Episode 022
Podcast: Play in new window
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Downloads:
MP3 format (for Freedom Haters!)
OGG format (for Freedom Lovers!)
Total Running Time: 52:04
Intro:
Mat Enders, Tony Bemus, and Mary Tomich
Intro Sound bite by Mike Tanner
Kernel News: Mat
Time: 1:30
Release Candidate:
None
Mainline:
3.3-rc6
Stable Updates:
On Sun, 4 Mar 2012 18:09:11 Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the release of Kernel 2.6.32.58
Greg had this to say about this kernel release:
Kernel Quote:
“This is the last 2.6.32 kernel I will be releasing. The 2.6.32 kernel is now in “extended-longterm” maintenance, with no set release schedule from now on. I STRONGLY encourage any users of the 2.6.32 kernel series to move to the 3.0 series at this point in time.”
Distro Talk: Tony
Time: 3:50
- 3-09 – Linux Mint 12 “LXDE” – fast and lightweight variant of the popular Ubuntu-based distribution
- 3-08 – CentOS 5.8 –
- 3-07 – IPFire 2.11 Core 57 – the latest update of the project’s specialist distribution for firewalls
Distro of the Week: Tony
- Debian – 1512
- CentOS – 1653
- Fedora – 1753
- Ubuntu – 2306
- Mint – 4265
Tech News:
Time: 11:31
Microsoft Contributes “Mayhem” to Open Source
No not literal mayhem all though they have done enough of that in the past. The point and click scripting “language”. It is billed as a simple scripting system for non-programmers. Outercurve is going to be the organization trying to drive its use and development. Outercurve promotes collaborative software development within open source communities.
Mayhem is licensed under the Microsoft Public License, which according to GNU.org is not GPL compatible. You can read the license in its entirety here (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/openness/licenses.aspx).
Mayhem is supposed to allow regular users to have different services and devices interact with each other. Mayhem connects graphical programs in a way that is similar to how batch files string together programs in the Windows command-line environment. Like connecting an alarm clock to a coffee maker so your brew is ready for you in the morning. In fact just about any device or service within Windows ecosystem can be used to add events and reactions to Mayhem. Paul Dietz, who is Microsoft’s project leader for Mayhem, said this about Mayhem:
“Any interconnected device could communicate with any other through simple trigger events (if the alarm clock rings) and reactions (then start the coffee maker.) Unlike writing a program, the user simply selects an event and a reaction, and then turns on the connection between the devices. No code, app or programming required,”
Mayhem takes instructions of the form “when this event happens, do this reaction” and an event could be for example:
pressing a key on a game
saying a verbal command
or using an interface on your mobile phone
Mayhem will also react to network-based events that use data from the Internet such as for example:
stock prices or exchange rates
weather
social networking updates
To aid in creating more Add-Ons to increase the power of Mayhem, the Outercurve Foundation is hosting the “Make Your Own Mayhem” Contest 2012. Developers are invited to submit any number of creative add-ons to Mayhem by midnight (Pacific Time), April 30, 2012. Submissions will be evaluated by judges Johnny Chung Lee, Rapid Evaluator, Google; IBM Fellow John Cohn, and MK Haley, Associate Executive Producer – Faculty, Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center. Awards include Honorable Mention, Most Awesome Add-on, People’s Choice (most ‘Likes’ on entry video) and the Mayhem Master’s Award 2012, awarded to the developer of the best collection of Mayhem add-ons. Over US$5000 in prizes will be awarded. Microsoft spun the not-for-profit open-source Codeplex Foundation group off in 2009. In 2010, they renamed themselves the “Outercurve Foundation.”
Kernel 2.6.32 The Real Story
Greg Kroah-Hartman tells the real story behind the 2.6.32 Kernel. You can continue reading my paraphrase and synopsis of his post on his website or you can head over and check it out from the horse’s mouth here (http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/2.6.32-stable.html).
On 3/4/12 Greg released what he said would his final release of the 2.6.32.58 kernel. He goes on to say that this kernel will continue to be maintained by the current 2.4 maintainer, Willy Tarreau. This was, by number of users, one of the most successful kernels ever.
An important part of how the stable kernels was released was the idea of “throw it on the floor” when Linus released a new kernel. For enterprise distributions this just does not fit the business model. At the time Greg was working for Novell/SUSE. They getting ready to release SLE10 based on the 2.6.16 kernel. As engineers for Novell/SUSE they were looking at the painful proccess of maintaining this kernel for 5-7 years. Since he was already maintaining the stable kernel he already had all of the scripts and work flow created. So he decided lets see how long he could maintain the 2.6.16 kernel. This experiment lasted for 855 days from 3/6/2006 to 7/29/2008 longer than any other release Greg had ever managed.
The work, and the experience gained from keeping this kernel alive for enterprise customers, brought this proposal about The Future of Enterprise Linux Kernels (http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/enterprise_kernel_future.html) in June of 2007.
The kernel developer community is very tight-knit. Even though they work for many different companies, often in direct competition. They all work together daily via email, talk on IRC, and socialize a couple of times a year at various conferences. At some of these meetings in mid to late 2009 the developers working for the different distributions all realized that they were all working on their next long term release. With the success 2.6.16 kernel they all agreed informally to push for the adoption of the 2.6.32 kernel. When they got back to their respective companies they started planting the seeds for the 2.6.32 kernel. Greg goes on to related that the seed planting worked so well that he had to stifle laughter when in a meeting a project manager announced that his team had decided that the 2.6.32 kernel would be best and what did engineering think about it.
All of this behind the scenes work came to a head when SLE11 SP1. Debian “Squeeze”. RHEL 6, Oracle Linux 6, and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS all released on the 2.6.32 kernel. “Hacking” these different and competing groups to coordinate and release this specific kernel, was a demonstration of how the community really can achieve remarkable things.
Greg’s old argument for moving the kernel of an enterprise distribution forward finally came to be realized by 2 of the 3 major players. Oracle Linux and SLE 11, latest releases, have moved to the 3.0 kernel, regardless of leaving practically the rest of the distribution alone.
What Greg learned from maintaining the 2.6.32 kernel have resulted in a proposal he made last year for the longterm kernel (http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/longterm-proposal-08-2011.html). Which results in a long term kernel being chosen once a year. Even though the Linux user and developer community has moved on and enterprise distributions are no longer the main consumer of the kernel. The explosion in the embedded market however has created a need for for this type of kernel support a continued necessity. The LTSI project (http://ltsi.linuxfoundation.org/) is hoping to fulfill this need.
Greg goes on to specifically thank some Debian kernel developers who he says carried a much larger portion of the water than any of the other kernel developers. He commends their dedication to the Debian user community. These developers are Ben Hutchings, Maximilian Attems, Dann Frazier, Bastian Blank, and Moritz Muehlenhoff who he says “that without their help, the 2.6.32 kernel would not have been the success that it was. The users of Red Hat and SuSE products owe them a great debt.”
Stuck On Windows But Need Some GNU Goodness Try GOW (GNU On Windows)
You can get the fantastic GNU tools you are used to working with on Windows now without the overweight bloat of Cygwin. Despite its lightweight footprint, about 10MB, it has most of the GNU tools you could want or need, like bash, curl, gawk, grep, putty, rsync, sed, sftp, and zip for a complete list see the list here (https://github.com/bmatzelle/gow/wiki/executables_list).
It also includes the simple GOW tool. The tool only has three options –help, –version, and –list which can be very useful if you want to find out if a specific tool is included. It is extremely easy to install. It comes as a single binary that puts all of the tools into the Windows path so it makes it very convenient to use them at the command line, and where else would you use the GNU tools. Even though they compiled for 32-bit systems it runs just as readily on a 64-bit installation.
SOPA, PIPA Who Needs Them If It Is A Dot Com, Dot Net, Dot Org We Can Shut You Down
Well that is according to prosecutors in the state of Maryland anyway. In the past you could avoid U.S. jurisdiction by having your registrar offshore and the servers offshore. Not so anymore if you have a .com, .net, or .org since these domains are controlled by Verisign based in the U.S. they are fair game. On February 26th U.S. authorities seized the domain name bodog.com. They did this by serving Verisign with a warrant ordering them to redirect traffic for the site to a warning page advising that it has been seized by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
This was one of the big concerns with SOPA and PIPA that it would give the U.S. the ability to break the Internet. Well it appears that they already can. Bodog had nothing in the U.S. except that that is where the registry lives. This is the worst overreaching of power I have heard of in recent times.
Did Apple Steal Their New Map Software?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2012/03/08/did-apple-steal-their-new-map-software/
At its iPad 3 unveiling Wednesday, Apple made a big deal about their new version of iPhoto built for mobile devices, featuring a system for geotagging photos and placing them on a map.
Apple also seemed to be using a new map service instead of the usual Google Maps for the program. But Several bloggers quickly noticed that the maps bore a striking similarity to OpenStreetMap, an open-source map service with over 400,000 volunteer contributors worldwide. Upon further investigation, it became eminently clear that Apple had lifted the maps directly out of OpenStreetMap.
OpenStreetMap is, of course, open source software, so it isn’t illegal for Apple to use it in their program. In fact, it’s actually a real validation for the Open Street Maps Community that a company like Apple used their data over the traditional Google Maps. But the usage policy requires proper attribution, and it’s abominable netiquette to use open source software without crediting it. Apple is drawing a fair amount of internet ire for their actions, as chronicled by Carl Franzen at Talking Points Memo.
More here:
http://alastaira.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/apple-maps-aka-apple-are-thieving-bastards/
Raspberry Pi Linux distro released, but the $35 computer faces new delays
The Raspberry Pi foundation has suffered a production setback that could delay delivery of the organization’s $35 Linux computer. The manufacturer accidentally used ethernet jacks without integrated magnetics, built-in transformers that provide DC-isolation and help filter noise.
The wrong jacks have been soldered to the Raspberry Pi boards and will have to be removed and replaced before the product can ship to end users. According to the foundation, the ethernet jacks are relatively easy to replace. The problem is that sourcing a sufficient quantity of the right ethernet jacks might take some time. This will be the second time that the Raspberry Pi project has suffered a minor delay due to component sourcing difficulties.
“All the stock of jacks we believed we had in place and ready to turn into the ethernet ports on your Raspberry Pis turn out not to be the correct part, so we’re having to start again and move through the negotiating/ordering/delivery cycle as fast as we can,” a representative of the foundation said in a statement on the organization’s blog.
The foundation says that it discovered the problem with the ethernet jacks several days ago, but waited until now to disclose it because they wanted to be sure that there were no other issues. The organization apologized for the delay and asked its eager customers to remain patient while the matter is resolved.
Fedora Remix – Official OS for Raspberry Pi?
The raspberry pi announcement via OSTATIC.com
“The Remix is a distribution comprised of software packages from the Fedora ARM project, plus a small number of additional packages that are modified from the Fedora versions or which cannot be included in Fedora due to licensing issues – in particular, the libraries for accessing the VideoCore GPU on the Raspberry Pi. The SD card image for the Remix includes a little over 640 packages, providing both text-mode and graphical interfaces (LXDE/XFCE) with an assortment of programming languages, applications, system tools, and services for both environments.”
– Ostatic.com
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/805
NVIDIA now a member of The Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation have announced the addition of new members to their organisation, including graphics giant NVIDIA. Drivers for NVIDIA hardware are already officially supported on Linux, although they are currently closed source.
Joining NVIDIA as new members are: Fluendo, one of the major companies behind GStreamer; Lineo Solutions, creator of embedded Linux systems; and Mocana, a security platform for mobile devices and apps. The Linux Foundation made this statement in their press release:
“The ongoing support from companies and organizations across industries and geographies demonstrates not only Linux’s ubiquity but also its ability to quickly adapt for a variety of technical and market opportunities,” said Amanda McPherson, vice president of marketing and developer services at The Linux Foundation. “Fluendo, Lineo Solutions, Mocana and NVIDIA each represent important areas of the Linux ecosystem and their contributions will immediately help advance the operating system.”
http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/news/nvidia-now-a-member-of-the-linux-foundation/
Linux.com’s Weekend Project: Take a Look at Cron Replacement Whenjobs
From the whenjobs web site: Whenjobs is a powerful but simple cron replacement.
Two key advantages over cron are a simpler syntax for writing rules and a powerful dependency system that lets one job depend on variables set when other jobs run (allowing, for example, one job to run only when another job has finished successfully).
Reviewers take : Not ready to completely replace cron
Link to program: http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/whenjobs/
make your dumb TV smart
Listner Feedback
Time: 46:32
Outtro Music:
Time: 49:11
“The Beach! The Beach!” (by Holy Coast)
This content is published under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.