08.28.09

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers
• Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

GNU/Linux

• Desktop

  • Saving Linux cash on Vista clunkers

    I wish there was an easy-to-use Windows-to-Linux desktop migration program, but the best of that lot, Versora Progression Desktop, has not been available since 2007, when Versora was bought out by Kaseya, an IT Managed Services Automation firm. While Kaseya promised that Versora’s functionality would still be available, I couldn’t find it any of Kaseya’s currently shipping products — and, in any case, Kaseya’s customers are businesses, not individual desktop Linux or Windows users. If there are any programmers out there who want an idea that could make a profitable little product, I think you could do well with a Windows to Linux migration tool.

  • Why Linux and open source matters for small businesses and schools

    Linux is adopted by many corporate companies and government institutions worldwide. Its use and desktop appearance is quite similar to Windows, thus easy to learn and use. Linux provides higher security, is less virus attacked (if at all), and more efficient in its use of hardware resources. Best of all, it is open source software and one can modify or adapt it to any purpose that suits one’s use and environment.

  • The big three operating systems

    Faster boot-up times are also on the agenda with Ubuntu team having said that they hope to achieve boot times of less than 20 seconds with the release of Ubuntu 9.10. And more recently developers laid out plans to reduce that to sub-10 seconds with the release following Karmic in April 2010. With those speeds users can certainly expect faster startup times in Karmic with more improvements to come.

• Education

  • Ask SIPB

    Most of these workstations run Debathena, a set of MIT extensions on top of the popular Ubuntu operating system. You can access everything provided in Ubuntu, as well as the various Athena services (files, printers, etc.) from any workstation. On these cluster machines, you are able to install any Ubuntu package for the duration of your login session.

  • How to Find Free Linux Ebooks and Courseware

    Like it or not, with Linux comes advocacy. There are a lot of people out there who like to spread the love in whatever ways they can. One nice side effect of this is the abundance of free Linux related information available to anyone. That’s good for us, as we’ll be covering just how to find all this great material.

  • 15 Great Ubuntu Tips For Linux Power Users

    A few days back I wrote about books that beginners can download and read to teach themselves Linux. Today in the Linux section we have something for the power users.

  • Learn Linux, 101: The Linux command line

• Applications

  • New Skype Linux Beta improves picture and sound quality

    After over a year of silence from Skype’s Linux developers since even a minor update to the Skype Linux client and over two years since the last major update was revealed, a new beta release of Skype for Linux has been made available.

  • qOrganizer: A personal organizer on Linux

    qOrganizer is a utility for Linux that helps you organize your daily stuff like, schedule, reminder, notes, to-dos etc. It has some good features for students to use as well like it provides them yo keep track of their timetable absence etc.

  • Scribus Desktop Publisher’s New Version is Much Improved

    Scribus also includes many improvements when working with PDF documents, including effects, transitions that you can add, and optional embedding of PDF and EPS files. I also appreciated the new Quick Start Guide, and Font Preview features.

• Kernel Space

  • VGA Arbitration Code Hits The X Server

    The VGA Arbiter is ready to enter the Linux 2.6.32 kernel in early September once the Linux 2.6.31 kernel is out the door and the merge window for 2.6.32 opens.

  • Fake Linux Torvalds Set For Web Vitriol Barrage

    According to Zemlin, Torvalds himself has given the go-ahead for the contest. Starting the week of Sept. 7, the public will be invited to vote for their favorite Fake Linus Torvalds. The identities of all four Fake Linus Torvalds will be revealed at LinuxCon, which will be held in Portland, Ore., from Sept. 21-23, and the top vote-getter will receive a ‘Silver Penguin’ award.

  • Linux 2.6.31 Kernel Is Ready With -RC8 Release

    The Linux 2.6.31 kernel brings ATI kernel mode-setting support for the R500 (Radeon X1000) graphics cards and earlier as a staging driver, TTM GPU memory management support as part of the ATI KMS push, adds support for USB 3.0, a performance counter subsystem, new hardware drivers, and other changes.

  • Kernel Improvements, Controversies Will Be Focus of Roundtable

    I think the next releases of GNOME and KDE are pushing us much farther along towards the leading edge here, and I’m interested to see what actually emerges as viable technology for the next generation of user interfaces.

• Desktop Environments

  • Quick look at KDE 4.3.0.

    Needless to say that there has been quite some code cleanup. Kwin and KDE 4.3.0 simply feels a lot more responsive and smoother than its predecessors.

  • Sticky Notes Part Deux

    For those interested in my previous post about LibStickyNotes, I made a plasmoid frontend that uses magic to communicate back and forth with a “source” application. The applet needs a bit more UI work but here is small preview.

• Graphics

  • Karmic: 1st Artwork Drop Brings Four New Themes & Two New Icon Sets

    ‘Breathe’ is a KDE-Oxygen spin off designed to “refresh” Ubuntu’s stock Human-tango theme.

  • Linux Format wallpapers [Updated]

    We’ve had a number of reader requests to make available some of the imagery we use in Linux Format magazine. Naturally we’re happy to share with you all, so we’ve put this page online where we’ll upload artwork as it’s requested.

  • Compiz 0.9 Finally Approaches, Beta Coming

    Compiz plug-ins are still being ported over to the Compiz++/Compiz 0.9+ architecture while other plug-ins in the process of being ported are not yet at a feature parity with where they were in Compiz 0.8 and earlier.

• Distributions

  • Linux Mint 7 “Gloria”: My new dual-boot

    I like Mint. I’ve liked it pretty regularly throughout all its iterations, despite the occasional annoyance (thumbnail loading). Version 7 is a solid distro that takes Ubuntu and improves upon it like a good spin-off should. I look forward to version 8.

    In closing, the best compliment I can give this distribution is that I’m running it. It now has the coveted one spare partition on my laptop. It wasn’t confined to a VM on a host environment and then summarily wiped like so many others. I stuck with it because it worked well for me. Perhaps it will do the same for some of you.

  • Gentoo

    • The Gentoo Foundation Board of Trustees Donate $500 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation in honor of the late Ferris E. McCormick, aka fmccor.

      His many contributions to the greater open source community will always be remembered as well as his generous friendship.

    • Podcast 62 Gentoo Developer Nathan Zachary | Warzone2100 review

      In this podcast we have the two Zach’s. The first Zach is one of weirdedout’s twin boys, Zachary, and he will tell us about one of his favorite games, Warzone2100. The second Zach is Nathan Zachary, Gentoo Developer.

  • Slackware

    • [Slackware 13.0 Released]

      Slackware 13.0 brings many updates and enhancements, among which you’ll find two of the most advanced desktop environments available today: Xfce 4.6.1, a fast and lightweight but visually appealing and easy to use desktop environment, and KDE 4.2.4, a recent stable release of the new 4.2.x series of the award-winning K Desktop Environment. We continue to make use of HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) which allows the system administrator to grant use of various hardware devices according to users’ group membership so that they will be able to use items such as USB flash sticks, USB cameras that appear like USB storage, portable hard drives, CD and DVD media, MP3 players, and more, all without requiring sudo, the mount or umount command. Just plug and play. Properly set up, Slackware’s desktop should be suitable for any level of Linux experience.

    • Vector Linux – An interesting choice

      Vector is definitely a very interesting choice. It has a long and exhausting installation, but once you get past that stage, you’ll start enjoying a well laid out desktop, provided you login in the default Xfce session. The desktop will offer you a wide range of useful programs across many categories. You’ll also be able to enjoy multimedia without any extra effort. It will also run quite fast. If you like simple eye candy, it can do that, too, rather well.

  • Ubunu

    • 10 New Features/Changes In Karmic You May Not Know About…

      Below is a list of 10 features and changes in Ubuntu 9.10 that you may not already know about… Or even be expecting!

    • Ubuntu 9.10 Gets A New Splash Screen, Not Plymouth

      Introduced last year with Fedora 10 was Plymouth, a project to replace the aging Red Hat Graphical Boot (RHGB) software. From the start, Plymouth leveraged kernel mode-setting to provide a flicker-free boot process and a splash screen that would run at the panel’s native resolution. Beyond using KMS, Red Hat designed a nice plug-in architecture for Plymouth to offer different functionality and make it easy to add in new artwork.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Sharp’s 5-inch PC-Z1 NetWalker honors Zaurus legacy with touchscreen Ubuntu

    Now Sharp makes it official with the launch of this 5-inch, 1024 x600 TFT LCD touchscreen NetWalker smartbook, aka the PC-Z1. It’s not a Zaurus per se, but the compact 161.4 x 108.7 x 19.7 ~ 24.8mm / 409g device certainly resurrects its ghost. Underpinning the device is an 800MHz Freescale i.MX515 CPU built around the ARM Cortex-A8 architecture, 512MB of memory, 4GB of on-board flash storage (with microSDHC expansion for another 16GB), 802.11b/g WiFi, 2x USB, and QWERTY keyboard going 68 percent of full-size.

  • PC-Z1: Sharp’s Ubuntu-powered, touchscreen “Mobile Internet Tool”

  • Sharp spins Ubuntu-based palmtop

  • Linux POS (Point of Sale) Solutions: Volante POS Systems Exceeds Expectations At The Amway Grand Plaza Hotel

    When the AAA four diamond Amway Grand Plaza Hotel decided to upgrade their point of sale system, they tapped Toronto based hospitality software company Volante POS Systems to do the job. The result was an extensive point of sale installation throughout the hotel and adjoining convention center, one that is fully customizable to the Amway Grand’s current and future needs. The entire system runs on a Linux platform, and adds a new market segment to Volante’s growing roster of hospitality POS clients.

  • Linux to Remain in Older Model PS3s

    With Linux install getting the boot from the slimline PS3, you might have been concerned that Sony would pull a fast one and make the functionality disappear from older systems via a firmware update.

  • Phones

    • Why Sprint Should Be Giving Away The Palm Pre For Free

      There was plenty of hype around the launch of the Palm Pre, which by all accounts is a pretty damn good phone (I’ve played around with it, and like it). However, Palm and Sprint made two huge mistakes in marketing it. First, they didn’t have a really well-developed developer community building apps for it, so the app store is pretty weak. Apple did this with the iPhone when it launched (and we dinged them at the time as well), but Apple got away with it for two reasons: Apple is leading the field in such smartphones, and it’s Apple, who seems able to bring developers to the table with cultish enthusiasm and loyalty.

    • Nokia’s First Linux Phone Looks Good

      After several unofficial leaks, Nokia on Thursday officially unveiled the N900, the company’s first Linux phone. It’s a good first step to rejuvenate Nokia’s smartphone line, but will the N900 have what it takes to go head-to-head with the iPhone and Android Phones?

    • Android

      • Mot Android phone(s) may debut on Sept. 10

        Motorola has sent out “save-the-date” notices for an Android-themed press event on Sept. 10 that is likely to see the announcement of the company’s first two Android phones, says eWEEK. The manufacturer is expected to announce a “Sholes” smartphone, destined for Verizon Wireless and/or a “Morrison” model, headed for T-Mobile, says the story.

      • Android demo’d on MIPS-driven 1080p display

        MIPS Technologies announced two more video-oriented system-on-chip vendor partners who will use its MIPS-architecture Android implementation, developed by Embedded Alley. Sigma Designs is demonstrating an Android- and MIPS-based set-top box (STB) prototype displaying 1080p video, and ALi Corp. announced it is also joining MIPS’ Android partner program.

Free Software/Open Source

• Issue #2 of of Opensourc3 magazine is available [PDF]

• OpenOffice 3.1.1 Available – Praise, and a Small Gripe

  I know that OpenOffice is a great thing. I use it all the time. My kids use it. I try to get all my customers, not having a current product to do ‘office-like’ things, to download it, or I download it and set it up for them.

• Open source: More than just a cheap date

  It’s not surprising that enterprise IT would be looking to lighten its software cost burden. Proprietary software vendors derive an ever-growing chunk of their revenue from software maintenance fees, a “boondoggle” for vendors, according to CMS Watch, which fattens vendor coffers while providing minimal value to customers.

• Closed source isn’t immoral if…

  It’s not so much a problem that people use closed nvidia drivers or flash-nonfree. It’s a problem that people do not understand closed nature limitations and do not have the will or method to support the creation or further development of the free alternatives. We may not be able to have the free alternative right now, but that doesn’t mean we should stop fighting for it, but at the same time it doesn’t mean we should stop using the closed solution.

• OpenWaters: How area businesses and government can profit from open source software

  Please join us on September 18, 2009 for Open Waters. This one-day event will help area business people, government and military leaders, and students better understand the fast-growing phenomenon of open source software.

• IT, a key business enabler in the downturn

  As a pioneer in the development and use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), we are a strong contributor to the Open Source movement, and have been utilising Open Source widely to provide our clients with more optimal solutions.

  We have a proven track record in contributing to the Open Source R&D, including significant contributions to projects such as Apache Web Services, OpenBRR, and Sahana Disaster Management project. Our support to projects such as Sahana has been part of our sustainability initiatives, which focus on making an impact in humanitarian and educational areas thereby helping to create a more digitally-inclusive society.

  Internally, we have developed solutions based on Open Source software including a custom-built software configuration management solution. We were able to save significant costs on licensing fee and acquisition costs, by adopting the Open Source software for developing the solution.

• Is forking good for open-source software?

  Forking can be good, and in many cases has allowed projects that were stalled to go on to bigger and better things. In some cases, the new project has actually been eventually folded back into and replaced the original project, the most notable being the GNU C Compiler (gcc), which was forked as the EGCS project and then folded back in.

• Five years of introducing students to open source

  We’ve just concluded our fifth Google Summer of Code, our flagship global program to introduce college and university students to open source development. Once again, the results this year have been impressive. Nearly 2,000 mentors from 64 countries participated in the program.

• Broadcast

  • Secure VoIP, GNU SIP Witch, and replacing Skype with free software

    For a number of years I have been working when possible on what is called the GNU Telephony Secure Calling initiative. The GNU Telephony Secure Calling initiative was itself originally formed specifically to make passive voice communication intercept a thing of the past using free software and public standards, and came out of ideas from and work of the New York City civil liberties community and New York Fair Use in the early part of this decade.

  • Dim Dim: Web conferencing turns open source

    Available as an open source software, Dim Dim is flexible. It can be extended and improved freely. Users can change the logo or the user interface if they wish to. Although there are a lot of players in this space, very few provide free and easy to use web conferencing services. Initially the company was called Communiva. The journey from Communiva to Dim Dim was a fraction of a day. Since Communiva was not such an easy to recall name, the founders chose 18,000 domain names and promised themselves that they would not leave the meeting without finalizing on one. To make the task easier, they set five rules, which were: the dotcom domain name must be available, it should be an easy to remember and an international name and the sound and spelling of the name must translate without ambiguity to its spelling and pronunciation, respectively. Dim Dim was the only name that met these rules.

  • GSM to feel the heat from open source project

    The announcement of a new project to attack the A5/1 GSM encryption standard could spell trouble in the mid-term for mobile phone network security. As well as normal telephone conversations, this would also allow text messages to be read, not just by state agencies with specialist equipment (for whom it is already a matter of course), but by anyone with the right equipment, costing just 1,000 euros. This would undermine the whole basis of the mobile banking security structure, which uses GSM to transfer mobile TANs for validating online transfers.

  • Halfway Through A Bad Year

    Open Source gets on the board: Allan concurs with John Malone of Eastern Management Group that open source PBXs, including but not limited to Digium/Asterisk, are becoming a significant element in the market.

• Mozilla

  • Five Features We Want to See in Firefox

    We know the folks at Mozilla are already working on this one, but when Google introduced Chrome and showed us how it isolated each tab as a separate process so that a bum tab wouldn’t crash the entire browser, and how you can see how much memory each tab is using, they left Firefox (and every other browser) in the dust on this one—meaning we probably won’t see content processes in Firefox for at least a year. Bummer.

  • Getting to Know Snowl: Following Online Discussions

    What does the next-generation feed-reader look like? Probably a lot like Snowl, a project out of Mozilla Labs that bills itself as a tool to follow and participate in online discussions. We take a look at early release of Snowl to see how it’s coming along. It’s not perfect yet, but the long term future for Snowl looks good.

  • fear of the awesomebar overblown

    As of this week, 94% of Firefox active daily users are on Firefox 3 and Firefox 3.5.

    (I don’t have absolute user numbers for other browsers, but usage is a reasonable proxy here and if you look at Safari, they still have about 16% of their usage coming from two versions or more behind the current release. If you look at the other browser with a significant number of users, IE, a whopping 37% of that share is two versions or more behind.)

  • Murphy’s Law: Mozilla Crowdsources Open Source

    TestSwarm was developed by one of the Mozilla Foundation’s JavaScript Tool Developers, John Resig, to deal with the scalability issues that factor into JavaScript code testing. To Resig, the proper testing platform includes at least five different browsers split into 12 total versions per operating system. Although he doesn’t go into this length in his example, you should triple that number to factor in the Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 operating environments.

• Government

  • Software development course due

    The East African Centre for Open Source (EACOS) is to host the first East African regional training on business and open sourcing in Kampala.

  • Finding government apps in Europe’s open source forges

    Starting on Monday 24 August 2009, the visitors of OSOR.EU, the Open Source Observatory and Repository for European public administrations, can search for applications among the 1749 open source development projects that are currently hosted on ten development websites provided by national and regional public administrations in Austria, France, Italy and Spain.

  • Programmers to swarm NHIN code in D.C. meet-up

    Code-a-thons are common among open source communities, letting programmers meet face-to-face to collaborate on high priority goals, according to Fred Trotter, an open source consultant and advocate for Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in healthcare. The events let developers partner in person – sometimes for the first time – as they often work in different cities or continents.

• Operating Systems

  • Living The PC-BSD Lifestyle

    Sitting next to my 47” Westinghouse LCD TV is the iXsystems Apollo Workstation. This workstation is powered by the 5500 series of the Intel® Xeon® processor, an Asus GeForce 9800 GT video card, and 4 gigs of RAM. It came with PC-BSD Galileo Edition (7.1) pre-installed and a handful of applications that immediately increased my quality of life tenfold.

  • Robots to Get Open Source Operating System

    Right now, ROS exists mainly as packages of software code on sourceforge.

• Openness

  • Hacking the NXT With LEGO’s Blessing

    Fortunately there are still a lot of options to choose from. Many open source, some free but closed source, and a few commercial options await our trials. I won’t go into detail about each, but I’ll summarize what I’ve found so far and save specifics for later posts.

  • Open source revolution at Sony

    The what seems to be an attempt by Sony to regain market share by embracing open source across the board. Anyone ready to root for the Japanese?

  • Research Trove: Patients’ Online Data

    Supporters of this model — sometimes called crowd-sourcing or open-source research — call it democratization of research and say they are pioneering new models that put patients in control of their data and build bridges between researchers, patients and their doctors. They say these methods are far cheaper and faster than traditional research, which has high start-up costs and relies heavily on clinicians.

  • Eco-Curious: Open Source Carmaker to Build Electric Car Inspired By S.F.

    That said, the crowdsourced vehicle provides S.F. with a lot more than just zero emissions. The car would provide local jobs. Unlike an hecho en Mexico Volkswagen, LocalMotors would build and assemble the car right here in S.F.

Leftovers

• Unchain the Office Computers!

  During a town hall meeting for State Department workers last month, an employee named Jim Finkle asked Hillary Clinton a very important question: “Can you please let the staff use an alternative Web browser called Firefox?” The room erupted in cheers. Finkle explained that he’d previously worked at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, where everyone enjoyed Firefox. “So I don’t understand why State can’t use it,” he said. “It’s a much safer program.”

• Canucks crack whip on Facebook privacy

  Facebook has vowed to overhaul how personal information is shared with third-party applications after Canada’s privacy Czar scolded the social website for its promiscuous policies.

• Sun-Oracle

  • Speculation Abounds as Sun-Oracle Wedding Day Nears

    Oracle’s (NASDAQ: ORCL) acquisition of Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) could close soon if the EU signs off on the deal next week — but what happens after that is anyone’s guess.

  • Eating, Smashing, and Mixing

    The Oracle/Sun takeover is in the news. It was reported that the Justice Department gave the acquisition the go ahead. Of course the powers that be must check things over, but most people will tell you when you are up to you chest in water, it might be time to sell the boat. I say this with some sorrow. I hate to see companies that contribute go by the way side. I am not saying Oracle does not contribute, but things will be different without Sun.

• AstroTurf

  • Faceless Coal

    The Adfero Group states on its website that it specialises in developing strategies for clients to “influence policymakers and shape legislation or regulations at the federal, state and local levels”. An environmental group that watchdogs the coal industry, Appalachian Voices, notes that “all of the “FACES” of coal are actually just istockphotos. They couldn’t even get real photos of their supporters.”

  • BPA industry fights back

    Public relations blitz takes cue from tobacco companies’ past tactics

  • Malawi’s child tobacco labourers suffer nicotine poisoning

    Multinational tobacco companies are coming under pressure today for their policy of buying tobacco from farms that exploit children.

    An international study has revealed that children working in Malawi’s tobacco fields are absorbing up a huge amount of nicotine, the equivalent to smoking 50 cigarettes a day.

    Some of these children are less than five and they work for less than 2 cents an hour in oppressive conditions.

• Censorship/Web Abuse

  • States Waking Up To AT&T, Verizon ‘Franchise Reform’ Con

    In AT&T’s home state of Texas “reform” was passed quickly, but locals have noticed no savings, and a commission tasked with studying whether the bill actually helped consumers has mysteriously disappeared after the fact.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Isohunt judge says MPAA has yet to prove direct infringment

    BitTorrent search engines, The Pirate Bay, was brought up on criminal misconduct charges and TorrentSpy’s case was decided on a discovery sanction. Some of the issues in the Usenet.com case closely resemble Isohunt and TorrentSpy’s, although the company is not a BitTorrent tracker or search engine.

    Usenet.com is a company that enabled users to access the Usenet network and it too lost on a discovery sanction.

  • US Gov’t Briefing For All Employees: All Music Downloads Are Stolen, Risky

    Now, to be fair, it’s rather obvious that the briefing is designed to keep gov’t employees from using file sharing programs and potentially exposing confidential gov’t documents via file sharing. And that’s reasonable. But why not be accurate and honest about it? Lying about it makes no sense.

  • Are rights holders seeding files to sue downloaders?

    A German software developer is alleging that a company hired by rights holders to hunt down file sharers actually helped to seed the file he eventually got sued for, according to a report from heise.de.

  • 10th Cir.: Court reporters do not own a copyright in the transcripts that they prepare

    The City and the court reporter complained to the district court and, after the case settled, the district court ordered the plaintiff’s counsel to pay the reporter a little over four thousand dollars. The attorney for the plaintiffs appealed in his individual capacity.