● 05.04.15

● Links 4/5/2015: Many New Releases, Ubuntu Drone

Posted in News Roundup at 11:32 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Gnome 3.16 user interface packages are being rolled out to Linux in the month of April. Usually, it takes at least three weeks for the packages to reach everyone, but it is expected to be much quicker this time. The maintenance releases are out already and they fix a wide range of bugs found in the Linux platform. Compared to Windows or Mac, Linux is always stable and is a reliable solution for users. It is being upgraded in terms of visuals so as to make it more user friendly. Gnome also supports both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the operating system.

• Gnu/Linux distributions provide great advantages over proprietary alternatives for people with disabilities. In this article, I’ll discuss some of the advantages, as well as areas that need improvement. Because I use Fedora, my article is written based on my experience with that Linux distribution.

Desktop

• Consider James Anderson. He’s an 84 year-old volunteer at Free Geek, a Portland, Oregon non-profit organization, which rebuilds old computers for users who need them. As shown in a Linux Foundation video, he works there every Friday to rebuild laptops using Linux that can be sent to Africa.

• Anderson has been playing with electrical equipment since he blew out his grandmother’s fuses and has been using computers since the “luggables” of the 80s. He’s never worked in IT, though, until he came to Free Geek. He had spend 13-weeks in Zimbabwe and saw how students there needed computers.

• The Gnome desktop version can also be made to look stunning too, so users shouldn’t think that choosing Linux will make things ugly or clunky, as this is not the case.

• In conclusion, Windows adding a Start button, which the company axed two years ago, and multiple desktops (a long established Linux feature) will not make the transition and subsequent day-to-day usage much less frustrating than the Windows 8 experience.

• However, one of the main downsides about the Linux operating system is that by being free, this means that there is no huge marketing budget to get the message out.

Kernel Space

• So the -rc2′s have lately been pretty small – looking more like late -rc’s than early ones. It *used* to be that I couldn’t even post the shortlog, because it was just too big. That’s not been the case for the last few releases.

Graphics Stack

• The accepted projects for this year’s Google Summer of Code have been revealed. The accepted X.Org projects are once again particularly interesting.

Applications

Instructionals/Technical

• The mundane way to submit a patch is by using git to make a patch file (using format-patch) and attaching it to the bug. But this is way to tiresome ! Here we use the git bz utility (gnome’s recommended way of doing this) to automatically send the patch to bugzilla which is a lot easier. Later, this same patch can be updated

Games

• A new Steam Hardware Survey has been released for the month of April, and it doesn’t bring good news for Linux users. This is probably one of the worst months for the Linux platform in a long time.

• Shadowrun Chronicles: Boston Lockdown, formerly known as Shadowrun Online, came out of Early Access last week. The tactical turn-based game is the latest set in the cyberpunk Shadowrun universe and the second that takes a crack at multiplayer. As a fan of the setting, I decided to take a close look at the game and see if it was any good.

• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, a game developed by Monolith and ported by Feral Interactive for the Linux platform, is now showing in the Steam library, and it might be launched soon.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• Before to increase version to 1.0 I moved it from kdereview to kdeutils.

• That is the first time that I use a distro-shipped Kate that is based on KF5 (and no other Kate 4.x is installed any more as escape route).

• It has only been a few days since Plasma 5.3 was released, now work has begun on the 5.4 release. Plasma 5.4 is scheduled for launch in August, in time for the next Kubuntu release.

• Last year’s kickstarter was a big success and all the support resulted in the biggest, best Krita release ever, Krita 2.9, with a huge number of exciting features. In fact, this week we’ll be releasing Krita 2.9.4, the first version of Krita with the Photoshop-type layer styles feature included! (As well as speed-ups and dozens of bug fixes…)

• This summer Krita is going all in for animation. Not only do we have a Google Summer of Code project focusing on it, but it will also be a major point in this year’s Kickstarter campaign, alongside with major performance improvements.

• On the first day of the Kolab Summit we announced that Kolab is getting full extended MAPI support. That was in itself a pretty fantastic announcement, but it was accompanied by announcements of instant messaging, WebRTC and collaborative editing.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• Gnome Shell, besides providing the main user interface for GNOME 3, is a Javascript shell with bindings to many native interfaces that allow e.g. Window manipulation, graphics rendering and animations, compositing, etc. It also allows developers to write extensions changing Gnome Shell’s behavior.

• The development of the next GNOME release, 3.17, has started, and the first snapshot, 3.17.1, is now available.

Distributions

New Releases

• It’s been almost a year and SMS-2.0.8 comes with LTS Linux Kernel 3.14.40 and many server packages upgrades.

• The New 9 Series Kicks off with the Release of the new Xfce Edition which comes in 2 flavors…

• This is minor fix of Kwort 4.2, involving kpkg and including some small updates too.

Arch Family

• Great news for Arch Linux users! From a few minutes, Kde Plasma 5.3 stable packages are officially available on Arch Linux repositories.

• In fact, after running the pacman -Syu command I finally noticed, listed on my terminal, the new packages of Plasma 5.3.0 with all the relative dependencies.

• On March 3, the Manjaro development team had the pleasure of announcing the immediate availability for download and testing of the second Preview release of the upcoming Manjaro Linux 0.8.13 operating system.

Red Hat Family

Fedora

• The Korora Project is very pleased to announce that the final release of the MATE edition of version 21 (codename “Darla”) is now available for download in both 32- and 64bit, (we strongly recommend using BitTorrent).

• Aside from the other features proposed thus far for Fedora 23, the update of the popular Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution due out in late 2015, you can add Mono 4.0 to the list.

Debian Family

• Debian Jessie has been released on April 25th, 2015. This has opened the Stretch development cycle. Reactions to the idea of making Debian build reproducibly have been pretty enthusiastic. As the pace is now likely to be even faster, let’s see if we can keep everyone up-to-date on the developments.

• I filed a few bugs, and I even uploaded my fixes to Github. Some of that went unnoticed, because Sean Owen of Cloudera decided to remove all Debian packaging from Spark. But in the end, even with these fixes, the resulting packages do not live up to Debian quality standards (not to say, they would outright violate policy).

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Electronic Commerce Retailer Ebuyer has launched a series of AMD-based HP laptops preloaded with Ubuntu. These devices are perfect for business and home users and are now available for pre-order on Ebuyer.com; fully available at the end of May 2015.

• Mark Shuttleworth is hosting his virtual keynote today for Ubuntu 15.10 with the Ubuntu Online Summit happening this week.

• Shuttleworth posted to his blog that he’s holding off on revealing the “W” codename for Ubuntu 15.10 until this keynote. The keynote is taking place at 14.00 UTC.

• Those who are partial to Ubuntu know that every six months the good people at Canonical, the people behind Ubuntu, release a new version to its popular Operating System. Well if you somehow missed the big event, the latest iteration of Ubuntu and all its cousins like Kubuntu, Ubuntu Mate, Lubuntu, Xubuntu and Ubuntu Gnome, were released on the 24th of April.

• As usual, you get to decide which flavor you prefer depending on your hardware some of the flavors like Lubuntu are to be recommended over the default Unity based installation especially if your hardware is dated.

• It seems world is slowly and steadily moving towards Linux powered devices. After Linux was used to power destroyers for US Navy, now Erle Robotics has used Ubuntu to power a drone.

Devices/Embedded

• The Raspberry Pi 2 Model B launched earlier this year, offering a more powerful machine capable of running a wider variety of software.

• The new $35 Linux board has double the memory of first generation Pis, a quad-core 900MHz processor and the ARMv7 architecture used by many mid-range smartphones.

• In the months since the Pi 2 launched developers have ported an increasing number of operating systems to the board.

Phones

Android

• This week the latest Android 5.1.1 Lollipop update has finally arrived for the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets, and even a few lucky Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge owners are getting the absolute latest version of Android with loads of bug fixes from Google. However, the Nexus 9 hasn’t seen an update since November, and is the only device still on Android 5.0.1 Lollipop.

• Wearable tech is fast becoming the next big thing. We’ve seen fitness trackers gain popularity, smart jewellery take off, and even luxury brands start to sit up and take notice. However, it’s smartwatches which are one of the most popular choices amongst early adopters of wearable tech. The affordable Pebble works regardless of what phone you use, while big names such as Samsung, Motorola, Sony, and LG all have Android-based products on sale. Now, Apple is taking them all on with the Apple Watch.

• Videostream for Chrome already makes it easy to play any video on your computer or network through your Chromecast, but the new Videostream app for Android gives you a remote control to stream movies on your PC, monitor downloads, and control playback without installing a special media server.

• Good news for Android users who want to get involved in the livestreaming craze that’s sweeping Twitter: Meerkat has officially made it to the Google Play Store with a beta app. Its main rival, the Twitter-owned Periscope, remains iOS-only for the time being.

• Earlier in the week, HTC announced that their 2014 flagship smartphone One (M8) would get the new Android 5.1 Lollipop firmware in August, which means device owners would have to wait for more than two months to savour the new update.

• Motorola has announced that the Moto X 2014 will receive the long awaited Android 5.1 update next week, as reported in this article at Load the Game. The software update will first be made available to users in Brazil, and a United States rollout is expected in the week thereafter. An exact release date for European users has yet to be announced but is expected to be released around the middle of May.

• One of our more frequent requests from readers is to tell them how to record your screen on Android. The functionality has been around for quite some time but usually requires some tinkering and adjustment to get it. In Android Lollipop, they have a screen recording method building into the OS and that’s how most people do it these days. Let’s take a look at a few Android apps and some other methods to get you screen recording.

• Every one of us has already had this fight at some point: Apple or Android? The two dominant players in the mobile space carry with them very loyal fanbases who, for some reason, like to spar off with one another over whose tech-daddy could beat up the other. The companies compete with the same level of petty at times, which doesn’t help. Apple screws around with text messages from Android users, Android pokes back at Apple over the controlling hand it has in its app store, and the two companies spend a great deal of time in legal battles because of course they do. C’mon, guys, can’t we all just spend our time pointing and laughing at Windows Mobile?

• [..]

• Yeah, no kidding. I have my brand loyalty, too, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t feel so offended at a roommate’s opinion of my phone that I felt I had to avenge the inanimate object by getting all stabby. Both men ended up getting arrested and were sent to the hospital to have their wounds treated. In a perfect world, they would be laid up next to each other, Instagram-selfying from their beds with comments about how awesome the pictures from their respective phones looked.

Free Software/Open Source

Web Browsers

Chrome

• In April 2015, we saw the naming of Microsoft Edge, the release of Chrome 42, and the first full month of Firefox 37 availability. Now we’re learning that Google’s browser has finally passed the 25 percent market share mark.

SaaS/Big Data

• Interested in keeping track of what’s happening in the open source cloud? Opensource.com is your source for news in OpenStack, the open source cloud infrastructure project.

CMS

• Greg Knaddison has worked for big consulting firms, boutique software firms, startups, professional service firms, and former Drupal Security Team leader. He is currently the director of Engineering at CARD.com and a Drupal Association advisory board member.

• Now that the Wagtail CMS is gearing up for its 1.0 release, I wanted to take some time to introduce you to the all around best and most flexible Django CMS currently available. Wagtail has been around for a while, but doesn’t seem to get the attention I believe it deserves.

• At Revolution Systems, we’ve used Wagtail recently on a number of projects, and the overall experience has been great. It strikes the right balance of making the easy things easy, and the hard things not only possible, but relatively easy as well.

BSD

• OpenBSD a free, multi-platform BSD-based UNIX-like operating system that aims to have a few important features such as portability, standardization, correctness, proactive security, and integrated cryptograph has been upgraded to version 5.7 and is now available for download.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• After a 25 year gestation, Hurd has finally been born. It was a difficult birth and it’s now being kept in an incubator under the care of Debian.

• For many years GNU’s always almost ready to be born operating system microkernel, Hurd, has been the butt of many jokes and Facebook memes, so it came as something of a surprise to read in Larry Cafiero’s Friday column that it’s now ready enough for Debian, which is offering a somewhat experimental and unstable release of Debian/GNU Hurd. An earlier attempt at a Hurd based distro, by Arch, seems to have died on the vine back in 2011, although a 2013 posting promises that development is still underway, with no news since.

• It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2015.

Leftovers

• Andre Saraiva is an internationally known graffiti artist. He owns nightclubs in Paris and New York, works as a top editor of the men’s fashion magazine L’Officiel Hommes and has appeared in countless glossy magazines as a tastemaker and bon vivant.

• The Mainstream Media are anxious to invoke the “violent nationalists” meme at every opportunity. Today Jim Murphy and Eddie Izzard ran away in Glasgow because evil nationalists shouted back when he was haranguing them. That’s what they did – shouted back. Nobody punched anyone. Nobody shoved anyone. Nobody threw anything. But people had the gall not to listen in hushed silence to Murphy.

• …likely the deciding vote for approval of government business will be from the SNP.

• Mike Huckabee And Ben Carson Used Fox News As A Political Springboard

Security

• CBI on Friday got a new specialised forensic lab to access and recover data from Apple and Android devices seized from suspects during investigation of cases.

• The new lab, inaugurated at the CBI academy in Ghaziabad, will be fully equipped with latest workstations and software to decrypt the data stored in Apple and Android devices, CBI sources said.

Finance

• Earlier that week, I had moved into my office. Secretly. I rented out my Venice Beach apartment for the month, packed a few duffels with my clothes and prized belongings, and started taking up residence behind my desk, carefully using each square inch of out-of-sight real estate to store my stuff. Not everyone aspires to have their co-workers catching them at their desk in their tighty-whities—at 6 in the morning. Believing the absolute best-case-scenario reaction to my being there would be supreme awkwardness, I kept the whole thing to myself. Every morning I’d neatly pack away my personal belongings, turning the lights back on and lowering the air conditioning to its too-chilly-for-me 72 degrees—the way they always left it overnight. I’d leave for a morning workout and shower, simultaneously keeping clean and in shape while ensuring I wasn’t always the first to arrive. Occasionally I’d even make myself late to work, blaming the awful L.A. traffic. Just to fit in.

• The fight to raise the minimum wage to $15 has already had an enormous impact on American politics. It hasn’t been reflected in national legislation, of course. With Congress in the hands of flat-earthers, the federal minimum wage is still stuck at less than half that—$7.25, the level it reached in 2009, as a result of legislation passed in 2007.

• But what first registered as a surprising anomaly—a one-day strike in New York City involving just over 100 workers on Black Friday, Nov. 29, 2012—has come to serve as a focal point for articulating demands for a dignified living wage, not just for fast-food workers, but for everyone who works for a living. What began as a movement of those holding “McJobs” is now brimming over with new participants making the point that virtually all jobs nowadays are, or at least can be, McJobs—even the latest to join in with demonstrations held on April 15: adjunct college professors.

• If you deposit more than $10,000 in cash, your bank is required to file a form with the authorities reporting the transaction. But the law also makes it illegal to “structure” deposits — depositing cash in amounts under $10,000 to avoid triggering the reporting requirement.

• But aggressive enforcement of these laws can ensnare small business owners whose only crime is dealing in cash. This video tells the story of Lyndon McLellan, a convenience store owner in rural North Carolina who had $107,702 seized by the IRS. The agency hasn’t charged McLellan with any crime, but under controversial civil asset forfeiture rules the burden of proof is on him to prove he didn’t violate the “structuring” laws. The video was made by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm that is representing McLellan.

Privacy

• Many publishers now post links to their content on Facebook, which has become an important source of online traffic for news sites. But opening those links on a mobile device can be slow and frustrating, taking around eight seconds.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• …the Green Party appears to be almost alone in its desire to alter the current framework for copyright protection (though the Pirate Party would reduce the term still further, to 10 years). It will be interesting to see whether the views expressed by authors and writers have any bearing on the Green Party’s position on reforming copyright in the UK.

• While entertainment companies and authorities believe they are necessary to stem the tide of online infringement, many current anti-piracy strategies are putting Internet users at risk. Domain suspensions, seizures, plus search engine down-rankings are all playing a part in creating a less-safe online environment.

• This week the MPAA opened applications for a new round of research grants, hoping the result will be “pro-copyright” academic papers. In an email leaked in the Sony hack the movie industry group further says it’s looking for pro-copyright scholars who they can cultivate for further public advocacy.

• We talk a lot about how fair use is under attack these days, and I’ve discussed in the past my concerns about freedom of expression when we always have a company (or a few companies) standing in the middle of our decisions on whether or not we can speak. NiemanLabs has a great example of where this becomes problematic in a story about how SoundCloud will not even consider fair use in making decisions about whether or not to take down content, and how that’s harming journalism…

• Every day thousand of Internet subscribers receive a piracy warning from their Internet provider. Increasingly, these notifications also include a settlement request ranging from $20 to hundreds of dollars. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, ISPs should protect their customers from these invasive tactics.

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