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[Front] Posted Oct 10, 2008 21:02 UTC (Fri) by corbet

James Bottomley opened this year's Linux-Kongress with his views on the Linux community's values. What these values are is not entirely obvious. Other groups have well-articulated value systems which define them, but while the Linux community's values are not so clearly expressed, they are central to what we do. Click below, subscribers only, for LWN's coverage of the keynote.

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[Press] Posted Oct 10, 2008 19:47 UTC (Fri) by ris

The sub-title for this article is Proprietary data formats may be legally defensible but open standards can be a better spur for innovation. "Dan Cohen, director of GMU's Center for History and New Media, and Sean Takats, a GMU history professor, are also directors of Zotero: open-source software developed by the history centre that lets researchers organize and share their digital information iTunes style, whether it is in the form of citations, documents or web pages. Zotero is free and popular, and has attracted some 1 million downloads since its launch in October 2006. Thomson makes the proprietary bibliography software EndNote, and claims that Zotero is causing its commercial business "irreparable harm" and is wilfully and intentionally destroying Thomson's customer base. " (Thanks to jerbol)

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[Press] Posted Oct 10, 2008 19:35 UTC (Fri) by ris

LinuxMedNews looks at multi-head, the killer application in health care. "Multi-head, multi-user systems running off a single PC. This is where multiple displays, keyboards and mice can be attached to a single PC with multiple users all working simultaneously from one system unit. This can dramatically lower the cost of an individual workstations as well as the cost to support individual workstations. This setup is becoming more and more viable as hardware power increases."

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[Security] Posted Oct 10, 2008 19:20 UTC (Fri) by ris

CentOS has updated cups (several vulnerabilities).

Fedora has updated ruby (F9, F8: multiple vulnerabilities), condor (F9: multiple vulnerabilities), postfix (F9, F8: multiple vulnerabilities), dbus (F9: denial of service).

Gentoo has updated portage (privilege escalation).

Red Hat has updated cups (several vulnerabilities).

Ubuntu has updated ruby (multiple vulnerabilities).

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[Development] Posted Oct 10, 2008 14:10 UTC (Fri) by corbet

Michael Meeks has taken a detailed look at contributions to OpenOffice.org and come away worried. "Crude as they are - the statistics show a picture of slow disengagement by Sun, combined with a spectacular lack of growth in the developer community. In a healthy project we would expect to see a large number of volunteer developers involved, in addition - we would expect to see a large number of peer companies contributing to the common code pool; we do not see this in OpenOffice.org. Indeed, quite the opposite we appear to have the lowest number of active developers on OO.o since records began: 24, this contrasts negatively with Linux's recent low of 160+. Even spun in the most positive way, OO.o is at best stagnating from a development perspective."

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[Kernel] Posted Oct 10, 2008 4:37 UTC (Fri) by corbet

A bit later than expected, Linus has released the final 2.6.27 kernel. For those just tuning in, 2.6.27 includes (among many other things) UBIFS, support for integrity checking in the block layer, multiqueue networking, the ftrace tracing framework, the lockless page cache, the relocation of a lot of firmware, the GSPCA webcam driver set, and a number of extended system calls. See the always-excellent KernelNewbies summary for lots more information about this release.

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[Press] Posted Oct 9, 2008 20:41 UTC (Thu) by cook

The Register reflects on the history of Linux. "Linux is what Windows had once promised to be - at least in terms of cross-platform support. In the wake of the PowerPC alliance from IBM, Apple, and Motorola in 1991, Microsoft made a commitment to support Windows NT 3.51 on PowerPC chips. Windows eventually added support for Digital's Alpha NEC's and SGI's MIPS chips. Workstation maker Intergraph ported Windows NT 3.51 to its Clipper chips and said it was creating a port to Sparc chips from Sun. Neither ports saw the light of day."

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[Press] Posted Oct 9, 2008 17:55 UTC (Thu) by cook

DesktopLinux.com features an interview with Miguel de Icaza. "GNOME project co-founder Miguel de Icaza discusses the release of Mono 2.0, in this detailed interview with Henry Kingman, executive editor of DesktopLinux. The conversation spans Mono's history, current state, and future, with stops along the way for updates on Moonlight and Mono Develop."

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[Security] Posted Oct 9, 2008 17:46 UTC (Thu) by cook

Debian has updated mon (insecure temp files) and iceweasel (multiple vulnerabilities).

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[Distributions] Posted Oct 9, 2008 16:49 UTC (Thu) by cook

Mandriva has announced the release of Mandriva Linux 2009. "Mandriva Linux 2009 goes further in its innovations and offers a thoroughly modern and cutting-edge graphical environment: KDE 4.1. Personalizable, modular, scalable, and full of visual effects that enhance the environment, KDE's new version is usable everywhere, from the oldest hardware to the newest. Mandriva’s team has gone to great lengths to integrate this new environment in a way that ensures everyone can jump right in to using it, with a customized graphical theme, careful choice of the most powerful applications, and a default configuration tuned to your system's particular hardware."

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[Press] Posted Oct 9, 2008 16:18 UTC (Thu) by cook

There appear to be some opposing trends involving Linux on Netbooks. PC World's article Netbooks Will Boost Adoption of Linux, Says Novell CTO notes: "A surge in demand for netbooks is helping drive business for Linux, as the devices are designed to be low-cost with smaller storage, according to Novell's chief technology and strategy officer for Linux. " People typically don't care what operating system is on the netbooks, because they don't buy them to run a suite of applications like Microsoft Office, but to be on the Web using a Web browser," Nat Friedman said in an interview with IDG News Service."

Laptop Mag's article Ubuntu Confirms Linux Netbook Returns Higher than Anticipated quotes Canonical's marketing manager Gerry Carr: "“We don’t know what the XP return rates are. But I will say that the return rate is above normal for netbooks that offer open-source operating systems,” Carr echoed. Carr highlighted a few reasons why Ubuntu-running netbooks are returned more often. “Unclear selling is happening, typically online. The customer will get their netbook sent to their home and they imagine to find something like a Microsoft desktop, but they see a brown Ubuntu version. They are unwilling to learn it and they were expecting to have Windows.”"

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[Kernel] Posted Oct 9, 2008 9:23 UTC (Thu) by corbet

The 2.6.25.18 and 2.6.26.6 stable kernel updates have been released. Each contains a long list of fixes for a number of important problems.

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[Announcements] Posted Oct 8, 2008 23:50 UTC (Wed) by jake

Linux Pro Magazine will be streaming live video of the Linux-Kongress keynotes. You can see James Bottomley's "What is the value of Open Source", LWN Executive Editor Jonathan Corbet's "Kernel Report", or Dirk Hohndel's presentation on Mobile Linux. Linux-Kongress is being held October 7-10 in Hamburg, Germany. See the web site for the schedule.

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Posted Oct 8, 2008 23:01 UTC (Wed)

The LWN.net Weekly Edition for October 9, 2008 is available.

Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition

• Front: Some views from Vision; Plugging into GCC; Accessibility in Linux systems
• Security: Partial disclosure; New vulnerabilities in kernel, lighttpd, mplayer, php5,...
• Kernel: 2.6.27 development statistics; Btrfs to the mainline?; Threaded interrupt handlers
• Distributions: New Release Season; ALT Linux 4.1 Desktop, Fedora 9 Re-spins, openSUSE 11.1 Beta 2, PDK 0.9.6, Ubuntu 8.10 Beta, VC4.1
• Development: Python 2.6 makes its debut, GNOME 2.25 release schedule, Theora 1.0 in testing, new versions of PulseAudio, SoftlabsAV, Midgard, rrdtool, Veusz, KDE, M2Crypto, phpDiplomacy, Albow, Mono, Claws Mail, Elisa, MMA, OpenSwing, TymeacSE, Pyjamas, PyYAML, PS/Tk, Pydev, cgit.
• Press: Stallman vs. Clouds, Takeover attempt of ODF, Red Hat's HPC platform, KPackageKit developers interview, PocketMac for Blackberry review, Fedora and Ubuntu reviews, Mono 2 review, 11 Linux productivity tools, issues with 6 month distribution releases.
• Announcements: New FSF High Priority list, Untangle Joins LF, call for Perl Grant Proposals, Top Ten Open Source Software Support Issues, OO.o Community Innovation Program winners, Ubuntu Server Survey, LCA Open Mobile cfp, SCALE call for non-profits, NLUUG and ELC-UU colocate, OpenSource World SF, IPTables video.

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[Security] Posted Oct 8, 2008 17:41 UTC (Wed) by jake

Red Hat has updated kernel (multiple vulnerabilities), condor (RHEL4, RHEL5: multiple vulnerabilities).

SUSE has updated MozillaFirefox, MozillaThunderbird, seamonkey, mozilla (multiple vulnerabilities).

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[Announcements] Posted Oct 8, 2008 17:30 UTC (Wed) by jake

The 2009 edition of linux.conf.au has announced three keynote speakers for the conference. It will be held January 19-24, 2009 in Hobart, Tasmania. "The speakers are: internationally recognised author, speaker and systems administrator, Tom Limoncelli; co-founder of Wikia and Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board, Angela Beesley; and Chief Open Source Officer at Sun Microsystems, Simon Phipps." Click below for more information.

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[Distributions] Posted Oct 8, 2008 13:14 UTC (Wed) by jake

In order to increase the number of eligible voters for the upcoming openSUSE board elections, there is a mechanism for openSUSE Members to grant a registered user the ability to vote in the election. That ability expires at noon UTC on October 9th. "Why? Simplisticly it's to get more voters/users/contributors involved in influencing how the openSUSE project progresses. There are 2831 registered users now, but only 212 Members - so according to my bad maths that makes about 7.5% eligible to vote. That to me isn't entirely representative of the community, so in comes the Franchise vote, we members have the ability to increase that voting percentage to 15%. The catch is that the users have to have registered prior to 01 September 2008." Click below for the reminder which includes more details.

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[Press] Posted Oct 7, 2008 22:00 UTC (Tue) by ris

LinuxDevices looks at a Linux-to-Blackberry sync solution, now in beta testing. "Initially, PocketMac for Blackberry, Linux Edition (let's call it "PBLE") is currently being tested only on the Xandros distribution. Currently, it is designed to sync with the KDE PIM suite. Other Linux distributions will be supported in the near future, says the IAA, which did not offer any additional information on Linux application support."

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[Announcements] Posted Oct 7, 2008 21:34 UTC (Tue) by ris

This press release looks at the Brazilian "Computador para Todos" (Computer for Everyone) program that was announced in November 2005. The open source Insigne OS has been key to the success of the program. ""It has been hard but pleasant work reaching 1.5 million families," says Joao Pereira da Silva Jr., Insigne's CEO. "Brand-new users considered the system very friendly, and the other systems' former users expressed admiration and a desire to migrate to Insigne. We are motivated to improve the Insigne OS to increase our market share.""

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[Announcements] Posted Oct 7, 2008 21:02 UTC (Tue) by ris

IDG World Expo has announced the launch of OpenSource World(TM) Conference & Expo. "OpenSource World will include the key features of LinuxWorld(R), but will offer a strong focus on supporting and enlarging not only the Linux market, but the overarching open source technology umbrella. OpenSource World is scheduled to take place August 10-13, 2009, at San Francisco's Moscone Center."

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