This page permanently redirects to gemini://gemini.techrights.org/2015/09/01/netrunner-14-2-lts/.

● 09.01.15

● Links 1/9/2015: Manjaro Linux 0.8.13, Netrunner 14.2 LTS

Posted in News Roundup at 4:20 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

=> ↺ As Fate & Linux Would Have It

• The fact that I used Linux and contacted an organization for German and American Linux users was in itself…well, I’ll let you assign any adjectives that you see fit. Now let’s tie in to the only person in Germany I solicited to help me find my baby girl. Let’s place her at the same post office at the exact same moment in time, in the same city of 75 thousand people. Let’s talk about the fact that a woman 30 feet away from the window heard the woman at that window ask for her mail.

Desktop

=> ↺ Xiaomi said to release notebook in 2016 with help from Inventec and Foxconn

• The sources believe Xiaomi will likely release a 15-inch notebook as it is the mainstream size in China and will adopt Linux operating system. The notebook is estimated to be priced at CNY2,999 (US$471) and will heap pressure on competitors’ simliar products priced between CNY4,000-6,000.

=> ↺ Xiaomi GNU/Linux Notebook In 2016

=> ↺ Linux Foundation Puts Free Chromebooks in the Hands of its Training Students Throughout September

• The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux and collaborative development, today announced it will give away one Chromebook to every person who enrolls in Linux Foundation training courses during September.

=> ↺ Why Chromebooks are better than iPads

• Chromebooks have become increasingly popular these days, with various models burning up the sales charts on Amazon. But what is it about Chromebooks that make them such a formidable competitor to the iPad? In a recent article, CheatSheet listed five reasons why Chromebooks are a better option than Apple’s iPads.

Server

=> ↺ A scalable tool for deploying Linux containers in high-performance computing

• One increasingly popular approach is container-based computing, designed to support flexible, scalable computing. Linux containers, which are just now beginning to find their way into the HPC environment, allow an application to be packaged with its entire software stack, including portions of the base operating system files, user environment variables and application “entry points.”

=> ↺ Hypervisors are sooo 2005. For hip containers, you need a ‘Microvisor’

• “Photon Machine” is the name for a new, stripped-back version of ESX that’s being cast as a “microvisor”. The Machine is designed to host virtual machines running Photon OS, the stripped-back version of GNU/Linux that VMware announced in April. To manage both, VMware will also release “Photon Controller”, a control plane that will drive the Machine and OS so that it becomes possible to spawn and manage a great many containers.

=> ↺ ​VMware goes container crazy with vSphere integrated containers

=> ↺ VMware vSphere Integrated Containers Previewed at VMworld

• VMware vSphere Integrated Containers also leverage the Project Photon OS, which was first announced in April as a Linux operating system distribution for running containers.

=> ↺ ​VMware wants to create the software-defined data center: Now

=> ↺ Edison Supercomputer Creates 3D Map of Adolescent Universe

=> ↺ The Growing Waves In the Linux Ecosystem: Two Perspectives

• The good news: Linux is on the up and moving like a freight train. 87% or organizations added Linux servers this year. About the same will add more Linux next year. Windows deployment has fallen from 46% to 26%

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Linux Kernel 3.12.47 LTS Out Now with Numerous x86 Improvements, Update Drivers

• Jiri Slaby, the maintainer of the Linux 3.12 LTS (Long-Term Support) kernel branch, announced the immediate availability for download of the forty-seven maintenance release, a milestone that brings enhancements to various instruction set architectures, as well as many updated drivers.

=> ↺ LILO Boot-Loader Development To Cease At End Of Year

• While most of you probably haven’t used the LILO bootloader in years in place of GRUB(2), the developer of “LInux LOader” intends to cease development at the end of the year.

• This summer’s intern, Eric Griffith, pointed out today an undated message on the LILO homepage about the bootloader project planning to end development at the end of 2015.

=> ↺ Linux 4.3 Scheduler Change “Potentially Affects Every SMP Workload In Existence”

• Aside from Ingo Molnar’s x86 boot changes he sent in to Linus Torvalds for the Linux 4.3 merge window, he also sent in the scheduler changes for this next version of the Linux kernel.

• With Linux 4.3 for those running any sort of SMP (Symmetric Multi-Processing) workloads, the performance could sway one way or another, but hopefully it’s for the better.

=> ↺ Better crypto, white-box switch support in Linux 4.2

=> ↺ Linux kernel 4.2 released

=> ↺ Linux 4.2 released with better performance, security

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ Nvidia Linux Video Driver 355.11 Adds Experimental OpenGL Support to EGL

• Three days after the release of the Nvidia 352.41 long-lived branch proprietary video driver for GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris operating systems, Nvidia announced on the last day of August the immediate availability for download of the short-lived Nvidia 355.11 graphics driver.

=> ↺ AMD Linux Graphics: The Latest Open-Source RadeonSI Driver Moves On To Smacking Catalyst

• Following this weekend’s Radeon R9 Fury open-source Linux driver tests with the DRM-Next code to be merged into Linux 4.3, the latest Mesa 11.1-devel Git code, and LLVM 3.8 SVN for the AMDGPU compiler back-end, I proceeded to run some bleeding-edge open-source Radeon Gallium3D graphics versus AMD Catalyst Linux benchmarks on Ubuntu.

=> ↺ Open Source GPU now out

• Hoping that MIAOW is not a catastrophe

• An open saucy general-purpose graphics processor (GPGPU) has been unveiled at the Hot Chips event.

• The GPGPU is relatively crude and is part of another piece of an emerging open-source hardware platform called MIAOW.

=> ↺ Researchers Take Wraps Off Open Source GPU

• The outlines of an open source hardware platform continue to come into focus with the introduction of what is claimed by university researchers to be the first general purpose graphics processor design.

=> ↺ Comparing DPMS on X11 and Wayland

• On the Plasma workspaces Display Power Management Signaling (DPMS) is handled by the power management daemon (powerdevil). After a configurable idle time it signals the X-Server through the X11 DPMS Extension. The X-Server handles the timeout, switching to a different DPMS level and restoring to enabled after an input event all by itself.

Applications

=> ↺ CUPS 2.1.0 Officially Released with Support for 3D Printers, IPP Everywhere, More

• The CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) open-source and cross-platform printing system for GNU/Linux and Mac OS X operating systems reached version 2.1 after being in development for approximately three months.

=> ↺ Atom 1.0.9 Has Been Released

• Atom is an open-source, multi-platform text editor developed by GitHub, having a simple and intuitive graphical user interface and a bunch of interesting features for writing: CSS, HTML, JavaScript and other web programming languages. Among others, it has support for macros, auto-completion a split screen feature and it integrates with the file manager.

=> ↺ APT 1.1 Has Been Released

=> ↺ Midori 0.5.11 Brings Fixes Only

• As you may know, Midori is a lightweight web browser with full HTML5 and CSS3 support, used by default on the XFCE4 desktop environment and on Elementary OS systems.

=> ↺ EasyTag 2.4.0 Has Been Released

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ September 2015 Issue of Linux Journal: HOW-TOs

=> ↺ How To Install Kernel 4.2 on CentOS 7, Via Repository

=> ↺ How To Install ImagePlay 6.0 Beta 5 (Open Source Prototyping Tool For Testing Image Processing Algorithms) On Ubuntu 15.04 And Ubuntu 14.04 Systems

=> ↺ How To Install Systemback 1.6.201 (Open-Source Backup Software) On Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 15.04 And Ubuntu 14.04 Systems

=> ↺ Using tshark to Watch and Inspect Network Traffic

=> ↺ How to Defragment Linux Systems

=> ↺ How to install a wireless hotspot with captive page on Linux using CoovaChilli

=> ↺ How to switch from NetworkManager to systemd-networkd on Linux

=> ↺ How To Install And Use SShuttle (VPN-Like Software) On Ubuntu

=> ↺ How To: Install/Upgrade to Linux Kernel 4.2.0 in Ubuntu/Linux Mint Systems

=> ↺ How to Install PHP 7 with Apache and MariaDB on CentOS 7/Debian 8

=> ↺ Trident – Setup Your Own Social Network Website

=> ↺ Send Nagios Alert Notification Using SMS

Games

=> ↺ Obsidian: Developing For Linux Was Not Worth It

• In a recent interview with PC Gamer, lead producer Brandon Adler of Obsidian said, “I don’t think it was worthwhile developing for Linux. They are a very, very small portion of our active user base – I think around one and a half percent of our users were Linux.”

=> ↺ Arma 3 Available For Linux In A Beta

• Arma 3 is now downloadable and playable on Linux, but be warned it’s early days for the port, and the port may not graduate to official status.

=> ↺ Supporting Linux wasn’t ‘worthwhile,’ says creator of one of 2015′s best PC games

• The idea of gaming on Linux PCs used to be nothing more than a cruel joke—so much so that many Linux enthusiasts dual-booted Windows in order to play PC games. But thanks to the impending release of Valve’s army of Steam Machines, Linux gaming is on the rise, with dozens of big-name PC games going Linux native in recent months. Now for the bad news: The makers of one of 2015’s best games regret their decision to embrace Linux.

=> ↺ Pillars of Eternity dev: “I don’t think it was worthwhile developing for Linux”

=> ↺ Prison Architect Last Ever Alpha Released

• Prison Architect has come a massively long way since the first alpha, and building a prison has never been more fun. This is the last alpha before the full release in October.

=> ↺ XCOM 2 Delayed Until February Next Year

=> ↺ DiRT Showdown Updated For Linux, Should Fix It Up Nicely

• DiRT should now work properly right away with most gamepads, instead of you needing to rotate sticks and press a bunch of buttons to get it working each time. I’m looking forward to them adding this behaviour into older ports too.

=> ↺ Insurgency FPS Should Be On Linux By The SteamOS Launch

=> ↺ Unreal Engine 4.9 Brings Better Support for iOS and Android Devices, Initial DirectX 12 Support

• On the last day of August 2015, Epic Games had the great pleasure of announcing the release of Unreal Engine 4.9 game engine for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating systems.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ Announcing Marble Maps for Android Open Beta

• It’s my pleasure to announce the Open Beta version of Marble Maps for Android. Marble Maps is a port of the Desktop application Marble Virtual Globe and right now features an OpenStreetMap viewer, search and routing. The app is not yet feature complete; future updates will add turn-by-turn navigation, improve vector rendering and add basic OSM editing capabilities.

=> ↺ Randa Meetings 2015 – What I plan to do

• It is time for one more Randa Meetings this year, and over 50 KDE developers are going to participate in it along with me as well. The Randa Meetings is a codesprint sponsored by KDE and organized by Mario Fux, in which KDE developers from all across the globe are invited, and get to sit under the same roof and work together to collaborate on different ideas, coming up with some awesome feature implementations within a time span of about a week. These meetings generally focus on a common topic every year. Last year (2014) it was focused mainly on porting of various KDE applications to the KF5 framework. Similarly, this year we have a common focus as well, and it is aimed at bringing more of KDE to the mobile platform as much as possible. Now, since I am a Marble developer, let me tell you in brief what are my plans for Randa Meetings this year.

=> ↺ Interview with Brian Delano

=> ↺ Kubuntu Site Revamped

• With the move to Plasma 5, updating the Kubuntu website seemed timely. Many people have contributed, including Ovidiu-Florin Bogdan, Aaron Honeycutt, Marcin Sągol and many others.

• We want to show off the beauty of Plasma 5, as well as allow easy access for Kubuntu users to the latest news, downloads, documentation, and other resources.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ GNOME’s Evolution 3.18 Email Client Gets a Second Beta Build with Multiple Bugfixes

• The GNOME Project is currently working on updating packages for the second Beta build towards the GNOME 3.18 desktop environment, due for release later this month, on September 23.

Distributions

=> ↺ How many OSes does your computer have?

• There are so many operating systems in the world. Apart from the famous ones, like Windows, MacOS, Ubuntu, Debian, Mageia or Linux Mint, there are hundreds of smaller and less well-known.

• If there are many operating systems, there is a good chance that your computer has several of them installed.

Reviews

=> ↺ Playing with OpenELEC 5.0.8

• This week I want to quickly talk about two projects which have caught my attention. The first is OpenELEC. The OpenELEC (Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Center) distribution is an operating system which turns a computer into a media centre. OpenELEC is available in several editions. There are 32-bit and 64-bit x86 builds and a build for people running older NVIDIA video cards. There is a build for WeTek Play Systems, a depreciated build for AppleTV systems, a Freescale build and a couple of builds for Raspberry Pi computers. I decided to continue my Raspberry Pi experiments and downloaded the OpenELEC build for Raspberry Pi 2 computers.

New Releases

=> ↺ First RC Build of Tiny Core Linux 6.4 Adds a New ASCII Penguin in MOTD

• Robert Shingledecker, the creator, maintainer, and lead developer of the Tiny Core project announced earlier today, September 1, the immediate availability for download and testing of the first Release Candidate (RC) build of Tiny Core Linux 6.4.

=> ↺ Core v6.4rc1

• This is a release candidate. If you decide to help test, then please test carefully. We don’t want anyone to lose data.

=> ↺ Latest Manjaro Linux 0.8.13 Update Adds KDE Plasma 5.4, LibreOffice 5.0.1, More

• The Manjaro development team announced on the last day of August that the eleventh maintenance update for the stable Manjaro Linux 0.8.13 operating system series is now available to users worldwide.

=> ↺ Netrunner 14.2 LTS – Update Release

• The Netrunner team is proud to announce the release of Netrunner 14.2 LTS – 32bit and 64bit ISOs.

=> ↺ Linux Lite 2.6 Is Out with Firefox 40.0.3 and LibreOffice 5.0.1, Based on Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS

• Today, September 1, Jerry Bezencon has announced the immediate availability for download of the final version of the Linux Lite 2.6 operating system, a release that brings a great number of new features.

=> ↺ Linux Lite 2.6 Has Been Released Today

• Linux Lite 2.6 has been released today, using XFCE, Firefox 40.0.3 and LibreOffice 5.0.1 as default. It is based on the Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS Trusty Tahr and received a new Control Center application, permits the users to backup the system via Systemback which is pre-installed, the Ctrl+Alt+Del key combination can now be used to trigger the shutdown, restart and logout dialog and uses GNOME Disk Utility for partition manage, VLC as the default media player, a new dark theme and new wallpapers.

Screenshots/Screencasts

=> ↺ Manjaro 0.8.13.1 Fluxbox Screenshot Tour

=> ↺ LXLE 14.04.3 Screenshot Tour

Ballnux/SUSE

=> ↺ Exclusive Interview: Michael Miller of SUSE Talks About Transition and Contributing to Open Source

• SUSE is one of the Linux trinity — which comprises Red Hat, SUSE, and Canonical. SUSE is also one of the leading contributors to many open source projects, including the kernel itself. However, the company went through challenging times as it was acquired by one company after another. It seems that things have stabilized with the Micro Focus acquisition, so I sat down with Michael Miller, SUSE’s Vice President of Global Alliances & Marketing at LinuxCon and talked about topics ranging from acquisition to future plans.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ Lenovo teams up with Red Hat, offers hefty rebates in bids to boost server business

• Lenovo, which recently lost one of its top enterprise business leaders and has so far failed to recover all sales previously produced by IBM in x86 servers, is ramping up efforts to win more business. The latest is the addition of Red Hat OpenStack. Lenovo is also offering rebates and other software.

=> ↺ What my conversation with GE taught me about open organizations

=> ↺ The Open Organization book club: Why opening up your org matters

• We are at an incredible intersection in history. The growth of computing, the Internet, and education is creating a wealth of open innovation around the world. While this was born back in the early days of “free software” in universities, it is now a global phenomenon powering major infrastructure, banks, devices, and more.

=> ↺ Red Hat to Webcast Results for Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2016

=> ↺ Red Hat, Inc. Analyst Rating Update

=> ↺ Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Expected to Report $0.29

=> ↺ Red Hat’s Adam Clater: PaaS Helps Shorten Application Deployment Time

• Adam Clater, principal cloud architect at Red Hat‘s North America Public Sector organization, has said platform-as-a-service is helping federal information technology professionals shorten the time it takes to deploy applications.

Fedora

=> ↺ Systemd Takes Over su, FCC Bans Open Source Firmware

• Paul Carroty posted Friday of the news that Lennart Poettering merged an ‘su’ command replacement into systemd and Fedora Rawhide – coming to a Linux system near you next. Elsewhere, Hackaday.com’s Brian Benchoff said new FCC regulations just killed Open Source firmware replacement and Phoronix.com today reported that LILO is being abandoned. Several polls caught my eye today as did the new Linux workstation security checklist.

=> ↺ NetworkManager 1.2 Pre-Release Soon Coming For Fedora 24

• While Fedora 24 isn’t set to be released until H1’2016, developers are already working on getting a NetworkManager 1.2 pre-release into the distribution’s archive early.

• NetworkManager 1.2 is a major update that is set to happen later this year. Given the magnitude of the update and NetworkManager being important to the Fedora/GNOME desktop, the developers want to get the fresh code into F24 packages early.

=> ↺ Hack fonts for Fedora and Epel

Debian Family

=> ↺ Reproducible builds: week 18 in Stretch cycle

=> ↺ My Free Software Activities in August 2015

• My monthly report covers a large part of what I have been doing in the free software world. I write it for my donators (thanks to them!) but also for the wider Debian community because it can give ideas to newcomers and it’s one of the best ways to find volunteers to work with me on projects that matter to me.

=> ↺ If you happen to know a browser developer…

• Do you happen to know a developer of Firefox or Chrome or some other mainstream browser?

• If so, can you please talk to them about our experiments with Client Certificate authentication in Debian?

• Client Certificate authentication rocks; with just a couple of little tweaks in the interface, it would be pretty close to perfect.

Derivatives

=> ↺ DebEX KDE Is A Debian Jessie Derivative That Comes With Both KDE Plasma 5 And KDE 4.14.3

• DebEX KDE is yet another interesting Debian Jessie derivative system, used an optimized version of KDE 4.1.3 and KDE 5 Plasma and KDE 4.14.3 as the default desktop environments.

• Also, it comes with the Nvidia 352.41 GPU driver by default, Chrome pre-installed and replaced VLC with SMPlayer,

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ The Death of Ubuntu’s Software Center

• Over the past few weeks, the fate of Ubuntu’s Software Center has received a lot of press. There have been ample ravings about how the Software Center is about to vanish from the face of the Earth. In reality, it’s not going anywhere yet. What is changing, however, will be the ability to submit new applications or updates to existing applications. In this article, I’ll explain what this means and where things will likely go from here.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Make 15.09 Has Been Released, Helping The Users Install The Unity 3D Editor

=> ↺ Ubuntu Make Now Lets Users Install the Unity 3D Editor in Ubuntu Linux

=> ↺ A Canonical Developer Suggests A Non-Windowing Display Server To Provide More Flexibility

• Canonical’s Joel Leclerc has proposed a non-windowing display server which could run with Wayland and Weston, in order to provide more flexibility and power to the OS.

Flavours and Variants

=> ↺ Monthly News – August 2015

• Cinnamon was the first project to receive attention. Its power applet now shows vendor and model information, box pointers look better, and multi-monitor support was further improved: When switching workspaces, the workspace name now appears on all relevant monitors, output names (i.e. plug names) are shown alongside monitor names (in the screenshot below that allows us to distinguish two identical Dell monitors via the name of their display port).

=> ↺ LXLE 14.04.3, Based On Lubuntu Trusty Has Been Released

• LXLE 14.04.3 has been released today, being based on Lubuntu Trusty and bringing a bunch of interesting new features, including Xautolock and OpenSnap, among others.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Fanless network appliance runs Linux on Marvell Armada 370

• Axiomtek’s fanless “NA150″ network appliance runs Linux on a Marvell Armada 370 SoC and offers five GbE ports, a 2.5-inch drive bay, and mini-PCIe wireless.

• The NA150 is latest addition to Axiomtek’s family of compact desktop and rack-mountable network appliances, but it appears to be the first to stray from the well-trodden x86 path. Unlike the company’s similar circa-2011 NA330 and NA320R systems, which were powered by Intel Atoms, the NA150 is built around Marvell’s ARMv7-based Armada 370 system-on-chip.

Phones

Android

=> ↺ 15 of the best Android apps from August

=> ↺ Android Wear Now Compatible With iPhone, iOS App Launches Today

=> ↺ Apple vs. Android: Mobile Security Pros and Cons

=> ↺ Spotlight: Parasol gives Android users important app permission info and control

=> ↺ Google’s new logo on Android and everywhere: identity evolved

• This morning Google revealed their new logo and design language evolution, complete with Android implementation. We’re having a look with what Google describes as “designers from all across the company, including Creative Lab and the Material Design team” at what it took to design this logo and this new look. We’ll see first how the new look will appear in a web browser on your desktop or notebook computer. We’ll also see how it’ll appear on Android – colors, animations, and everything in-between.

=> ↺ Japan’s Line rolls out a cute Android launcher because it’s not cute enough already

=> ↺ Android M: OS will let users acess Android Pay; list of key features

=> ↺ New Galaxy Note 4 Android 5.1.1 Release Info

=> ↺ Samsung Gear S2 Shuns Android Wear As Apple (Kind Of) Embraces It

=> ↺ Amazon Prime Instant Video Now Lets iOS And Android Owners Download Titles For Offline Viewing

=> ↺ HTC One M8, One M9, LG G2, G3 and G4 With Android 6.0 Marshmallow Update

=> ↺ Messaging Firm Line Introduces A Launcher App For Android Devices

=> ↺ Google Maps for Android Update Brings New Navigation UI and More

=> ↺ Spotlight: Fontster is an open-source font installer for Android

=> ↺ iPhone hit Alto’s Adventure is finally coming to Android

=> ↺ App Connects Android Smartwatch to iPhone

=> ↺ Qualcomm Sics Fire-Breathing Snapdragon on Android Hackers

• Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon Smart Protect will allow phone makers and mobile security software vendors to enhance their existing security products, the company said. For operators, it should mean less fraud and network congestion associated with malware traffic. For consumers, it should mean improved protection of personal data with minimal impact on device performance or battery life.

=> ↺ Real pics of Samsung’s clamshell Android with 16 MP camera emerge, flippin’ awesome

• Samsung’s flip Android comes with two 3.9-inch Super AMOLED panels with 768 by 1280 pixels of resolution, both of them protected by layers of Corning’s Gorilla Glass 4, which is the same ultra-resistant glass that you’re going to find on high-end Samsung handsets such as the Galaxy Note5 or the Galaxy S6. The handset draws its processing power from the hexa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 chipset, a SoC that’s paired with 2 GB of RAM.

=> ↺ New Android-x86 Release Peppered With Problems

• If you want one Linux-based OS to run on all of your devices, Android-x86 could become a viable alternative. The major advantage to running Android on all of your devices would be keeping all of your settings, apps and Google services on an equal footing. That is not happening yet, however.

• Chih-Wei Huang, project maintainer for the Android-x86 Project, last month announced the release of Android-x86-r3 — the third stable release of the Android-x86 project.

• It certainly is more refined, but it is a work that needs more progress.

=> ↺ Nextbit’s Robin Is An Android Smartphone That Taps The Cloud For Bonus Smarts

• After weeks of teasing out little details on Twitter, Nextbit has finally spilled the beans on what they’ve been working: Robin, a “cloud-first” Android smartphone.

• So what does “cloud-first” mean? At least initially (the company suggests that the cloud integration will only get deeper in time), it means smart, automated offloading of your photos, videos, and apps to free up the local storage space on your device.

• Robin has 32GB of storage built in. As you fill this, it’ll automatically back up your photos and apps to a private 100GB box on their cloud server.

=> ↺ Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 Reviewed: The Ultimate Android Tablet

• Both models of the Galaxy Tab S2 are impressive. Of the two, I’m partial to the 8-inch Tab because its size is perfect for what I like to do with a tablet, like reading comics and watching movies.

• The question now is, should you buy a Tab S2 instead of the iPad?

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ The new IT is all about the customer

• Open source code. GitHub and other cloud repositories enable developers to share and consume code for almost any purpose imaginable. This reflects today’s practical, non-ideological open source culture: Why code it yourself if someone else is offering it free under the most liberal license imaginable?

Events/Communities

=> ↺ OpenStack Summit Tokyo 2015: Presentation

=> ↺ Common problems in open source communities (and how to solve them)

• In her Texas Linux Fest keynote, Joan Touzet talked to us about how to improve our open source communities. Joan’s talk was a series of stories about communities who have faced a crisis and then rose above it.

SaaS/Big Data

=> ↺ OpenStack Was Key To Building Servers.Com

• When XBT Holding S.A. decided to simplify how its subsidiaries provided global hosting, network solutions, and web development they turned to the open source cloud infrastructure platform OpenStack. By consolidating the offerings under a single service provider, Servers.com, customers can more easily browse, mix, compare and choose the most suitable services.

=> ↺ ZeroStack Comes Out of Stealth, Focused on Private Clouds

• There is another OpenStack-focused startup on the scene, and you have to appreciate its creative name: ZeroStack. The cloud computing company has come out of stealth mode to introduce a private cloud solution that it claims is easier to configure, consume and manage than any other technology on the market.

=> ↺ Apache Ignite, a Big Data Tool, Graduates as a Top-Level Project

• Only a few days ago, Apache, which is the steward for and incubates more than 350 Open Source projects, announced that Apache Lens, an open source Big Data and analytics tool, has graduated from the Apache Incubator to become a Top-Level Project (TLP). Now, the ASF has announced that Apache Ignite is to become a top-level project. It’s an open source effort to build an in-memory data fabric that was driven by GridGain Systems and WANdisco.

=> ↺ Funding the Cloud: Top VCs Aim for the Silver Lining

=> ↺ How Apache Spark Is Transforming Big Data Processing, Development

Databases

=> ↺ Accelerating Scientific Analysis with the SciDB Open Source Database System

• Science is swimming in data. And, the already daunting task of managing and analyzing this information will only become more difficult as scientific instruments — especially those capable of delivering more than a petabyte (that’s a quadrillion bytes) of information per day — come online.

• Tackling these extreme data challenges will require a system that is easy enough for any scientist to use, that can effectively harness the power of ever-more-powerful supercomputers, and that is unified and extendable. This is where the Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center’s (NERSC’s) implementation of SciDB comes in.

CMS

=> ↺ PiwigoPress release 2.31

• I just pushed a new release of PiwigoPress (main page, WordPress plugin dir) to the WordPress servers. This release incorporates new features for the sidebar widget, and better interoperability with some Piwigo galleries.

Education

=> ↺ How to teach student sys admins

• Students spend the 16-week long course learning practical skills using real tools. To support their systems, students learn about using support tickets and documentation by using RT and MediaWiki. To deploy and maintain their systems, they learn about configuration management using Puppet, system monitoring using Nagios, and backup and recovery using Bacula. But the broad concepts are more important than the specific software packages I just mentioned. The point is to learn, for example, configuration management, not to be trained to use Puppet. The software used by Clark is used because it works for him, but the software is flexible and changeable.

Openwashing (Fake FOSS)

=> ↺ Tech giants partner up to build next-gen, open source video codecs

• Amazon, Netflix, Intel, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Cisco have announced the formation of the Alliance for Open Media.

• The group aims to build “The open and royalty-free format for next generation ultra high definition media.”

=> ↺ Syncsort open-sources Spark connector for mainframes

=> ↺ SAP Unveils Software for Spark, Open-Source Big Data Sieve

• SAP SE has become the latest big technology company to throw its weight behind open-source data-sifting software called Spark as it tackles information streaming from industries such as retail, telecommunications and transport.

=> ↺ RapidMiner Embraces its Community and Open Source Culture Delivering Get-More-Open-Core Predictive Analytics

=> ↺ Avnet Leverages Open Source Prototyping Platform in New MicroZed Carrier Card Kit for Arduino

Funding

=> ↺ ownCloud beefing up security with bounty program

• ownCloud Inc. have announced a partnership with HackerOne to help with the newly created Security Bug Bounty Program in an effort to find vulnerabilities and fix them before they become an issue for users.

=> ↺ National Science Foundation Commits $6 Million to Secure IoT

BSD

=> ↺ OpenBSD Is Getting Its Own Native Hypervisor

• The OpenBSD Foundation has been funding work on a project to provide OpenBSD with its own, native hypervisor.

• The hypervisor’s VMM is so far able to launch a kernel and ask for a root file-system, but beyond that, it’s been laying most of the hypervisor foundation up to this point.

=> ↺ Coming Soon to OpenBSD/amd64: A Native Hypervisor

• Earlier today, Mike Larkin (mlarkin@) published a teaser for something he’s been working on for a while.

=> ↺ the peculiar libretunnel situation

• The author of stunnel has (once, twice) asserted that stunnel may not be used with LibreSSL, only with OpenSSL. This is perhaps a strange thing for free software to do, and it creates the potential for some very weird consequences.

• First, some background. The OpenSSL license and the GPL are both free software licenses, but they are different flavors of freedom, meaning you can’t mix them. It would be like mixing savory and sweet. Can’t do it. Alright, so maybe technically you can do it, but you’re not supposed to. The flavor, er, freedom police will come get you. One workaround is for the GPL software to say, oh, but maybe wait, here’s an exception. (Does this make the software more or less free?) Here’s a longer explanation with sample exception.

=> ↺ FreeBSD on Beagle Bone Black (with X11)

• X11 clients on the Beagle Bone Black .. that’s X11 over the network, with the X Server elsewhere. No display as yet. The FreeBSD wiki notes that there’s no (mini) HDMI driver yet. So I built some X11 programs, xauth(1) and xmessage(1), and installed them on the Bone. Since I bought a blue case for the Bone, and it is the smallest computer in the house (discounting phones .. let’s call it the smallest hackable computer in the house) the kids decided to call it smurf. Here’s a screenshot of poudriere’s text console as it builds packages.

Openness/Sharing

=> ↺ Schiphol Airport working on open innovation

• …open data and an open programming interface…

=> ↺ How open film project Cosmos Laundromat made Blender better

• If you’re not familiar with the string of open projects that the Blender Institute has kicked out over the years, you might not be familiar with the term “open movie.” Simply put, not only is Cosmos Laundromat produced using free and open source tools like Blender, GIMP, Krita, and Inkscape, but the film itself, and all of its assets—models, textures, character rigs, animations, all of it—are available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license. Want to see what a production character rig looks like? Or know how that giant color tornado was created? How about actually using a character (or just a prop) in your own project? Maybe you even want to redo the entire film to your own tastes. It’s an open movie! You can!

=> ↺ Making strides in container integration, and more OpenStack news

Programming

=> ↺ The thin line between good and bad automation

• I don’t like automation — I love it. I whisper sweet nothings, come ’round with flowers, and buy milkshakes for automation. I’ve even stood outside the window with a boombox for automation. I will go out of my way to automate tasks that, while they are not terribly tedious, I don’t want to have to remember exactly how to do them somewhere down the road, when months have gone by since the last time I had to relearn them.

Leftovers

Security

=> ↺ Linux Foundation publishes best practices for secure workstations

=> ↺ Tuesday’s security advisories

=> ↺ OpenSSL Security: A Year in Review

• Over the last 10 years, OpenSSL has published advisories on over 100 vulnerabilities. Many more were likely silently fixed in the early days, but in the past year our goal has been to establish a clear public record.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

=> ↺ Breaking the Depleted Uranium Ceiling

• It is an astonishing fact that, despite near universal recognition now that the war in Iraq was a disaster, no major British social institution is headed by a single one of the majority of the population wo were opposed to the war.

• Every Cabinet Minister actively supported the war. Of the fifteen Tory MPs who rebelled and voted against the war, not one is a minister. Civil servants officially have no politics but privately their opinions are known. There is not one single Permanent Under Secretary of a UK government department who was known to be against the war and most were enthusiasts. Simon Fraser, PUS at the FCO, was an active Blairite enthusiast for the war. Though no Blairite, the Head of MI6 Alex Younger was also an enthusiast.

=> ↺ Missing From Reports of Yemeni Carnage: Washington’s Responsibility

• But that “huge role” often disappears when the the leading papers are discussing the carnage that results from the air attacks that the US is supporting and supplying. Thus when the Times‘ Rick Gladstone (8/22/15) reported that “Saudi-led airstrikes on a residential district in Yemen’s southwestern city of Taiz had killed more than 65 civilians, including 17 people from one family,” according to Doctors Without Borders, and that the death toll in the war included “hundreds of civilians killed in airstrikes,” Washington’s role in facilitating those deaths went unmentioned.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

=> ↺ Obama can rename Mount McKinley Denali — but he can’t stop its loss of ice

• This Monday through Wednesday, President Obama will be in Alaska, visiting melting glaciers and remote towns and meeting with other Arctic leaders. On Sunday, the president made a major statement by officially renaming Mt. McKinley — the U.S.’s highest peak — Denali, its traditional native name.

• The trip’s purpose is to highlight climate change — and for Alaska in particular, the change has been dramatic.

Finance

=> ↺ Blythe Masters Tells Banks the Blockchain Changes Everything

• These Wall Street veterans all know who Blythe Masters is. She’s the wunderkind who made managing director at JPMorgan Chase at age 28, the financial engineer who helped develop the credit-default swap and bring to life a market that peaked at $58 trillion, in notional terms, in 2007. She’s the banker later vilified by pundits, unfairly some say, after those instruments compounded the damage wrought by the subprime mortgage crash in 2008. Now, one year after quitting JPMorgan amid another controversy, Blythe Masters is back. She isn’t pitching a newly minted derivative or trading stratagem to this room. She’s promoting something wilder: It’s called the blockchain, and it’s the digital ledger software code that powers bitcoin.

=> ↺ eBay Pledges Loyalty To PayPal — Bans Rivals

• eBay will soon be banning PayPal rivals, ProPay and Skrill, from offering payment services to sellers on its platform.

=> ↺ Police force could lose 22,000 jobs under new spending cuts

• Major reduction in funding could see number of police officers in England and Wales fall to 40-year low

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

=> ↺ NRA Host Warns Parents Of Slain Virginia Journalists To Not “Become So Emotional” In Response To Shooting

• Colion Noir, a commentator and web series host for the National Rifle Association (NRA), warned the parents of slain journalists Alison Parker and Adam Ward against becoming “so emotional” in response to the fatal shooting of their children that they channel their “grief-inspired advocacy” to the wrong effect.

=> ↺ Fox’s Bill O’Reilly Says Black Lives Matter Is A “Hate Group” That Wants Police Officers Dead

=> ↺ CNN Allows Dick Cheney To Attack Hillary Clinton For Email Practices Colin Powell Also Used

• CNN repeatedly asked former Vice President Dick Cheney for his criticism of Hillary Clinton’s email practices during her time as secretary of state, but the network failed to acknowledge the fact that Colin Powell, who was secretary of state during the Bush-Cheney administration, similarly used a private email account to conduct State business.

Censorship

=> ↺ Muhammad cartoon editor gets Norway prize

• Jyllands-Posten editor Flemming Rose, who was behind the controversial 2005 publication of Prophet Muhammad cartoons, is being honoured by a Norwegian free speech group.

Privacy

=> ↺ Don’t let Roanoke murderer’s arrest justify a license plate reader rise

• As someone who has been reporting on license plate readers (LPR) for some time now, it actually surprised me when I heard that Roanoke, Virginia, shooter Vester Lee Flanagan had been first located through the use of the scanning device. While the devices have been in use in Virginia for years, their effectiveness and efficiency there—and nationwide—is questionable.

• According to local media accounts, when Virginia State Police Trooper Pamela Neff received the suspect’s plate number over her radio last week, she punched it into her LPR system and got an alert that the car had passed by not three minutes earlier. Within 10 minutes, Neff and other officers converged on Flanagan’s location, finding that he had shot himself, ending the manhunt.

=> ↺ Fake EFF site serving espionage malware was likely active for 3+ weeks

Civil Rights

=> ↺ Human Rights Abuses in Mexico

• Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff co-hosts for the Project Censored show provide an update on human rights abuses in Mexico funded by US; they speak with researcher/journalist Laura Carlsen in Mexico City.

=> ↺ Mississippi’s Clarion-Ledger Promotes Blogger Who Compares “Abortion ‘Doctors’ With ISIS”

• A “featured blogger” for Mississippi’s Clarion-Ledger touted the Center for Medical Progress’ (CMP) widely debunked sting videos targeting Planned Parenthood to compare doctors who perform abortions to terror group ISIS.

Internet/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ FCC Introduces Rules Banning WiFi Router Firmware Modification

• For years we have been graced by cheap consumer electronics that are able to be upgraded through unofficial means. Your Nintendo DS is able to run unsigned code, your old XBox was a capable server for its time, your Android smartphone can be made better with CyanogenMod, and your wireless router could be expanded far beyond what it was originally designed to do thanks to the efforts of open source firmware creators. Now, this may change. In a proposed rule from the US Federal Communications Commission, devices with radios may be required to prevent modifications to firmware.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ Yandex Demands Takedown of ‘Illegal’ Music Downloader

• Russian search giant Yandex has ordered U.S-based Github to take down a tool that allows downloading of MP3s from its music streaming service. Yandex, which has 60% of the local search market and has deals with Universal, Sony and Warner to offer a Spotify-like platform, says that the music downloader is illegal.

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

=> Techrights

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.