a bill of materials (BOM) of US$151.75, according to preliminary findings from the IHS iSuppli Teardown Analysis Service. When manufacturing expenses are added, the cost increases to US$159.25. The high-end model with 16GB of NAND flash memory has a US$159.25 BOM, for a total cost of US$166.75.

Free Software/Open Source

• Reuven Cohen has an interesting post up on Forbes’ site, which asks, “Free Versus Open: Does Open Source Software Matter in the Cloud Era?” He writes: “I like open source as much as the next guy but, from a value proposition standpoint, just being ‘open source’ doesn’t sound all that compelling to me. This has become especially true in the emerging cloud computing landscape where APIs and Big Data have become some of the most valuable currencies.” In fact, though, as the transition to the cloud and Big Data continue, open source software is playing an absolutely critical role.

• Cohen notes that Big Data has become one of the “most valuable currencies,” but isn’t the open source Hadoop platform–used to sift insights from extremely large data sets–one of the flagship pieces of software driving the Big Data trend? Hadoop has given rise to promising startup companies such as Hortonworks, focused on training and services surrounding it.

• There is an increasingly common refrain I keep hearing from startups. These young companies, with their generally un-original software products, claim that its solution is just like (insert the market leader) except open source. Don’t get me wrong. I like open source as much as the next guy but, from a value proposition standpoint, just being “open source” doesn’t sound all that compelling to me. This has become especially true in the emerging cloud computing landscape where APIs and Big Data have become some of the most valuable currencies.

• The business intelligence landscape is changing to accommodate broader interactivity and ease of use. This is nothing new; one of the key trends is the increase in data discovery though self-service BI models.

• Get everyone who works on open-source software together and put them in a little room in your brain. Now take a look around at what you just created. They’re smart. They come from all different countries and educational backgrounds, but it’s a stag party in there. They’re almost all men.

• Now imagine arriving as a woman.

• “It’s like going to a party where you know no one. That’s not a party you want to be at,” says Maírín Duffy, a blogger and senior interaction designer at Red Hat in Boston. Duffy is one of the few women who have shrugged off intimidation and walked right into the open-source community. Not many others have followed.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

SaaS

Business

Semi-Open Source

• The latest release of the commercial bug tracking system, JIRA 5.1, is the “fastest JIRA yet” according to its creators, Atlassian. The release notes explains that the previous “soft limit” of 200,000 issues has been removed thanks to a 40% improvement in performance; a new scaling guide provides more information.

Funding

• A Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the launch of an open source games console based around the Tegra 3 chipset and Android operating system has surpassed its $950,000 fund raising target in less than 24 hours. At the time of writing, the project has raised $2.22 million dollars and has 28 days to go before the funding period closes. This makes it the most successful Kickstarter campaign to date.

Public Services/Government

• The IT department of the city of Helsinki claimed in a report to the city board that migrating to OpenOffice would cost is over 21 million euros. On 10th of April 2012, FSFE filed a Freedom of Information request, asking the city how it had arrived at a surprisingly high cost estimates for running OpenOffice (now LibreOffice) on the city’s workstations. The city of Helsinki has now denied this request and has stated that it will not release any details about the calculations.

Openness/Sharing

• According to Don Tapscott’s “Four Principles of an Open World” TED talk, we are experiencing one of the most significant times in human history. Through the Internet and other innovations, we are able to collaborate like never before, and that change is having a profound effect on society.

Leftovers

• Staff working on opening and closing ceremonies allowed to eat chips served outside branches of fast food chain

Internet/Net Neutrality

• Regular readers of this blog will know how central broadband targets are to our digital agenda. By 2020, I want half of all Europeans with broadband subscriptions at 100 Megabit/s or higher.

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