● 09.19.14

● Links 19/9/2014: Another Red Hat Acquisition, Netflix Dumps Microsoft Silverlight and Brings DRM to WWW

Posted in News Roundup at 2:18 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Microsoft is hard at work on Windows 9 in a desperate attempt to recover from the Windows 8 debacle that angered many users and generated a ton of media criticism. The Register recently noted that Microsoft was apparently…er…inspired by Linux in one feature found in Windows 9, and now PC World thinks that there are five more great features that Microsoft should…er…borrow from Linux.

Desktop

• I think GNU/Linux has reached “critical mass” there, a point where positive feedback ensures growth no matter what. There’s nothing that can stop it.

Kernel Space

• One of the events which I attended focused on overcoming common pitfalls that women may encounter when preparing a resume which meets the expectations of corporate recruiters and hiring managers in the Linux community. As a recent MS in Computer Science graduate, I attended in order to receive feedback and improve my resume to emphasize the skills I have gained both as a student and as an open source developer. That workshop, which was lead by Leslie Hawthorn on the first day of the conference, provided me with insight and tools to present myself to employers and to actively shape my career trajectory.

• Like it or not, systemd is here to stay, so we might as well know what to do with it.

• systemd is controversial for several reasons: It’s a replacement for something that a lot of Linux users don’t think needs to be replaced, and the antics of the systemd developers have not won hearts and minds. But rather the opposite, as evidenced in this famous LKML thread where Linus Torvalds banned systemd dev Kay Sievers from the Linux kernel.

• It’s tempting to let personalities get in the way. As fun as it is to rant and rail and emit colorful epithets, it’s beside the point. For lo so many years Linux was content with SysVInit and BSD init. Then came add-on service managers like the service and chkconfig commands. Which were supposed to make service management easier, but for me were just more things to learn that didn’t make the tasks any easier, but rather more cluttery.

• If you’re not a Linux or Unix developer, you’ve never heard of systemd, the new Linux-specific system and service manager. In Linux developer circles, however, nothing else ticks off many programmers more than this replacement for the Unix and Linux’s traditional sysvinit daemon…

• For those able to spend $1000+ (USD) on a processor, the Intel Core i7 5960X is a fantastic offering that is still leaving me pleased with the performance after extensive Linux testing.

Graphics Stack

• Earlier this summer was the start of an X.Org-funded project to develop Shatter. Shatter has long been talked about as a new feature for the X.Org Server to replace Xinerama. Shatter comes down to allowing the X.Org Server to split the rendering between multiple GPUs with each GPU covering different areas of a larger desktop.

• Earlier this month it was announced that the X.Org Foundation would participate in the next FOSS Outreach Program for Women (OPW) organized by the GNOME Foundation. This program is very controversial but one thing is for sure: there isn’t much interest from women in getting involved with X.Org.

• NVIDIA has released a new Linux driver for its products and the developers have added support for the latest GPUs that were just announced.

• The latest quarterly update to Wayland and its Weston compositor are now available! Wayland/Weston 1.6.0 is another important milestone now crossed in delivering a next-generation Linux display experience.

• Those still running Intel “Sandy Bridge” processors with integrated HD Graphics will be ecstatic this morning that the Mesa driver has taken a leap forward.

Applications

• AntiMicro 2.6 was released recently, getting two new turbo modes, an option to invoke the Game Controller mapping window from command line as well as experimental uinput support.

• In this article I will show you how to install 5 text editors for programmers: Geany, Sublime Text, SciTe, Komodo Edit, Atom, on Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr and derivative systems: Linux Mint 17 Qiana, Pinguy OS 14.04, Elementary OS 0.3 Freya, Deepin 2014, Peppermint Five, LXLE 14.04 and Linux Lite 2.0.

Proprietary

• With its speedy interface, Opera can load graphics-laden websites with numerous tabs already opened. A digital speed meter is visible in the URL showing quantity of data and connection speed. I really like the Opera Turbo Settings feature. Opera speeds up browsing on slow networks. You can choose to disable the turbo effect, leave it on by default, or automatically enable it when needed.

• Netflix is one of those few sore spots for Linux, thought technically it’s not that difficult to run Netflix on a Linux box, but it’s still challenging for an average user. We have good news for you.

• Linux users, you’ve been very, very, very, very, very, very patient. And now, your patience is being rewarded with Netflix support on your OS of choice. For the longest time Netflix relied on Microsoft’s would-be flash competitor Silverlight. But, of course, support for the plug in was practically non-existent on the open-source OS. Now, with Silverlight fading, and Netflix embracing the power of HTML5, your wish of watching flicks in your favorite distro (be it Ubuntu, Mint or Arch) may finally come true. Paul Adolf from Netflix posted a message to Ubuntu developers, telling them that, “Netflix will play with Chrome stable in 14.02 if NSS version 3.16.2 or greater is installed.”

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• I’ve recently bought an offer for Sanctum 2 on Steam, and while at the start I was a bit skeptic, I must say that I like this mix between a Tower Defense and an FPS.

• This may not be news for our readers who have been around for a while, but Techland’s Chrome Engine 6 actually supports Linux.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• KDE (back when it was still the name of the desktop environment) and our applications historically stood for powerful features and great flexibility and customizeability. This is what our users love about our software, this is why they choose Plasma and KDE software instead of one of the other Free desktop offerings. And it is also something they would fight tooth and nail for if we wanted to take it away (as many a KDE maintainer who dared to remove a feature he thought was unnecessary can tell).

• Recently, Dolphin 4.14 has been released, and in this post, I will tell you about the improvements that are included in this release. This is my last “recent developments in Dolphin” post – I have stepped down as maintainer recently.

• digiKam is one of those première Open Source applications that are better than their non-free counterparts. The team has announced the release of version 4.3.0 of this photo management software collection.

• Wearing your fireproof underwear? KDE’s Aaron Seigo – never one to shy away from saying what he thinks – lit into community managers in a Google+ post on Monday, calling the community manager role in free/open source software projects “a fraud and a farce.”

• The KDE community now has multiple release tracks for their software. It used to be just the monthly incrementals to the KDE Software Compilation, but part of the transition to Qt5, QML and the new Frameworks, this monolithic release schedule has been abandoned. The Frameworks 5 (successor of kdelibs) and Plasma 5 release schedules are now pretty much disconnected. The new release schedule can be found here for Frameworks 5 and Plasma 5. This complicates things quite a bit for the planning of my Slackware packages. I do not want to get obsessed with providing these packages the day their source code is released. That will be unmanagable at a personal level.

• I’m a designer/artist and tutor. I’ve worked with 3ds Max and related tools for about 14 years since graduating from Edinburgh College of Art many eons ago, in 1999! Recently, I’ve been running 3d graphics workshops and teaching online and making my own artworks. I’ve also worked with a lot of clients mainly in the offshore renewable sector for visualisation projects in 3ds Max.

• [...]

• Well, it is free and open source but at the same time very good and a great user interface, much more than say GIMP. It feels as if the overall interface in Krita has been considered when its programmers made it. I also like the fact that as well as Blender, it does not require licenses to teach it and run workshops, whereas 3ds Max that I use requires people unless they are pirating, to pay for the software even when learning.

• The Grantlee community is pleased to announce the release of Grantlee version 0.5 (Mirror). Source and binary compatibility are maintained as with all previous releases. Django is an implementation of the Django template system in Qt.

Distributions

Arch Family

• Manjaro Linux 0.8.10 Ascella XFCE Edition is the latest version of manjaro linux distribution with XFCE desktop environment. Manjaro Linux is a fast, user-friendly, desktop-oriented operating system based on Arch Linux. Key features include intuitive installation process, automatic hardware detection, stable rolling-release model, ability to install multiple kernels, special Bash scripts for managing graphics drivers and extensive desktop configurability.

• ODG’s “R-7 Glasses” eyewear features augmented reality features based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 805 SoC and Android-based Vuforia SDK for Digital Eyewear.

Slackware Family

• An open source approach enables government IT to be interoperable and customised to suit local needs, according to Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Red Hat.

Red Hat Family

• Red Hat Inc, the world’s largest commercial distributor of the Linux operating system, reported a 19 percent increase in quarterly revenue, helped by strong subscription growth.

• Red Hat has agreed to buy FeedHenry, an enterprise mobile application platform provider, for about 63.5 million euros in cash. FeedHenry’s backers include Intel Capital, ACT Venture Capital, Kernel Capital, VMware and Enterprise Ireland.

• Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) is buying Ireland’s FeedHenry, provider of a platform that helps enterprises streamline and speed up mobile app development, for €63.5M ($81.9M) in cash.

• Red Hat is acquiring enterprise mobile application platform provider FeedHenry for approximately 63.5 million Euros in cash. The acquisition will enable Red hat to support mobile application development for enterprise customers which continue to adopt mobile devices as part of their IT infrastructure.

• Red Hat posted strong quarterly results on Thursday that beat Wall Street’s expectations, and a big part of the news was that the company is starting to see meaningful revenue from its many initiatives surrounding the OpenStack cloud computing platform. If things go according to the company’s playbook, it will start to draw recurring revenue from subscription support for OpenSack deployments similar to the subscription revenues it gets for supporting its other open source platforms.

Fedora

• The alpha release of Fedora 21 is finally happening next week! Fedora 21 Alpha was originally scheduled to ship in early August.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• The first image of Ubuntu Touch has been declared as ready for “release to manufacturing” after much work by Canonical.

• After bug fixing and testing, the landing team for Ubuntu Phone has promoted their first image for ubuntu-rtm distribution. Łukasz Zemczak wrote, “We have promoted our first image from the ubuntu-rtm distribution! After QA did promotion-wise exploratory testing of #44 (krillin) and gave us a green light we decided to promote krillin’s #44 and it’s mako counterpart – #41, to the ubuntu-rtm/14.09 channel. That’s excellent news as per our agreement we will not enter TRAINCON-0 but continue normal operation. Yay!”

• The first smartphones to run Ubuntu software could ship later this year, and they’re expected to sell for between $200 and $400.

• With Ubuntu 14.10 bringing various updates to the packaged desktop environments along with updated open-source graphics drivers, here’s our per-cycle usual tests of the popular Linux desktops while looking at their impact on the Linux gaming performance.

Devices/Embedded

• Via debuted a rugged fanless low-power Android mini-PC based on Via’s dual-core Cortex-A9 Elite E1000 SoC, and offering mini-PCIe, mSATA, HDMI, and GbE I/O.

• HDMIPi, the affordable 9″ display for the Raspberry Pi, is being delivered to Kickstarter backers now. We caught up with Cyntech’s Dave Mellor to find out more…

• The £75/$125 9″ screen (1280×800 resolution) was successfully funded on Kickstarter in December 2013. Having suffered a few unavoidable delays, units are now being dispatched to early adopters.

Phones

Ballnux

• Samsung Electronics showed off the very first Tizen-OS based smart TVs at Samsung Open Source Conference held at the Grand Inter-continental Hotel in Samsung-dong, Seoul. The reveal was shown as part of the ‘Overview on Tizen TV Architecture’ session.

• It looks like a Tizen Smartphone launch in India is on the cards, and the launch date is November 2014 for our Linux based friend. Samsung believe that they can use content to differentiate themselves from the competition, enabling them to maintain their lead in the Indian Smartphone market. We are not expecting the launch of the Samsung Z at this point, but more likely the budget Tizen Samsung SM-Z130E or SM-Z130H.

• Samsung, with the launch of the Tizen Samsung NX1 Smart Camera, has introduced a new 28 megapixel (MP) APS-C CMOS image sensor for digital cameras, which is said to offer superior light absorption thanks to the back-side illuminated (BSI) pixel technology and 65-nanometer (nm) low-power copper process.

Android

• The next generation of Google’s Android operating system, due for release next month, will encrypt data by default for the first time, the company said Thursday, raising yet another barrier to police gaining access to the troves of personal data typically kept on smartphones.

• Apple’s new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have been burning up the preorder sales charts since they became available. But just because Apple is selling a lot of iPhone 6 devices doesn’t mean that Android users should jump on the iTrain, and dump their Android phones. Business Week explains why Android users should steer clear of Apple’s iPhone 6.

• Tim Cook wasn’t kidding when he said the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are the best iPhones ever. The new phones have bigger screens, run an operating system that allows users to customize their experiences in an increasing variety of ways, and even incorporate different kinds of keyboards. If you’re an iPhone user, there is no good reason to bat your eyes at fancy Android (GOOG) phones anymore.

• Less than a day after Apple detailed new efforts in user privacy for its products, Google now says it plans to encrypt user data on all Android devices. Speaking to The Washington Post, Google says data encryption will now be a part of the activation process instead of an optional feature. The end result is that whatever data is stored on that device, be it a phone or tablet, will be inaccessible unless the person has the correct password.

• Google has begun bringing Android apps to the Chrome Web Store, allowing you to run a handful of Android apps on a Chromebook or Chromebox. But as we’ve reported, it’s already possible to run some Android apps that aren’t available in the Chrome web store… it just takes a little work to prepare and load those apps.

Free Software/Open Source

• Understanding the importance of mobility, the IT team at Atul realized that access to ERP applications on mobile devices could greatly enhance business capabilities and insights. The team aspired to enable its sales team to punch in orders directly from their smartphones into the ERP. However, after prospecting various solutions available in the market – it was inferred that mobile integration was an expensive and complex proposition. The solution costs were in the range of Rs 40-50 lakh in addition to the database license costs which seemed to be prohibitive for Atul.

• Strong security is necessary nowadays. However, some solutions can be overwhelming to many users, so they are often not implemented or simply misunderstood. In other words, regardless of how strong a security implementation is, if users do not understand how it works or how to use it, it may be worthless.

• Cloudflare today announced it has made available a keyless SSL solution that enables the content delivery network to provide data transfers that are both authenticated and encrypted, without requiring customers’ private digital keys.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• Mozilla is much in the news this week, partly for technology efforts that are moving forward, and partly for shuttering a long standing effort from the company. Partnered with Grameephone, an operator in Bangladesh, Mozilla rolled out Firefox OS-based phones for Bangladesh that are priced under $60 and are poised to put smartphones in the hands of some users who haven’t had phones before.

SaaS/Big Data

• Rackspace names a new CEO, as the OpenStack cloud founder chooses not to sell after evaluating its strategic options.

• This is the second part in a series of three articles surveying automation projects within OpenStack, explaining what they do, how they do it, and where they stand in development readiness and field usage. Previously, in part one, I covered cloud deployment tools that enable you to install/update OpenStack cloud on bare metal. Next week, in the final article, I will cover automating “day 2 management”—tools to keep the cloud and workloads up and running.

Databases

• As the OpenStack cloud computing arena grows, a whole ecosystem of tools is growing along with it. Tesora, the leading contributor to the OpenStack Trove open source project, is out this week with what it is billing as the first enterprise-ready, commercial implementation of OpenStack Trove database as a service (DBaaS). Tesora also recently announced that it has open sourced its Tesora Database Virtualization Engine, and now is also offering the Tesora OpenStack Trove Database Certification Program.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Under Ellison, Oracle has already squandered all of their open source holdings. We don’t need MySQL anymore, we’ve got Maria. The Document Foundation with LibreOffice has made Open Office irrelevant — and it doesn’t even belong to Oracle anymore anyway. What’s left? Java? What a fine job they’ve done managing that mess. Oracle Linux? OMG, what’ll we do if they screw that up?

• Oracle couldn’t do any worse with Ellison gone than they’ve done with him.

• The all-purpose IT vendor reported that its fiscal 2015 Q1 total revenues were up 3 percent; net income was unchanged at $2.2 billion over Q1 2014. Few people keep their jobs for life, except perhaps the pope, members of the U.S. Supreme Court, and those who own their own businesses and don’t wish to retire.

Funding

• Hazelcast, a startup looking to challenge legacy database providers like Oracle and fast-growing startups pushing open-source databases, has landed $11 million in new funding.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• The Christchurch Unix community has its annual technical show this weekend, as part of international Software Freedom Day celebrations. Personal Computer operating systems derived from Unix offer an alternative, to Microsoft desktop security issues and costs, and are maintained by a large international community. Main variants of Unix are GNU/Linux and Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) operating systems. BSD is the core of Apple Computer’s OS-X. Licensed free software installation discs, install help and tuition are made available to the public on Software Freedom Day.

• GNU RCS (Revision Control System) 5.9.3 is available.

Openness/Sharing

Open Data

• Data.gov wants to be the fuel that helps power the organizations and people that will change the world.

• Data by itself is just the tinder for the spark of imagination and innovation. Without it many of the kinds of innovations we see like iTriage, Bright Scope, and Patients Like Me would not be possible. The Data.gov project is how the United States government, under the Obama administration, is striving to empower citizens to create the change they envision; not just by fixing a temporary problem, but by helping to let citizens solve the problem themselves.

Leftovers

• Russia has said the conduct of the Scottish referendum “did not meet international standards”, with its observers complaining the count took place in rooms that were too big and that the procedure was badly flawed.

• In an apparent attempt to mirror persistent western criticism of Russia’s own elections, Igor Borisov – an accredited observer – said the poll failed to meet basic international norms.

• I met numerous voters who had received letters from their employers – including Diageo, BP, RNS and many others – telling them to vote No or their job was in danger.

• I find Apple’s dead warrant canary of particular interest given the revelation in the recent DOJ IG Report on National Security Letters that some “Internet companies” started refusing NSLs for certain kinds of content starting in 2009; that collection has moved to Section 215 authority, and it now constitutes a majority of the 200-some Section 215 orders a year.

Security

• When the developers of TrueCrypt delivered the bombshell that they were abandoning their popular open source encryption program, it left many organizations in a hugely difficult position. Should they continue to use it, or heed the developers’ advice that it was no longer secure and switch to another encryption product?

• On the face of it, the decision should be an easy one: If the developers of something as security sensitive as an encryption program say that their program is no longer secure, surely it would be rash not to heed the warning.

• The developers of a type of malicious software that encrypts a computer’s files and demands a ransom have fixed an error security experts said allowed files to be recovered without paying.

• The malware, called TorrentLocker, popped up last month, targeting users in Australia, according to iSight Partners, a security consultancy. It now appears to be also geo-targeting victims in the U.K.

Transparency Reporting

• More likely, this decision was prompted by recent events — namely the publication of emails more than a year old.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• A new report says economic growth can be stiumlated by investment in clean infrastructure and technology to address climate change.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• The last-minute reinstatement of Wisconsin’s voter ID restrictions could create voting problems for over 32,000 students attending state universities.

Censorship

• A former Customs lawyer claim that he was told to bury bad news matches similar stories which have sparked a wide-ranging inquiry by Chief Ombudsman Dame Beverley Wakem.

• She said she was “appalled” by Curtis Gregorash’s claim. “Having said that one of the reasons I am undertaking of selected agencies in respect of their OIA practices is that anecdotally a number of people have told me similar stories,” she said.

• She said a planned inquiry to be launched after the election could see the Ombudsman’s office using its Commission of Inquiry powers to compel evidence to be given under oath were there signs information was being hidden.

• On the next Project Censored Show on Pacifica Radio, join co-hosts Mickey Huff and Peter Phillips as they celebrate Banned Books Week. This year, BBW focuses on Graphic Novels. Their first guest is Charles Brownstein, executive director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Charles will give a history of censorship and comic books and why this theme was chosen for BBW this year; Barbara Jones joins the program to give perspectives on BBW from the American Library Association where she is director of Director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom; the second half of the show looks at a recent example of book banning in Delaware regarding The Miseducation of Cameron Post– the librarian of the Dover Pubic Library, Margery Cyr, joins the program to give overall details of the struggle over the book; Susan McAnelly, manager of Browesabout Books in Rehoboth Beach tells of her role and that of independent bookstores in fighting censorship; and recent high school graduate, Maddi Bacon, explains how she was active opposing the ban as a student at the Cape Henlopen High School. We round out the show with a quick update from former CIA analyst, transparency activist and civil libertarian Ray McGovern who will be speaking in the San Francisco Bay Area next week.

Civil Rights

• Responding to public outcry after a video showing officers from the New York Police Department assaulting unarmed street vendors in Brooklyn recently was posted online, NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton announced on Wednesday that a cop seen in the video viciously kicking one merchant had been suspended and was under investigation by the department’s office of internal affairs.

• Los Angeles Unified school police officials said Tuesday that the department will relinquish some of the military weaponry it acquired through a federal program that furnishes local law enforcement with surplus equipment. The move comes as education and civil rights groups have called on the U.S. Department of Defense to halt the practice for schools.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• A few months ago, John Oliver did an amazing job making net neutrality into a mainstream issue, by reducing it to its core element: that it’s all about “preventing broadband provider fuckery.” That was a great segment that truly went viral. But, still, the TV folks have remained pretty quiet on the issue. However, it appears that another late night comedian has jumped into the game as well, with Jimmy Kimmel doing a segment last week trying to explain the fast lane/slow lane issue in rather graphic form:

• Facing a possible cut-off from the internet by the US, Russian security officials and IT giants are discussing the possibility to make the Russian sector of the net independent, according to insiders.

• The issue would be discussed at several closed-door events in the days to come, including a national Security Council session on Monday next week, reports Vedomosti newspaper citing a number of unnamed security and industry sources.

• The meeting of security officials, to be chaired by President Vladimir Putin, will to discuss the results of a July Communications Ministry exercise to test how robust the Russian internet infrastructure would be if it were subject to a massive cyber-attack. The answer to that is reportedly “Not robust enough.”

• No company has gone to greater lengths than Verizon in trying to stop the government from enforcing network neutrality rules.

• Verizon is the company that sued to overturn the Federal Communications Commission’s Open Internet Order from 2010. Verizon won a federal appeals court ruling this year, overturning anti-discrimination and anti-blocking rules and setting off a months-long scramble by the FCC to get enforceable rules into place.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• We’ve written a few times in the past about how the entertainment industry’s woeful job of preserving and archiving old works has resulted in culture being lost — but also how unauthorized copies (the proverbial “damn dirty pirates”) have at least saved a few such treasures from complete destruction. There was, for example, the “lost” ending to one of the movie versions of Little Shop of Horrors that was saved thanks to someone uploading it to YouTube. Over in the UK, a lost episode of Dad’s Army was saved due to a private recording. However, Sherwin Siy points out that the very first Super Bowl — Super Bowl I, as they put it — was basically completely lost until a tape that a fan made showed up in someone’s attic in 2005. Except, that footage still hasn’t been made available, perhaps because of the NFL’s standard “we own everything” policy.

• A new report published by the Digital Citizens Alliance estimates that the most popular cyberlockers generate millions of dollars in revenue. The research claims that the sites in question are mostly used for copyright infringement. The list of “rogue” sites includes the Kim Dotcom-founded cloud hosting service Mega, albeit based on a false assumption.

• Led by director Lexi Alexander, a collection of Hollywood directors, producers, actors, writers and other workers have teamed up in support of Peter Sunde. As the jailed former Pirate Bay founder prepares for his father’s funeral, the insiders call for his uncuffing. “We oppose your imprisonment,” they say in their video.

• While we’ve written plenty about Peter Sunde, the former spokesperson for The Pirate Bay, we didn’t cover his eventual jailing earlier this year. Given all the coverage of his trial and efforts post-trial to have the results revisited, the fact that he finally ended up going to jail didn’t seem like much of a story. However, the way in which he’s been treated in jail is simply inhumane. He’s been put in the equivalent of a maximum security prison and basic requests for more humane treatment have been rejected. The latest outrage was that Peter’s father recently passed away, and while prison officials have said they’ll make arrangements for him to attend the funeral, he’ll have to wear handcuffs. TorrentFreak says he’ll have to wear handcuffs while carrying his father’s coffin — but from Peter’s brother’s quote, it seems clear that the prison officials were actually saying he can’t even carry his father’s coffin. The handcuff remark was just their way of saying “fuck you.”

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