Linux in the news
Recommended Reading
A cost analysis of Vista content protection
Peter Gutmann has posted a lengthy look at the costs of the DRM features built into Windows Vista. Reading it is a sort of Alice-in-Wonderland experience, highly recommended. "If a graphics chip is integrated directly into the motherboard and there's no easy access to the device bus then the need for bus encryption is removed. Because the encryption requirement is so onerous, it's quite possible that this means of providing graphics capabilities will suddenly become more popular after the release of Vista. However, this leads to a problem: It's no longer possible to tell if a graphics chip is situated on a plug-in card or attached to the motherboard, since as far as the system is concerned they're both just devices sitting on the AGP/PCIe bus. The solution to this problem is to make the two deliberately incompatible, so that HFS can detect a chip on a plug-in card vs. one on the motherboard."
Predictions for 2007 (and how I did on 2006) (LinuxWorld)
Don Marti takes a look at his predictions for 2006 and makes some new predictions for 2007. ""Platforms get granular for self-defense. Tired of worms that attack software you don't use, but that you need to patch anyway because it's part of the 'platform'? In 2006, you'll get better dependency checking to deploy just what you need, and update services that are smart enough not to bug you about software you don't need to update because you don't have it." Partial hit. The hot distribution was Ubuntu, which borrows its easier to manage approach from Debian. Package management is getting better all the time, but there still aren't enough tools to detect software that isn't being used and encourage new sysadmins to remove it."
The Ultimate Distro (Linux Journal)
Glyn Moody examines the advantages of distribution forks in a Linux Journal article. "This is one of free software's greatest and least-appreciated strengths: the fact that it can continue to evolve in an almost organic fashion, untrammelled by constraints of economics, or even feasibility. It is this fecundity that drives free software forward unstoppably, and that distinguishes it from the sterile code monster that is Windows, which, trapped within the carapace of its closed source, only slouches towards Redmond to be born every five years or so." The article mentions the Linux distribution timeline, which gives a graphical representation of distribution forks.
Companies
Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw)
Groklaw reports that Samba hacker Jeremy Allison has left Novell in protest. "Whilst the Microsoft patent agreement is in place there is *nothing* we can do to fix community relations. And I really mean nothing. We can pledge patents all we wish, we can talk to the press and "community leaders", we can do all the right things w.r.t. all our other interactions, but we will still be known as GPL violators and that's the end of it."
Financial firms back Microsoft Linux deal (The Register)
The Register reports on some recent high profile SUSE Linux subscription customers. "Three big financial firms have come out of the closet and confirmed they have taken delivery of SUSE Linux subscriptions from Microsoft. Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and AIG Technologies have all signed up to the Franken-deal in the belief that it will make it easier to run Linux-based systems alongside Microsoft software."
Red Hat results kicks rump, takes names (Linux-Watch)
Linux-Watch looks at Red Hat's financial results. "Red Hat Inc. on Dec. 21 announced its financial results for its fiscal year 2007 third quarter. The Raleigh, NC-based Linux company's numbers were, in a word, great. The total revenue for the quarter was $105.8 million, an increase of 45 percent from the year-ago quarter and 6 percent from the prior quarter. Subscription revenue was $88.9 million, up 48 percent year-over-year and 5 percent sequentially."
Linux at Work
Linux powers controllable Christmas lights for charity (Linux.com)
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier takes a look at a web-controlled Christmas light display that is powered by Linux. "During the holiday season, Komarnitsky says that he runs four Linux servers to keep up with the load -- one for each webcam, and one that serves up the pages to the public. Komarnitsky says that the entire system is run by Linux, with the exception of the laptop that displays messages typed in by users. Komarnitsky uses three D-Link DCS-6620G webcams, one of which was donated by D-Link."
Legal
Apple, Google, Napster Face Intertainer Patent Suit (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg briefly reports on a software patent suit filed against Apple, Google, and Napster. "Culver City, California-based Intertainer's investors include Microsoft Corp., the world's biggest software maker, and Intel Corp., the world's biggest semiconductor maker." The patent in question would appear to be #6,925,469, which covers distribution of "digital media content" in very general terms.
Interviews
Ubuntu Founder On Microsoft "Challenge" (Red Herring)
The Red Herring interviews Mark Shuttleworth. "Microsoft and others, a lot of them say that free software and open source is all about copying what was being done before in proprietary software, and for a lot of time that was true. The world we are seeing is that, as soon as the free software reaches a point where it's as good as the proprietary software, suddenly all the innovation shifts to the free software."
Resources
Bandwidth Monitoring Tools for Ubuntu Users (Ubuntu Geek)
Ubuntu Geek takes a look at a number of network bandwidth monitoring tools. "Here is the list of bandwidth monitoring tools for your network bandwidth: bmon, bwbar, bwm, bwm-ng, iftop, iperf, ipfm, speedometer, cbm, ibmonitor, pktstat, mactrack, MRTG, Cacti. Now we will see each tool separately."
Linux Gazette #134 is out
The January edition of Linux Gazette is available. Articles include Fun with FUSE, Mounting remote resources as filesystems via FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace), Away Mission -- OracleWorld '06, San Francisco, Installing Mandriva, OSI, GAP, and "Exhibit B" licences, Perl One-Liner of the Month: The Count of Corpus Christi (TX), and much more.
Reviews
The Buzz About Aldrin (Linux Journal)
Dave Phillips reviews Aldrin on Linux Journal. "For the past month I've been building and playing with Leonard 'paniq' Ritter's Aldrin, a music production system that combines a tracker-style composition interface with audio synthesis and processing modules called machines. Users of the famous Buzz music software will probably recognize Aldrin's design at once. In fact, it may be fair to describe Aldrin as Leonard Ritter's interpretation of the original Buzz."
A Good Beginning (And Some Holiday DSP) (Linux Journal)
Dave Phillips looks at DSP software in the Linux Journal. "[Sonic Visualizer] truly emphasizes visualization, with data view formats such as various spectrograms, amplitude waveform, piano roll (for MIDI plot), chronogram, pitch envelope, and power curve. The user scrolls through the views with the Navigate cursor (the pointing hand) and uses the Select tool (the arrow) to make selections within the view. Edits are limited to cut/copy/paste, but the program isn't intended for audio processing. It is primarily a tool for audio analysis and visualization, and an excellent tool at that. Highly recommended for serious research and viewing enjoyment."
Low-cost laptop could transform learning (Yahoo)
Yahoo has an AP article on the OLPC project. "Nicholas Negroponte, who launched the project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab two years ago before spinning One Laptop into a separate nonprofit, said he deliberately wanted to avoid giving children computers they might someday use in an office. 'In fact, one of the saddest but most common conditions in elementary school computer labs (when they exist in the developing world), is the children are being trained to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint,' Negroponte wrote in an e-mail interview. 'I consider that criminal, because children should be making things, communicating, exploring, sharing, not running office automation tools.'"
Book review: OpenOffice.org 2 Guide (Linux.com)
Linux.com reviews a book about OpenOffice.org. "OpenOffice.org expert Solveig Haugland has published a massive new manual called the OpenOffice.org 2 Guide. This 520-page tome will be useful both for OOo newbies and power users who are interested in learning arcane features of the office suite. What does Haugland's $28 book have that the free online guides don't? The primary distinction is that Haugland's book is one work in one place, whereas the community's guides are available for sale in the form of separate books on the main OOo programs (Writer, Calc, Draw, Impress) for generally $10 to $20, or for free download."
A first look at Thunderbird 2.0 (Linux.com)
Linux.com looks at Thunderbird 2.0. "After many months of development, Thunderbird 2.0 is almost ready to debut. The Mozilla Foundation released the first beta of Thunderbird 2.0 last week, and I've been using it to manage my mail since then. The new release boasts tagging, history navigation, new mail alerts, improved extension support, and a number of other features. Thunderbird 2.0 won't knock your socks off with exciting new features, but it's a nice, gradual improvement over the Thunderbird 1.5 series."
Google Toolbar 3.0 beta improves browsing experience (Linux.com)
Linux.com looks at the Google Toolbar 3 beta for Firefox. "I tested the toolbar with Firefox 2.0 and Flock 0.7.9. You'll see a warning before you install the toolbar on Flock that the extension wasn't designed specifically for Flock, but I haven't run into any problems with it so far in Flock. Once I had it installed, I signed out of Google services and signed in using the Google Toolbar sign-in feature. I was then authenticated for Gmail, Google Apps, Google Bookmarks, Blogger, and the whole kit and caboodle of Google services I tried, with the exception of AdSense."
New Xen better for desktops (ZDNet)
ZDNet looks at a new release of Xen, a commercial virtualization system. "On a desktop system, Xen virtualization promises to keep separate zones for test, work, personal and management software. So far, however, that promise has been hampered by a major weakness: the inability to display multiple graphical user interfaces for these "guest" operating systems. Xen 3.0.4 changes this. By including what's called a virtual frame buffer, Xen's controlling "host" operating system can capture video data written to a specific part of memory and then send it to the display. The technology lets users see virtual machines through a graphical interface, a feat competitors such as EMC's VMware can already accomplish, rather than the text-based command line suitable chiefly for the technically proficient."
Miscellaneous
Creative Commons gets new chairman; Lessig to continue as CEO (NewsForge)
NewsForge reports that Lawrence Lessig has retired from his position as the Creative Commons chairman of the board. "After four successful years of revolutionizing how content is shared in the real world, Lawrence Lessig, founding chairman of Creative Commons, announced his retirement as chairman of the board last week. Lessig passed the CC torch to Joi Ito, a venture capitalist from Japan. Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization and is known for its Creative Commons copyright licenses. "We provide free licenses," Lessig writes, "that mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share the work, or remix the work, or both share and remix the work, as the author chooses.""
South Korea's ETRI develops advanced Linux desktop search system
ZDNet Korea looks at antbear, a desktop search system that addresses problems in the searching of text written with Asian character sets. "Advanced word recognition technology gives more reliable search results Linux desktop search, thus far, had some limitations due to its lacking features compared to Windows environment that has various features. Although 'Beagle' has been available for supporting Korean and other Asian languages (Chinese, Japanese), its 'bigram' search method in many situations fails to recognize true meanings of Asian characters for the search. For example, it breaks down and indexes the search word(s) into two separate characters, which can generate unrelated results. The reliability of the search result gets even worse when its search is based on larger number of files."
Grant funds open-source challenge to Google library (ZDNet)
ZDNet reports that the nonprofit Internet Archive has received a million dollar grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. "The archiving organization's Open-Access Text Archive is an open-source alternative to book-scanning efforts like the ones from Google and Microsoft. Internet Archive, perhaps best known for its WayBack Machine archive of Web pages by date--is also an online digital library of text, audio, software, images and video content."
2006: The year the FSF reached out to the community (Linux.com)
Linux.com looks at the Free Software Foundation. "The list of the community-based actions the FSF has taken in the past year is a long one. It begins with an expanded role for some of its longstanding institutions. Throughout the year, the FSF's high-priority list seems to have exerted some influence on such items as the open source release of the Java code and the growing interest in LinuxBIOS by chipset manufacturers. Similarly, the FSF's compliance lab, although now more than five years old, enlisted five volunteers to answer licensing questions using a ticket system, and now fields more than 75 questions each week, according to compliance engineer Brett Smith. In the last couple of years, too, rather than maintaining just the GNU Project Web site, the FSF has also started a non-developer site that Peter Brown, executive director of the FSF, describes as carrying "more of a mainstream message.""
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