● 05.11.13

● Links 11/5/2013: Ubuntu Deviation (DEB), Debian Celebrations

Posted in News Roundup at 11:27 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• The United Space Alliance, which manages the computers aboard the International Space Station in association with NASA, has announced that the Windows XP computers aboard the ISS have been switched to Linux. “We migrated key functions from Windows to Linux because we needed an operating system that was stable and reliable.”

• According to The Washington Post, U.S. service academies are ramping up efforts to groom a new breed of cyberspace warriors to confront increasing threats to the nation’s military and civilian computer networks which control almost everything these days. And guess what, they are being trained using Ubuntu OS (possibly in a virtual environment).

• The United Space Alliance has decided to stop using all Windows computers aboard the ISS, in favour of Linux—to ensure it’s systems are “stable and reliable”. Ouch.

• Today The Document Foundation announced their latest update to 4.0. Blender 2.67 brings new features like cartoon and 3D capabilities. And KDE received its latest monthly updates fixing 75 more bugs.

• I just read recently that Linux is replacing windows for the laptops at the International Space Station. The reasons for this, NASA states, is due to the operating systems reliability and ability to be customised. This caused me to think. Is there anything that Linux cannot do?

Desktop

• For much of the last year FUD has been spread about the viability of GNU/Linux on the desktop. Either the FLOSS developers are amateurs, the ecosystem is too diverse, there’s no money to be made or it’s just broken… That’s all FUD. GNU/Linux desktops are going places. You can see that on Wikipedia and other webstats. Nowhere, not in any country Wikipedia lists is Linux below 1%. Their global average is 7.55%. Some of that is Android/Linux but they haven’t sorted that out properly. For example they show Apple’s share as iPhone 16.13% + iPad 9.05% + Mac 6.71% + iOS 0.66% and total share of Windows is 55.73%. Clearly, it’s Windows that is in decline. A year ago they were 73.38%. Nowhere is GNU/Linux share declining even as the world pumps out hundreds of millions of legacy PCs and smart mobile thingies annually. In fact it’s growing. All the major OEMs produce GNU/Linux desktops/notebooks. Some retailers even sell them. Imagine what the share of GNU/Linux would be if retailers put a fraction of their advertising money to the task. The present share is achieved with almost no advertising, just what’s on the web.

• I am Gary Newell. I am a software developer living in Aberdeen, Scotland specialising in software for the oil and gas industry.

Server

• Supercomputer maker Cray had been hinting that it would deliver a new cut-down version of its “Cascade” XC30 system, and the machine is being unveiled on Tuesday at the Cray User Group meeting in Napa Valley, California.

Audiocasts/Shows

Kernel Space

• I sat in a session today at the Interop conference, led by Stuart Bailey, a name that is familiar to me as the leader of a commercial networking vendor infoblox. As it turns out, he’s also Open Network Foundation Spec Editor, SDN Design Team Member, Working Group Vice-Chair and an OpenFlow Open Source Contributor.

• Bailey went through an (IMHO incomplete) list of open source SDN networking efforts, but that’s not the point. The point is that when it comes to SDN, open source is how the industry is moving forward.

• Whether it’s OpenFlow (technically an open spec) or the Floodlight SDN controller or Infoblox’s own LINC SDN controller, controlling SDN is a big area for open source.

• Though to be fair, these are still early days, multiple vendors including HP and Juniper are both building proprietary controllers (that leverage open standards) and jury is still out on whether OpenDaylight will amount to anything. OpenDaylight is a big multi-stakeholder effort to build open source framework platforms (i.e. a controller) for SDN.

• The documentary provides a great insight into the Free Software/Open Source Software world and focuses on the individuals that made it happen. Brian would like to follow that up, informally, with a documentary on his own that picks up where it left off, but with more of a focus on the practical usage of Linux in the market.

• Most organisations have coalesced around VMware’s vSphere, Microsoft’s Hyper-V and Xen as their choice of hypervisor – the platform that supports virtualisation of their IT resources – but there is an open source alternative in the form of KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine).

• Every once in a while, I crawl out from under the rock that is bugzilla and I try and look around at what others are doing in the distro kernel space. Today I was curious how Fedora and Ubuntu compare in how they configure the kernel. I’ve long thought that for all the focus the kernel gets, it should be the most boring package in an entire distro. It should work, work well, and that is about it. It isn’t there to differentiate your distro. It’s there to let your distro run. So, will my personal belief stand up, or would I find something in the configs that proves one “distro” is better than another? Let’s dive in.

• After the release of Linux kernel 3.9.1, Greg Kroah-Hartman has also announced that the twelfth maintenance release for the stable Linux 3.8 kernel series is available for download.

• Actually, Linux kernel 3.8.12 includes mostly the same changes as Linux 3.9.1 kernel, so you should check out the announcement for Linux kernel 3.9.1.

Graphics Stack

• Similar to yesterday’s early Radeon DRM benchmarks from Linux 3.10, here’s some initial OpenGL performance results for NVIDIA GeForce hardware when using the Nouveau DRM that’s updated in the Linux 3.10 kernel.

• The Radeon 3.10 DRM updates weren’t interesting when it comes to performance with no big changes, but the update does bring RadeonSI tiling and most importantly is the Radeon UVD support. With the Linux 3.10 kernel DRM subsystem pull, the only major changes are Fermi VRAM compression support and NVF0 mode-setting support. There still isn’t any re-clocking support by default or other major advancements for the Nouveau driver in Linux 3.10.

• Processor manufacturer Intel has announced that the Linux version of its SDK for OpenCL Applications is now ready for production use. The XE 2013 version of the software development kit supports the current version, 1.2, of the vendor-independent OpenCL language specification, which is designed to standardise and simplify the development of code on heterogeneous computer systems. Intel says that developers will be able to utilise the potential of OpenCL 1.2 simultaneously on the CPUs and GPUs of the third and future generation of Intel Core processors.

Applications

• Managing files is the most basic task with computers. You apply a file manager to organize your stuff, to browse for a particular file, or to modify attributes. Just as much tasks are processed as many programs are available. Operating systems come with their own tools (GNOME uses Nautilus, KDE has Dolphin, at Mac OS X it is Finder, and Microsoft calls it Explorer) but countless other applications exist and fill more or less niches.

• While our Windows-using friends boast of tools like Photoshop and Lightroom, we, as Linux users, often find it difficult to find the right tools for specific tasks. One of the most popular reasons why Windows and Mac are still ahead of Linux is that photographers need certain tools for their work that are only available on Windows or Mac.

• That said, this doesn’t mean that you have to stick with Windows or Mac if you’re a photographer. Linux too, these days, offers a variety of tools that will benefit photographers. These tools provide almost as many features as their Windows counterparts. So, if you’re a photographer tired of excuses to not switch to Linux, here are some of the best photography applications Linux has to offer.

• There’s a huge shift going on in the business world. That shift is from the standard desktop metaphor to a very web-based model. But for those that still want to hold on to the desktop model while saving some space and increasing speed, there are plenty of small footprint applications that allow just that. From nearly every corner of the business workspace, you can enjoy the small footprint; even within the realm of productivity. No matter the need, there’s probably a tiny tool waiting for you to try out.

• Samba 4 has been under development for 10 years. In that same time, the Samba 3.x series also has seen numerous releases and advancements. This parallel development has led to some confusion over the nature of Samba 4; and, some distributions release both samba3 and samba4 packages that can be installed in parallel, with varying degrees of success.

• Shutdown command works just fine, but if you want a GUI to schedule system shutdown in Ubuntu, EasyShutdown is the answer. It was a very basic app made to do just that one thing, scheduling shutdowns in Ubuntu. And it is nicely integrated with Unity launcher as well.

Instructionals/Technical

• I’m still running squeeze on my X60… and I decided that with wheezy becoming “stable”, it was good idea to upgrade. Before I started, I did back up my root filesystem (fortunately), with

Games

• Pick one of the following scenes: a torrent is taking an age to complete; a confirmation e-mail is in limbo; or you’re on hold to a woefully inept customer services department of a woefully inept company providing a woefully inept service.

• The Humble Bundle folks have announced the Humble Double Fine Bundle. Available right now, this time you’ve got two weeks to pay whatever you want for a bundle containing DRM-free copies of the following:

• The Turbulenz game engine has been open-sourced under the MIT license.

• Turbulenz is an HTML5-based game engine, but while it’s web-based, it’s quite impressive. The HTML5 game engine supports 2D and 3D content via WebGL and JavaScript. Thanks to the web nature, it’s multi-platform friendly across WebGL-supported browsers. Turbulenz can even handle Quake 4 assets.

• First of all, Half-Life 2 is now available to play on Linux through Steam. That’s according to SteamDB, which compiles information from Steam’s large and growing database of game data. The update happened late last night, but is by no means final.

• Since its release, the $35 Raspberry Pi mini-computer has been hailed as the perfect all-in-one retro game console. Now, it’s easier to do than ever, and it doesn’t take any advanced Linux knowledge. Here’s how to make your own retro game console in about 30 minutes.

• The client for the digital platform Steam from Valve was taken down yesterday, for a little over 30 minutes, by a spur of hardware failures.

• You heard right, Half-Life 2, Episode 1, Episode 2 and Lost Coast are now available on Linux in Beta form!

• Didn’t see that one coming! The Linux versions come as part of their Steam Pipe beta versions!

• Son of Nor is an award winning and challenging 3rd person action adventure game for Windows, Mac and Linux that can be played in single player or with up to 4 players cooperatively online or via split-screen.

• Welcome to The Funding Crowd, in which every Wednesday I’ll try to review the latest news regarding the crowdfunding of Linux games.

• Here there will be room for everybody: from the 6+ digits, AAA-ish projects by professional studios, to the humble one-person teams asking for $1,000 to make their dreamed game come true. However, the focus will be primarily put on the latter rather than on the former, and the reason for this is two-fold:

• Didn’t see that one coming! The Linux versions come as part of their Steam Pipe beta versions!

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• Linux has the internet pretty well covered, in both the server and client space. It has not one, but several office suites to choose from, all using the internationally recognized and adopted open-source file formats. Even the gaming barrier has been broken. So why aren’t we seeing faster adoption, especially in the corporate world? Most corporate IT people will tell you it’s due to the lack of an enterprise-grade PIM.

• Patrick Volkerding has just pushed KDE 4.10.3 for Slackware-Current. Usually Eric did the push on his KTown, but since KDE 4.10.x has been included in Slackware-Current, Pat took the responsibility of building the packages, while Eric may provide updates for Slackware 14.0 users.

• Last week-end, our awesome Nick released new stable versions for almost all Xfce major components: libxfce4util, tumbler, xfce4-appfinder, xfce4-session, xfce4-panel, xfwm4, xfce4-settings, garcon, thunar, xfce4-terminal and tumbler (this is not amnesia, we got two releases in a single day for this component!).

• If you’ve read some of my articles before you’ve probably noticed something… I’m a BIG KDE Plasma Desktop fan. I’ve used it for years, and while I have honestly tried other desktops, I’ve never found any that fit my needs like the Plasma Desktop. In my day-to-day use there’s several little things I do, just little things, but they make my daily use so much easier and productive I thought I’d share them. Here’s a few of my favorites, hopefully you may find one or two of them useful.

• One of the big things we’ve accomplished on the road to Plasma Workspaces 2 is making all the desktop “chrome” use Qt Quick (nee QML). The log out dialog, the lock screen, the splash screen, the log in screen, the activity manager and widgets explorer .. everything.

• Aurélien Gâteau has announced the version 0.2.3 of Homerun, an application that brings Unity’s Dash like ability to KDE Plasma.

• Aaron Seigo just got his hands on the hardware that will be powering the Vivaldi Tablet that will be powered by KDE Plasma Active. We have him hold that sucker right up to the camera so we can take a close look at all those groovy chips and circuits.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• GNOME’s latest desktop avatar hasn’t really excited most users. The GNOME team has, therefore, put together a number of extensions to make the desktop experience more user friendly. We take a look at some of the best extensions for GNOME 3.

• Gnome Music app was being developed in three phases as explained on the GNOME Live wiki. Seif Lofty, the project maintainer, has announced that first phase is almost complete. This phase involves the setup of basic infrastructure, implementation of grilo querying, album view, songs view, artist view, playback support and porting user interface to glade.

Distributions

• As I’m sure you can see, if you’re reading this, we have chosen to make a name change. FuSE Linux is now Cloverleaf Linux.

• Debian based Linux distribution CrunchBang 11 has been released. Dedicated to the speed-obsessed Ubuntu fans, CrunchBang 11 alias “Waldorf” is also dubbed by the project manager as “the most thoroughly tested CrunchBang release to date”. Maintaining it’s low-drag, no extra fluff tradition CrunchBang 11 is said to be as stable as the underlying Debian 7 “Wheezy”.

New Releases

Screenshots

Gentoo Family

Slackware Family

• I was on holiday, so I was unable to create the Slackware packages for KDE Software Compilation 4.10.3 any sooner than today. This installment of KDE SC was already added to slackware-current earlier this week, but my packages are specifically for users of the stable release, Slackware 14.

Red Hat Family

• The third stable release of the Ceph distributed storage platform, named the “Cuttlefish” edition, has enhanced Red Hat support and improvements to make it easier to deploy. Ceph, which is developed by Inktank, offers a distributed system that can be presented to users as an object storage system, a block storage system, or as a POSIX compatible filesystem. Ceph 0.61 now has RHEL 6.0 tested packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux available from the Ceph site and in the EPEL (Extra Packages For Enterprise Linux) repository; the company says it is discussing with Red Hat the possibility of including Ceph in a future RHEL.

Fedora

• Fedora Project Leader Robyn Bergeron has announced, on behalf of Red Hat and the Fedora community, that the traditional Fedora user conference FUDCon will be re-named and re-imagined under the name “Flock”. The new format will see the developer gathering transformed into a three day conference of scheduled talks with an additional, optional day of hacking. Flock will be a more organised, traditional conference that accepts talk submissions ahead of time, in contrast to the more ad hoc FUDCon that was organised in a barcamp style.

• Korora is based on Fedora, but comes with lots and lots (and lots) of additional packages — here’s my screenshot gallery of the desktops and contents.

• The latest beta version of Red Hat’s Fedora operating system now chooses not to mask passwords by default in its installation, but should this become a standard practice?

• There’s no doubt that desktop Linux has become increasingly user-friendly over the years, but it’s equally true that some distributions focus more on ease of use than others do.

• So I had a few spare cycles this morning and thought I’d look at the memory usage of the installer in F19 Beta TC3.

• The awesome Chris Lumens made this much easier back in 2011 by adding memory use logging functionality to anaconda. He wrote up his findings at the time – based on a Fedora 15 install – in this blog post.

Debian Family

• Google is moving the default software for its rentable cloud servers from a custom version of Linux to Debian.

• After more than two years of development, the Debian project on Saturday released the long-awaited version 7.0 of its venerable Linux distribution.

• Debian’s sense of priority is very clear from the outset. After all, what other distribution these days defaults to the text-based installer and not the graphical one?

• Similarly, where desktop distros sport air-brushed wallpaper or gradients based on carefully chosen colors, Debian 7.0 defaults to a minimalistic, monochromatic black and white. This default may reduce perceptual problems for the color-blind, but it is hardly a choice designed for mass appeal. The most you can say is that users will take it more seriously than the cartoon spaceships of the previous release.

• Following the release of Debian GNU/Linux 7.0, codenamed Wheezy, comes early news of “Jesse.” While it’s still really really early, it’s never too soon to move on. So, while Jesse gets her attention, Wheezy and Squeeze backport rules are tightened.

• Codenamed Wheezy, Debian 7 actually brings the GPL operating system up to speed with some of its more famous offspring, though, true to its roots, Debian’s stable release continues to focus on just that – stability.

• If you’re looking for a stable, rock solid Linux distro the new Debian will not disappoint. If you prefer to have the latest and greatest software on your machine you’re better off sticking with more popular Debian offspring, such as the Ubuntu or Mint distributions.

• Let me get it straight in the beginning, if you are a real distro hopper and always looking for the latest Linux world has to offer, Debian is not the perfect distro for you. You will get bored quite easily with Debian Wheezy! As indicated, Debian stable branch is for those who look for supreme stability and awesome performance. I had used Debian Squeeze for quite sometime in 2011 and was really happy with it’s performance till I got bored and ventured to other distros offering “bleeding edge”. However, the only caveat I noted in Debian Squeeze was a daunting installation process and I wasn’t as seasoned to Linux those days as I am now.

• Now that you have installed Debian 7.0 ‘Wheezy’ and got yourself comfortable with it, it’s now time to get some software installed on to your system system.

• The first things you’ll need to do is update the repository source list. You can easily do this by performing the following with your /etc/apt/sources.list:

• Lars Wirzenius has been around since the beginning. In fact, he was a friend of Linus’ who went to the same college where Linux was born. He co-founded the Linux Documentation Project and describes himself as a “hacker, programmer, and software developer,” but Debian seems to be his passion. So, when he pens an essay, it’s probably worth reading and this time he’s thinking Debian releases take too long.

Derivatives

• The Elive Team proudly announced today, May 6, a development version (2.1.40) of the Elive Linux operating system, now based on the newly released Debian 7.0 Wheezy GNU/Linux distribution.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• According to a recent message posted on the Ubuntu Devel mailing list by Colin Watson, Installer Team leader, Ubuntu might get a new, simplified packaging format and app installer which should make it easier for developers to get their software into Ubuntu. This will target, at least initially, the Ubuntu phone/tablet but it should be usable elsewhere too, even on non-Ubuntu or non-Linux systems.

• Last week I traveled to Oakland to spend a week with my colleagues at Canonical for the Client Sprint. The aim of the sprint was to ensure the many different teams working on Ubuntu Touch at Canonical are in sync and working as efficiently as possible. This largely involves ensuring that the management teams are planning their work effectively, and that everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet.

• Canonical’s Foundations Team are creating a new application packaging system to sit alongside the existing “apt and dpkg” system that Ubuntu currently uses. The plan was disclosed by Colin Watson, technical lead of the Foundations Team which is responsible for the core of the Ubuntu system, in a mailing list post.

• By the end of this month Canonical plans to equip its employees with early versions of its widely hyped “Ubuntu phone” for testing and refinement.

• With Ubuntu’s new release out this week, i wanted to share with you how to get this working in a chroot environment alongside ChromeOS on the Acer C7. I have covered how to put the C7 into Developer mode in a previous post so won’t outline it here. Head over to http://blog.projectz.me/2013/03/26/2143841985/ for instructions on how to get that part done.

• Ubuntu is one of the most widely used Linux distributions alive today. It and its many derivatives and off-shoots are used by millions of people all around the world. As such when Canonical releases a new version of Ubuntu it sends ripples throughout the open source community. The latest release of Ubuntu, version 13.04, arrived on April 25. A lot of rumours circulated over the past six months as to what would make it into the new release, whether Ubuntu would move to a rolling release model and what would happen with the Unity Dash. Now that Ubuntu 13.04 is here we can find out what direction Canonical has decided to take with its popular distribution.

• About two weeks ago my work laptop died. The motherboard just bricked itself to pieces and there was no rescuing it. As my old machine was old and decrepit, and I was going to be replacing it with something with an entirely different hard drive profile I opted to do a clean install of Ubuntu 12.4. Previously I’ve been running Kubuntu 10.4 and it’s been high time to move on.

• While Ubuntu already has its own software store, Canonical developers are now working on their own application package installer and package format.

• When people hear Ubuntu Linux, the reactions vary greatly. Some folks hiss and spit like a cornered cat, some cheer, and some just tilt their head in confusion. But from my perspective as a long-time Linux user and a supporter of what Canonical and Ubuntu are doing, one word comes to mind: Future. What do I mean? Simple. Ubuntu Linux holds the key to mass acceptance of Linux on the desktop.

• Canonical, maker of the open source Ubuntu operating system, is planning to test out living day-to-day with smartphones using its Ubuntu Touch OS before next month.

• In the words of Pablo Rodriguez: “We are very happy to see Unity becoming more mature and we are very enthusiastic about the availability of Ubuntu on tablet devices. As Java developers, we’d like our software to run in as many platforms as possible and if Canonical can produce a lightweight version of Ubuntu which can run the Java Runtime Environment in tablet devices our customer will be offered the possibility of running our desktop based enterprise applications on tablets.”

• Do you want to know how to tell real Linux geeks from people who just use it? Ask them what their favorite application packaging system is. Hardcore old-school Linux users will soon be telling you all all about RPM vs. DEB and before it’s over someone is sure to chime in about going straight to source code ala Gentoo Linux’s Portage.

• As I mentioned in a recent post, I have come to like Ubuntu 13.04 quite a bit. Raring Ringtail marks the first Ubuntu installation lasting more than a day in one of my machines since the Ubuntu 10.10 days. In fact, the more I am using it, specially after getting some updates that have improved stability, the more I am liking it. It´s been a two year hiatus and now that I am getting to love it again, I can´t help but being a bit concerned with everything I am reading about Canonical changing the core of Ubuntu.

• “Samsung are making the first Ubuntu Phone!” screams the subject field of the latest e-mail to arrive in the OMG! tips inbox.

• Ubuntu 13.04 is out, and it is one of the best releases of Ubuntu ever. The best thing about it is speed. Apparently Canonical decided to optimize its performance with mobile devices in mind rather than PCs, resulting in more aggressive performance improvements, and it feels twice as fast as 12.10.

• Surprisingly Ubuntu 13.04 still offers a complete lack of customization options for the Unity desktop, but there is a solution. Install the Unity Tweak Tool to access a variety of helpful settings that will remove all barriers. Now you can get the Unity desktop to look the way you want, and perform the way it should.

Flavours and Variants

• ou like Lubuntu, you waited for it, you downloaded and installed it. Now you have a beautiful and fast environment running on your computer.

• There are different favour of Ubuntu that you can install depending on your preferences. Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu are some of the few popular ones. But do you know that there is a Ubuntu distro specially for the Chinese?

• Ubuntu Kylin is the official Chinese Ubuntu distro and it comes with features targeted at the Chinese market. China would probably be its biggest market, but any Chinese in the World will be able to use it, and love it too.

• The actual WiFi network consists of 26 Xirrus XR-4830 arrays running a Linux-based operating system at its core.

Devices/Embedded

• Embedded Linux pioneer LinuxDevices.com departed from the web earlier this week. The site became a collateral casualty of the aquisition of eWEEK by Quinstreet in February 2012, as part of a bundle of Ziff Davis Enterprise assets. Quinstreet immediately fired all the LinuxDevices staffers and ceased maintaining the site. A few days ago, the site’s plug was finally pulled and it is now gone from the Web, save for a few pages on the WayBack Machine.

• An embedded computer which is equally at home running Android, Linux Ubuntu is the first product from an interesting collaboration between US-based board firm Seco and Italian software design consultancy Aidilab.

• Dubbed UDOO, the board is also Arduino-compatible which means you can use the Arduino IDE to build and upload firmware to the embedded board, without additional/external cable connections.

• Since its release, the $35 Raspberry Pi mini-computer has been hailed as the perfect all-in-one retro game console. Now, it’s easier to do than ever, and it doesn’t take any advanced Linux knowledge. Here’s how to make your own retro game console in about 30 minutes.

• A fully functional low-cost single-board computer with dual Gigabit Ethernet and two USB 3.0 ports, is the MiraBox an ARM-based miracle?

• Behold, something we’ve always wanted. [Matthieu] mounted his Raspberry Pi board inside of a computer monitor. His work makes for the cheapest smart-TV modification we can possibly think of.

• Many LinuxGizmos readers are aware that LinuxDevices.com has been dormant ever since its February 2012 acquisition from Ziff Davis Enterprise by Quinstreet. Despite the lack of any updates over the past year, the vast LinuxDevices news archive continued to serve as a valuable archive of embedded Linux information, history, and memorabilia; but earlier this week, the plug was pulled and LinuxDevices disappeared from the Web.

• Marvell announced a new member of its Linux-ready Armada 300 line of system-on-chips (SOCs) designed for a wide variety of networking applications. The Armada 375 is equipped with a dual-core Cortex-A9 processor clocked at either 800MHz or 1GHz, and offers gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0, SATA 2.0, and PCI Express connectivity.

• Grid2Home has announced immediate availability of ZigBee-certified software for integrating mesh-based wireless networking into Smart Grid-aware devices. G2H-ZIP now supports all major CPU architectures and physical layers, including ZigBee, WiFi, and Power Line Communications, and is usable in devices running Linux and various real-time operating systems, says the company.

• Aaeon announced a Linux-friendly ‘EPIC’ form-factor SBC (single-board computer) based on a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N2600 processor, which is bottom-mounted for efficient heat transfer. The EPC-CV1 supports up to 2GB RAM, offers dual-display HD video output, provides Gig-Ethernet, USB, serial, and SATA ports, and accommodates a 3G cellular module and SIM.

Phones

Ballnux

• A look inside Samung’s new high-profile smartphone, the Galaxy S4, shows that the South Korean electronics giant is using numerous components produced by its various internally owned subsidiaries.

Android

• The most visible of the Android-based micro-consoles with the name that sounds like what Kool-Aid man says when he’s busting through painted styrofoam walls will delay its $100 Ouya game cube until the end of June: specifically June 25 — about two weeks after E3 wraps.

• This could be a symptom that no one’s really very interested in the Facebook Phone: the price on contract has just gone down to 99 cents. On the other hand, given the rather hinky way that phone pricing can work, it might be a symptom of it being a runaway success.

• Is a Nexus 11 tablet coming later this month? Leaked information suggests it could happen. LG’s new Optimus G Pro is here and first impressions are very positive, while a free app turns the Wii Fit Balance Board into a smart scale.

• Google has updated its Google Earth Android app to version 7.1, bringing several important improvements, most notably the support for Street View.

• If you want to explore the Earth from the street level, zoom into an area and the Pegman — the little yellow guy signifying the availability of Street View — will appear in the right hand corner. Drag and drop him into a street and you’ll jump right into Street View.

• Android dominated the global smart mobile device market in the first quarter, according to a new report from Canalys.

• That market — which combines smartphones, tablets, and notebooks — hit 308.7 million units in the first quarter, representing year-on-year growth of 37.4 percent, according to Canalys, which released the report on Thursday.

• Google should unveil a new version of its mobile OS next week. Here’s some of what we may see this time around, and also down the line.

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• If the unscientific poll we conducted on tablet operating systems is any indication, it appears as if Canonical can depend on a community of early adopters if and when a tablet is released with Ubuntu OS preinstalled.

• Like many folks, I received a shiny new Nexus 7 tablet for Christmas. This brought me great joy and excitement as I began to plot my future paperless life. For most of the evening and an hour or so the next day, I was sure the new Android tablet would change my life forever. Sadly, it wasn’t that easy. This month, I want to dive head first into the tablet lifestyle, but I’m not sure if it’s really the lifestyle for me. I’ll try to keep everyone posted during the next few months (most likely in the Upfront section of LJ). And please, please don’t hesitate to send me messages about the ways you find your Android tablet useful at work/home/play.

• In today’s multi-platform environment many people consume content on the go using different devices throughout the day. Looking at the share of device page traffic on a typical work day in the UK, we can see that mobiles capture the largest share of page traffic in the early mornings, especially between 7am-9am as Brits consume digital content over breakfast or during their commute to work.

Free Software/Open Source

• I am constantly reminded of this in conversations with new clients: so much of the business world sees social media as a low-cost “channel” for marketing. Yes, social, done right, is perhaps the most cost-effective approach there is. But to focus on costs is to ignore the big benefits: the ability to scale with communities (principle = peer production), the ability to enter a wider range of conversations (principle = the long tail), the ability to surface the best ideas and give them support (principle = crowdsourcing). These principles and others either originated or were evangelized in OS communities. Some actually predated OS, and at least one (the long tail) became widely known after the birth social media. But the point I’m making here is that the principles have not been well embraced, and many organizations that profess to do social really don’t. And we shouldn’t expect them to get there anytime soon. It took many years for the OS movement to get beyond the perception that it’s all about costs (the tide has turned, fairly recently). But without an appreciation for the principles and their provenance, it may take organizations even longer to truly embrace social.

• Many people, when they hear “open source,” think “oh boy, free software.” But making software available under open-source terms sometimes opens up a more powerful possibility: the chance to blow up existing models and rebuild them, piece by piece.

• I’m happy to announce the Version 3 release of Froide, the open source, Python-based platform for running Freedom of Information portals: allowing you to make requests to public entities by email and track responses, as well as, customize your instance to fit your campaign for government transparency.

• Froide has been in development for nearly two years. It has powered the FOI portal in Germany for over a year and a half and has recently been used to launch an Austrian FoI site.

• Here on OStatic, we’ve frequently debated whether fragmentation is good for open source projects, or not so good. We’ve published posts arguing that centralized management of open source projects and documentation could have big benefits for users, and we’ve run many posts on successful forks of open source projects.

• When the topic of fragmentation comes up, people often gravitate toward arguments surrounding how centralized funding could advance many open source projects, or how centralized marketing efforts could. But what about development? Recently, at the Libre Graphics Meeting in Madrid, the developers of GIMP, MyPaint and many other free graphics applications got together and talked about an important topic: how to work together better.

• As Linux users, we tend to take programs like GIMP for granted. Thankfully, as of version 2.8.2, GIMP is available as a native application for OS X! Because everyone reading this most likely is familiar with how awesome GIMP is for photo editing, it’s worth mentioning there is another open-source photo-editing application for OS X named Seashore.

Events

• Despite our minuscule differences and preferences in software and hardware, in the FOSS realm there is really no “us and them.” There’s just “us” to varying degrees of participation. Understand that and you’re more than halfway there.

• The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced the keynote speakers for LinuxCon and CloudOpen North America, taking place September 16-18, 2013 at the Hyatt New Orleans in New Orleans, La.

• LinuxCon, which has sold out every year since its debut, is the world’s leading conference addressing all matters Linux for the global business and technical communities. CloudOpen, which debuted just last year, features technical content that addresses open cloud platforms, tools and big data strategies. It will cover technical content such as Chef, Gluster, Hadoop, KVM, Linux, OpenStack, oVirt, Puppet, the Xen Project and more.

SaaS/Big Data

• Rackspace (NYSE:RAX), the cloud services provider (CSP) and OpenStack proponent, delivered weaker than expected quarterly earnings results today. The big question: Is the growth of cloud computing slowing down — or is Rackspace being squeezed by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Windows Azure and other big-name public clouds?

• In a panel discussion at Interop this week, vendors and customers discussed some lessons learned along the path of server virtualization.

• Inktank, the company behind the Ceph distributed storage platform, is cuddling up close with Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) with the latest release of Ceph, dubbed Cuttlefish. The new version may better position the open-source storage system for Big Data channel partner opportunities.

• The open source cloud discussion has noticeably shifted over the past year, judging by the Live Linux Q&A video chat held Tuesday on the Linux Foundation’s Google+ page.

• One big debate at the CloudOpen conference last year, for example, centered on whether the industry needed an open source alternative to the Amazon Web Services API or should simply accept it as the de facto standard for cloud applications.

• Facebook and friends’ Open Compute Project has made servers, motherboards, and power supplies more affordable for datacenters. Now it tackles perhaps its biggest challenge to date: High-end network switches.

Business

Semi-Open Source

Funding

• The Software Freedom Conservancy has a plan to help all non-profit organizations (NPOs) by creating an Open Source and Free Software accounting system usable by non-technical bookkeepers, accountants, and non-profit managers. You can help them do it by donating now.

BSD

Public Services/Government

• When Canadian government departments weren’t meeting accessibility requirements, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, the Canadian equivalent of the Office of Management and Budget, decided to create a web experience toolkit.

• “It actually became much easier for everyone to meet their requirements and a lot less costly by everyone pooling their resources into a common solution that everyone could repurpose,” said Paul Jackson, project lead for Canada’s WET, during an April 17, DigitalGov University webinar.

• The toolkit is a code library and framework for web design with a heavy emphasis on accessibility, usability, interoperability, and mobile-friendly and multi-lingual features. The WET is open source, so it can be used commercially or for government, and is on GitHub, allowing it to be constantly updated, improved and added to, said Jackson.

• “Ten years ago, Open Source — notably Linux — was often labelled a ‘fad’ or destined for the ‘hobbyist’ market,” said Mark Bohannon, Vice President for Corporate Affairs & Global Public Policy at Red Hat.

Openness/Sharing

• The OpenWorm project has been working on its virtual nematode since December 2011, with the ambitious aim of modelling the entire organism in software. C. elegans is the organism of choice for the project, because it’s also closely studied in biology labs.

• It’s not news that popular media have undergone significant changes due to participatory digital platforms. We tweet. We connect. We comment. Above all, we share. And the ability to share media has become a need and expectation in networked culture. There are already all sorts of buzzwords swirling around this topic—viral media, memes, prosumers, attention economy, Web 2.0, etc.

• Often when talking to friends and family and colleagues in the library science field I find that the number one complaint boils down to the closed/boxed-in nature of their jobs. The other day I spoke with a friend who shared her frustrations over the fact that her employer wouldn’t let her step out of her defined role to assist in other areas of the business. She had other jobs before this one and knew a lot that would help in new efforts the company was pursuing, but she wasn’t allowed to consult because it was outside of her job description. Another friend constantly talks to me about how he could offer so much more if people would just include him in the discussions that happen before decisions are made.

• If you regularly play both console games and PC games, you’ll likely be fully aware that one platform is much, much more suited to games that require you to precisely aim at things. Unfortunately, most console games do not support a full keyboard-and-mouse setup, so often times you’re left wishing the right analog stick would stop being so floaty. However, for certain console games, a light gun ends up being the true savior of aiming, but here in 2013, most games don’t utilize any sort of peripheral. If you long for the day when you could aim as well on a console as you do on a PC, a new Kickstarter project might be the answer.

Open Data

Open Hardware

Programming

Leftovers

Health/Nutrition

• Reshma’s mother and sister, Asma, were reported to have rushed to the hospital to meet her.

• Army officers co-ordinating the rescue said they were astonished by the woman’s strength. “It is incredible that someone could have survived in the wreckage 408 hours after the building came down,” said army officer Shah Jamal. “Her will to live is amazing.”

• Nine people have been arrested in connection with the disaster, including the owner of the Rana Plaza and owners of the factories it housed.

• Several major western retailers were being supplied by factories based in the building. Primark and its Canadian counterpart, Loblaw, have announced they will compensate the victims of the disaster, the world’s worst industrial accident since the Bhopal gas leak in India in 1984.

Security

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• Stephen Hawking has been subject to vile abuse targeting his disability after it was announced he is planning to boycott a conference in Israel, hosted by the country’s president Shimon Peres.

• The reason people care, apparently, is because people died, and U.S. officials may not have told the truth about the circumstances of those deaths.

• If that’s what makes this a scandal, then there’s another Libya story that should be getting attention. It’s not, and never really has, because the dead are Libyan civilians, killed by U.S./NATO airstrikes.

• This spring, three senior Obama Administration officials informed Daniel Klaidman of The Daily Beast that the CIA would no longer operate targeted killings with unmanned drones. All targeted killings using the controversial technology would from now on be conducted by the Department of Defense, which has its own drones program in place.

• Noam Chomsky was among 20 academics who privately lobbied Professor Stephen Hawking to boycott a major Israeli conference, it has emerged.

• Chomsky, a US professor and well-known supporter of the Palestinian cause, joined British academics from the universities of Cambridge, London, Leeds, Southampton, Warwick, Newcastle, York and the Open University to tell Hawking they were “surprised and deeply disappointed” that he had accepted the invitation to speak at next month’s presidential conference in Jerusalem, which will chaired by Shimon Peres and attended by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.

• Hawking pulled out this week in protest at Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, in the wake of receiving the letter and soundings from Palestinian colleagues. The 71-year-old theoretical physicist’s decision has been warmly welcomed by Palestinian academics, with one describing it as “of cosmic proportions”, but was attacked in Israel.

• On Saturday April 30th the Greek fascist party, Golden Dawn, attempted to create blood banks for the exclusive use of Greek nationals. Across the country, Golden Dawn members, with much pre publicity arrived at general hospitals to donate blood which they demanded was to be restricted to Greeks only. At the general hospital in Samos, as in many other places, the fascists were met by a broad coalition of opponents as well as medical staff who blocked their approach to the blood donation centre. The face off started at 9.30am and ended at 4.00 pm when the blood centre closed for the weekend. Golden Dawn members departed without success.

• Efraín Ríos Montt held to account for abuses in campaign that killed an estimated 200,000 and led to 45,000 disappearances

• There is something fundamentally wrong with a system where not being charged with a war crime keeps you locked away indefinitely and a war crime conviction is your ticket home.

• Chris Grayling’s radical changes to legal aid could mean being represented by the same company that jails you

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Readings are taken at the NOAA-operated Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii and form part of the Keeling Curve — a continuous record of CO2 measurements dating back to 1958. Bubbles found inside Antarctic ice core samples provide a longer record of CO2 in the air for the past 800,000 years.

• CO2 measurements surpassed 400 ppm in the Arctic last summer, but the readings from Hawaii mark the first time prolonged levels above 400 ppm have been observed at more moderate latitudes.

• U.S. natural gas production is booming. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), production grew by 23 percent from 2007 to 2012. Now—with production projected to continue growing in the decades ahead—U.S. lawmakers and companies are considering exporting this resource internationally. But what are the climate implications of doing so?

Finance

• The Guardian today published a photo of a bit of derelict yard where kids had been playing, as evidence that because of cuts the local council – Blackburn – could not afford a proper playground.

• The reason Blackburn council cannot afford a proper playground is nothing to do with cuts. It is because. like most local governments in this country, it blows far too much money on the excellent lifestyles of fatcat senior officers. In the town hall of Blackburn there are an astonishing 16 council officers on over £75,000 per year plus allowances, gold-plated pension, car and benefits.

• More than 100 of Britain’s richest people have been caught hiding billions of pounds in secretive offshore havens, sparking an unprecedented global tax evasion investigation.

• George Osborne, the chancellor, warned the alleged tax evaders, and a further 200 accountants and advisers accused of helping them cheat the taxman: “The message is simple: if you evade tax, we’re coming after you.”

• HM Revenue & Customs warned those involved, who were named in offshore data first offered to the authorities by a whistleblower in 2009, that they will face “criminal prosecution or significant penalties” if they do not voluntarily disclose their tax irregularities, as the UK steps up its efforts to clamp down on avoidance ahead of the G8 summit in June.

• Slowly but surely, over the past few months, we’ve figured out exactly what bitcoin is, how it works, and what it all might come to. We witnessed events in Cyprus that put into question the current system and the U.S. Treasury issued guidance validating the legality of a brand new form of virtual money. We experienced a frenetic bubble as well as the inevitable crash.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Bills introduced in Nevada to allow machine guns on the Vegas strip, privatize public education, and thwart federal healthcare reform can be tied back to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), according to a new report from ProgressNow Nevada detailing ALEC’s influence in that state.

• Former Nevada Senator Bill Raggio, the longest-serving senator in state history, was ALEC’s National Chair in 1993 and told an ALEC meeting in 1992 that “Those who founded ALEC in 1973 probably did not imagine that in just 20 short years ALEC would grow to become the most influential state-level organization in the country.”

• And so, the report seems to suggest, there’s something a little off about foreign leaders, nine in recent years, who’ve expelled the agency. Why else would Bolivian President Evo Morales expel an anti-poverty group from his “impoverished” country, if he wasn’t just a little bit crazy? And Russian President Vladimir Putin can’t be playing with a full deck either; he recently expelled USAID and a bird lovers group.

• Of course, these leaders and other USAID critics aren’t crazy; they argue that USAID undermines national sovereignty and democracy. The story includes charges that USAID manipulates the internal politics of host nations, but it leaves the allegations unexplored and lets supporters bat them away.

• [...]

• And just last month, U.S. diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks revealed that USAID and its Office of Transition Initiatives had been secretly tasked with destabilizing Venezuela’s democratically elected government.

• Indeed, manipulation of broadcast outlets seems to have been in the playbook last night…

Censorship

• It was hoped John Sweeney, known for investigation into Scientology, and controversial drugs adviser Professor David Nutt would speak at Cardiff Central Library event

• The same “Ag-Gag” laws that make it a crime to film or document egregious abuses on industrial farms may soon be used to criminalize anti-fracking activists who seek to expose environmental harms brought on by the gas drilling industry—if a bill recently proposed in Pennsylvannia passes.

• A few days after the blueprints for the world’s first printable gun were published online, Defense Distributed has been asked by the State Department to pull them down, citing possible arms trafficking violations. The blueprints, however, are still available on The Pirate Bay and many other file-sharing sites, which adds a 3D chapter to the IP enforcement debate.The Pirate Bay says it welcomes the blueprints and has no intention of taking the files down.

Privacy

• This is a post I’ve been wanting to write for a while. In fact, it stems from something I noticed way back in August of last year. After digging for answers and even a couple attempts at contacting their customer support, I’ve concluded that LinkedIn is by far the creepiest social network. The primary reasons LinkedIn is the mustached, trench coat and wire frame glasses wearing mouth breather of the internet are the “People You May Know” and “People Also Viewed” features.

• Open source focused developer of the Firefox web browser, Thunderbird email client and Bugzilla bug tracking system Mozilla has issued a “cease and desist” notice to Gamma International.

• The ACLU has been peeking through an FBI handbook and there it stumbled across the revelation that the FBI can look at emails as long as they are at least six months old. The handbook, which was published last year, offers this advice to men in suits in the field.

• HUSBAND and wife councillors who watch CCTV of kids on their living room telly have been accused of ‘sofa snooping’.

• It’s not unusual for government officials — the very people we disagree with regarding civil liberties issues — to agree with us on consumer privacy issues. But don’t forget that this person advocated for full-body scanners at airports while on the payroll of a scanner company.

• One of the points he makes, that the data collected from Google Glass will become part of Google’s vast sensory network, echoes something I’ve heard Marc Rotenberg at EPIC say: this whole thing would be a lot less scary if the glasses were sold by a company like Brookstone.

• Imagine a world in which every major company in America flew hundreds of thousands of drones overhead, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, collecting data on what Americans were doing down below. It’s a chilling thought that would engender howls of outrage.

• We’ve been doing a fair amount of thinking about the implications of consumer wearable cameras like Google Glass, and I’m sure we’ll have more to say in this space on the subject. But meanwhile, we’re pleasantly surprised to report a very trenchant analysis of the technology’s implications for our privacy by none other than Michael Chertoff.

Civil Rights

• “You want to film something b**ch? Film this!”

• Tens of thousands of students in Chile have clashed with riot police while protesting for improvements to the education system. Police said they were attacked with petrol bombs and used tear gas and water cannons to break up protesters.

• The march in the capital Santiago was mainly peaceful, but police used water cannons and tear gas to break up one group of demonstrators when they were attacked by petrol bombs.

• Today, CDT is releasing a paper analyzing the free expression implications of the proposed “Right to Be Forgotten” in the draft European Data Protection Regulation (DPR). The Right to Be Forgotten concept has received much attention since the DPR was first introduced, and while we understand the concerns that motivate the proposal, CDT continues to have serious misgivings about the DPR’s approach to the concept. As described in Article 17, the Right to Be Forgotten would put private companies in the position of balancing users’ free expression and privacy rights – a difficult task that has traditionally been the purview of courts and legislatures, and one that companies are not equipped to undertake. Further, the DPR puts a heavy thumb on the scale on the side of privacy, promising high fines if companies violate the regulation, but providing only narrowly scoped safeguards for journalistic and artistic expression.

• The proposed Article 17 allows any user to request that an online service provider delete all of the data about her that the service provider possesses. If that information has been made publicly available, data controllers are required to notify third parties that link to, or have copies of, the data about the deletion request. This broad conception of the Right to Be Forgotten fails to adequately consider the free expression concerns inherent in a right to remove true, lawfully published information from the public record. Quoting and commentary are integral to free expression; yet Article 17 could chill such expression, since a deletion request would extend to third-party references to data that an individual requests deletion of. Article 80 requires Member States to make a limited accommodation for free expression, but that provision falls short of standards required by international human rights instruments. If adopted, the “Right to Be Forgotten” proposal would generate a variety of regulations to protect free expression throughout Member States, creating a lack of clarity for both individuals and data processors regarding what standards apply to a deletion request and what balance must be struck between privacy and free expression.

• A long-fought-for bill to reform libel law in the UK received final passage and became law late last month. The Defamation Act makes many needed changes to the law and is largely a victory for free expression advocates, but its partial liability protections for website operators leave something to be desired, and pose significant risk to the ability to speak anonymously on the Internet.

• A leader of one of the youth movements behind Egypt’s 2011 uprising has been detained by security forces, officials have told reporters.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• Today’s news about BT’s new sports service certainly doesn’t mean the end of the Internet, but the changes we are seeing, where Internet providers are providing parallel content delivery services does change the dynamics in the industry in a worrying way.

• The publication of the report on culture and the Internet requested by French president Hollande to Pierre Lescure – former CEO of Canal +, a major TV station owned by Vivendi-Universal – will be the object of a major media buzz in France. For those interested in what would be ambitious public policies adapted to the digital era, La Quadrature du Net brings back on the table its Elements for the reform of copyright and related cultural policies. Will those 14 propositions, attentive to the freedoms and uses of everyone, to the interests of authors and other contributors, be a part of it, or will the Lescure report perpetuate the repressive policies led by Nicolas Sarkozy?

• After 40 years, Ethernet has come to dominate network connectivity. This is in part thanks to John D’Ambrosia, a key figure in today’s Ethernet world. Currently the chairman of the Ethernet Alliance, D’Ambrosia has done much to advance IEEE standards, in particular the 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet specifications. D’Ambrosia is also set to be confirmed as chair of the new IEEE group that will define 400 Gigabit Ethernet.

DRM

• The HTML Working Group of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) today released a First Public Working Draft of the controversial Encrypted Media Extension (EME) specification, despite massive opposition from public interest organizations and members of the public.

• Today’s business models typically focus on gaining leverage with a large group of people, from software developers to end-users. Yet the behavior of many entrepreneurs suggests they’d prefer control of their intellectual property to successful adoption by millions — at least, that’s the consequence of their choices. By erecting barriers to adoption, they unwittingly discourage the very usage that would build their market and drive their success. However, CERN’s celebration of 20 years of the open Web refutes this strategy and provides a useful insight into the dynamic of gaining broad adoption.

Intellectual Monopolies

• NZ part of International Day of Action against the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement

• Actions are taking place across five countries today to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.

• ‘This coordinated action is designed as a shot across the bow for negotiators as they head to the next round of TPPA negotiations in Lima, Peru starting on 15 May’, said Jane Kelsey, who is part of the international campaign.

Copyrights

• Ofcom today released their latest research into people who infringe copyright and what kinds of factor influence behaviour change.

• The United States Department of Defense has “claimed ownership” of CAD drawings of a plastic, printable pistol. In doing so, they apparently believe they can stop the files from existing. The result is obviously the complete opposite, which calls into strong question the judgment and ability of United States Government to set Internet policy at all.

• Telecoms regulator Ofcom has just published a study into the state of online copyright infringement in the UK, with some very interesting conclusions. The researchers found that 10% of the country’s most prolific infringers are responsible for almost 80% of all infringements carried out online, but with a bonus. These plus an additional 10% of infringers spend 300% more than ‘honest’ consumers who don’t infringe copyright at all.

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