FOSSPlanet

Android smartphones are sending waves of excitement through the mobile community that they are a serious contender to knock iPhone off its smartphone perch. But, are they really a threat or have they already missed the boat?

Bordeaux 1.8.0 beta 1 for Mac OSX systems has been released, this release adds support for Microsoft Office 2003 Applications (Word, Excel, Powerpnt) Microsoft Project 2003 and Visio 2003. Their are still a small number of known problems around libgphoto2 and libpng support with this release.

Anyone who was ever fool enough to believe that Microsoft software was good enough to be used for a mission-critical operation had their face slapped this September when the LSE (London Stock Exchange)'s Windows-based TradElect system brought the market to a standstill for almost an entire day. While the LSE denied that the collapse was TradElect's fault, they also refused to explain what the problem really wa. Sources at the LSE tell me to this day that the problem was with TradElect.

The Mono discussion may be tiring, but the fact of the matter is that thanks to this discussion, various major Linux distributions are now making official statements detailing their position in the Mono/C# debate. The latest to do this is Ubuntu, which reiterated their position yesterday.

Dave Philips reviews the Linux version of Pianoteq (commercial software) on Linux Journal. "On the 15th of May 2009 the Modartt company announced the release of version 3.0.3 of their award-winning Pianoteq, a professional-quality digital keyboard instrument created by an audio synthesis method known as physical modeling. The program is vastly praised by its users, but in order to feel the love you've had to run a Windows machine or a Mac box. Until now, that is. The latest release introduces various new attractions, and the one that interests me the most is support for a native Linux version."

The GNU General Public Licence is falling in popularity, looking at all the versions of the GPL as a whole, according to figures released on Tuesday by Black Duck. At the same time, Microsoft's open source software license, MS-PL, is gaining ground in the open source world, the company said. Black Duck, which provides services and products for developers working with open source code, compiled the figures from its database of more than 200,000 open source projects collected from the internet.

[The lead is a tad misleading. GPL has lost some percentage but it lost to BSD and MIT, not to MS-PL - Sander]

I have trolled my Twitter feeds looking for something exciting or provocative related to Open Source, but nothing, other than the release of Fedora 11 and Firefox 3.5 is jumping out at me and frankly neither is particularly news worth, despite the large number of people that are supposedly downloading both code sets. Has Open Source lost its mojo? Has it become so common place that there are no real innovations to talk about? Or is it simply the summer lull?

Linux Journal's Shawn Powers shows us how to use nice and renice to change the priority level of your processes.

From the PHAT dept.:
The FAT file system is the file system used by MS-DOS and earlier versions of Windows. It's a relatively simple and straightforward file system, supported by just about any operating system, making it the favoured file system on memory cards and the like. FAT is an ECMA and ISO standard, but these only apply for FAT12 and FAT16 without support for long file names, and therein lies a problem.

...The new patch offers support for long file names without infringing any of Microsoft's patents. This isn't just an empty claim; several patent lawyers with expertise in this area have investigated the patch and concluded that it does not infringe the patents.

One of the benefits of moving the different graphics hardware drivers over to using kernel mode-setting, an in-kernel GPU memory manager (whether it be GEM or TTM), and other newer X innovations is the possibility of now running the X Server without root privileges. By doing so, this of course improves the security since this very large chunk of code is no longer running with all of these high-privileged rights.Due to now living in a KMS-enabled world, at least on the Intel and ATI side (the NVIDIA side is still slowly but surely coming via Nouveau), it's rather easy to get the X Server running without any special rights...

The Free Software Foundation Europe presents an interview with Smári McCarthy. "Stian Rødven Eide: One of the most profiled projects you have been involved with is the Fab Lab, having headed the Icelandic branch for over a year now. While best known for its use of 3D printers, the Fab Lab is actually a much broader concept that goes far beyond technical innovation. Can you tell us a bit about your work there, and what you hope to achieve? Smári McCarthy: There are two sides to the Fab Lab story. On the one hand, there’s the research side, which is all about developing the universal constructors, figuring out the hard science of digital fabrication. In that realm I think our work is done when we can download chicken sandwiches off the Internet."

The July, 2009 edition of the GNOME Journal has been published. Contents include: "a review of Project Hamster by Les Harris, an interview on working with upstream with Laszlo Peter by Stormy Peters, using git for GNOME translators by Og Maciel, an introduction to GNOME Zeitgeist by Natan Yellin, a look at some of GNOME Do's advanced features by Jorge Castro, and lastly, the Behind the Scenes feature continues with Owen Taylor by Paul Cutler."

CentOS has updated seamonkey (arbitrary code execution).

Fedora 9 has updated xorg-x11-xfs (race condition).

Fedora 10 has updated xorg-x11-xfs (race condition).

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has updated pidgin (denial of service) and openswan (input validation flaws).

Ubuntu has updated kernel (multiple vulnerabilities).

Adobe AIR is a technology that lets you run Internet applications on the desktop. With AIR you do not need a browser to run such desktop applications. This tutorial explains how you can install Adobe AIR 1.5.1 for Linux on an Ubuntu 9.04 desktop and how you can install AIR applications.

Andrew Tridgell has published a patch that could make the Linux implementation of the FAT filesystem impervious to Microsoft patent claims of the kind that forced a settlement from TomTom. The patch alters the VFAT code so that it does not generate both short and long filenames, says Tridgell.

The typical download manager at a minimum provides means to recover from errors without losing the work already completed, and can optionally split the file to be downloaded (or uploaded) into 2 or more segments, which are then moved in parallel, potentially making the process faster within the limits of the available bandwidth. So what is the perfect download manager i should use in Linux ?

iTWire reports on a new Linux installation by a Glendale, California hospital. "Adventist Medical Center (GAMC) has installed thin clients running Linux virtual desktops in 65 patient rooms in its new West Tower. "Just as easily as the hospital provides patients with TVs in rooms, now we provide personal computing," said Roger Pruyne, senior programmer/analyst and project manager for the GAMC Patient Computing project. The system combines NoMachine's NX remote access and virtualisation software, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, and an IBM System x3650 server. GAMC estimates that this approach saves 98 percent of the cost that would have been involved if conventional PCs had been selected."

When it comes time to move from Windows to Linux, one of the first things you want to consider is what software you rely on in the Windows world, and what you're going to use in Linux.

VirtualBox 3.0, with its improved 3D support, can ensure that some users won't need to boot Windows even when gaming. With its version 3.0 of VirtualBox, Innotek/Sun/Oracle made a significant step forward. End users will probably like the 3D graphics support the most: you can now run Ubuntu with Compiz. The new version brings enhancements and support for OpenGL 2.0.

Release candidate #1 for Slackware 13.0. Hi folks -- the TODO isn't entirely empty here, but it's pretty much down to minor nits, and so we're going to call this release candidate #1 and (mostly) freeze further updates unless they happen to fix problems.

Matt Asay makes a great point.

When you are using a cloud software licenses don’t matter much. (Picture from NASA via Visible Earth.)

This has always been true, of course. Ever since the Web was spun, users of Web services have remained blissfully ignorant of disputes over software licenses. Licenses, we don’t need no steenkin’ licenses.

What is changing today is simply the balance of where client computing takes place. Power and responsibility are moving to what used to be called the server side.  

Things I used to do on my PC, like get my mail and manage my calendar, are now done online. What matters is no longer who controls my software but who controls my data.

To Matt, this becomes a question of “data-driven lock-in,” with Google becoming Microsoft due to its “control” of my data.

But do they really control my mail? That’s not the deal implicit in the transaction. Just as with Google Health, I own my mail and my list of appointments.

What Google owns is not the data, but data about the data. They know I’m on those pages, and they have the right to sell ads against those page views. They can aggregate data about my use of the resource, both to manage it and to sell billboards alongside it.

You can argue it’s better than the deal you get here. When you post a TalkBack, that legally becomes the property of ZDNet.

This is not because ZDNet is greedier than Google. It’s convenience. Managing hundreds of licenses to the hundreds of comments on my controversial Steve Jobs post would drive everyone crazy. But it’s easy, once you aggregate all your mail in your inbox, to give you control.

What we’re entering, in license terms, is not a cloud era but a fog era. Clouds and fog are the same thing. The difference between them is in the eye of the beholder. If you can see clearly licenses and their terms are in the far distance. If you can’t, then you need a legal guide.

From the Get Virtualized dept.:
Red Hat today officially announced the beta availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 (RHEL), which in my view is a lot more than a typical point release. Sure we're all waiting for the big RHEL 6 release, but there are some major changes in RHEL 5.4.

The most obvious change is the shift to the KVM hypervisor (as opposed to Xen). Xen is still in RHEL, but with RHEL 5.4, Red Hat is signaling its intention that KVM (eventually) is to be Red Hat's preferred Hypervisor. It's a preference that Red Hat execs have indicated at multiple points this year and should be no surprise since Red Hat now owns lead KVM vendor Qumranet.

A while ago I put up this article, reviewing 5 so-called 'essential' add-ons for Firefox. To continue in the same manner in this second part, here are 5 add-ons updated for Firefox 3.5 which can prove useful. Maybe not the most popular, but they definitely deserve a try.

The Ubuntu Technical Board has been asked for a position statement on the use of C#, specifically the Mono implementation, by applications in Ubuntu.

Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian friends, both at home and abroad. June was a very busy month for me, which is why there were so few postings and I wanted to jump on July with a really big bang, but I am having trouble finding a topic worth discussing. I could talk about my new netbook, an ASUS Eee PC that I picked up for a song, but it is still running Windows and while I have downloaded the Ubuntu Netbook Remix, I have not had time to unspool it and begin the install process. I have trolled my Twitter feeds looking for something exciting or provocative related to Open Source, but nothing, other than the release of Fedora 11 and Firefox 3.5 is jumping out at me and frankly neither is particularly news worth, despite the large number of people that are supposedly downloading both code sets.

While StarDict touts itself as "the best dictionary program for Linux and Windows," it has a serious challenger to the title called GoldenDict.

As the Debian project releases a second update of its Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 ("Lenny") distribution, a controversy has broken out over the next version, "Squeeze." GNU guru Richard Stallman has warned that by including a Mono-based note-taking application called Tomboy, Debian runs the risk of Microsoft litigation over C# patents. Debian forms the basis for a number of desktop and embedded Linux distributions, including Ubuntu and Xandros. The second stable release, made available this week, is said to include numerous security fixes, as well as "a few adjustments to serious problems." But, the upcoming Squeeze release appears to have some serious problems, according to Debian insiders.

In total, PostgreSQL 8.4 includes 293 enhancements from the previous 8.3 release, an update that was primarily centered around performance. "There is no performance change [that] affects all users equally across the board," PostgreSQL project core team member Josh Berkus told InternetNews.com. "However, there are several changes with dramatically improve performance for several specific common use cases."

A Linux developer has published a new kernel patch that provides a workaround to avoid Microsoft's patents on the FAT filesystem. The patch, which has undergone extensive legal review by patent lawyers, could make it possible to use FAT on Linux without having to pay licensing fees to Microsoft.

In many parts of the world, the power grid is shoddy, computers are scarce, and connectivity is even rarer. Thus, as with many other modern practices and technologies, populations are increasingly bifurcated into the "computing haves" and the "computing have-nots." But many are addressing the divide. SolarNetOne is a turnkey Internet hotspot—power, computers, and satellite uplink—you can install virtually anywhere, for less than the cost of a subcompact car.

The PostgreSQL developers have released version 8.4 of the open source database saying it is "Now easier to use than ever". The release, which comes after sixteen months of development by the PostgeSQL Global Development Group, adds a number of new features such as per-column permissions which gives more control over which users can see which columns in a database.

The Triple Crown of Linux conferences — if there is one — is surely the Linux Symposium, the Linux Kongress, and linux.conf.au. It was just a month ago that we passed on the message to LinuxJournal.com readers that the time to get their name on the Kongress program was nigh, and now it is time to do the same for the southernmost jewel in the crown.

In June of 2007, after many months delay, the Free Software Software Foundation released GPLv3. Since that time, the license has been gaining an increased following, but without much threat to GPLv2 in first place.

Canonical has launched Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Services, an effort to help customers build and support cloud infrastructures that live behind corporate firewalls. The announcement, leveraging Ubuntu Server Edition, caught The VAR Guy’s attention for two key reasons.

"What ever happened to chunkfs?" This is a question I hear every few months, and I always answer the same way, "Chunkfs works, the overhead is reasonable, and it is only practical if it is part of the file system design from the beginning, not tacked on after the fact. I just need to write up the paper summarizing all the data." Thanks to your benevolent LWN editor, you are now reading that paper.

From the 'that's a lot of downloads' files:SourceForge.net, the big open source app/code repository has hit a major milestone: 4 billion downloads.Since 1999, SourceForge has the 'go to place' for all open source downloads, but in the last couple of years, Google Code has put up a bit of challenge.

Does the idea of "advocacy" make you nervous? It does sound a bit scary, doesn't it, like those annoying door-to-door religious people. But it's not that way. If you're interested in helping people learn to speak Linux, here are a few easy, non-scary tips.

Red Hat today officially announced the beta availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 (RHEL), which in my view is a lot more than a typical point release. Sure we're all waiting for the big RHEL 6 release, but there are some major changes in RHEL 5.4.

The LWN.net Weekly Edition for July 2, 2009 is available.

Less than 24 hours since it was released, Firefox 3.5 has already been downloaded more than four million times. According to Mozilla's Worldwide Firefox Downloads page, the major update to the open source Firefox web browser is currently being downloaded approximately 77 times every second all around the globe.

FrostWire is an open-source, free Java-based peer-to-peer client with support for the BitTorrent protocol, skins and iTunes. The latest release, 4.18.0, contains many improvements, bug fixes and several changes. See the official announcement here. Debian Lenny doesn't come with FrostWire included in its repositories, but installing it is very easy if you follow the steps below.

Next week, I'm taking part in a debate with a Microsoft representative about the passage of the OOXML file format through the ISO process last year. Since said Microsoftie can draw on the not inconsiderable resources of his organisation to provide him with a little back-up, I thought I'd try to even the odds by putting out a call for help to the unmatched resource that is the Linux Journal community. Here's the background to the meeting, and the kind of info I hope people might be able to provide.

Since the torrents of IANALs have been filling the Internet tubes with passionate arguments on Mono/No Mono, it seemed a good time to weigh in with an article written by an actual lawyer on the possible risks and dangers. "Without that explicit patent license, we certainly should prefer the community-driven and Free-Software-developed languages over those developed by companies (like Microsoft) that have a history of anti-Free Software practices."

Firefox 3.5 has been released and is available for download, the new version is faster than ever and come with many new features. This how to shows you how to upgrade from firefox3.x to firefox3.5

This article continues the series of articles on Fireall Builder, a graphical firewall configuration and management tool that supports many Open Source firewall platforms as well as Cisco IOS access lists and Cisco ASA (PIX). This article demonstrates how you can work with IP Service object in Firewall Builder.

Mandriva has updated pidgin (multiple remote vulnerabilities).

SUSE has updated acroread (lots of vulnerabilities).

Skip-free audio and video playback is a fundamental expectation for many - if not most - Linux users. Given the importance of this feature and the increase in hardware performance over the years, one would think that the audio latency problem would have been solved some time ago. The recent posting of (and mixed reception for) the "RealtimeKit" mechanism shows that this issue remains open, though, and that we are still short of a consensus on how it should be solved. Click below (subscribers only) for LWN's report.

Krusader is a twin-panel file manager for KDE which has been around for around seven years and was always a good alternative to Konqueror since KDE3 days. Its interface resembles the one of the popular file manager Midnight Commander for the console. Codenamed 'Mars Pathfinder', 2.0 is the first KDE4 stable release, bringing lots of new features and coming with the entire interface ported to Qt4 libraries.

A potential Oracle-Ubuntu partnership gets a little sexier when you throw OpenOffice into the mix. Here's why according to The VAR Guy.

As the Debian project releases a second update of its Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 ("Lenny") distribution, a controversy has broken out over the next version, "Squeeze." GNU guru Richard Stallman has warned that by including a Mono-based note-taking application called Tomboy, Debian runs the risk of Microsoft litigation over C# patents.

Last week I made a summary of the current state of the Linux netbook market. Today I will show you that Linux netbooks are at a crossroad. They can reach a bright future and a significant market presence through 3 different paths: the smartbook path, the cheap path and the power path. I will explain how each path will lead the Linux netbook to market dominance in a specific niche.

From the Not Oracle dept.:
The PostgreSQL Global Development Group has released version 8.4, continuing the rapid development of the world's most advanced open source database. This release contains an abundance of enhancements to make administering, querying, and programming of PostgreSQL databases easier than ever before. With 293 new or improved features in version 8.4, there are even more reasons to choose PostgreSQL for your next project.

The most numerous changes in PostgreSQL 8.4 are new or improved administration and monitoring tools and commands. Each user has their own favorite features which will make day-to-day work with PostgreSQL easier and more productive for them.

The long-awaited PostgreSQL 8.4 release is available. "This release contains an abundance of enhancements to make administering, querying, and programming of PostgreSQL databases easier than ever before. With 293 new or improved features in version 8.4, there are even more reasons to choose PostgreSQL for your next project." See the announcement (click below) for a list of the most interesting new features.

For those of you using PHP in the development of web-sites or even on the desktop (like what we do with the Phoronix Test Suite), PHP 5.3.0 has finally been released! This major update to PHP5 brings support for namespaces, late static bindings, closures, new PHP extensions, plenty of bug fixes, and much more.

Version 1.0 of the Open Database License is now official. This is the license that the OpenStreetMap project proposes to move to; the current plan envisions a vote being held almost right away, followed by a 2-3 month transition.

In the latest Black Duck analysis of open source licensing trends, it appears on the surface that the GPL has lost significant market share.

That is, until you look inside the numbers.

Versions of the GPL are currently being used by 65% of all projects, down from about 70% a year ago, with V3 licensing now on track to become the fourth most-widely used license by the end of the year.

The only non-GPL licenses to attract significant usage are the Artistic License and the standard BSD. But the GPV v3 should, at its present rate of growth, pass the latter in share within six months, the report says. Over half of all projects are still licensed under GPL v2.

The Artistic License, originally credited to Larry Wall, is the only open source license to have gone through a successful court challenge, specifically that of Jacobsen v. Katzer, where a district court is still considering an SFLC request for injunctive relief.

The best-known project under the Artistic License is Perl, but that project is dual-licensed under the GPL. There are also multiple versions of the Artistic License — Version 1.0, Version 2.0, and clarified. The Black Duck project did not break them out.

Black Duck’s analysis of its own figures, however, is that “open core” licensing is on the rise and that open source licensing is becoming more diverse, less “restrictive.”

So is the GPL losing its grip as the dominant open source license? I don’t think so but I can be persuaded.

The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate is out. "KDE 4.3 focuses on polishing and completing the user experience by providing a modern and beautiful Free working environment. Compared to the Beta releases, this release candidate now contains the new Air theme, which will be the default for KDE 4.3.0. Air is a theme lighter than Oxygen, which is still available as an option through the 'Desktop Settings' dialog." See the full announcement for a summary of features in KDE 4.3.

Transmission is a lightweight BitTorrent client built in GTK, with a clean and simple interface. Although most people prefer more popular clients like Vuze, Deluge or KTorrent, Transmission incorporates all the major features one needs for downloading torrents and can prove a very good alternative to those, especially if you don't need all those whistles and bells.

As much as I've railed against quickie distro reviews, I find myself trying a new version of Ubuntu in live CD form and writing just such a piece. I apologize in advance for not running Ubuntu 9.04 longer, but in this evaluation that has everything to do with the hardware I'm using, I'll explain why this is a wham-bam distro evaluation

This is quietly growing the base we need to insure the future isn't presented to our kids as a shrink wrapped set of chains. I have argued and presented the case for an organized advertising effort for the concept of Linux and Free Software for almost 5 years. That didn't do so well...too many politics and egos blocked the way. But this... This is working, and it's working better than I had ever imagined.