Linux in the news

For $150, Third-World Laptop Stirs Big Debate (New York Times)

The New York Times is running a front page article on the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. "When computer industry executives heard about a plan to build a $100 laptop for the developing world’s children, they generally ridiculed the idea. How could you build such a computer, they asked, when screens alone cost about $100? Mary Lou Jepsen, the chief technologist for the project, likes to refer to the insight that transformed the machine from utopian dream to working prototype as “a really wacky idea.” Ms. Jepsen, a former Intel chip designer, found a way to modify conventional laptop displays, cutting the screen’s manufacturing cost to $40 while reducing its power consumption by more than 80 percent. As a bonus, the display is clearly visible in sunlight." (Thanks to Jonathan B. Horen.)

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Child's play: Sneaking a peek at the OLPC OS (Linux.com)

Linux.com takes a look at the OLPC laptops. "The first One Laptop Per Child hardware devices are still months from deployment, but you can sneak a peek at their Sugar desktop environment and bundled applications by running an OS image under an emulator. It's a great way to finally get some hands-on time with this long-anticipated project, even though it's not perfect."

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How Vista Lets Microsoft Lock Users In (InformationWeek)

InformationWeek has an article by Cory Doctorow on Microsoft's use of "trusted computing" technologies to lock up its document formats. "Vista is the first operating system to begin to use the features of the Trusted Computing Module, though for now, Microsoft is eschewing the use of 'Remote Attestation' where software is verified over a network (they've made no promise about doing this forever, of course). No company has spent more time and money on preventing its competitors from reading its documents: remember the fight at the Massachusetts state-house over the proposal to require that government documents be kept in open file-formats?"

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Kimball Rules: SCO's Objections Denied! (Groklaw)

Groklaw has a new ruling from Judge Kimball in the SCO case reaffirming the magistrate's order tossing out much of the company's purported evidence. "The court finds that SCO failed to comply with the court’s previous discovery-related Orders and Rule 26(e), that SCO acted willfully, that SCO’s conduct has resulted in prejudice to IBM, and that this result–the inability of SCO to use the evidence at issue to prove its claims– should come as no surprise to SCO." The end gets a little closer.

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Why Flash 9 for Linux is taking so long (Linux.com)

Linux.com looks into the reasons behind the delay of Adobe's Flash 9 player for Linux. "Adobe skipped a version of Flash for Linux and released stable versions of the Flash 9 player for Windows and Mac OS X long before the beta of Flash 9 to Linux users. Paul Betlem, senior director of engineering for Adobe, explained why the process is taking so long. Betlem says that several factors have contributed to the tardiness of Flash on Linux. The primary problem, says Betlem, is the complexity of porting the Flash player to Linux due to differing libraries used for sound, video, and type on different Linux distributions."

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HP racks up 100,000 Linux server sales in UK (PC Pro)

PC Pro reports on a new HP Linux server sales landmark. "HP has sold its 100,000th Linux-based server in the UK. The company has also shipped over 1,500,000 Linux servers worldwide, it has announced. The company pointed to figures from IDC that showed 32.7 per cent year-on-year growth in Linux server shipments by the company, gaining five percentage points of unit market share."

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Novell announces Linux-based Open Enterprise Server 2 (Linux-Watch)

Linux-Watch looks into Novell's announcement of their upcoming Linux-based Open Enterprise Server 2 operating system. "Although OES 2 won't be out until early in the second quarter of 2007, it already has support commitments from Novell's software partners. The list currently includes backup solution vendors CA, Commvault, Symantec, and Syncsort, along with anti-virus software vendors McAfee and Trend Micro. OES, which will be based on Novell's SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server) 10, is designed to be a drop-in replacement for Novell NetWare servers, and as a direct competitor to Microsoft's Server 2003."

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Linux lab cuts staff, focuses on legal issues (ZDNet)

ZDNet reports on layoffs at Open Source Development Labs. "CEO Stuart Cohen resigned to pursue opportunities with higher-level open-source software, and nine employees in technical and administrative roles lost their jobs, said Mike Temple, OSDL's chief operating officer and its new leader. That leaves a staff of 19, including Tom Hanrahan in charge of engineering, Diane Peters in charge of legal work, and top Linux programmers Linus Torvalds and Andrew Morton."

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Turbolinux proposes mobile Linux for consumers (EETimes)

EETimes reports on the latest efforts by Turbolinux, Inc. "Turbolinux, Inc., a major Linux operating system supplier in Japan, said it will offer a Linux booting device in an iPod-sized media player as a way to promote Linux among consumers. Dubbed "Wizpy," the player uses flash memory in a portable media player with radio and audio recording functions. More important, it functions as a USB flash memory drive that can boot Linux on PCs, enabling users to establish their own Linux working environment, browser, mailer and application software."

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Patent Office Asked to Review and Revoke Blackboard Patent

The Software Freedom Law Center has filed a request with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to re-examine the Blackboard e-Learning patent. "Blackboard, Inc., maker of web-based software that allows teachers and students to interact outside of the classroom, was awarded the patent on January 17, 2006. The patent, "Internet-based education support system and methods" (U.S. 6988138), grants Blackboard a monopoly on most educational software that differentiates between the roles of teacher and student until the year 2022."

These articles on NewsForge and Groklaw examine the case in more detail.

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University Students to Enhance KDE (KDE.News)

KDE.News has an interview with some students working on KDE. "A group of students at the Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse will be collaborating on the KDE projects KPlato and Umbrello as part of their Institut Universitaire Professionalisé en Ingénierie des Systèmes Informatiques (Professional Institute of Computer Software Engineering) course of study."

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Looking Back on Three Years of OpenUsability with Jan Muhlig (KDE.News)

KDE.News talks with Jan Mühlig. "Just following the recent World Usability Day and a few months past the third birthday of OpenUsability I took some time to talk to Jan Mühlig, one of the OpenUsability founders and to get an inside look at some of the history of the project, how it works from the inside and some of the current direction."

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Housekeeping utilities for Debian packages (Linux.com)

Bruce Byfield discusses some lesser-known Debian package management tools in a Linux.com article. "For all the efficiency and continued evolution of Debian's APT tools, some gaps in package management functionality remain. One of the largest ones is that, when a package is removed, any other packages that depend on it are not removed. The result is a growing number of orphans on the system -- that is, packages that serve no purpose for the system as a whole, although in some cases they continue to be useful individually. Similarly, while you can keep track of security announcements for Debian or distributions derived from it, the basic package system has no way of telling you which vulnerabilities might affect your system. To compensate for these lacks, you can turn to a group of housekeeping tools that make maintaining your Debian system easier and more efficient."

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Lightweight Linux for High-Performance Computing (LinuxWorld.com)

LinuxWorld.com takes a look at lightweight Linux for HPC. "Linux has long provided an outstanding operating system for a wide range of users in a variety of settings. However, high-performance computing users, who must run applications on thousands of nodes, historically have faced challenges that Linux could not effectively address."

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When Linux Runs Out of Memory (O'ReillyNet)

O'ReillyNet looks at what happens when a Linux system runs out of memory. "Perhaps you rarely face it, but once you do, you surely know what's wrong: lack of free memory, or Out of Memory (OOM). The results are typical: you can no longer allocate more memory and the kernel kills a task (usually the current running one). Heavy swapping usually accompanies this situation, so both screen and disk activity reflect this."

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Linux Gazette #133

The December 2006 edition of Linux Gazette is out. Articles in this edition include Easy Shell Scripting, Installing Knoppix, Plotting the spirograph equations with 'gnuplot', Poor Man's Laptop: Richer Features, Learning about Linux Processes, and much more.

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Bastille: rated security with education (Linux.com)

Linux.com takes a look at Bastille. "Bastille is a program for improving system security on Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Mandriva, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and SUSE. Unlike packet sniffers, anti-virus programs, and the majority of security programs available today, Bastille does not wait to react to possible security breaches, but prevents them by removing system vulnerabilities. With many distributions softening security in their default installations in the name of convenience, this approach is enough by itself to make Bastille an essential program."

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The Linux way to Flickr (Linux.com)

Linux.com looks at the Flickr Web portal. "The Flickr Web portal allows people to publish and share online, grouped and tagged by subject, whole galleries of digital pictures. You can use Flickr with several GNU/Linux-based applications. Developers can also use the API published on the Web site to obtain an API_KEY and build new interfaces to download, upload, or process pictures in Flickr. What might be less known is that Flickr already is another place where GNU/Linux users can meet, as well as a potentially very useful advocacy tool."

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Multifunction media player targets Nokia Linux tablets (LinuxDevices.com)

LinuxDevices covers the beta release of the Canola media player for Nokia's Linux-based 770 and forthcoming "870" Internet tablets. "The Instituto Nokia de Tecnologia in Brazil released the first beta of the Canola media player for Nokia's Linux-based 770 and forthcoming "870" Internet tablets. Canola can index and render local and network-based music, video, and photos; podcasts; photocasts; and Internet radio."

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The Ruby Way (Linux Journal)

Nicholas Petreley reviews The Ruby Way on Linux Journal. "I've wanted to tackle Ruby for quite some time. Luckily, Addison-Wesley just sent me a copy of The Ruby Way, Second Edition by Hal Fulton. This is one of those books that makes me think publishers feel the need to sell books by the pound. The sad part about that is that, in many cases, books printed by the pound contain tons of fluff and useless information. Not so with The Ruby Way. Every page contains gems valuable for anyone who wants to program with Ruby."

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OpenOffice.org announces contest winners (Linux.com)

Linux.com covers the OpenOffice.org template and clipart contest. "OpenOffice.org has announced the winners of its template and clipart contest. The judges distributed a total of five cash prizes totalling $1,700 for templates, and three cash prizes totalling $1,300 for clipart, as well as two Honorable Mentions for templates. In addition, the project will send T-shirts and other OpenOffice.org merchandise to many of the other entrants."

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Of hypocrisy and the FSF (Libervis)

Libervis asks why the FSF sites run Debian when Debian is not on the FSF's list of free distributions. Quoting Richard Stallman: "We did not install any of that non-free software, so it is ok for us to run Debian. But we cannot recommend its servers to the public. Other people might install the non-free software from the site."

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