Development

Tux Droid brings Tux the penguin alive

Tux Droid is a fun new project that combines open-source software with a hardware project to create a wireless animated version of Tux the penguin, the Linux mascot:

The development team appears to be located in Belgium; they launched (PDF) the project in April of 2006, with hardware supplied by the company kysoh, whose name stands for Keep Your Sense Of Humor.

Tux Droid is interfaced to the host computer via a 2.4 Ghz wireless USB link. Control information and audio are routed back and forth across this link. The wireless link allows Tux Droid to be separated from the host computer, expanding the possible uses for the device. Power to the penguin comes from a set of rechargeable batteries and an AC power supply/recharger.

The Tux Droid can perform the following output functions:

• Flapping of the wings.
• Movement of the eyelids.
• Movement of the beak.
• Spinning at the base.
• Light blue LEDs in the eyes.
• Output of audio via a built in speaker.

Input functions include:

• Sensing a tap on the head.
• Sensing movement of the wings.
• Input of audio via a microphone.
• Reception of infrared signals from a TV-style remote control.

The Tux Droid API document is still in an early stage. The API development page describes the communication paths across the wireless USB link. The hardware architecture describes the data communication paths throughout the system. The penguin's embedded Behavioral CPU is an Atmel AVR microcontroller which is running open-source control software. The AVR connects to the mechanical interfaces and LED directly, and communicates with the wireless link and sound device through an internal I²C bus.

A wide variety of possible applications have been suggested for the Tux Droid, including flapping its wings for incoming email, dancing along with music that is playing, controlling multimedia playback functions, and more. One use that your author particularly liked was having the penguin light up its eyes, flap its wings and make noise to signal a system error. One can imagine connecting some network monitoring software up to the device for an amusing system security alarm.

A prototype of Tux Droid was recently demonstrated at the recent O'Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland, Oregon. A number of interesting animations show some potential uses for Tux Droid. This animation [Flash] presents a good representation of the penguin in motion. Hardware preorders are being accepted for early adopters of this critical technology.

Tux Droid shows how, with a little imagination, an open-source project can be innovative, useful, and plenty of fun. The only thing your author would like to suggest is the replacement of the blue LEDs with RGB clusters. There's nothing like red eyes to convey a mood.

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dkop 010 announced

Release 010 of dkop is available, it features bug fixes and improved documentation. "dkop is a Linux utility program for copying disk files to recordable DVD media. With dkop, you can copy your files to DVD for safekeeping or archival storage, and verify that the copy is good (no read errors). dkop is a free program licensed under the GNU General Public License. Three kinds of backup are available: full, incremental, and accumulate."

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Linux-HA 1.2.5 released

Version 1.2.5 of the Linux-HA cluster management software is out. "1.2.5 is a recommended upgrade for anyone running a 1.2 version of heartbeat as it contains a fix for a remote denial of service vulnerability."

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Linux-HA 2.0.7 available

Version 2.0.7 of the Linux-HA cluster management software is out. "2.0.7 has is a recommended upgrade for anyone running a 2.0 version of heartbeat as it contains a fix for a remote denial of service vulnerability."

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Firebird 2.00 Release Candidate 4 announced

Release candidate 4 of the Firebird 2.00 DBMS has been announced. "Firebird 2 contains a large number of new features, including derived tables, support for Execute Block, increased table sizes, new improved index code (the 252-byte index length limit is no longer applicable), expression indices, numerous optimiser improvements, enhanced security features, support for on-line incremental backups, new international language support, along with numerous other improvements and bug fixes."

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MySQL 5.1 New Features: MySQL Partitions

The MySQL DBMS project has a tutorial article on partitioning in the upcoming MySQL 5.1 release. "Partitioning is a way of pre-organizing table storage. You can say "some of the table's rows will go here, some will go there, still others will go to to still other places". Often, depending on the storage engine, the effect is to spread the table's rows over different files or even different disks. We - one of the folks who write the MySQL Reference Manual and one of the folks who test new features - will try to touch on everything that we, or beta testers, or participants in the the MySQL forums, have ever considered is worth touching on about partitioning. Nevertheless we won't repeat what's already in the MySQL Reference Manual when we can't think of a different way to say it."

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SQLite 3.3.7 released

Version 3.3.7 of SQLite, a light weight DBMS, is out. "Version 3.3.7 includes support for loadable extensions and virtual tables. But both features are still considered "beta" and their APIs are subject to change in a future release. This release is mostly to make available the minor bug fixes that have accumulated since 3.3.6. Upgrading is not necessary. Do so only if you encounter one of the obscure bugs that have been fixed or if you want to try out the new features."

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sendmail 8.13.8 available

Version 8.13.8 of the sendmail mail transfer agent has been announced. "It fixes some problems introduced in 8.13.7, as well as some other bugs. For a complete list of changes see the release notes down below."

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Hobbit Monitor version 4.2 released

Version 4.2 of Hobbit Monitor is out. "The Hobbit monitor is a full-featured, Open Source tool for monitoring the health and performance of networked systems. Systems can be monitored for various usage parameters such as cpu-, memory- and disk-utilisation; but also logfiles, network ports in use, file- and directory-size and the bandwidth used on network interfaces is automatically registered. Common network services (Web, E-mail, DNS, LDAP etc.) can be monitored, as well as custom network services, with a full check of whether the service is running and responding as it should."

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SSL-Explorer 0.2.7 released (SourceForge)

Version 0.2.7 of SSL-Explorer, a browser based SSL VPN solution, has been announced. "The main addition to this 0.2.7 release of SSL-Explorer is a major alteration to the authentication flow which has been changed to a multi-stage login process. The system now has the ability to alter the selectable authentication schemes for a particular user depending on those granted to them via their policies. Additionally, an RSS based context sensitive help system has now been introduced into this release. Also included in the release are various bugfixes for proxy support."

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Gallery 1.5.4 released (SourceForge)

Version 1.5.4 of Gallery, a web-based photo album, is available. "This release is a pure bug fix release with no security fixes. The most annoying bug was the broken permission dialog."

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Solr: Indexing XML with Lucene and REST (O'Reilly)

Bertrand Delacretaz introduces Solr on O'Reilly. "Solr (pronounced "solar") builds on the well-known Lucene search engine library to create an enterprise search server with a simple HTTP/XML interface. Using Solr, large collections of documents can be indexed based on strongly typed field definitions, thereby taking advantage of Lucene's powerful full-text search features. This article describes Solr's indexing interface and its main features, and shows how field-type definitions are used for precise content analysis."

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acpitool 0.4.6 released

Version 0.4.6 of acpitool is out with a bug fix. "AcpiTool is (yet another) Linux ACPI client. It's a small command-line application, intended to be a replacement for the apm tool. The primary target audience are laptop users, since these people are most interested in stuff like battery status, thermal status and the ability to put their precious laptop to sleep."

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Jitterbit 1.1 released (SourceForge)

Version 1.1 of Jitterbit is out. "This release contains an important security fix where a logged-in user could overwrite variables, and a collection of regular bugfixes. Jitterbit is an open source integration tool that delivers a quick and simple way to design, configure, test, and deploy integration solutions. It supports many document types and protocols: XML, web services, database, LDAP, text, FTP, HTTP(S), file."

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GanttProject 2.0.2 Final (SourceForge)

GanttProject version 2.0.2 has been announced "GanttProject is a project scheduling application written in Java and featuring gantt chart, resource management, calendaring, import/export (MS Project, HTML, PDF, spreadsheets). The final build of GanttProject 2.0.2 is available for downloading. It is a maintenance release focused on the most annoying bugs and usability problems remained after GP 2.0.1."

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GNOME 2.16.0 Beta 2 released

Version 2.16.0 Beta 2 (2.15.91) of GNOME is available. "We are pleased to announce the release of GNOME 2.16.0 Beta 2 (2.15.91). This is one of the last releases in the 2.15 development series and represents a release that is now API/ABI, feature, string and UI frozen. This means that we're pretty close to the final 2.16.0 release. The GNOME contributors are now busy fixing the most important bugs that are still out there, localizing the whole desktop or updating our documentation."

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GARNOME 2.16.0 Beta 2 released

Version 2.16.0 Beta 2 (2.15.91) of GARNOME, the bleeding-edge GNOME distribution is out. "We are pleased to announce the release of GARNOME 2.15.91 Desktop and Developer Platform. This release includes all of GNOME 2.16.0 Beta 2 (2.15.91), tweaked and updated with love by the GARNOME Team."

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GNOME Software Announcements

The following new GNOME software has been announced this week:

• Glade 3 (new features, bug fixes and translation work)
• Gnome Hearts 0.1.2 (bug fixes and translation work)
• LDTP 0.5.0 (new features and bug fixes)
• Mathusalem 0.0.3 (new features and bug fixes)

You can find more new GNOME software releases at gnomefiles.org.

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The GNOME Journal, August Edition

The August edition of the GNOME Journal is out. Topics include the Women's summer outreach program, Glade 3.0, Tinymail, and an interview with Davyd Madeley. "Collaboration is somewhere where we can really get ahead of the game. Collaborative Abiword, collaborative Inkscape, these applications are really pushing the limits with how people expect conventional applications to function. The way we work is undergoing a paradigm shift, in that we no longer all work together in the same office and sometimes, there is no office at all. The ability to collaborate in the same basic way but over a network is seriously a cool thing."

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KDE Software Announcements

The following new KDE software has been announced this week:

• LDTP 0.5.0 (new features and bug fixes)

You can find more new KDE software releases at kde-apps.org.

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KDE Commit-Digest (KDE.News)

The August 13, 2006 edition of the KDE Commit-Digest has been announced. "In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: kdesu, the KDE application privileges manager, gets long-awaited support for the sudo method. Strigi gets .rpm and .deb package contents indexing capabilities, and can now index UTF-8 encoded text. Guidance gets a new power manager applet. Code import for the Physiks educational Summer Of Code project. Amarok gets support for MTP media devices. Work starts on porting KGoldRunner to KDE 4. Rewrites begin in the KReversi game and Oskar media player. GUI optimisations in KTorrent and KTU (KDE Translation Updater). Experiments using Kexi as a database backend in KPhotoAlbum, and rendering SVG in Unity."

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Icarus Verilog 20060809 released

Development snapshot 20060809 of Icarus Verilog, an electronic simulation language compiler, is out. See the release notes for more information.

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Wine 0.9.19 released

Version 0.9.19 of Wine has been announced. Changes include: Support for a proper Trash folder, Many improvements to the IDL compiler, Better FreeBSD support, A number of MSI bug fixes, Many RichEdit improvements and Lots of bug fixes.

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Wine Weekly Newsletter

The August 10, 2006 edition of the Wine Weekly Newsletter is online with coverage of the Wine project. Topics include: News: 0.9.17, 0.9.18, CrossOver Mac, WineConf 2006!, CreateRemoteThread & VirtualAllocEx, Metacity Fullscreen Issues, Preloader Problem on x86_64, Windows Notes Client with Wine and Winelib Port.

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SquirrelMail 1.4.8 Released (SourceForge)

Version 1.4.8 of SquirrelMail, a PHP4-based Web email client, has been announced. "This release contains an important security fix where a logged-in user could overwrite variables, and a collection of regular bugfixes."

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FreeMED 0.8.3 released (LinuxMedNews)

Version 0.8.3 of FreeMED has been announced on LinuxMedNews. "FreeMED 0.8.3, an enterprise-grade opensource electronic medical record / practice management package, has been officially released by the FreeMED Software Foundation. FreeMED's website has also been updated to provide a more community oriented portal for information about the software."

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stygmorgan 0.27 released

Version 0.27 of stygmorgan, an organ synthesizer with automatic accompaniment, is out. The project introduction states: "stygmorgan is an emulator of which nowadays the manufacturers of musical keyboards denominate like Interactive Workstation, that is to say, an organ with automatic accompaniment and capable to create more or less complex musical sequences. stygmorgan means a step ahead on the old project gmorgan1 because it uses real time patterns, the source code of the program has been rewritten practically completely."

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Caml Weekly News

The August 15, 2006 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with new Caml language articles. Topics include: Format polymorphism; Lexing, parsing, symbolic manipulation and interpreting; Streams; can ocamldep order .cmo files?; question about how to bind c++ classes to ocaml and Camomile-0.7.0.

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GNU Classpath 0.92 released

Version 0.92 of GNU Classpath, the essential libraries for Java, is out. "This is the first release that has a full graphics 2D implemenation based on Cairo enabled by default. This enables the use of applications like JEdit, FlickrBackup and JFreeChart out of the box. Screenshots of CairoGraphics2D at http://www.jfree.org/jfreechart/samples-gnu.html Also new in this release is the inclusion of an applet viewer and plugin that can be embedded in webbrowsers or other applications. It works on any platform supported by the various runtimes based on GNU Classpath, including 64 bit architectures."

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Parrot 0.4.6 released

Version 0.4.6 of Parrot has been announced. "On behalf of the Parrot team, I'm proud to announce Parrot 0.4.6, the most recent close-to-monthly release of Parrot. I'm particularly pleased to report that Parrot 0.4.6 includes the beginnings of a Ruby implementation (named "Cardinal"), thanks to the work of Kevin Tew. What is Parrot? Parrot is a virtual machine aimed at running all dynamic languages. "

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Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!

The August 15, 2006 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is online with a new collection of Python article links.

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python-dev Summary

The python-dev Summary for the period of July 1-15, 2006 is out with coverage of the python-dev mailing list.

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python-dev Summary

The python-dev Summary for the period of July 16-31, 2006 is out with coverage of the python-dev mailing list.

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Ant 1.7: Using Antlibs (O'ReillyNet)

Kev Jackson looks at new features in the upcoming release of the Apache Ant Java build tool. "Most Java developers use Ant to do builds and are familiar with its core tasks. But Ant's tasks tend toward an undesirable coupling: everything important had to be a core task because it was hard to distribute new plug-in tasks. Fortunately, Ant 1.7's new antlibs feature makes it much easier to distribute and use new Ant tasks."

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