● 06.27.14

● Links 27/6/2014: New Mint 17 Variant, OwnCloud 7 Beta

Posted in News Roundup at 4:33 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• But the fact is, even if you think you are bound to Windows or some other proprietary operating system, you are probably already a Linux user too. When you visit a website, the chances are that it is using an Apache2 webserver. This is free and designed to integrate with the security and operating system features of Linux. Currently more than 60% of webservers are known to be hosting via Apache.

Desktop

• I came across a post in a forum challenging GNU/Linux experts to find a file-manager in GNU/Linux that would allow the authour to use GNU/Linux exactly the way he uses that other OS:“1. Search selected network drives / partitions / directories for files by name using wildcards

Kernel Space

• Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of four stable kernels: 3.15.2, 3.14.9, 3.10.45, and 3.4.95. As usual, they contain changes throughout the tree and users of those kernel series should upgrade.

Graphics Stack

• While nothing was explicitly stated with regard to 3D performance changes with the numerous Intel DRM improvements for Linux 3.16, I ran some basic OpenGL benchmarks on a Intel Core i7 4790K Devil’s Canyon box with Ubuntu 14.04 to look out for any performance changes when using the latest drm-next code merged into Linux 3.16.

• At the X.Org Board of Directors’ meeting yesterday, it was confirmed about two projects already failing. “Unfortunately we had to fail two students, one that disappeared right after the program start and one who failed the mid-term evaluations.” Sadly, this isn’t too uncommon for these student open-source projects funded by Google.

Benchmarks

• The new OSX will be released this fall but a Mac OSX Yosemite beta is already available online. I don’t care much about the “wow” effect around the new Apple products, so I tested this new Operative System comparing the old OSX Lion 10.7.5 and the current Ubuntu Linux 14.04 LTS for the stuff I care: the UNIX and the Web performance part, because I fear the upgrade OSX dilemma.

Applications

• Command-line lovers, allow me to introduce you to Xiki, the incredibly interactive, flexible, and revolutionary command shell. I do not use the word “revolutionary” lightly. The command shell has not advanced all that much since the ancient days of Unix. Xiki is a giant leap forward. If you’re looking for the Next Big Thing in FOSS, Xiki is it.

• A new version of the Calibre eBook reader, editor, and library management software, has been released and features even more options to edit books.

• Calibre is mostly used as an eBook converter and reader, but it can do a lot of other things as well. One of the latest features added to the application is the ability to edit books, which is something that very few other apps can do.

• Popcorn Time is a P2P media player built for one purpose – to allow its users to watch the latest TV shows and Movies directly from torrent sources, without downloading the actual files. It sounds illegal, but the developers say it’s not.

• Most people would say that downloading a movie from a P2P website and watching it without paying anything is illegal, but that is actually debatable and depends from country to country. Whether this is moral has nothing to do with the way the application works, so we won’t dwell on it any longer. It’s your duty, as a user, to decide if you want to employ this application or not.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• Torchlight came out for Linux in September of 2012 via Humble Indie Bundle 6. It has since been available for Linux users only in the Ubuntu Software Centre which hardly encompasses all Linux users.

• After years of rumours, months of teasing and weeks of waiting, SteamOS is finally here. The beta release of the gaming distro signalled the start of Valve’s tentative entry into the hardware market. The same day as the release, the first wave of Valve’s own Steam Machines went out. These beta units, while never truly meant to grace store shelves, are the first examples of many more third-party offerings to come. This massive step from Valve is making waves around the tech and games world, so we decided to talk to a few of the people that could help us truly understand the position Valve is in, and what their next move might be.

• The developers of Unreal Tournament have another update in store for us and it sounds like it’s all coming together very nicely. If you have been living under a rock the new one is confirmed for Linux.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• Thanks again for your further support of the Randa Meetings fundraising. We have now reached almost 40% of the our goal and there is still time to go. Please help even more and spread the word. If we reach our goal we can have an even more stable Kdenlive, more applications ported to KDE Frameworks 5, further progress on Phonon, a look at Amarok 3, even better KDE educational applications, a finished port of GCompris to Qt and KDE technologies, an updated KDE Book, more work on Gluon and a new and amazing KDE SDK!

• One of the features no longer available in the upcoming Plasma 5 release is the xembed based system tray (for explanation see my previous blog post). This can result in some applications missing a system tray icon, but it shouldn’t happen. There are patches around for various toolkits which will turn the xembed icon into a status notifier item. Our KDE packagers were informed back in March about the upcoming change and which patches should be applied to which components.

• Kubuntu14.10 Alpha 1 (Utopic Unicorn) is based on KDE 4.13.2, but the developers are tracking the upcoming KDE Frameworks 5, which is now in the works. It’s been a long time since a Kubuntu development version didn’t integrate an unstable version of KDE, but it looks like users will still be able to test what the makers of this distro are preparing.

• “Plasma 1 is our recommended stable offering and what you get from the default download, but is now in maintenance mode. It runs the software you are familiar with and will be getting updates and bugfixes but not new features from now on.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• I’ve done the release team duty for the GNOME 3.13.3 release this week. As I often do, I took some screenshots of new things that I’ve noticed while smoketesting.

• There is quite a bit of good new stuff in this release, starting with an rewritten and improved Adwaita theme that is now part of GTK+.

• Fast forward to the present day, and Jim has conducted a set of user tests on GNOME 3.10 and 3.12, which he has analysed and presented to Jakub and me. I have started filing bugs so we can fix the usability issues he discovered. More bug reports are on their way, and we’re pushing to use Jim’s testing data to increase GNOME’s usability for the next release. (Check out the bugs if you’re interested in helping out with this!)

• The mission: use GNOME Shell as the primary desktop for an entire week. Do I choose to accept it? Yes. It’s easy enough to try something for a short time and discard it in a negative manner, which has been the case for me with GNOME Shell in the past, but perhaps it can be fun to challenge yourself to try something properly and for a longer time. Or perhaps you’re a masochist! Either way, feel free to join me…

Distributions

• Frequently within the Phoronix Forums it is requested to do benchmarks with Arch Linux since its users tend to be adamant that it’s the fastest Linux distribution. In the past I’ve run benchmarks of the Arch-based Manjaro to look for speed differences as an easy and quick to deploy variant. Today the latest Arch Linux variant I am benchmarking is Antegros Linux.

New Releases

• SparkyLinux 3.4 “Annagerman” MATE, Xfce and Base (Openbox) is out.

Red Hat Family

• For those in need of a quick and easy place to experiment and trial Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0, which was released as stable earlier this month, it’s easy to do so within Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud. It’s running well using a Xen HVM instance and so I have run some preliminary benchmarks against SUSE Enterprise and Ubuntu Linux.

• HP has the ability to run Red Hat’s distribution on its Helion OpenStack platform and welcomes a certification for it. So, why won’t Red Hat certify it on HP? At HP Discover 2014 in Las Vegas earlier this month, Saar Gillai, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for HP Cloud, joined John Furrier and Dave Vellante on theCUBE and talked about his bewilderment of why Red Hat won’t certify on HP’s platform.

• Red Hat has made a series of moves in recent months to make headway in the cloud as it once again seeks to successfully productize an open source platform.

• Red Hat Inc. has agreed to acquire Paris-based OpenStack cloud integrator eNovance. The new acquisition will help customers architect a cloud strategy, as well as set up, deploy and manage private clouds, according to the Raleigh, North Carolina-based company.

Fedora

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• The first alpha of the Utopic Unicorn (to become 14.10) has now been released!

• This alpha features images for Kubuntu, Lubuntu Ubuntu GNOME, UbuntuKylin and the Ubuntu Cloud images.

• Unlike the previous development branch for Ubuntu 14.04, fewer developers chose to participate in the first Alpha release of 14.10. This is not something to worry about and it’s likely that the second Alpha will have more exposure.

• Canonical stopped releasing Alpha versions for its operating system for some time now, and only a few of the flavors have decided to keep doing this kind of releases. Ubuntu 14.10 will only get a Beta version right before launch so, until then, users can only expect the flavors to have intermediary builds.

• If Ubuntu Linux is to prove truly competitive in the OpenStack cloud and Big Data worlds, it needs to run on more than x86 hardware. And that’s what Canonical achieved this month, with the announcement of full support for IBM POWER8 machines on Ubuntu Cloud and Ubuntu Server.

• POWER8 is IBM’s platform for wooing enterprise users interested in Big Data and fast performance. In early June, Canonical announced the official general availability of Power8 servers running Ubuntu.

• The next version of Ubuntu is due out in October, but you can take an early build of the open source operating system for a test drive at any time by grabbing the latest nightly.

• Or you can try the first Alpha release of Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn. While there’s not an official Alpha build of the main branch of Ubuntu with the Unity desktop, there are builds for Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, Ubuntu Kylin, and Ubuntu Cloud, which are all variations of Ubuntu with custom desktop environments and other features.

Flavours and Variants

• With the release of Linux Mint 17 “Qiana” Xfce, the collection of Mint flavors is now complete. Cinnamon, MATE, KDE, and Xfce are the main versions, but the developers have been dabbling for some time in a Mint release based on Debian. We’ll have to wait a little more until those experimental OSes make their entrance in this branch.

• Just like all the other releases in the new 17 “Qiana” series, the Xfce flavor is also based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, a distribution that will be supported until 2019. This extended support period will also be adopted by Linux Mint developers and the next three editions of this distro will use the same base, 14.04 LTS

• Ubuntu has quite a few flavors under its belt, but there are still a few ones missing, like MATE for example. A few developers, including one from Canonical, are working to make Ubuntu MATE Remix a reality and so far they have done a great job.

• MATE is a desktop environment aimed at users who really enjoyed the old GNOME 2, but who also want something different from what everyone else is doing. Most of the major desktop environments are going through big changes, like GNOME and KDE, but the MATE developers are working to keep things the way they were.

• Linux Mint 17 Xfce was released today. Let’s look at what it offer to the user. This is not going to be a full-blown review, rather a quick screenshot tour in the Live session.

• Linux is great for a litany of reasons, but one of the most important is refurbishing. You see, an operating system based on the open-source kernel can breathe new life into an older computer, and effectively turn it into a new machine. This is because the operating systems are typically less system intensive than Windows.

Devices/Embedded

• Before Google comes in with its own smartwatches, consumers have two mainstream devices to choose from. On one hand, there is the Galaxy Gear 2, coming from a reputed brand like Samsung and there’s Pebble Steel by Pebble Technology Corporation that gained popularity after a successful Kickstarter funding campaign for their first watch.

• When we consider the turf of wearable devices, there’s nothing much to boast of, except, of course, Google Glass. Apart from Pebble and Gear, the tech industry is impatiently waiting for the Motorola smartwatch, which will be made in collaboration with Google. The wait, however, doesn’t have to be this hard. If you are someone who wants to get their hands on a smartwatch right now, both the Pebble and the Gear 2 are excellent choices. Both have their own merits, and also their own demerits. But then, which to choose between the two? Well, that’s why we are here. In this article, we’ll be doing a quick comparison between the Pebble Steel smartwatch and the Galaxy Gear 2. Let’s see who wins.

• Motorola Solutions unveiled a rugged, enterprise handheld that runs Android 4.1, 1D or 2D scanning, and offers a choice of brick, gun, or turret styles.

• When Motorola split into Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions back in 2011, Motorola Mobility was supposed to be the Android company and Motorola Solutions the Windows company. Yet, the latter, which produces a range of enterprise solutions including 4G wireless equipment, has done quite well with its Android-ready enterprise handhelds.

• A Polish start-up company is claiming to have created the first industrial computer based on the new Raspberry Pi Compute Module.

• Techbase, said the device which it has dubbed ModBerry is designed to be used in automation and installation markets providing multi-level user access cloud management.

Phones

• Exciting times are ahead of application and platform developers with the release of Tizen Common as it has the ability to run on the Intel NUC DE3815TYKHE, which was one of the giveaways at the Tizen Developer Conference (as well as the Samsung Gear 2)

Android

• The keynote of Google I/O was only and only about one thing – Android. This Linux-based operating system has become the center of Google’s universe. From cars to smartwatches, it was only about Android. That makes one wonder where was the other Linux-based platform, Chrome OS, Google has been developing for a while!

• Chrome was not absent, Google did talk about Chrome OS at the event, but it was more about Android than the Chrome OS. You can see Sundar Pichai talking about Chromebook at the event, but was more about Android than Chrome OS.

• Google’s Sundar Pichai had a lot to share on stage the Google I/O 2014 keynote on Wednesday. Between Pichai and another half-dozen Googlers, the keynote ran for about 2.5 hours, bombarding attendees with information on new features for Android, Chrome and other initiatives. So it makes sense that some things only got a few minutes of attention, and one of items that was actually the most interesting came when Pichai said Android apps are coming Google’s Chrome OS.

• There have been rumours doing rounds suggesting the end of Google’s Nexus line of Android devices. Well, here’s some piece of ‘real’ news for those who are worried about this. Google will be launching a new Nexus device along with the release of its Android L by the end of this year.

• It is also a fact that Google is reforming the way it will be rolling out high-end Android devices. Reportedly, the search giant is progressing on a new program dubbed Android Silver, as part of which, Google will be paying big manufacturers such as Samsung, LG and Motorola to make Android smartphones according to the specifications it offers. They will then be sold via cellular carriers like AT&T and Verizon. This is expected to materialise by next year.

• Android developers are getting their first look at the future with the new Android L Developer Preview edition of the mobile device operating system, which was unveiled by Google on June 25 at the Google I/O 2014 developers conference. The early preview version provides developers and users with glimpses of the evolution of Android as it approaches its seventh birthday in September 2014. Android L marks the first time that Google has ever provided early access to a development version of the OS to device and application developers, according to a June 25 post by Jamal Eason, an Android product manager, on the Android Developers Blog. The preview version, which is available for use as of today, will allow developers to explore many of the new features and capabilities of the next version of Android while providing tools to allow development and testing on the new platform, wrote Eason.

Free Software/Open Source

SaaS/Big Data

• In a large open source project made up of lots of interacting pieces developed by different teams, how do you decide what officially becomes a part of the core release and what stays outside? In OpenStack, a formal process of incubation helps prepare fledgling projects for integration into the main code body as they develop and mature.

• This market is moving so quickly in terms of what’s happening. And if you wind back Hadoop, it started as a way of having a scale-out architecture. It allowed you to take your storage out onto the web. And around 2011, the team at Yahoo! Decided that Hadoop was a great technology and realised that it had potential far outside the four walls of Yahoo!

• So they decided to take it out to be a general data processing platform, and they founded Hortonworks. We take Apache Hadoop, which is an open source data architecture, and to turn it into an enterprise-class data platform, completely in the open.

Databases

• Google has been using, improving and boosting its Knowledge Graph search services for several years to show users how information can be linked together in graphics form to help find desired results. Now it is again pushing forward in the graph database world through the open-source release of Cayley, which will be used in the continuing development of graph databases.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• It’s been a couple of months since the latest development release for Oracle Linux, but the developers have had enough time to prepare the distro for the final release, although a precise date hasn’t been put forward.

• “It’s an exciting day for the Oracle Linux team because the Oracle Linux 7 release candidate is now available for download from Oracle Technology Network! Head on over to the OTN Oracle Linux downloads page and have a look at the Oracle Linux Beta Programs section to get it right now,” said the developers in the official announcement.

• Oracle is a little different – First of all, I’m not even sure what the name of the thing is. I’ve heard of OEL (Oracle Enterprise Linux), Oracle Linux, and a few other names. I think I’ll just call it OEL. OEL is a pay distro *BUT* they do offer free downloads of their install media as well as updates. Originally updates were pay-only but they opened that up a while back when they had a promotional campaign claiming they were faster with updates than CentOS (turns out they aren’t but close). I guess their business plan is you can use OEL for free and have updates… but there are some value add features (like Ksplice and Dtrace, etc) and support that cost extra. To download their iso install media you have to have an account on their system but that is cost-free and it just so happens I already had one because I’ve downloaded previous releases like OEL6.

Healthcare

• GNU Health is a free software tool for healthcare facilities in rural areas and developing countries, licensed under the GNU GPL. The project got its start in 2006, and at the time of my interview with Falcon, GNU Health had evolved into a health and hospital information system used by the United Nations, public hospitals and Ministries of Health in countries like Argentina, and private institutions around the globe. Today, GNU Solidario is planting their free software and health administration system into facilities in need in countries all over the world.

Funding

• Couchbase Inc., which helps companies manage data, raised $60 million in a funding round that almost doubled the amount it had received from investors.

• With a fresh new $20 million funding round in its pocket a new distribution strategy built on open source licensing, database startup Aerospike is bidding to become a major player in a market segment that some people believe will be the future of enterprise database management.

BSD

• GhostBSD 4.0 continues moving along as the FreeBSD operating system focused around the MATE Desktop Environment.

• GhostBSD 4.0 Beta 2 was released and it features various bug-fixes and other minor improvements over the earlier development versions.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Richard Stallman’s speech will be part of Tails HackFest. His talk will be nontechnical, admission is gratis (and registration is appreciated) and the public is encouraged to attend.

Openness/Sharing

• An ‘open-source’ seed initiative has released 36 varieties of 14 food crops, which the project’s leaders say could help poor farmers get access to better quality seeds.

• Aleph Objects believes in open source 3D printing. In fact, the company was born to build open source and its philosophy of “Libre Hardware” is built into everything the company creates. “We exist for the freedom of our users and the benefits that brings,” said Harris Kenny, communications manager for Aleph Objects, a Loveland, CO-based maker of the LulzBot 3D desktop printer.

Open Hardware

• Intel chips and 3D printing could make robots as ubiquitous, affordable, customizable and diversely helpful as smartphones.

Programming

• PHP, an HTML-embedded scripting language with syntax borrowed from C, Java, and Perl, with a couple of unique PHP-specific features thrown in, has been updated to version 5.5.14.

• The PHP 5.x branch includes a new OOP model based on the Zend Engine, a new extension for improved MySQL support, built-in native support for SQLite, and much more.

Leftovers

• Ed Miliband has said a Labour government at Westminster would consider building border posts if Scotland voted for independence.

Security

• Canonical has published details in a security notice about a GnuPG vulnerability in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS operating systems that has been fixed.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• What is common between The Conspirator, Death of a President, JFK, The Day of the Jackal and Shooter? Full of twisted plots, these movies are based on President Assassination plots. A similar plot is bearing the wrath of the government of North Korea, which has taken serious offense to Seth Rogen’s upcoming film titled The Interview.

• The American action-comedy is about two journalists that are given the task of assassinating North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and is now being called as an “act of war” by the government. The movie stars Rogen and James Franco as the two journos who are instructed by the CIA to assassinate the leader. In a statement issued by a local KCNA news agency, a spokesperson from the foreign ministry called Rogen as a “gangster filmmaker” and has asked for the ban of the film, reported AFP.

• [...]

• This makes me wonder if there are any Hollywood films that show the assassination of a real and not a fictional US President. Or are there films that revolve around the plot of murdering the current US President? However, what I do remember is that the US Army banned the sale of Medal of Honor video game as the game allowed you to play as an Al Qaeda member and attack US troops. Do you think a writer can ever dare to work on a film plot about the assassination of the current US President?

• Is Clinton trying to pull this trick all over again? Who knows. But what’s clear is that proponents of the Iraq War are still the kinds of people that corporate media are seeking out as experts now. Getting pro-war Democrats to balance out the pro-war Republicans isn’t exactly a broad debate.

• Remember Schaft? The dextrous little robot that previously grabbed the top prize at DARPA’s $2 million Robotics Challenge. Google acquired the Japanese robotics firm in 2013, and reports emerged soon after that Mountain View was planning to pull its team from the DARPA robotics competition. The reason being the company is not keen on pursuing military contracts.

Finance

• Poverty continues to be a pressing social problem– but it’s hardly mentioned on the network newscasts, according to a new study by the media watch group FAIR.

• Peter Phillips with guest host Marty Bennett Co-Chair, North Bay Jobs with Justice, examine the significance of the $15 an hour city-wide minimum wage recently approved by the City of Seattle and we will discuss the minimum wage and living wage campaigns across the SF Bay Area that are part of the national “Fight for $15″ campaign. Our guests include: Jahmese Myres, Policy Associate and Organizer, East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, Gordon Mar is Executive Director of SF Jobs with Justice, Derecka Mehrens, Executive Director, Working Partnerships USA (Santa Clara County) and Paul K. Sonn, General Counsel & Program Director National Employment Law Project

• Owing to its concerns over western (mainly US) dominance on the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, China is working towards establishing a global financial institution. According to two sources familiar with the matter, Beijing has proposed to other countries to double the size of the registered capital for the bank to $100bn, FT reported.

• The bank, which will be named Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has so far garnered attention from 22 countries including Middle East. Initially, the model will be focusing on a revised version of the ancient trade route that connected Europe to China- silk road.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• One measure of the resistance to the inclusion of corporate sovereignty provisions in TAFTA/TTIP is that the European Commission unexpectedly announced that it would be holding a three-month public consultation on this aspect in an attempt to defuse public anger.

Privacy

• We hear all the time that the British public don’t care about mass surveillance, privacy and Edward Snowden, but we know that’s not true. It may be that those inside the Westminster bubble have been able to hide from how people really feel up to now, but it’s time to change that.

• President Obama aims to allow European citizens to sue the United States over the misuse of their personal data

• The top court in Massachusetts has ruled that an attorney charged with mortgage fraud must decrypt his computers for police, who believe they contain evidence of the alleged crime.

Civil Rights

• Campaigners call for release of 29-year-old Mubarak Bala, who lives in Kano in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north

• The Department of Justice has asked a Detroit-area federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit against the department and the FBI filed by local horror-rap group the Insane Clown Posse and four of its fans, with the assistance of the ACLU. That’s a real thing that’s happening in the world we all inhabit. Here, watch ICP’s Joseph Bruce (aka Violent J) introduce the lawsuit on January 8:

• U.S. District Judge Robert Cleland on Monday heard arguments on a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Insane Clown Posse and a group of fans against the FBI.

• ICP, a Detroit music duo known for explicit lyrics, face paint and a diehard following that created the “Juggalo” subculture, claim a 2011 FBI report caused their fans to be detained, questioned and harassed by law enforcement agencies across the country. (View the complaint here.)

Internet/Net Neutrality

• Fifteen years ago, he landed a marketing job with a network equipment maker called Riverstone Networks. Riverstone made network routers, among other things, and it sold many of these to Chinese internet service providers who then used them to block traffic on their networks.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• As you may have heard, this morning, the Supreme Court effectively killed off Aereo with an unfortunate and terribly problematic 6 to 3 ruling that can be summarized simply as the “looks like a duck” test. If you’re not familiar with the history, decades back, when cable companies were first around, they started rebroadcasting network TV to cable subscribes, and the Supreme Court (rightly) ruled that this was perfectly legal. The broadcasters ran screaming and crying to Congress, who changed the law to create a retransmission setup, saying that if cable companies wanted to retransmit broadcast TV they had to pay fees. Aereo got around that by setting up a very different system — or so we thought. The majority decision, written by Stephen Breyer, really just keeps going back to the fact that Aereo looks just like what those cable companies used to do… and therefore, given that Congress changed the law to outlaw that, Congress must have meant that Aereo should be illegal as well. The majority seems to view things as a black box, ignoring everything in the box. It just says “well, to end users and to networks, this is identical to the old cable systems.” As for the very careful steps that Aereo took to comply with the law? The majority just brushes that off as meaningless.

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