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● 07.18.12

● Links 18/7/2012: KDE Workspaces 4.9, Raspbian

Posted in News Roundup at 7:22 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

=> ↺ What Large Brazilian Organizations Thinks of GNU/Linux

• A large retail chain, Casas Bahia, with 53K employees and $billions in revenue (2008) ran Suse GNU/Linux on mainframes and POS (point-of-sale) systems with zero failures in five years giving real-time information on every transaction with security.

=> ↺ Motoring on Linux

• Years ago, an old friend of mine remarked that if his car was controlled by the Windows operating system, it would take him ages to get anywhere.

• He reached this conclusion after spending many mornings downloading updates to his Windows-based system and then rebooting it before he could start work. From this, he surmised that if such Windows software was used to control the electronic systems in his car, he would spend an equal amount of time in the driver’s seat waiting for updates before he could even put his key in the ignition.

• My friend, of course, was a complete and utter technical Luddite — one of those chaps that would rather have lived in the age of steam where at least he would have some vague notion about how large amounts of very hot water could be used to propel vehicles along a track.

=> ↺ Softly on a budget

• The primary freeware photo-editing option on a Linux system is the ”ugly and cranky” GIMP.

• MICROSOFT is about to drop Windows 8 on us and Apple has an operating system update coming soon. They will cost money. And do we need them? What if you could get all the photo-editing and other essential software absolutely free? Well, good news – you can.

• Linux, the open-source operating system, has come of age. Not so long ago it was too geekily intimidating for the average mortal to even consider as an alternative to the big two, but the latest versions are not much harder to use than Windows or OS X.

=> ↺ Linux distributions that can run on an MK802 Mini PC

• The MK802 is a tiny computer that looks like a USB flash drive, and which ships with Google Android 4.0 and sells for around $80 or less. It’s designed to be something you can plug into a TV to surf the web, watch video, and play games on the big screen.

Desktop

=> ↺ Dell Gives Linux Laptops Another Chance

• Today Dell announced its official re-entry into the Linux laptop market. Project Sputnik, first announced in May, is graduating from Dell’s internal incubator program into a real product. According to project lead Barton Geroge, Dell will sell a special “developer edition” of its XPS13 Ultrabook starting this fall.

• The laptop will come pre-loaded with Ubuntu, a user friendly distribution of the open source operating system Linux (or GNU/Linux to purists). George said the laptop won’t be able to dual boot Windows. But Dell made available an Ubuntu install image customized for the XPS13, so you could buy the Windows version and install Ubuntu yourself if you require dual booting. George says the developer version will be the high end configuration of the XPS13, with 4GB of RAM, an Intel Core i7 processor and a 256GB solid state hard drive. This model currently sells for $1,499, and George says the Linux version will sell for a little bit less than the Windows version.

=> ↺ Fail Client: How Linux Fails At The Corporate Desktop

• My work takes me in and out of busy offices all day long. I see Macs, I see PCs, I see servers and printers. I see PCs running Windows which is no surprise, but what I never see are PCs running Linux. “Why is this?” I always ask myself. I mean, the benefits of open source far outweigh the risks and from an administrative viewpoint, the OS is a lot easier to manage. So what is it that is holding Linux back? It’s not spreadsheets and documents –word files and excel files can be easily handled in LibreOffice– nor is it Access/database related as you can get KEXI running in no time. No, I will tell you what is holding Linux back and the answer is simple. Outlook.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ The Best Features Of The Linux 3.5 Kernel

=> ↺ Profiles in Linux: H. Peter Anvin

• Every time you boot a CD or DVD, thank Peter Anvin for making it possible. And, as a key Linux contributor that’s not all Peter has done in his long Linux career.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ Gallium3D’s LLVMpipe Now Handles Wider Registers

=> ↺ AMD Radeon R600g Gallium3D: Mesa 8.0.4 vs. 8.1 Git

• With Mesa 8.1 set to be released next month, here are some benchmarks comparing the Git performance of Mesa 8.0.4 to Mesa 8.1-devel for several generations of Radeon graphics cards. In this article the R600g Gallium3D driver is being put under the microscope while other articles in the coming days will look at the Intel i965 DRI driver, ATI R300g Gallium3D for the older Radeon GPUs, and the Nouveau Gallium3D driver.

Applications

=> ↺ Shotwell Faces Tool: Weekly Report 07 & 08

• This last two weeks I’ve continued the work on the test suite, adding face recognition using Philipp Wagner’s FaceRecognizer class and some scripts to help doing the testing. I’ve also wrote the instructions to use all those tiny programs at [1] —it could be incomplete, please ask whatever you need

• This face recognition thing seems to be more about collect people faces to make a decent and realistic database to train the face recognition model and then try to recognize this same people in other photos. There is really few code to show: Since I discover, read and understand the new OpenCV FaceRecognizer class [2], the written code is really simple [a] —in fact, the main task of this last two weeks has been mainly to do tests, trying to make a decent faces-database of my friends to improve the results I’m getting from my tests: About 30% of accuracy recognizing people —in the articles I’ve read there are people talking about more accuracy, but such accuracy seems to be not so real, because they use face-databases like the one at [3], and we can’t expect Shotwell users making that kind of photos.

=> ↺ Information Grows Strong Roots With TreeLine

• Part of what makes TreeLine such an easy information organization tool is its tree structure. It lets you configure the note-entering process to fit a variety of informational types. So you do not have to shoehorn information into a make-do mess. TreeLine may take some effort to learn to use at 100 percent effectiveness, but once you do, it will be worth the effort.

Proprietary

=> ↺ Nero CD/DVD Burning Software On Linux Is Dead

• As was raised earlier today within the Phoronix Forums, the Nero CD/DVD burning software for Linux is dead.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Read News Offline With Lightread

=> ↺ Now Tweet Music Tracks And Listen To Your Friends’ Music With Amarok

=> ↺ PAFM: No-Frills Web-Based File Manager

=> ↺ How to Watch Netflix on Linux

=> ↺ How to Draw Circle And Rectangle In GIMP

=> ↺ How to peek into remote isos

=> ↺ Use Imagemagick to add watermark to images

=> ↺ Everything you need to know about APC (Alternate PHP cache)

=> ↺ The Perfect Server – CentOS 6.3 x86_64 (Apache2, Dovecot, ISPConfig 3)

Wine

=> ↺ Wine 1.5.9 Supports RandR 1.2/1.3, Better HLSL

Games

=> ↺ OUYA Approaches $5 Million In Backing, Attracts 5x Goal (So Far)

=> ↺ Unigine Hosting Open Air Game Conference

• Unigine Corp is hosting an interesting “open air” game development conference later this week in Tomsk, Russia.

• Unfortunately it’s on short notice, but hopefully it will become an annual thing: Unigine OpenAir. This is perhaps the most interesting and unique game development conference I’ve yet to hear about: it’s camping in tents outside the city of Tomsk for two days filled with gaming-related talks. There is no Internet connection at Unigine OpenAir, but to make up for it Unigine is hosting a whiskey party, barbecues and kebabs, the best DJ from Siberia, fires, and other special events.

=> ↺ Linux Gaming Begins Gathering Steam

• “Steam remains one of the best assets in the gaming space today that doesn’t get much attention due to the console cycles and the rise of social gaming,” said P.J. McNealy, consultant at Digital World Research. “However, it’s right in the thick of the emerging business models for gaming, and being available on Linux certainly can’t hurt.”

=> ↺ 100 “Funnest” Open Source Games and Apps

• It’s become something of a summer tradition here at Datamation to take a break from featuring open source apps for businesses and concentrate on open source apps that are just plain fun. This year, we’ve updated and expanded our list of the open source movement’s “funnest” apps with 100 titles in all. We’ve added two entirely new categories: board games and sports games, and we found plenty of good games that we had overlooked on previous versions of this list.

=> ↺ 5 Blogs You Should Follow For Linux Gaming

=> ↺ Valve Games and Steam on Ubuntu 12.04

• Yesterday, the Valve Linux team publicly announced their ongoing work to bring Steam to Linux. A major part of that announcement is the choice of Ubuntu 12.04.

• Valve has been a major force in gaming since 1996. Gabe Newell and the Valve team have created some of the best game series EVER. Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, and most recently Portal are extremely popular, and quite addicting.

=> ↺ With Valve On Linux, Has LGP Lost All Relevance?

• Aside from how Valve can better embrace Linux and open-source, another thing to ponder with Valve officially writing about Steam/Source on Linux, is the future of Linux Game Publishing.

• Linux Game Publishing got a new CEO in January and aside from a brief company update in February, nothing new has come out since. The company hasn’t released any new Linux game ports in years, their blog has been silent, and there hasn’t been any rumblings of new projects to be announced soon.

=> ↺ Steam’d Penguins

=> ↺ Steam on Ubuntu

Desktop Environments

=> ↺ New Features Of Enlightenment Desktop : Tooltips and Wallpaper Background Fill Colors

• The Enlightenment desktop is heading for a stable release finally, and new features are being added everyday. You can also submit your feature ideas in their Trac page and if you are lucky and your feature charming enough, the developers will add it to the next Enlightenment release. Recently, the developers closed two feature request tickets and added them in default Enlightenment desktop.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ QtNetworkManager To Be Improved

• If you are a Gnome user, you are lucky enough to face no problems in connecting with wireless and wired Internet networks.

=> ↺ Phonon-GStreamer Update Fixes Gapless Playback Bug

• If you are a KDE fan and felt irritated because you were unable to experience gapless playback, you will be relived to know that phonon developers have finally got this issue fixed. Phonon-Gstreamer 4.6.1 is a bugfix release, and along with this bug, developers have also fixed a handful of major bugs like:

=> ↺ Moun Suite 1.4 RC Released

• Kubuntu developer, Jonathan Thomas, blogged about the release of Moun Suite 1.4. Some of the major improvements in this release includes enhancements in Moun Discover, update manager and a bug fix in language support.

=> ↺ KDE 4.9: More Change Than You’d Expect

• KDE 4.9 is a mature release, so you wouldn’t expect major renovations. However, to judge from the second release candidate (technically, the 4.8.97 release), that expectation is no more than half correct.

• Yes, the release is full of the small refinements that characterize an incremental release. However, it also includes some more important features, most of them to do with Activities, as the development team continues its efforts to make the release series’ most major innovation more appealing and useful to users.

• Users wishing to try the release candidate can always compile from source, or check the development repositories of their distribution.

=> ↺ Sprint News and Pre-Alpha Release of Kolab 3.0

GNOME Desktop

=> ↺ Why I Went Back To Gnome From KDE

• I recently became a KDE user, that was the time when Gnome Shell was going through transition and extensions were missing and I was looking for something which I could use without much frustration. One of the things that I love the most about KDE is the polishes interface and total control over your desktop. You can customize almost every aspect of KDE. In addition, the familiar UI (simple and aimed at the traditional desktop) makes it easy to continue to work without having to learn new tricks.

=> ↺ Future Releases Of Gnome May Include PIN Unlock Facility

• If you find hard to type long passwords in your touch devices, you may get relief soon. Gnome developer Giovanni Campagna is currently working on a PIN unlock feature, similar to mobile phones, that is aimed at being touch friendly replacement of passwords.

=> ↺ Why Look Forward to GNOME 3.5.4

• Matthias Clasen routinely posts previews to upcoming GNOME releases and recently he did it again. In a post on his personal blog, Clasen, a GNOME developer, highlighted some of new features coming to GNOME 3.5.4. He is joined by Alex Diavatis, of www.worldofgnome.org, who offers a closer look at some of the new features as well.

• The first mention in Clasen’s post is of Nautilus. He said, “Nautilus has received a major face-lift, and looks very much like a GNOME 3 application now.” Diavatis writes, “Nautilus menu moved into a single button on top right” and “the symbolic icons on the left, which seems pretty.”

=> ↺ This is how Nautilus looks in SolusOS

=> ↺ Making GTK3 themes – Part 1: Basics

• I’m Satya. I’ll be writing some tutorials about making GTK3 themes here at World of Gnome. Thanks to woGue for giving me a chance to write here

• In this post I’ll discuss some basic things about GTK3 themes. So let’s start…

• The new trend is to use the web technologies everywhere, be it smartphone or desktop. Web technologies are generally easier, and that’s why they are so widespread. So what it has to do about GTK3 themes? A lot, because GTK3 themes use CSS syntax, which is widely used in the web. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. The CSS syntax is very easy to understand and and use. For example, if we want to set a blue background and white text color in a paragraph (represented as p in HTML), the CSS syntax will be,

=> ↺ Oops!… I crashed it again

Distributions

=> ↺ Linux Deepin 12.06 preview

New Releases

=> ↺ SystemRescueCd 2.8.1

=> ↺ Canaima 3.1-VC3

=> ↺ Alpine 2.4.5 released

• The Alpine Linux project is pleased to announce the immediate availablity of version 2.4.5 of its Alpine Linux operating system.

=> ↺ SystemRescueCd update includes version 2.00 of GRUB

• The latest 2.8.1 release of SystemRescueCd upgrades a number of the live system’s bundled tools as well as its underlying components, such as the GRUB bootloader. The Gentoo-based GPLv2-licensed distribution for administering and repairing systems includes the recent stable GRUB 2.00 bootloader release and updates the standard long-term kernel to Linux 3.2.23; the alternative kernel is now at version 3.4.5.

=> ↺ Softpedia Linux Weekly, Issue 208

• · Announced Distro: CentOS 6.3 · Announced Distro: OS4 12.5 · Announced Distro: Linux Mint 13 RC KDE · Announced Distro: Finnix 105

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

=> ↺ Mageia has been visiting Europe

• Like last year, Mageia had a presence at Linuxtag in Berlin, one of the biggest Linux and OpenSource events in Europe.

• And like last year we shared a booth with the German MandrivaUser.de community. At Linuxtag, we had some prominent members of the Mageia project there, some of them (Nicolas and Marja) coming all the way from France and the Netherlands.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ Red Hat, Burt’s Bees among Social Madness winners

• At long last, local winners have been crowned in their respective categories in the nationwide social media contest dubbed Social Madness.

=> ↺ Red Hat Taking Advantage Of Turmoil In Europe

=> ↺ Why the Street Should Love Red Hat’s Earnings

• Although business headlines still tout earnings numbers, many investors have moved past net earnings as a measure of a company’s economic output. That’s because earnings are very often less trustworthy than cash flow, since earnings are more open to manipulation based on dubious judgment calls.

• Earnings’ unreliability is one of the reasons Foolish investors often flip straight past the income statement to check the cash flow statement. In general, by taking a close look at the cash moving in and out of the business, you can better understand whether the last batch of earnings brought money into the company, or merely disguised a cash gusher with a pretty headline.

=> ↺ Switch your CentOS systems to Oracle Linux

Fedora

=> ↺ Fedora 18 Will Feature KDE Workspaces 4.9

• Fedora 18, codenamed Spherical Cow, will feature KDE Workspaces 4.9. This was decided in Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee meeting held on 16th of July.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Ubuntu App Showdown : Judges’ Voting On

=> ↺ Ubuntu 12.10 To Include Gwibber, Photos Lens By Default

• Ubuntu 12.10 scheduled to be released this October will include Gwibber and Photos lens by default. These lenses add up to the existing collection of lenses namely applications, files, music and videos.

=> ↺ Testing in Cadence

• Last month, an interesting thread emerged on ubuntu-devel. A proposal to change the way we as ubuntu look at testing and quality. In many ways it was more of a codification of ideas and thoughts from the precise cycle than a proposal.

• One of the outcomes of this was a change to how to test isos. Rather than focus on arbitrary moments in time, we’ve been asked to stick to a two week cadence for testing. What that means is a regular checkup of our images every two weeks. Quite a task, but not impossible! Given the fact the change happened mid-cycle, there has been some confusion over what exactly this means. I decided to put together a post detailing exactly what’s on the table for us as a community and more importantly how you can help!

=> ↺ Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 274

=> ↺ Steam arrives on Ubuntu, Valve announces it from their new Linux blog

=> ↺ Your very own ARM-based Ubuntu servers in the cloud… for free

• Not content with dominating the world of smartphones and tablets, makers of low-power ARM chips are setting their sights on the server market. While x86 servers are still the norm, there have been hints for some time that ARM might become a presence in the data center. Another small, early step toward an ARM future was taken this week as the makers of an infrastructure-as-a-service testbed added ARM servers as a free option for developers.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ You Asked For It, PC-like Performance From A Small Cheap Computer

• While the Raspberry Pi is interesting to everyone, it is most suitable for absolute newbies learning software, it’s target market.

=> ↺ Want to buy more than one Raspberry Pi? Now you can!

• Up until now, we’ve had to restrict purchases of the Raspberry Pi to one per customer because the demand has been (and continues to be) so high. Both of our manufacturing partners have been working at building capacity so you we can lift that limit – right now, 4000 Raspberry Pis are being made every day. As of this morning, you’ll be able to buy as many Raspberry Pis as you want from both RS Components and element14/Premier Farnell. (See below for ordering instructions.)

=> ↺ Raspbery Pi’s Own Raspbian Gets SD Card Image

• Raspberry Pi foundation has announced the release of the first SD card image based on the Raspbian distribution. The image will make it easier for Raspberry Pi users to switch from ‘generic’ Debian Squeeze to this ‘optimized’ image.

=> ↺ Raspbian Linux now available for Raspberry Pi: Up to 40 percent faster than Debian

• Raspbian is a Linux-based operating system optimized for the Raspberry Pi, a low power, inexpensive mini-computer with a 700 MHz ARM11 processor. Up until recently, the folks behind the little computer had recommended using Debian Linux for an operating system. But benchmarks show Raspbian to be up to 40 percent faster at some tasks.

=> ↺ Raspbian-based SD card image released

Phones

=> ↺ MeeGo Revived: Interview With Jolla CEO

• MeeGo was one of the most promising open source mobile platform developed by Intel in conjunction with Nokia. I have been tracking Intel’s MID (Mobile Internet Devices) efforts from my Linux For You days when I asked about it during an Intel event in Jaipur (India) and Intel director Narendra Bhandari took it to himself to explain about the project.

• Intel worked with Nokia to transform its Maemo platform into MeeGo to help Intel realise its MID aspirations. Everything was going of well, despite the slow yet promising development of MeeGo. Then came Microsoft’s Stephen Elop who infamously killed almost all of Nokia’s open source projects and reduced the once market leader into a hardware dilevery truck for Microsoft’s failed mobile OS.

Android

=> ↺ Android-X86 4.0.4 (ICS) RC2 Released With ARM Translator, More [Android For Netbooks Or Laptops]

=> ↺ Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is Hard to Crack, Says Security Expert

• Google’s latest Android OS, version 4.1 Jelly Bean, is properly strengthened against hacking exploits and malware, according to mobile security researcher Jon Oberheide.

• The analysis, posted on Duo Security’s bulletin on July 16, says that Android has “stepped its game up” in protecting against malicious exploits.

=> ↺ Fujitsu to offer smartphone specifically designed for elderly users

• Japanese electronics firm Fujitsu unveiled a new smartphone yesterday designed for elderly users, featuring a unique touchscreen and Android user interface that’s been simplified. Called the F-12D from Fujitsu’s RakuRaku product line where “rakuraku” can be translated from Japanese to mean “easy” or “comfortable,” the company will primarily be aiming to target Japan’s aging population with this particular model.

=> ↺ XBMC Now Available For Android

• XBMC, an advanced, full-featured and attractive open-source media center is now available for Android. As per the announcement in XBMC blog, this version can be run on phones, media players, set-top boxes, tablets and all devices that are powered by Android.

• The program is in beta stage and not yet available in Play Store. XBMC developers are looking for people who can test this on their devices, so if you want to be one of their beta testers, head over to their blog.

=> ↺ CyanogenMod 9 running on the Nexus Q

=> ↺ Sony officially launches Sony Xperia S, P and U in the U.S

=> ↺ Android now powers 51.8% of US smartphones, growth continues

• Popular analyst company Nielsen has published its report on the US smartphone market in the second quarter of 2012. The quarter saw smartphone growth continue as two thirds of all new customers picked a smartphone.

• Android continues to be in lead, powering 51.8% of all US smartphones and 54.6% of the ones purchased over the past three months. And that was the quarter before the Samsung Galaxy S III was launched.

=> ↺ Meizu MX 4-core is now available globally, pricing still steep

• The original (dual-core) Meizu MX is one of the most popular smartphones in China. Shortly after the launch there, it was quietly made available around the world from various retailers. Later, after the huge success of the MX, Meizu announced a quad-core version – the MX 4-core.

=> ↺ sony xperia z: Leaked Details

=> ↺ Jelly Bean is the safest version of Android yet

=> ↺ Sony Xperia ion now available at Rogers, can be yours for $549.99 outright

• Here it is Canada… Sony’s first LTE-enabled smartphone has officially launched at Rogers, plus I think they are also first in North America to make this available. The Xperia ion can now be yours, as expected, for $49.99 on a 3-year and ranges north to $549.99 outright. The ion comes seriously stacked with specs: 4.6-inch display (1280 x 720), 12MP Sony Exmor R camera that shoots 1080p videos, LTE connectivity, has a 1.5GHz dual core processor and is 10.8 mm thin. Now, the ion currently runs OS 2.3 Gingerbread but is on a path towards Ice Cream Sandwich sometime “soon.”

=> ↺ MIPS Works with Android 4.1, Focused on Low-Cost Tablets

• Among chip makers that have worked steadily with the Android mobile OS, you don’t hear MIPS Technologies mentioned much. But MIPS has, in fact, worked with Android since the birth of the OS, as we noted all the way back in 2009. When it comes to low cost Android tablet devices, you hear much discussion of devices running ARM chips, but MIPS has in fact been a competitive player in this space. Tablets based on MIPS chips and priced under $100 have made a mark around the world. Now there is news that MIPS will develop around Jelly Bean, otherwise known as Android 4.1.

=> ↺ Tikl Me, Elmo

• If you don’t have the push-to-talk (PTT) feature from your cell-phone provider, you can download the free Tikl app from the Android Marketplace. Tikl allows you to use PTT technology with any other users that have Tikl installed on their phones. Because Tikl is available for both Android and iOS, it covers a wide variety of smartphones.

=> ↺ ZTE Grand X coming to UK for £190 pay-as-you-go: 4.3-inch qHD, microSD, stock Android 4.0

• If this is the “advanced gaming smartphone” that ZTE teased a few days ago, then we can’t help but feel a little miffed. It’d be fairer to describe the Grand X as the most advanced phone in ZTE’s growing budget line-up, and if you look at it from that perspective then it’s rather more impressive. For £190 PAYG with Virgin Mobile in the UK, you’re getting a 4.3-inch qHD LCD touchscreen, dual-core 1GHz Tegra 2 processor (no Nexus 7 guts here unfortunately), microSD expandable storage (plus 4GB built-in and 512MB RAM), 5-megapixel rear camera and VGA front-facer, sub-10mm thickness and — ta-da! — stock Ice Cream Sandwich, albeit accompanied by legacy Gingerbread navigation buttons. We’d have liked to see the proper, up-to-date Android 4.0 button layout, but in any case the absence of ZTE’s Kanzi skin or indeed any other customization is a welcome change, because Google juice tastes fine served neat.

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

=> ↺ Nexus 7 Now Available In India

=> ↺ Toshiba gaat AT200 en AT300 updaten naar Android 4.1

=> ↺ Sony announces new Walkman running Android

• The word “Walkman” brings back a lot of memories for some of us. Now, Sony is looking to upgrade your nostalgia. They have announced the new F800 series Walkman, and it comes complete with Android as the base. According to sony, it will be “an extreme on-the-go entertainment experience”.

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ Chef Offers a Recipe for the Open Source Cloud

• As one of the original architects of Amazon’s EC2, Opscode CTO Chris Brown witnessed firsthand what happens when you make ubiquitous and nearly infinite computing power available to engineers who were used to working with a handful of machines. In short, you become very, very popular.

=> ↺ Multi-touch in WebKit-Clutter

• Following my past work on multi-touch support in Clutter, have been playing lately in implementing the W3C Touch Events API in the Clutter port of WebKit.

• A lot of code can be reused from WebCore without problems, but we’ll need to do some mildly complex event translation because the W3C API and the one in Clutter (and in XInput and in Gtk+) are very different.

=> ↺ Open source offense could be our best defense against cyberattacks

• A core dilemma for IT today is how to properly protect the organizations’ information systems and assets given security tools often seem like a black hole sucking down both time and money. But a strong defense doesn’t have to be expensive, and a good place to start is assessing what information is publicly available and figuring out how to safeguard it from attack.

=> ↺ Open Compute Project Driving Open-Source Hardware Development

• The open-source hardware movement behind the year-old Open Compute Project is gaining traction.

=> ↺ Eaves: Open source communities need simple social “hacks?

• Turns out the open source development model has some flaws after all. Or is it just a case of geeks being geeks?

• David Eaves, principal of Eaves Consulting, told attendees during his opening keynote at OSCON 2012 today that a lot of the “soft” skills that hard core coders often scoff at are actually important when it comes to producing flawless code.

=> ↺ Twitter’s Open Source Big Data Tool Comes to the Cloud Courtesy of Nodeable

• Usually when we think of a pivot, we think of a company that has decided to drop its core offering and market a different product or service. Obvious Corporation put ODEO up for sale and focused on Twitter. BRBN shuttered its location check-in service and became Instagram. But Nodeable‘s pivot isn’t that sort of pivot.

• Today Nodeable launched a new service called StreamReduce, a cloud-hosted real-time big data analytics product. StreamReduce is based on the same architecture as Nodeable’s existing IT operations monitoring tool. The company is keeping its current service, but is expanding its scope by marketing beyond its current base of developers and system administrators.

Web Browsers

Chrome

=> ↺ Google Blocks Extensions Outside Chrome Web Store

=> ↺ Report: Chrome for iOS Quickly Grabs 1.5% Market Share

• At last month’s Google I/O Developer Conference, Google launched Chrome for iOS, bringing the popular browser to Apple’s iOS devices, including the iPad and iPhone. Even on the very first day of availability, Chrome for iOS drew a huge number of downloads. Now, a report is out that says the mobile browser already has 1.5% of the mobile browser market.

Mozilla

=> ↺ New Security and Developer Features Now in Firefox [14]

=> ↺ Firefox 14 is now available

• Firefox 14 is now available as a free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux from http://www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/. As always, we recommend that users keep up to date with the newest version of Firefox for the latest features and fixes. The release notes for Firefox 14 are available at http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/14.0.1/releasenotes/. Firefox 14 is also now available for Android. The associated release notes are available at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mobile/14.0.1/releasenotes/index.html.

SaaS

=> ↺ ownCloud Offers Special Pricing For Colleges

=> ↺ HP: OpenStack v 3 “Folsom” is serious contender

• Some may be laughing at OpenStack technology today but the next version — “Folsom” — is a “serious” offering, Hewlett Packard Fellow Brian Akers said at OSCON 2012.

• During his conference opening keynote, Akers, a key architect on the Drizzle database project who was hired by HP Cloud Services, said the “Diablo” release of OpenStack, a version 1.0 release, had a lot of issues and the “Essex” release was a version 2.0 that was workable but difficult to install.

=> ↺ OpenNebula 3.6 Brings a Raft of New Tools and Marketplace Integration

Databases

=> ↺ 7 hard truths about the NoSQL revolution

• The NoSQL buzzword has been metastasizing for several years. The excitement about these fast data stores has been intoxicating, and we’re as guilty as anyone of seeing the groundbreaking appeal of NoSQL. Yet the honeymoon is coming to an end, and it’s time to start balancing our enthusiasm with some gimlet-eyed hard truths.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

=> ↺ LibreOffice 3.6 RC1 Released

=> ↺ Will open source office suites go the way of Thunderbird?

• Microsoft’s latest entry in the office productivity is such a blatant move towards convergence of mobile and desktop, you have to wonder if they are going too far, too fast.

• If mobile and cloud is indeed the new direction of productivity apps, open source office suites must innovate quickly or die.

• Microsoft wants to embrace desktop and mobile users as much as possible with their upcoming Office 2013 release, and right now it feels like Microsoft just pulled away from LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice, leaving the venerable open source office suites eating Microsoft’s dust.

Education

=> ↺ Does the Indian education system teach students how to collaborate?

Healthcare

=> ↺ Open source hospital information system to be packaged for Debian

• The Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (Vista), an open source hospital information system used in 160 hospitals, several hundreds of clinics and more than a hundred nursing homes, will become part of the Debian free software distribution. This was announced at the Libre Software Meeting (LSM/RMLL) in Geneva, last week Wednesday.

BSD

=> ↺ FreeBSD 9.1-BETA1 Available…

=> ↺ FreeBSD 9.1 enters beta

• The developers at the FreeBSD Project have released the first beta for version 9.1 of the open source FreeBSD operating system. Aimed at developers and testers, the first test build of FreeBSD 9.1 was originally expected to arrive on 6 July but later fell behind schedule. In the mailing list announcement, Ken Smith, a member of the Release Engineering Team, says that the developers “hope this will be the only BETA build”, noting that it will be followed by two release candidate builds.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

=> ↺ The FSF Compliance Lab Doubles

• Last month, Joshua Gay and Donald Robertson III, two long time employees, took on responsibility for the Free Software Foundation’s (FSF) compliance lab (http://www.fsf.org/licensing/). Already, they are finding that having two people not only allows them to do more, but to organize more for future growth as well.

• “Already, we’re doing all the things Brett was doing and rolling out new projects,” Gay and Robertson say. They are referring to Brett Smith, the former solo employee for the lab, who is now employed by the W3 Consortium.

Project Releases

=> ↺ GParted Live 0.13.0-1 Released

• The GParted Team have released a new version of Gnome Partition Editor. This is a stable release and fixes a major bug an also adds several new features.

=> ↺ Cheese 3.5.4 Released, Take Photos With Your Webcam

Public Services/Government

=> ↺ Helping the European Parliament to release its own free software

• For the first time, the European Parliament is about to release one of its own programs as Free Software. The program in question is called AT4AM, short for “Automatic Tool for Amendments”. The Parliament is in the business of making laws, and AT4AM automates a lot of the formal stuff associated with the production process.

• To understand what AT4AM means for MEPs and their staff, have a look at how amendments were filed before, and how it works now. (Vimeo. Flash required, sorry.) Parliament staffer Erik Josefsson compared the introduction of AT4AM to the arrival of version control for developers. It’s been in use inside the parliament for about 18 months, and it’s a pretty fundamental tool for the people working there.

Licensing

=> ↺ Can the Terms of the GPL Prevent GNU/Linux being used for War?

• There’s been a lot of noise on the internet recently about the fact that the Windows-based software being used in the remote control system of drones use by the American military has been hit by a virus and this has caused the Department of Defense (DOD) to use GNU/Linux which is a more secure option. This has, predictably, caused raised eyebrows and demands by some that any military organisation should be prevented from using GNU/Linux in offensive weapons systems. The use of Drones in Afghanistan is a highly controversial issue but it is not the purpose of this article to debate the morality and ethics of deploying drones in an area of asymetrical conflict but rather to explore if it is actually possible to use the terms of the GPL to legally prevent the deployment of software or operating systems by any government’s military.

=> ↺ Now You Can Also Join The Open Source Initiative

• The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is accepting applications for Individual Membership, starting immediately. Open source community members worldwide are invited to join OSI now at opensource.org/join and help shape the future of open source.

• “The transformation of the OSI into a member-based organization is a timely and important step for the worldwide open source community,” said Simon Phipps, OSI President.”I encourage everyone to visit opensource.org/join and take a stand for open source.”

=> ↺ New life for the Open Source Initiative

• OSI, an important, but long quiet, open-source organization is seeking to revitalize itself with a new membership program.

=> ↺ OSI Announces It Will Open the Organization to Individual Members

• Wednesday, July 17, at the O’Reilly Open Source Conference in Portland, Oregon, the Open Source Initiative (OSI) announced a new initiative to open up the organization to individual members. Historically, the organization was open only to affiliate members, so this announcement marks a significant new direction for the open-source advocate. The shift represents a move from a governance model of volunteer and self-appointed directors to one driven by members.

Leftovers

Finance

=> ↺ Is The Wall Street Casino Closing?

• In a powerful sign of tough times for the casino business, Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs is actually going to use their bank charter to do what banks do – expand loans.

=> ↺ Goldman Settles Class-Action Over $698 Million Offering

• Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) reached a class settlement with investors in a $698 million mortgage- backed securities offering, a lawyer for the plaintiffs told a federal judge in New York.

• David Wales, who represents the Public Employees’ Retirement System of Mississippi, told U.S. District Judge Harold Baer in a letter made public today that both sides had accepted a settlement proposed by a mediator. Details of the agreement weren’t disclosed.

Civil Rights

=> ↺ NSA Mimics Google, Pisses Off Senate

• In 2008, a team of software coders inside the National Security Agency started reverse-engineering the database that ran Google.

• They closely followed the Google research paper describing BigTable — the sweeping database that underpinned many of the Google’s online services, running across tens of thousands of computer servers — but they also went a little further. In rebuilding this massive database, they beefed up the security. After all, this was the NSA.

• Like Google, the agency needed a way of storing and retrieving massive amounts of data across an army of servers, but it also needed extra tools for protecting all that data from prying eyes. They added “cell level” software controls that could separate various classifications of data, ensuring that each user could only access the information they were authorized to access. It was a key part of the NSA’s effort to improve the security of its own networks.

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