● 08.12.12

● Links 12/8/2012: CDE Open-Sourced, Wikileaks Exposes TrapWire

Posted in News Roundup at 10:00 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Based on the events of recent weeks, it very much looks like Microsoft is heading to make Windows a closed ecosystem (a la Apple). They want to make both the hardware and the OS and third-party applications can only be sold with their approval and only through their App Store (with a 30% commission to Microsoft).

• With the upcoming release of Windows 8 in October, the computer world appears to be divided in its opinion of Microsoft’s new operating system. Following the release preview of Windows 8 a few months ago, some are excited about the new interface, while others feel it was built only to be more convenient for tablet or touchscreen users. If Windows 8 turns out to be another Vista, Linux is expected to eat another inch more of Microsoft’s market share.

Desktop

• When I initially switched to Linux from Windows, I was a Gentoo user, and I still recommend that distribution for anyone looking to learn more about how Linux actually works and is built. These days, however, I’m an Ubuntu user (12.04), simply because it mostly just works. I’m not in love with Unity, but then I’m not really a fan of any of the desktop user interfaces these days, OS X included.

• The Allwinner A10 chipset – which features an ARM Cortex-A8 processor – currently powers a number of Android devices, including the MK802 PC on a stick, the ZaReason tablet and Hackberry A10 dev board.

• I’m not a big Linux user, so I was surprised and impressed when I stumbled across StartOS today, the first Linux-based operating system from Chinese startup Ivali. StartOS is a Linux-based system that’s targeted at Chinese users and boasts simplicity and stability as its primary advantages.

• Linux computer builder ZaReason is launching a thin and light laptop called the UltraLap 430 which has all the specs you’d expect from a modern ultrabook. But what sets it apart from pretty much every other ultrabook on the market is the fact that the UltraLap 430 ships with a Linux-based operating system rather than Windows.

Audiocasts/Shows

Kernel Space

• My name is Linus Torvalds, and I am your god.

• You don’t have to be a Linux user, or even a nerd, to love Linus Torvalds. His arrogant and irreverant sense of humor draws scores of views, shares and upvotes on almost anything he says online.

• He cares very little about what others think, and will publicly lambaste anyone he deems deserving. Which to be honest, appears to be most people.

• From an abundant smorgasbord, we’ve chosen 14 of our favorite smackdowns from King Linus.

• The order has come down from Paris. The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service has spoken and its word is final: No more leap seconds this year.

Graphics Stack

• Continuing on from yesterday’s news about Ubuntu delaying their Wayland-based system compositor, a new Wayland LiveCD release, and a preview of where Wayland’s at today, Kristian Høgsberg confirmed his attendance for next month’s XDC2012 conference. He also added two items to the program:

• The Khronos Group has announced the availability of version 3.0 of the OpenGL ES open mobile graphics interface specification, code-named “Haiti”, at this year’s SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles. OpenGL ES is the most important 3D graphics interface for SoC GPUs, which can be found in tablets and smartphones, and is supported by Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS and other systems. OpenGL ES 3.0 has been significantly improved compared to its predecessors but is still backwards compatible with ES 2.0.

Applications

• The title and the following text have been stolen by me from Michael Schumacher at the GIMP Developers Mailing List and GIMP Users Mailing List.

• One of the weaknesses in Windows Explorer, OS X Finder and a myriad of Linux file managers is the fact they insist on opening two separate windows to view two different folders or drives. If you’re frequently shunting files between two locations on your hard drive, one of the best things you can do is reach for a third-party file manager that lets you open a single window with two (or more) panes allowing you to set up source and destination locations quickly and easily.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• Can video games art? This is a really dumb question. Of course they are. Or rather they can be. Anyone who would say no to this is wrong. Artists can choose to express themselves in just about any medium and this includes the interactive and the digital. Dismissing one for expression as invalid and unsuited to properly conveying creative ideas is silly.

• That said, if you rephrase the question and ask whether or not the modern triple A mainstream releases are art, then no they are not. Or rather they are as much art as Michael Bay’s Transformers. They are commercial products first and foremost. They trade in the same distractions as Hollywood blockbusters: guns, sex and explosions. They are made to excite, titillate and provide the player with a quick adrenaline rush. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but there is usually not much artistry involved. These games are to be consumed as entertainment, and if they do contain some deeper meaning, or give you reasons for contemplation it is usually just a nice bonus.

• Valve, the games company that is behind the Steam download platform, is set to open the distribution system up to non-gaming software.

• You know what I don’t miss? I don’t miss installing software from disks. Back in the olden tymes, when I had to walk to school barefoot and all that, software like WordPerfect would come on a stack of floppy disks and you’d have to sit there feeding them into the drive one by one for an hour. Infuriating!

Desktop Environments

• Prior to commencing the weekend, the Enlightenment crew released a new round of alpha releases for EFL 1.7.

• The updated Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL) this time around include Eina, Eet, Evas, Ecore, Embryo, Edje, Efreet, E_dbus, Eeze, Expedite, Evas Generic Loaders, Eio, Emotion, Ethumb, and Elementary.

• The Open Group, the steward of the UNIX standards, has open sourced the CDE classic desktop for Unix under the LGPLv2 licence. The Common Desktop Environment and the Motif toolkit on which it is based, itself open sourced in 2000, became the de facto standard for Unix desktops in Unix’s commercial hay day in the 1990s. CDE broadened the concept of simple window managers configured by means of text files which had previously dominated the Unix world; it included a desktop offering integrated applications and graphical configuration tools.

• Competition may be good for business, but competition among Linux desktops is currently so fierce that it may end up being to everyone’s detriment in the medium-term.

• The developers at the GNOME project have published GNOME 3.5.5, the latest unstable development version of what will eventually become the stable 3.6 branch of GNOME. The new pre-release version implements more of the planned new features and goals, such as the new lock screen and new input methods for entering, for example, Japanese or Chinese characters.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• Two months after the most recent update to the 4.8.x branch of the KDE Software Collection (KDE SC), the project has delivered the 4.8.5 stabilisation update to the software suite. Usually, these updates are provided at monthly intervals, but the release of KDE SC 4.9 most likely delayed the scheduled publication.

GNOME Desktop

• There were lot of voices against the replacement of categories with pagination, and that was another controversial feature originally planned for Gnome 3.6.

• The former Google’s employee and currently Executive Director of Yorba, talks about developing with Gnome and he spots the strategies that a company should use to have profit by developing Open Source Desktop Applications.

• Adam has an impressive bio in Google’s desktop projects and his company has already released 2 top quality Apps for Gnome; Shotwell and Geary.

• The GNOME project, which is facing heavy criticism over usability issues, is to build a touch-capable ‘GNOME OS’ as a way of improving the overall experience for users and developers

• There’s been plenty of excitement surrounding Firefox OS ever since Mozilla announced its first hardware partners earlier this year, but now it looks like there’s yet another open source operating system entering the scene.

Distributions

• The last version (4.4) of DSL came, I guess in 2008. Hence, in my article on lightweight Linux distros, I didn’t include DSL. But, now I have to include it. DSL 4.11 is here and boy! What a lightweight OS it is! I couldn’t imagine a fully functional distro with graphical desktop taking only 18-20 MB of RAM! Incredible!

• These were reviews of Zorin OS 5 Core, Zorin OS 6 Lite and Zorin OS 6 Core. Also, there were guest posts from different authors who took part in the Zorin OS contest.

• In addition to the Lite and Core versions, the Zorin team releases an Ultimate edition.

• While the Core and Lite versions of Zorin OS are free as beer, Ultimate is not a free Operating System.

New Releases

• The next edition of Bridge Linux to be released is Bridge Light. This release also features the Terminator swap, a smaller iso, the new installer, updated README, and GRUB2 along with the system-wide features of 2012.8 which can be found here.

• Patrick Volkerding received a tremendous bug reports after announcing Slackware 14.0 Beta and he compiled all those bug reports and fixed them in private along with the Core Team. When he sees it ready for public, it’s time to release thus Slackware 14 RC1 has been announced.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

• The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published by volunteers from the community. The magazine is lead by Paul Arnote, Chief Editor, and Assistant Editor Meemaw. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license, and some rights are reserved.

Red Hat Family

• The Scientific Linux (SL) project has announced the availability of version 6.3 of its Linux distribution. The new SL release is based on the sources of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.3 released six weeks ago. As usual, it therefore contains all of the features introduced in the most recent RHEL release which, in addition to bug fixes and optimisations, saw several new virtualisation features added.

• Now after three years of effort, Deltacloud has finally hit its 1.0 release. A 1.0 release is usually a major milestone signifying that an open source project is mature and ready for consumption. In Deltacloud’s case, the effort has already been deployed and integrated into Red Hat’s commercial CloudForms effort that officially launched in June.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• This simple tutorial will explain how to turn off discrete card on a Ubuntu laptop with two graphic cards. Discrete graphic card takes up more energy and the processor usage. If you seldom use the discrete card, follow the steps to turn it off.

• It reports the system architecture you use, the version of popularity-contest you use and the list of packages installed on your system. For each package, popularity-contest looks at the most recently used files, and reports the filename, its last access time and last change time.

Flavours and Variants

• I recently reviewed Linux Mint 13 LTS “Maya” KDE, and I was quite pleased with it. My long-term review of the Xfce edition just ended, so this one will go for another 8 days. This will be the last such long-term review of the summer, because after this I am going home and won’t be back until just before the semester starts, at which point I probably will not be able to continue this.

• After doing some research and testing for the last week I have arrived at the conclusion that Bodhi’s ARM branch will best serve our users by moving our core from Debian Wheezy ARMEL to utilize Debian Wheezy ARMHF. I’m not going to get into the technical difference between the two platforms here – just know that in general ARMHF is faster.

• Peppermint OS 3 has been released. If you aren’t familiar with it, Peppermint OS is a cloud-oriented distribution. It’s based on Ubuntu 12.04 (it’s actually a fork of Lubuntu 12.04).

• Unlike most other distributions, it’s geared toward letting you use your favorite web apps as well as desktop software. Web apps such as Editor by Pixlr run in the Ice SSB framework, which makes these applications a part of your desktop rather than running them in a browser. This makes them feel like they are running locally rather than in the cloud.

Devices/Embedded

• BeagleBone adopted by thousands for creative development of electronics and applications., – BeagleBone eliminates barriers with easy development on one-of-a-kind, credit-card-sized Linux computer platform based on ARM® Cortex™-A8 processor

• Extending the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins, the Gertboard by Gert Van Loo will allow RPi to sense and interact with the world around it

• Quite a co-incidence. We just published an article about managing your Nikon DSLR cameras using your Android devices, and here comes a rumor that Nikon is planning to announce Android based cameras.

• Damn Small Linux is a light-weight operating system designed to run on older computers which might not have the speedy processors, large hard drives, or vast amounts of RAM available on newer systems.

Phones

Android

• The majority of Android tablets and mobile phones run on embedded processors based on a core licensed for ARM Inc. However, there are a small number of tablets which also run on the MIPS processors.

• Cyanogenmod is an alternative Android firmware which can flashed to get software tweaks, performance optimizations and other additional customizations not possible with the stock Android provided with the phones.

• It is extremely popular with geeks who like to tinker with Android based devices.

• When the Android-based Ouya was announced last month, founder Julie Uhrman said she wanted the system to be more than just a game console, and it now has support for apps like Twitch.TV and Vevo music streaming. The non-gaming options on the console seem set to increase, as the team behind the popular XBMC media manager have pledged to bring the program to the system.

• Since the HTC G1 introduced Android in October 2008, a multitude of vendors have shipped thousands of different smartphone models around the world. Yet only a few dozen have made a major impact. Here, I single out the 10 most significant Android smartphones in the platform’s short history. My criteria includes popularity, technological and design breakthroughs, and their debut of new Android releases. These were the phones that not only showed there were viable alternatives to the highly controlled, one-size-fits-all philosophy of the Apple iPhone – they were the phones that made people go “Wow.”

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

Free Software/Open Source

• We explain how to use use powerful open source firmware to unleash the beast in your router

• The world of data storage is changing and open source is helping (well, trying extremely hard) to shake up a few traditional technology standards.

• For many years, storage has been about big boxes from big name storage vendors. Usual suspects here might include EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, NetApp, Oracle Exadata and obviously we could extend this list ad infinitum if we started to add hard drive manufacturers, big data players and database shops.

• Liferay, maker of an enterprise-class, open-source portal, has announced the public launch of Liferay Marketplace, a new marketplace that offers more than 70 enterprise tools and apps developed by Liferay.

• Both Tactic Team and Tactic Enterprise have been released as open-source software. An earlier version of this story indicated that the Enterprise version would require a paid license, but that is not the case. We regret the error.

• The Open Source Initiative and Open Source Hardware Association are apparently swinging handbags at each other over two logos which they claim are similar.

• The Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) has a gear logo where part of it is broken to indicate open source goodness. The Open Source Initiative has a green circle which has been broken to indicate open sauciness. We would have thought both symbols mean that open source software is broken, but apparently they are supposed to symbolise keyholes.

• Version 1.2 of the open source Instantbird instant messaging (IM) client is now available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The latest version has been ten months in the making; a large part of that time has been taken in moving to share code with Thunderbird 15, currently in beta, which will also offer instant messaging features. Because of this the developers note that there aren’t any major new features, but there are a large number of improvements to existing features and numerous under-the hood changes.

• TextMate, which is considered to be one of the best text editors for Mac, has gone open source. In less than 24 hours, over 500 branches/forks have already been created and many improvements are already landing into the codebase.

• Lazarus (so named because it’s an older project, reborn) is a full-featured graphical IDE for Free Pascal, an open-source implementation of Object Pascal. While the Lazarus developers politely ask that it not be called a Delphi clone… if it walks, talks, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. This should not be considered a slam. I found it because I went looking for a free or low-cost Delphi clone, because there’s a powerful market niche for one.

• Open-source software is everywhere. Chances are you use it every day in such creations as Google, Android or Mozilla Firefox. Its source code is wide open – anyone can study, improve or modify it if they like.

• Among the biggest reasons to use open-source software is price: It’s usually free.

• But specialized pieces of software – tools such as Photoshop – often have price tags that reflect their power. If you just want it for the occasional project, those prices can be hard to justify.

• RIM is actually working on an open-source, cross-platform gaming engine.

Events

• But it’s also known for some amazing parties (ahem, “evening events”). The Linux community knows how to have a good time; we just try to provide the best venues possible for facilitating FUN as well as learning and networking.

• The Summit will feature more than 30 eminent panelists and speakers, including government officials, health care leaders, clinical care providers and policymakers. The event will bring together the OSEHRA community, now totaling more than 1,000 members, for the first time and provide a venue for Open Source Health IT training and educational workshops.

Web Browsers

Chrome

Mozilla

SaaS

• NEW YORK (TheStreet) — Only three years ago, companies were nervous about the potential security and management risks of sending critical data and services into the “cloud.” Today, the cloud-computing industry has developed so rapidly that Rackspace(RAX) has put its faith in open-source cloud technology.

• Platform-as-a-service provider dotCloud has made Hipache, its distributed HTTP and WebSocket proxy, available as open source. Based on the node-http-proxy library, the distributed proxy is designed to handle high volumes of HTTP and WebSocket traffic to large numbers of virtual hosts.

• Intel and several Chinese organizations have set up a technical community which will focus on the development and support of open-source cloudplatform OpenStack, and hopes to increase China’s contribution to the OpenStack global community.

• According to a report Thursday by Sina Tech, Intel Asia-Pacific Research and Development, Chinese Internet company Sina, China Standard Software, and Shanghai Jiaotong University signed an agreement to set up the China Open Source Cloud League.

• OpenStack is a strange beast. The open-source cloud computing platform is a darling of IT vendors and some major end-users clamoring for an open cloud ecosystem, yet it generates a lot of criticism. Some folks question its governance model, while others question its technological maturity against more-established alternatives such as Amazon Web Services and VMware. So, what’s with the schizophrenia around OpenStack as the cloud’s open source savior?

Databases

• The latest major update to Riak – Basho’s open source clustered NoSQL database – adds official support for FreeBSD and features new approaches to cluster management. In version 1.2 of the highly scalable distributed database, developers can stage and review multiple cluster changes to see how they affect the system before committing them; this is especially useful for cancelling changes or delaying them until off-peak hours.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Version 3.6.0 of LibreOffice, the fourth major iteration of The Document Foundation’s open source productivity suite, is now available to download. While the release doesn’t include any outstanding changes, it does bring with it a number of incremental improvements that result in better overall performance and interoperability, while also adding some new features.

• Bob Evans has a colorful past. He works at Oracle these days as what I would call a king’s blogger except that he isn’t doing very well even with the apparent influence of the king himself.

• Bob used to write for SAP where he penned his own gems about Oracle. The watchmen at Oracle thought Bob did such a good job that they decided to hire him. Now Bob turns on his blog flame against Oracle’s critics.

• Bob decided to attack me yesterday in a post he wrote. It’s an odd one about how “TechCrunch is Clueless About The Cloud.” It’s their attempt to rebuke my post last week about how Oracle will be the big loser when IT gets virtualized.

• Like it or loathe it, Oracle has been in charge of Java for two and a half years now, and things are looking good, according to the analyst house IDC

Business

Semi-Open Source

• Any industry requires a proper technology set-up to accelerate growth. Modern trend speaks out loud about the use of ERPs (Enterprise Resource Planning) in the corporate world for a smooth and efficient functioning of any enterprise.

Funding

Project Releases

• WriteType 1.3.163 is now available! WriteType is a word-processor designed to help elementary school students write better. It gives students who have a hard time writing an easier approach in putting their ideas on paper. In addition to fixing many bugs, the latest WriteType release has several new features to help students succeed.

Openness/Sharing

• More than 5,400 developers have downloaded a new open-source operating system designed to enable digital devices to communicate with each other.

• 3D printing is slowly becoming the next big thing. Over the last few weeks, we’ve heard of people making everything from blood vessels to kid-sized exoskeletons–the possibilities seem almost endless. But what if you’re too broke to buy yourself a 3D printer and too cool make yet another RepRep 3D printer? The answer is simple: cement your individuality and build yourself a Pwdr instead.

Open Access/Content

• Though paying for tuition and housing eat up more money, textbook costs are among the most groan-inducing expenses incurred by college students. With tools like Amazon and chegg.com, only the least resourceful of freshmen are blowing $200 for a brand new textbook these days. But a new type of textbook is threatening to disrupt a $4.5 billion industry that has so far avoided the media upheavals experienced in music, movies and trade publications. Open-source textbooks, free for students to use and for professors to modify, are being developed by more companies and adopted in more classrooms. They may work hand-in-hand with the rise in free online courses to revolutionize the way we view—and pay for—higher education.

Open Hardware

• Identifying a gap in the market has been the key to many successful open source projects. In the case of the participants in Project Hexapod, a group of robotics enthusiasts based at the Artisan Asylum makerspace in Massachusetts, they identified a clear lack of six-legged, rideable robots.

• Members of Project Hexapod, which comprises three instructors, one teaching assistant, and 15 students, have launched a crowdfunding Kickstarter project to raise $65,000 to build ‘Stompy’: A arachnid-esque, six-legged, 1800kg hydraulic robot.

• The latest addition to the Arduino open source prototyping platform, the Leonardo microcontroller board is available from Rapid Electronics, writes Richard Wilson.

Programming

• Go is a fundamental rethinking of native languages that improves greatly on C while maintaining that language’s minimalism.

• Java runtime maker Azul Systems recently made its flagship Zing Java Virtual Machine (JVM) available to open source developers for free for use in development, qualification and testing.

Leftovers

Finance

• The U.S. Justice Department’s decision not to prosecute Goldman Sachs Group Inc for its subprime mortgage trades resulted from either “weak laws or weak enforcement,” the senator who asked for a criminal investigation of the firm said on Friday.

• I mentioned yesterday that Goldman Sachs got a rare “reverse Wells notice” from the SEC, when they were told that a mortgage-backed securities deal which they earlier heard they would face prosecution for would not net them any civil enforcement. But that was just the beginning. Later in the day, they learned they would not face any prosecution from the Justice Department for the misdealings brought to light in a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report a year ago.

Censorship

• Australian Attorney-General Nicola Roxon has been forced to back down on her government’s unpopular plan to force ISPs to store the web history and social networking of all Australians for two years. The plan has been deeply unpopular with the public, with hackers attacking the government’s spy agency

Civil Rights

• If you didn’t believe that everything you do is monitored before today, this latest confirmation should seal the deal. The information, of course, was not officially released, but when hackers gained access to highly secure emails at global analysis firm Stratfor earlier this year the cat came out of the bag.

• With New York recently launching an all-seeing domestic awareness system, many Americans who don’t live in Mayor Bloomberg’s police state believe they are safe from the watchful eye of Big Brother.

• The latest WikiLeaks release has shone a spotlight on an alleged domestic and foreign surveillance program run with cloud-based software provided by Virginia company TrapWire, many of whose top leaders and employees are former members of three-letter American intelligence agencies.

• The U.S. cable networks won’t be covering this one tonight (not accurately, anyway), but Trapwire is making the rounds on social media today—it reportedly became a Trending hashtag on Twitter earlier in the day. Trapwire is the name of a program revealed in the latest Wikileaks bonanza—it is the mother of all leaks, by the way. Trapwire would make something like disclosure of UFO contact or imminent failure of a major U.S. bank fairly boring news by comparison.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• Lon Seidman knew he wasn’t going to get rich from his three-hour video discussion of the Curiosity rover landing on Mars. The local media entrepreneur did a live Google+ Hangout about the event and posted the resulting video to YouTube, expecting it would earn him a few bucks and attract some new readers to his site, CT Tech Junkie. During the discussion, Seidman played a number of NASA videos about the Curiosity mission. He knew he was on safe ground because works of the federal government are automatically in the public domain.

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