● 05.27.15

● Links 27/5/2015: Fedora 22 is Out, Mandriva Liquidated

Posted in News Roundup at 5:04 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Today we are releasing a research paper about a malware family that primarily targets Linux-based consumer routers but that can infect other Linux-based embedded systems in its path: Dissecting Linux/Moose. This blog post will summarize a few elements of the full report.

• Why should you be lugging around a bulky PC when you can get a decent computing power in a box no wider than 5 inch or a stick as big (or small) as the Chromecast?

• Linux has become a dominant force in the consumer space, thanks to Google’s Chrome OS and Android. While both Android and Chrome OS are Linux-based distributions, they can’t run a majority of applications written for the traditional Linux-based distributions such openSUSE, Fedora or Ubuntu.

• An $89, peer-to-peer “Brease” private file server on Kickstarter features four USB 3.0 ports, a GbE port, 256-bit AES, mobile support, and media streaming.

• Dutch startup Brease is more than halfway to a $90,000 Kickstarter funding goal for the Brease private file server. Packages are available through June 16, starting at $89, or $119 for the functionally identical Black Thunder Edition, both of which ship in Feb. 2016. An internally identical anodized aluminum Onyx Edition goes for $199, but ships in Dec. 2015.

Desktop

• ‘Resist gratification’, says super-GNU-man freedom fighter

• Croatia is gaining in usage of GNU/Linux. That TFA was written shows the awareness of a lack of availability of IT. All that is needed to bridge the digital divide is for Croatian schools to catch up with and to exceed the rest of society in using GNU/Linux, the right way to do IT in education. Croatia needs to treble its IT in schools. That isn’t going to happen with Wintel. With FLOSS it is possible and can be done within a few years for no extra expenditure. With a little extra effort the change can be done in two years.

• Gartner researchers report that worldwide Chromebook sales are set to reach 7.3 million units in 2015, a 27 percent jump from the 5.7 million units sold last year.

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

• While many Linux desktops using the open-source Mesa graphics drivers are shipping with OpenGL ES 1.x/2.x support, this mobile/embedded version of OpenGL isn’t enabled by default within Mesa.

• Intel developers in particular have been trying to wrap-up OpenGL ES 3.1 support within Mesa. That work is getting closer to finally being realized.

• Intel developers have been working hard on GLES 3.1 enablement in Mesa but it didn’t make it for Mesa 10.6. As of writing this article, the outstanding OpenGL ES 3.1 extensions still needed to be finished for Mesa include ARB_arrays_of_arrays, ARB_compute_shader, ARB_framebuffer_no_attachments, ARB_shader_image_load_store, ARB_shader_image_size, and ARB_shader_storage_buffer_object. Most of these OpenGL extensions have been started but not yet completed.

Benchmarks

• Yesterday data access to LinuxBenchmarking.com was opened, the public results viewer to the immense amount of test data — primarily the Linux kernel, LLVM Clang, and GCC — collected on a daily basis within the new server room. Here’s some numbers behind it.

Applications

• APT (Advanced Package Tool) is the default package manager of Debian, Ubuntu and their derivative systems.

• APT (Advanced Package Tool), a set of core tools inside Debian that make it possible to install, remove, and keep applications up to date, is now at version 1.0.9.10 and it’s available for download.

• A few days ago the Scribus team quietly tagged Scribus 1.5.0 in SVN. This release is a preview / testing release, but it provides an interest look at the next stable release: 1.6.0. No release date or schedule is known for 1.6.0. For those uninformed, Scribus is an open-source desktop publishing suite.

Proprietary

• As you may know, Vivaldi is a Chromium-based open-source internet browser, built by the Opera founder. It did not reach a stable version yet, but it is already usable.

• On May 26, Opera Software, through Marcin Mitek, had the pleasure of announcing the immediate availability for download of a new development build of the upcoming Opera 31 web browser.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• The Humble Artifex Mundi Mobile Bundle has been released, and it incorporates a large number of games from the Artifex Mundi sp. z o.o. publisher. Despite the name of the collection that hints only at the mobile platform, almost all titles are also available for Linux users as well.

• Ride the Bullet is an action game developed and published on Steam by Jordan Sendar also received a Linux version and is now available for purchase.

• Audiosurf 2 is the sequel to the smash hit music game Audiosurf, and as the name suggests you do literally surf the music. The sequel is available day-1 on Linux thanks to having a build during the Early Access time.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• Xfce’s Power Manager was getting behind the times, but it has been updated and ported to GTK+ 3.14. As you can imagine, this is an important update, and it packs other changes as well.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• When I became interested in Linux and open source. I found Krita, it had everything that I needed for a digital painting. For me it is important to repeat that feeling like you paint using traditional materials.

• Today KDE releases a bugfix update to Plasma 5, versioned 5.3.1. Plasma 5.3 was released in January with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience.

• The KDE Community has just revealed that Plasma 5.3.1, the desktop for the KDE project, has been made available, and it comes with a large number of changes and various small fixes.

• Scott Kitterman exposed the email exchanges today of the Ubuntu Community Council informing Jonathan Riddell that due to his aggressive, confrontational behavior towards some within the Ubuntu community and Canonical, he should step away from “all positions of leadership in the Ubuntu Community for at least 12 months.” His leadership positions should be put aside for both Ubuntu and Kubuntu while he would be able to keep his upload/commit rights and still participate as a member of the Ubuntu community.

• So this has just happened. Scott Kitterman, a Debian developer and member of the Kubuntu Council, has decided to make public some emails where it would appear that members of the Ubuntu Community Council ask Jonathan Riddell to step down from his position as a Kubuntu Project leader.

• I’d like to thank all the Kubuntu members who just voted to re-affirm me on the Kubuntu Council.

• Scott Kitterman’s blog post has a juicy details of the unprecedented and astonishing move by the Ubuntu Community Council asking me to step down as Kubuntu leader. I’ve never claimed to be a leader and never used or been given any such title so it’s a strange request without foundation and without following the normal channels documented of consultation or Code of Conduct reference.

• Here is all that we have to share in terms of background information. The Ubuntu governance goals demand that “Decisions regarding the Ubuntu distribution and community are taken in a fair and transparent fashion”. To that end, here is all the correspondence between the Ubuntu Community Council (UCC) and the Kubuntu Council (KC). In this post, I am, on behalf of the KC, merely trying to provide data.

• Friction between the lead Kubuntu developer Jonathan Riddell and Ubuntu reached extreme temperatures on Monday when the Ubuntu Community Council (UCC) asked Riddell to step down from the position of Kubuntu Leader.

• While Qt 5 has so many compelling advantages over Qt4, for those still running the older version of the Norwegian toolkit, version 4.8.7 of Qt4 is now available and it ships with tons of changes.

• I am happy to announce release of Qt 4.8.7 today bringing over 150 improvements and bug fixes. Qt 4.8.7 provides important security updates, better support for Mac OS X 10.10 and many requested error corrections. As a patch release, it does not add new functionality and maintains full compatibility with previous Qt 4.8.x releases.

• On May 26, the Qt Company, through Tuukka Turunen, had the great pleasure of announcing the immediate availability for download of the seventh maintenance release of Qt 4.8.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• The GNOME developers are hard at work these days to release the second milestone for the upcoming GNOME 3.18 desktop environment, which will see the light of day on September 23, 2015.

• The GNOME developers are hard at work these days to release the second milestone for the upcoming GNOME 3.18 desktop environment, which will see the light of day on September 23, 2015.

• The GNOME Project released version 3.17.2 of Disks, better known as GNOME Disk Utility. This utility contains several significant improvements and new features, for example D-Bus is now activatable and the appearance of the volume grid has been refined.

Distributions

• Every time a new, promising GNU/Linux distribution is announced, the community is on fire testing, helping, and contributing to make it the best ever, the next-gen, everything they’ve ever dreamed of.

• Penetration testing gurus Offensive Security have made their popular Kali operating system available for Docker-addicted system administrators.

• Developer Mati Aharoni acted on a request from a user who asked for a Dockerised image of the Kali penetration testing system platform.

• “Last week we received an email from a fellow penetration tester, requesting official Kali Linux Docker images that he could use for his work,” Aharoni says.

New Releases

• We are pleased to announce Alpine Linux 3.2.0, the first release in v3.2 stable series.

• This release is built with musl libc and is not compatible with v2.x and earlier, so special care needs to be taken when upgrading.

• Natanael Copa has been happy to announce today, May 26, the immediate availability for download of the Alpine Linux 3.2.0 operating system, which includes several attractive new features.

• Steven Shiau, the creator of the Clonezilla Live and GParted Live projects, has made available a new version of the GParted Live distro, as announced on May 26 by Curtis Gedak.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

• An anonymous reader has pointed out that Mandriva is currently being liquidated (page in French). The company brought in €553,000 in 2013, but that is seemingly not enough to keep it going in 2015. It is a sad end for a company that has been pursuing the desktop Linux dream since 1998.

• I think that it is sad that the Mandriva star twinkles no more in the OS universe, but it is good that other distros can continue with its legacy: Mageia, OpenMandriva Lx and, up to a certain extent, PCLinuxOS.

• Mandriva, a French purveyor of desktop Linux, is being wound up, after becoming totally incapable of supporting usual performance (TITSUP), financially at least.

• The liquidation notice suggests the company’s 2013 was around €600,000 and that the company has between 10 and 19 staff.

• It is with sadness in our hearts that we inform you today, May 27, about the termination of the French Mandriva company, which is currently in the process of being liquidated, according to a notice posted on the societe.com website.

• It also had some success in Malaysia.

• But by 2012, the company was on the brink of bankruptcy, a situation that had happened several times since its early days, in 1998.

• It was saved for a few more years by Jean-Manuel Croset, who joined as COO in 2011 and soon after became CEO.

Ballnux/SUSE

• SUSE, the well-known Linux company, may not have the OpenStack cloud reputation of rivals Canonical, Red Hat, and Mirantis, but it offers one thing that no one else does: It’s public-cloud agnostic.

Red Hat Family

• Red Hat is letting another one of their developers focus on improvements to Nouveau, the open-source NVIDIA Linux graphics driver.

• Red Hat has announced Cloud Suite for Applications, an accelerated way to develop, deploy, and manage applications at scale using open source technologies. The new cloud offering helps enterprises reduce silos and enable more efficient OpenStack cloud deployments. Through the platform, Red Hat is offering IaaS, PaaS and management in an open environment, supported by Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the ability to leverage certified hardware of choice.

• The open organization trumps the traditional corporate structure because it is about putting innovation first, says Jim Whitehurst, author of ‘The Open Organization’ as well as the CEO of Red Hat.

Fedora

• You can now download the Fedora 22 Linux operating system ahead of the official announcement, which will be published on the Fedora Project website later today.

• Quite a few people are going to be installing Fedora 22 in the coming days, searching for things in the software center and not finding what they want. This is because some applications still don’t ship AppData files, which have become compulsory for this release. So far, over 53% of applications shipped in Fedora ship the required software center metadata, up from the original 12% in Fedora 21. If you don’t like this, you can either use dnf to install the package on the command line, or set gsettings set org.gnome.software require-appdata false. If you want to see your application in the software center in the future, please file a bug either upstream or downstream (I’ve already filed a lot of upstream bugs) or even better write the metadata and get it installed either upstream tarball or downstream in the Fedora package. Most upstream and downstream maintainers have shipped the extra software center information, but some others might need a little reminder about it from users.

• The Fedora project has announced that Fedora 22 is finally available for download for all the new flavors, Workstation, Server, and Cloud.

• Fedora 22 Workstation was released today and it ships with the latest stable GNOME 3.16, a new default package manager and other interesting changes. Let’s take a look at what’s new!

• We started not long time ago, just a few days after F22 Beta release and it was challenging to finish all the work for these websites, collect informations from Spin SIGs, get legal approval, make new translation resources and and and.

• If you didn’t notice, Fedora 22 was released today. Today I refreshed the Fedora 22 OS Template I made for OpenVZ and uploaded it to contrib. For fun, I thought I’d build a MATE Desktop GUI container right in front of your eyes… and then connect to it via x2go. Enjoy!

• Red Hat’s new Fedora Linux comes with a better desktop, but the real improvements are in the cloud and server updates.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• The development for Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) is moving forwards and developers have already added some packages from the GNOME 3.16 stack, which will make quite a few users happy.

• From the creator of the RemasterOS Linux and K-Mint Linux distributions, we’re introducing you today to the Black GNOME Linux distro, based on the latest Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS (Trusty Tahr) operating system.

• UBUNTU creator Mark Shuttleworth issued a call to arms this month to developers of all Linux desktop environments to work together to bring their applications to a converged platform that will run Ubuntu on phones, tablets and PCs.

• In a video address to kickoff the Ubunt Online Summit, Shuttleworth said convergence was rapidly transforming personal computing.

• Mark Shuttleworth thinks the only way private clouds can compete in the long run with public clouds is with by offering similar pricing.

• Ubuntu Edge was the superphone from Canonical that never raised the money it needed to become a reality, and the community is still asking about it, two years later. The truth of the matter is that not making the Ubuntu Edge phone is probably the biggest mistake the company ever made.

• Canonical has added some of the GNOME 3.16 packages in their Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf system, but the changes will not be spotted by the regular user.

• The problem is not with the updated applications, but with an upgraded GTK version, which may really affect the system. Before implementing apps by default, Canonical patches them to work well with Unity, basic on the philosophy that an app that works well does not need to get updated.

• So instead of hurling insults at the confused penguin nestlings, I have decided to help by giving you my own guide on how to make Ubuntu beautiful. Please note there are many ways to do this, this is just my way and because I detest the Dock-style launchers (bottom of the screen) do not ask me about them.If I wanted a Mac I would buy a Mac and use their Docking feature. Who am I kidding here, If I wanted a Mac, I would not be able to afford a Mac.

Flavours and Variants

• Here’s the problem. For the last couple of years or so we’ve been using Mint’s Xfce edition of Maya (that would be version 13 for those who read the box scores) on nearly all of the machines here at FOSS Force. As Maya will be supported until 2017, we had absolutely no plans to make any upgrades until then, as taking time out for the tedious process of upgrading our machines isn’t one of my favorite things to do — and I’m the one who’d be doing the upgrading.

Devices/Embedded

• Faytech’s “FTA20″ SBC runs Linux or Android on an Allwinner A20, and offers I/O including HDMI, VGA, LVDS, GbE, and WiFi, with optional Bluetooth and GPS.

• The FTA20 is the second generation SBC for Shenzhen-based display vendor Faytech, which offers capacitive touchscreens ranging up to 21.5 inches for the SBC. Unlike the many Allwinner A20 SBCs designed for the hacker community, the FTA20 offers a wider variety of standard and optional features, and is designed for industrial use.

Phones

• After its $25 phones fail to dent the dominance of Google and Apple, the Firefox backer will try to compete using technological superiority — and maybe by adding key Android apps, too.

Android

• Do any of the following scenarios apply to you? A – you have a few hundred apps installed, and managing them is an absolute nightmare, but you don’t want to let go of any. B – you used Spotlight on iOS once, and kind of liked it better than using Google search on Android. If the answer’s yes, give App Search Plus a try. Its feature list is just this one little thing – “really fast app search”.

• Google I/O 2015 is likely to see plenty of updates and some new releases, with Android, Chrome and the Internet of Things the likely stars

• It’s likely Android M will be shown off but not actually launch yet. That’s OK, there are plenty of improvements to see for both Android and Chrome in the coming months.

• Announced almost exactly one year ago, Android Auto is Google’s attempt to bring the smartphone’s capabilities to a car while minimizing driver distraction. The system has been available on third-party navigation systems since earlier this year, but starting today, it is available for the first time in a production vehicle, the 2015 Hyundai Sonata. Dealers will be able to update Sonatas equipped with the optional navigation and tech package with Android Auto starting today, while owners will be able to perform the update themselves later this summer.

• The Apple Watch is, despite its many talents, a watch first and foremost. Rival Android Wear watches, which made a debut last year, are still frustrating wrist-top computers that happen to tell the time.

• Samsung has been thinking up new ways to transform smartphones into laptops. In a patent application filed last week, first spotted by Patently Mobile, Samsung describes a mobile device that runs Android and is able to switch over to Windows when inserted into a dock. Individually, these ideas aren’t new — dual-OS devices and docking smartphones have been tried a number of times over the past several years — but they haven’t been put together in a particularly straightforward way. Of course, this is only a patent application, so there’s no guarantee that Samsung will actually make it.

• The Nexus 5 Android 5.1.1 Lollipop update is currently rolling out to owners of the former flagship and today we want to take a initial look at how the update is performing on the Nexus 5. This is our early Nexus 5 Android 5.1.1 Lollipop review.

• In 2005, software engineer Hiroshi Lockheimer got a call from Andy Rubin, his former boss at Danger Research, the creator of the Sidekick (aka Hiptop), the first truly web-savvy smartphone. Rubin was now at Google, which had recently acquired his new startup. Lockheimer was working on Internet TV software for Microsoft, after stops at Palm and Good Technology.

• After a week cruising around with Android Auto, I’m convinced this is the future of in-dash technology. Taking the software design out of the hands of car makers and putting it in the hands of phone makers should have happened long ago.

Free Software/Open Source

• Open source innovation has not only revolutionized the software and biotech industries — it’s completely changed the way we think about creativity. To be derivative is now a form of being creative. That is, in order to do something new, we don’t have to build something new — we can use existing and emerging forms, made available through open access, and do something new with them. This promotes a democracy in the innovation game: with open source services, there is no discrimination against persons or groups or against fields or endeavors.

• Andrey Petrov spoke at a Sourcegraph open source meetup about lessons learned from his successes and failures creating open source projects.

• Designed by Christian Robinson, the Roboto font files were first released in 2011 under the Apache license. Now, the company is organizing the files and the font production toolchain into a fully realized open source project on Github.

SaaS/Big Data

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• The system works fine otherwise and can be accessed via ssh, but restarting kdm doesn’t help to fix it, it just changes the pattern. Anyway, as explaining a toddler he cannot watch his favourite youtube cartoons because suddenly the computer screen has become an abstract art work is not easy I quickly decided to downgrade.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Richard Stallman is the President of the Free Software Foundation and also the founder of GNU or GNU’s Not Unix! operating system that contains only free software. One of his constant claims is that GNU/Linux is a misnomer and that it shouldn’t be used. In fact, he’s now saying that the GNU operating system is often called Linux.

Openness/Sharing

• An EU-funded research project wants to find regulations and other obstacles that hinder digital Do-It-Yourself companies. A consortium of universities and research institutes in Manchester, Milan, London, Thessaloniki and other cities intends to help small enterprises benefit from digital DIY, help policy makers and prepare teachers and educators.

Open Data

• One of the themes at the AGIT 2015 conference will be Open Government and geo-data infrastructures. According to the organisers, the availability of standardised open government services has increased the importance of government geo-data infrastructures, taking the opportunities for using geo-information to a new level. Discussions will focus on questions like what value can be created by building a European ‘spatially-enabled society’ as part of the European knowledge society, and what are the challenges and prospects with regard to cloud computing.

• Despite pledges by the G7 and G20 to boost transparency by opening up government data, fewer than 8% of countries publish data sets in open formats and under open licences on public sector budgets, spending and contracts.

Open Hardware

• Hubble is an open source, mid-level laser cutter designed to be affordable, versatile, and hackable. Hubble was created to fill the current gap between amazing, entry-level projects, like MicroSlice, and the expensive, proprietary laser cutters on the market.

Programming

• As the number of applications and APIs connected in a cloud-driven world rises dramatically, it becomes a challenge to integrate them in an elegant way that will scale in terms of the clarity of architecture, run-time performance, complexity of processes the systems take part in, and the level of maintenance required to keep integrated environments operational.

Standards/Consortia

• Share-PSI workshops bring together government departments, universities and standards organisations to “identify what does and doesn’t work, what is and isn’t practical, what can and can’t be expected of different stakeholders”, the project website states.

Leftovers

Security

• However, it’s unusual to see PoS malware distributed through spam, like in the case of NitlovePOS, especially as part of a larger, indiscriminate campaign. This suggests that cybercriminals seek to exploit cases where employees use Windows-based PoS terminals to check their email or perform other risky activities.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• Now, there’s no actual evidence that any of this is anything more than deranged ranting, yet here we are: Millions of casual news observers who scrolled through western media this weekend came away thinking ISIS is plotting to acquire a nuclear bomb, kill the president and prostitute his wife.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• The amount of global e-waste — discarded electrical and electronic equipment — reached 41.8 million tonnes in 2014, according to a new United Nations University report.

Finance

• ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, Total and BP pour funding into projects to unlock oil reserves – despite scientists warning they will lead to climate change disaster

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• EU plans to regulate hormone-damaging chemicals found in pesticides have been dropped because of threats from the US that this would adversely affect negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), according to a report in The Guardian. Draft EU regulations would have banned 31 pesticides containing endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that have been linked to testicular cancer and male infertility.

• Just after the official launch of the TTIP negotiations on 13 June 2013, a US business delegation visited EU officials to demand that the proposed regulations governing EDCs should be thrown out in favour of a further “impact study.” Minutes of the meeting on June 26 show Commission officials saying that “although they want the TTIP to be successful, they would not like to be seen as lowering the EU standards.” Nonetheless, the European Commission capitulated shortly afterwards.

Privacy

• I was wrong. So was most of the media

• A group of 35 top academics have published an open letter calling on the UK government to ensure “the Rule of Law and the democratic process is respected as UK surveillance law is revised.” This comes in response to the UK government previously turning to draft “Codes of Practice” and “clarifying amendments” to extend its surveillance powers, rather than using primary legislation that is subject to full parliamentary and public debate. Interestingly, the letter includes signatories both for and against such extensions, working in the fields of law, media, policy, and technology.

Civil Rights

• The espionage trial of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian opened behind closed doors in Tehran on Tuesday, 10 months after he was arrested at his home in the Iranian capital.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• The negotiations on Net Neutrality comes to the end in June with next and probably final trialogue expected on 2nd of June. Until now, the different documents received from the negotiations1 have shown a very weak position of the Members of European Parliament (MEPs), abandoning the improvement on Net Neutrality that had been brought by the previous legislature. If the MEPs do not take this last chance to save Net Neutrality, it would have a critical impact on the way Internet is functioning, on the citizens’ fundamental rights and on further regulations adopted within the so-called Digital Single Market.

• At the 2014 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Jan Koum, chief executive of WhatsApp, made an announcement that would cause much unease 4,000 miles away in New Delhi. “We want to make sure people always have the ability to stay in touch with their friends and loved ones really affordably,” he said. “We’re going to introduce voice on WhatsApp in the second quarter of this year.”

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• A federal court in Oregon has signed off on a highly peculiar judgment against a Dallas Buyers Club pirate. Citing “financial hardship,” the woman doesn’t have to pay the $7,500 in costs and fees as long as she promises not to download any infringing material in the future, and removes any and all BitTorrent clients.

• Rightscorp, the piracy monetization company that works with Warner Bros. and other prominent copyright holders, goes to great lengths to reach allegedly pirating subscribers. The company offered Cox Communications a cut of the piracy settlements if they agreed to forward their notices, the ISP revealed in court.

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