● 10.20.12

● Links 20/10/2012: Chromebooks in the News, Ubuntu GNOME Remix 12.10

Posted in News Roundup at 9:59 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

• This could be the best PC on the planet for some people:

• * It’s highly mobile and, folded, protects its screen, * It will last 6h on a small battery, 2 cells, * keyboard, 2gB RAM, 16gB SSD, Wifi, and HDMI out * It has a dual-core Xynos ARM CPU clocked at 1.7gHz * It’s Chrome OS, not that other OS, and * If you do everything on the web, it works for you.

• Google has announced the launch of a new Chromebook laptop running Chrome OS, the company’s minimalist Linux-based operating system built around the Chrome web browser. Unlike previous Chromebooks, which were all powered by x86 Intel Atom or Celeron CPUs, the new laptop uses an ARM-based processor, specifically the dual-core Samsung Exynos 5250 system-on-a-chip (SoC) running at 1.7GHz.

Server

• Notice that the rate of growth of GNU/Linux is nearly double that of that other OS and at that rate,

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

• Ben Skeggs of Red Hat pushed a number of new DRM commits into the Nouveau driver development repository today, including new support for Z compression.

• The Unigine Engine has been revised with a number of new features and impressive capabilities. One of several new features is “real-time global illumination with spherical harmonics”, which may be a mouthful but is for delivering even more beautiful graphics.

• About the real-time global illumination with spherical harmonics, Unigine Corp says, “A new, real-time global illumination based on precomputed spherical harmonics allows to render high-detail diffuse lighting with interreflections and angle-dependent specular highlights. It is fully interactive: soft environment light illuminates both static geometry in the scene and dynamic objects moving around it…The stunning lightmap-like quality is achieved by using automatically generated LightProb…Global illumination is available across all APIs and is well scalable performance-wise… As you can see, GI makes a huge difference: it brings a truly photorealistic visual quality to a scene.”

Applications

Instructionals/Technical

• The YellowDog (Yum) package manager for Fedora will soon have an successor marked as the next Generation Yum using hawkey/libsolv (maintain by SUSE) for backend.

• DNF a Yum fork, promises better performance, easier bindings to other languages other than Python (Yum) and a clear package manager API. This will benefit PackageKit and therefore Gnome Software, at least in a Fedora installation.

Desktop Environments

GNOME Desktop

• Linux Mint team has released a bug fix of Cinnamon desktop and Nemo file browser. This is a maintenance release, which means no new features have been added, but a variety of bigs have been fixed which will make the desktop experience even smoother. Some of the major bugs that have been fixed are:

• Ubuntu GNOME Remix, a Linux distribution which aims to become an official Ubuntu flavour, uses GNOME Shell as the default “shell” and tries to provide a “mostly pure GNOME desktop experience built from the Ubuntu repositories”.

Distributions

• If you are a longtime Windows user, then switching to Linux is quite a challenging task. Not that Linux is difficult or something, it’s just that many users get perplexed as to which distribution to choose. This is actually where the problem begins for most users. They go to various sites and forums, ask for questions and different people recommend various distributions.

• That said, it’s quite obvious that most of the time new users go for Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distribution at the moment. They choose it either because one of their friends recommended it to them or they heard something good about it from news, blogs, or forums. In both cases, it’s evident that Ubuntu has been, and will be the first choice for most of the new users.

• Ubuntu’s latest release and controversies have dominated the news this week, but it wasn’t the only distribution making announcements. Fedora 18 is running behind schedule, but developers are already looking ahead. The Mandriva foundation has a name and Mageia has officially changed its schedule.

New Releases

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Leave it to Ubuntu/Canonical’s Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator for Life Mark Shuttleworth to completely ruin a perfectly good release day for Ubuntu 12.10 and its arguably superior derivatives like Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu and Edubuntu.

• No matter how you got this news, what I want to announce is the same: I want to stop the development and maintenance of Ubuntu Tweak. This means you will not be able to use “Apps” (Since it is a web service), I will not response for the bug report, the last commit of the code will be: Add cache support for Apps, only available in Ubuntu 12.10, so sad…

• You may ask why I made this decision to stop the development of Ubuntu Tweak, I may write 10,000 words to describe how I start this project, how I feel happy from this project, how I feel bad from this project…But I just want to say: If making free software is not free any more, why still doing this?

• For those wondering about the performance of Ubuntu Linux 12.10 versus Microsoft Windows 7 when using the same system and the Catalyst graphics driver, here are new Phoronix benchmarks of an AMD Radeon HD 6870 graphics card when running a variety of OpenGL workloads from Ubuntu 12.10, Kubuntu 12.10 (the KDE desktop version of Ubuntu 12.10 to avoid the Unity desktop overhead), and Microsoft Windows 7 Professional x64.

• Canonical released Ubuntu Linux 12.10 yesterday, which brought tighter integration with Amazon in system search results, a move that has raised some criticism from the community. According to Canonical, Amazon integration in Dash is something users expect and the firm will integrate other online services in future Ubuntu releases.

• Ubuntu Linux 12.10 includes innovations such as document search capabilities that allow users to easily find documents whether they are stored on their computers or in the cloud.

• While the larger Ubuntu community was busy downloading, installing and enjoying the latest edition of Ubuntu yesterday, a post by Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth ruffled some feathers.

• Popular Ubuntu configuration utility Ubuntu Tweak has officially ended support for its long-running project today. Ubuntu Tweak has been a mainstay application on newbie machines since the days of Dapper Drake, and between then and now has gain a lot of respect within the community regardless of being merely a front-end for already trivial tasks.

• In the wake of the release of Ubuntu 12.10, Mark Shuttleworth has announced a new style of development for Ubuntu 13.04, the next major version of the Linux distribution. Referring to “a few items with high ‘tada!’ value that would be great candidates for folk who want to work on something that will get attention when unveiled,” Shuttleworth said that there will be a new process where the new features will not be talked about “until we think they are ready to celebrate”. Before that time the company says it will only engage with “contributing community members that have established credibility”.

• The Ubuntu Manual Team has announced that the Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal version of the Ubuntu Manual, “Getting Started with Ubuntu 12.10″PDF has been published. The 143 page manual provides an introduction to Ubuntu covering topics such as how to try out a LiveCD, how to install the distribution, using the Ubuntu desktop, working with Ubuntu, managing hardware and peripherals, managing software and updates, and offering pointers for further research and reading.

• In announcing Ubuntu 13.04 is the Raring Ringtail, Mark Shuttleworth encouraged attendees going to the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Copenhagen to bring along their Nexuis 7 tablet. At that point it could be deduced they would be bringing Ubuntu Linux to this popular Google tablet, but now it’s confirmed.

• You’re listening to your tunes or watching a video on your Android phone and you’re not too happy with the tinny, low audio. So you wander over to your new Ubuntu Boombero Speaker and place your device on top and suddenly Mr Bombastic is filling the room with big base vibes. Well now it’s a reality.

Flavours and Variants

• Yesterday marked the release of Ubuntu 12.10, the latest version of the most popular Linux distribution. What’s interesting now is that GNOME and Ubuntu are back together after 18 months.

• The first stable release of Ubuntu Gnome Remix has arrived with a lot of promises for long-time Gnome users. Ever since Ubuntu switched to Unity, it became harder for Gnome users to get the pure Gnome 3.x experience on top of their preferred operating system. Quite a lot of users moved to other distributions and we saw the rise of derivatives like Linux Mint which seems to have become the favorite distro of seasoned GNU/Linux journalists like Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols.

• As a long time Gnome+Ubuntu user, I was personally excited about this release. However, before I picked this review, I reminded myself that ‘this is the first release of Ubuntu Gnome Remix’ so treat it as the first release. At time tend to start judging things in their beta or alpha stages, which is simply unfair. So, before we bring UGR under the microscope keep in mind that this is the very first release and Gnome 3.x is still going through heavy development so my criticism of this release should be taken too seriously.

Devices/Embedded

• The first generation all-in-one Internet TV, Boxee tried to do everything you could do with TV and the Internet…and it wasn’t very good at doing anything. Oh sure, if you put in the sweat equity you could do great things with it. At day’s end, though, the Boxee was a device for hardcore Internet TV geeks. The new Boxee, which will be available in some U.S. markets on November 1st for $99 and a monthly $14.99 service fee, also tries to do a lot, but it’s meant for Joe TV-Watcher instead of Joe Techie.

• The differentiator for the Raspberry Pi mini computer is price. It’s not the most powerful single-board computer around but it’s not trying to be. The platform-makers’ big idea was to make a device that kids could learn to code on — meaning it needed to be powerful enough to do cool stuff like play BlueRay-quality video, but cheap enough that kids wouldn’t have to share it with the rest of the family. And at $35 for the current model B — and $25 for the forthcoming model A (which has less memory, fewer USB ports and no Ethernet) — it’s already got a disruptive price-tag.

Phones

Android

• Sony has been generously providing ICS updates to its Xperia line up of phones, even the low range and older ones. To make things merrier for Xperia owners, Sony has shared some details regarding upgrade plans for Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• With the Amazon Kindle Fire HD and Google Nexus already firmly entrenched, and Apple potentially lining up to lay waste to all competitors, it’s certainly a curious time to be launching the Iconia Tab A110. Acer can point out that unlike the Kindle Fire HD and also Barnes & Noble’s Nook HD, the A110 will run Jelly Bean, the latest version of Android. It also comes with an Nvidia Tegra 3 processor and a microSD card slot, which you might need because the A110 only includes 8GB of on-board storage.

Free Software/Open Source

• Like other Linux distributions, we take a range of upstream components and assemble them together into an integrated system. Throughout this integration work our community actively participates in a range of different areas – development, testing, bug-fixing, translations, documentation, and more.

Events

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• Mozilla has been steadily moving forward with its Boot to Gecko, Firefox OS and smartphone initiatives, and now the company’s long awaited app store is available in a preview edition for Android developers. A Mozilla blog post on The Future of Firefox includes instructions for how Android users can get the preview edition of Firefox Marketplace through Mozilla’s Aurora channel. This app store will play a key role in Mozilla’s serious efforts to become entrenched in the world of smartphones and open mobile operating systems, even though it is Android-focused for the moment.

• Today, a powerful new Popcorn Maker demo makes its debut on TED.com, showcasing Popcorn’s potential to change the way the world tells stories on the web.

SaaS

• It never fails: stand by the computer service desk in any retail store and the stories you overhear make the repair desk the technology equivalent of the local tavern.

• If something’s gone wrong with someone else’s computer, you’re bound to hear about it. And, oftentimes, you’ll hear how supposedly protective measures to help safeguard your computing life have been circumvented or defeated.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• At the LibreOffice Conference, currently taking place in Berlin, The Document Foundation has released version 3.5.7 of its open source LibreOffice productivity suite, fixing more than 50 bugs. The seventh maintenance update to the 3.5.x branch corrects problems that caused the application to crash, including one that occurred when pasting data into more than one sheet in the Calc spreadsheet program. A number of bugs related to RTF and SmartArt import, ODF and DOC export, and program crashes when using tables were also fixed.

Healthcare

• The nonprofit Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent (OSEHRA) organization recently held its first annual Open Source EHR Summit & Workshop. Seong K. Mun, PhD, President and CEO of OSEHRA, talked about goals for the workshop and OSEHRA in general before it began. This was first time that the OSEHRA community to meet and develop their skills with open source health IT training and educational workshops.

Business

• Open source services provider Sirius Corporation has provided a combination of OpenSource and proprietary software for Ysgol Maesydderwen school, near Swansea.

• Funded by Powys County Council, the Welsh school received installation of a new infrastructure, new desktops and laptops for both pupils and staff and 100 iPads for class activities and projects.

Funding

• Quadcopters are all the rage right now for amateur drone projects and hobby flying, and it’s no wonder; a quadcopter has outstanding speed, maneuverability, and payload capacity. They are as fun to fly as they are useful, but unfortunately they tend to be something else: prohibitively expensive.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• As those who have read my previous entries know, I quit my job of three years as senior software engineer at Creative Commons to pursue the free software project I’ve been running, MediaGoblin. I’d explain a bit further what MediaGoblin is but actually there’s no reason to: we’re in the middle of running a fundraising campaign, and we put a video together that explains everything wonderfully already. So what you really ought to do is click through to:

Public Services/Government

• It’s another of controversial tenders tracked down by Foundation of Free and Open Source Software experts in the scope of “Monitoring of public procurement for software and hardware in units of government and local administration and intervention in case of detecting irregularities”. This time their attention was brought by tender for “Equipment for Regional Centre for Transferring Modern Technologies in Mielec” issued by District Starosty. Announcement has been issued in Official Journal of the European Union – TED: 292946-2012. Estimated value of the tender is over 200 thousand €. Time limit for receipt of tenders is due on 22.10.2012. Documentation of this tender is available here: District Starosty in Mielec.

Openness/Sharing

• Nevermind Apple’s maps misfire, the free, volunteer-made OpenStreetMap, may end up reigning supreme anyway, as companies increasingly choose it for map data over Google. But as the project grows, it’s becoming harder and harder for its members to agree on what direction to go in next. Part 1 in a 3-part series.

Programming

• GitHub, a leading repository of open-source code, has been hit by two days of denial-of-service attacks.

• The attacks, which shut the service down temporarily on Thursday, and which slowed it down today before things returned to normal, were an odd turn of events for a site that’s a favorite among coders, and an increasingly popular place to find programming talent.

Leftovers

Health/Nutrition

Copyrights

• The French seem to have an appetite for regulating the Internet, and for going after Google in particular. A new proposed law would force Google to make payments when French media show up in news searches; but Google has responded, in a letter to French ministers, that it “cannot accept” such a solution and would simply remove French media sites from its searches.

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