Episode 037 – Solstice / Mat didn’t plug in the laptop
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Total Running Time: 1:19:55
Summary
Kernel News: Mat
Time: 13:13
Distro Talk: Tony
Time:15:34
Mary Distro Review
Time:29:09
Zorin
Tech News:
Time:42:00
US Top Of Top500 List Again
Surface Crashes During Debut Ala Windows 98
Judge Calls US Patent System Chaos
Canonical Comes Up With Their Own Secure Boot Solution
Humble Indie Bundle V Generates Five Million USD
Fedora 18 Will Preview A New Package Manager
Visualizing Botnets
Pktstat
ROSA Icons
Is it Alive? – Mary
Time:1:00:00
Listener Feedback
Time:1:06:48
Mat’s Soapbox
Time:
Outtro Music
Time:1:13:37
Funky Banane – Hippie House Jam Band
Intro:
Tony Bemus, Mat Enders, and Mary Tomich
Intro Sound bite by Mike Tanner
Kernel News: Mat
Time: 13:13
Release Candidate:
No release canidate as of this recording
Mainline:
3.5-rc3
Stable Updates:
On Wed, 20 Jun 2012 02:00:35 BDT Ben Hutchings released kernel 3.2.21
There were 76 files changed, 707 files inserted, 274 files deleted
On Fri, 22 Jun 2012 12:25:12 PDT Greg Kroah-Hartman released kernel 3.4.4
There were 69 files changed, 384 files inserted, 247 files deleted
On Fri, 22 Jun 2012 12:25:51 PDT Greg Kroah-Hartman released kernel 3.0.36
There were 23 files changed, 133 files inserted, 85 files deleted
Kernel Developer Quote:
Linus had this to say about a recent patch for monitor detection:
“I’d suggest that if you see no other connectors at all, *then* you might say “ok, let’s assume that we have a VGA monitor behind a broken KVM switch”. At that point, at least that assumption doesn’t make things worse for anything else that you know is there.
And if people have truly undetectable VGA hardware in addition to another (detectable) output, I would suggest that you tell them to force it with xrandr. Again, there’s no way in hell I will accept the idiotic argument that my old working single-monitor setup should be broken because the i915 driver decided that I *might* have a second monitor on VGA despite everything else saying that is not the case.”
Distro Talk: Tony
Time: 15:34
- 6-18 – Liberté Linux 2012.2 – lightweight and easy-to-use Gentoo-based live medium with the primary purpose of enabling anyone to communicate safely and covertly in hostile environments
- 6-18 – Zorin OS 6 – Ubuntu-based distribution created with beginning Linux users in mind
- 6-19 – Superb Mini Server 1.6.6 – Slackware-based distribution for servers
- 6-19 – Salix OS 13.37 “Live MATE” – Slackware-based live CD featuring the MATE desktop
- 6-20 – ROSA 2012 “LXDE” – a Mandriva Linux fork featuring the lightweight LXDE desktop environment
- 6-20 – Snowlinux 2 “KDE” – Debian-based distribution showcasing the KDE 4.4.5 desktop
- 6-21 – Netrunner 4.2 – Kubuntu-based distribution providing the very latest KDE 4.8.3 desktop
- 6-21 – Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3 – the latest update of the company’s enterprise-class operating system
- 6-22 – Pinguy OS 12.04 – Ubuntu-based desktop Linux distribution with a customised GNOME Shell user interface
- 6-22 –
- 6-22 –
Distro of the Week: Tony
- Fedora – 1511
- Ubuntu – 1545
- Zorin – 1686
- Mageia – 2206
- Mint – 3002
Mary Distro Review
Time: 29:09
What’s on sda6: Zorin OS 6
This week’s distro visiting sda6 is ZorinOS6. I decided to do something a little bit different this week. Zorin,like a few other distros, has a lite version and a ‘pro’ or premium version if you want to donate ten Euros to the project. I decided to donate the 10 Euros and download the mega-ultimate version. All 3.5 GB of it. Let’s get this baby downloaded. My fast-as-heck Internet connection was feeding me bits at the paltry rate of 150 kb/sec. Holy dial-up, Batman! Six hours later I had my download and I burned the DVD.
The Live boot: The DVD was so jam-packed with software, it took longer to boot than I expected. I almost thought the system was hung up. But no, it eventually, completed and I had a pleasant, functional live desktop. It was clean—computer, home, trash are the icons you get out of the box. The Avant Window Navigator dock spans the bottom of the screen, customized for Zorin desktop with a transparent portion in the middle. I later discovered that the default desktop was called the ‘Windows 7’ look. More on that look later.
On to the install of Zorin OS6. It went without incident. Hmmm…I have had a couple of these in a row. I’ll have to fix that next week. My only complaint was the gray text on gray background during the install. I admit to changing a few appearance settings when running it live and the odd combination could have been due to my changes.
Flash forward to the desktop…This version of Zorin contains a robust combination of KDE/Gnome apps. For example, if you don’t like the default Rhythmbox music player, don’t worry, you can easily run Amarok because it’s already installed. And so are Virtual Box, MythTV Frontend, XBMC, Frets on Fire, Scribus, Blender Inkscape, Miro, OpenShot video editor, Kdenlive, MeTV Digital TV Viewer, and a plethora of games, including my favorite road race game that’s named after a penguin—SuperTux, which I had to adjust for my Nvidia-rendered screen.
Chrome is installed, but not Firefox. For a distro that includes so many different applications why only a single browser…? Could that be the reason for the Web Browser Manager, a Zorin-provided utility that let’s you determine which browser you would like to install, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Midori. Midori? What happened to Konqueror, Reknoq, and Epiphany, the Gnome browser?
Zorin OS6 has several interesting gimmicks: The first is the Zorin Look Changer. This utility allows you to change the look of your desktop to one of six different choices (Win2K, WinXP, Win7, Gnome 2, Unity, Mac OS X) if you have the premium edition or three (Win7, WinXP and GNOME 2) if you have the free version. Zorin OS6 boots to the Windows 7 version. Of course I tested, changing to all six desktops. There was not much difference, aside from the appearance of the menu, between Win 7, XP, and 2000.
The most intriguing to me was the Unity interface. Docky has been configured as the Unity tool bar on the left , a serviceable replacement for the Unity toolbar. At the top was the second panel which used Avant Window Navigator.
One small nit—there is a typographical error on the screen that confirms you’ve successfully chaged [sic] your desktop. Oops…!
Another gimmick in Zorin OS 6 is called Zorin Background Plus. From the Unity-look interface, ss it, simply click into the System Tools menu, then the program. After activating it, I was suddenly traveling across the universe at warp-speed, stars rushing past me. But how do I stop it? For me it was a screen-saver from which I couldn’t exit. Except for the active background, everything on my screen disappeared, and no amount of mouse jiggling or clicking could bring it back. Hey, I want to get off this ship! But, wait—I noticed the panel functionality still seemed to “be there,” it’s just that the icons were not visible. I could click on the space and open the corresponding application. Right-clicking gave me the option of changing the desktop background and after making a change, my task bar returned. However, during my research it seemed that others did not have this problem so I chalked it up to my graphics.
PlayOnLinux – This app is installed by default. A screen wizard that walks you through a series of installs, including Microsoft fonts. After refreshing, the program is ready for use. There are quite a few “templates” already available for commonly used programs. An option to install programs that are not listed is available as a link in the lower left corner. I decided to give it a go and selected a game, The Ghost Chronicles for a test. PlayOnLinux creates a virtual drive, then turns Wine to do the heavy lifting. Within a few minutes, Ghost Chronicles was installed without a problem. I was able to start the game and play it. Emboldened, I decided to install a second game: Lights Out. It, too, installed without a problem and I could start the game just fine. However, I did notice that the font for some of the game documents was arial, which did not exist in 1912, when the game was set.
QuickSynergy – GUI for Synergy, a program that will let you use one keyboard and mouse on multiple computers across a network. The computers can be running Linux, Windows, or MacOS. The computer with the keyboard and mouse is the server or host, and the computers with the displays to be controlled remotely are the clients. That was the description from the Ubuntu documentation.
Gespeaker – a utility that converts typed text to speech. You simply type in the phrases you want to convert and the Gespeaker does the rest as this example shows: [played audio].
Package Managers – Both the Ubuntu Software Center and Synaptic were installed by default. I like Synaptic and use it as my package manager when I am not apt-getting via the CLI. I have to say how impressed I was with the Ubuntu Software Center. You can check installed packages by provider, by date of install which is can also be done in Synaptic but it’s easy to find here.
Zorin fancies itself as the operating system of Windows users who are transitioning to Linux and I would be hard-pressed to disagree. 4 out of 5 cups of coffee for Zorin OS6 Premium Edition.
Tech News:
Time: 42:00
US Top Of Top500 List Again
Since 2009 the top spot on the Top500 list has not been a US based system. Well the drought is over. The super computer named Sequoia at the DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory reached 16.32 petaflops per second using the Linpack benchmark with 1,572,864 cores. The computer that was unseated at the number one spot, Fujitsu’s “K Computer” running at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science, now occupies the number two spot. The number three spot goes to a new comer to the list, Mira an IBM BlueGene/Q system running at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, it reached a speed of 8.15 petaflops per second on the Linpack benchmark using 786,432 cores. The third computer US computer in the Top10 is an upgraded Jaguar at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The US leads the Pack with three systems in the top ten, with second place being shared by Germany and China each with two entries. For producers IBM leads the pack with five systems in the Top10 and the only producer with multiple entries in the TOP10. The top spot for the Top10 in processors is a tie between BlueGene/Q, Zeon each powering four of the them.
For the complete list you can go here (http://www.top500.org/list/2012/06/100).
TOP 10 Sites for June 2012
Rank Site Computer
1 DOE/NNSA/LLNL Sequoia – BlueGene/Q
United States IBM
2 RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science K computer, SPARC64
Japan Fujitsu
3 DOE/SC/Argonne National Laboratory Mira – BlueGene/Q
United States IBM
4 Leibniz Rechenzentrum SuperMUC – Xeon
Germany IBM
5 National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin Tianhe-1A – Xeon
China NUDT
6 DOE/SC/Oak Ridge National Laboratory Jaguar – Opteron
United States Cray Inc.
7 CINECA Fermi – BlueGene/Q
Italy IBM
8 Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ) JuQUEEN – BlueGene/Q
Germany IBM
9 CEA/TGCC-GENCI Curie thin nodes – Xeon
France Bull
10 National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen Nebulae – Xeon
China Dawning
Surface Crashes During Debut Ala Windows 98
The latest Microsoft announcement for their new tablet called Surface crashes ala Windows 98. Except mister gates was not on stage with the gentleman doing the demo this time. The BSOD has become so ingrained into modern society that Microsoft has actually updated it for Windows 8. Since that is going to be the operating system on Surface we can probably expect to see it frequently. Good luck Microsoft trying at such a late date to try and get in on the tablet market.
See the video for the Surface crash here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEJTRJY8KEQ
See the original Windows 98 crashe video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzFUcDKC64E
See the Windows 8 BSOD here http://cdn.ientry.com/sites/webpronews/pictures/bsod_sad_616.jpg
Judge Calls US Patent System Chaos
Judge Richard Posner, a very outspoken judge in US District Court in Illinois, struck a blow for patent sanity when threw out the Motorola/Apple case with prejudice. Previously in this case he had canceled a jury trial. He also had previously ruled that proposed expert testimony from experts would be inadmissible. This would have made supporting claims for damages almost impossible. He did make a point of dismissing these cases with prejudice explaining why:
“It would be ridiculous to dismiss a suit for failure to prove damages and allow the plaintiff [Apple] to refile the suit so that he could have a second chance to prove damages. This case is therefore dismissed with prejudice,”
This saga is not over completely yet however aas they both still have cases against each other in the US International Trade Commission and in German courts. Maybe the courts are coming around three weeks ago we had the Judge in the Oracle vs Google case showing great understanding of the technology and now we have a judge who is basically just throwing the bullshit flag. Hooray!!
Canonical Comes Up With Their Own Secure Boot Solution
While Fedora is bending to Microsoft’s will and getting it’s boot loader signed by them. Mark Shuttleworth explains Canonical’s plan to deal with UEFI. They plan on acquiring their own key and getting hardware manufacturers to use it. Mr. Shuttleworth went on to say this about their choice in solutions:
“so that the entire free software ecosystem is not dependent on Microsoft’s goodwill for access to modern PC hardware.”
Matthew Garret, of Red Hat, did point out that this would have the same effect as using the Windows key in that machines that are shipped with Ubuntu would only be able to boot Ubuntu. This means that if Canonical does not offer a signing service like Microsoft then any hardware with the Canonical key would be locked down even tighter than hardware distributed with Windows on it.
Humble Indie Bundle V Generates Five Million USD
Here’s the run-down on Humble Indie Bundle V, the two-week pay-what-you-want DRM-free multi-platform game collection:
– Total payments of $5,105,947.73 USD
– 598,906 purchases
– $8.53 average purchase price
– $7.97 Windows average purchase price
– $9.99 Mac OS X average purchase price
– $12.50 Linux average purchase price
– $13,167.84 top contribution
It took just one day for this indie game collection to generate two million dollars, four more days to make three million dollars, and four more days beyond that for another million dollars. This is now the highest grossing indie bundle game offering at over five million dollars with the previous bundle generating just $2.37M USD. This posting covers the game details that made up this latest offering.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTEyMDA
Fedora 18 Will Preview A New Package Manager
During today’s FESCo meeting, the engineering and steering committee approved a number of new features for Fedora 18, a.k.a. the Spherical Cow.
– Fedora 18 will use DNF, which is a new package manager. DNF is considered a next-generation Yum package manager and uses the hawkey/libsolv back-end. DNF was forked from Yum 3.4 and aims to provide better performance while with a smaller memory footprint, a leaner code-base, a strict API definition for extending projects, strict API definition for plug-ins, and a SAT solver for dependency resolving. DNF and Yum can co-exist so for the Spherical Cow this is mainly meant as a preview item. Hawkey is the new package management API that is built atop libsolv. More information on the Wiki (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/DNF)
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTEyMjM
Visualizing Botnets
Awesome video of one minute of botnet activity (botnets are NOT awesome—this video is)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1R_5wVbdz4
Pktstat
Pktstat displays a real-time summary of packet activity on an interface. Each line displays the data rate associated with different classes of packet. and how much bandwidth is being used by what. Partially
decodes HTTP and FTP protocols to show what filename is being
transferred.
How I run it:
# pktstat -i wlan0 -w 1 -F
ROSA Icons
https://abf.rosalinux.ru/import/rosa-icons
Is it Alive?
Time: 1:00:00
During this segment of the show, I challenge Mat and Tony to identify whether a Linux Distro is alive or dead? Last week we took a different tack when Mat and Tony had to decide if the named entity was derived from Slackware, Debian or Red Hat. This week wer’e back to our normal format. The items for the June 24 show:
====================================
Open Filer
Openfiler is a network storage operating system, fronted by a web based management user interface. With the features we built into Openfiler, you can take advantage of file-based Network Attached Storage and block-based Storage Area Networking functionality in a single cohesive framework.
MAT: Alive
TONY: Dead
VERDICT: ALIVE
====================================
Slackintosh
Slackintosh is a port of Slackware GNU/Linux to PowerPC (Macintosh) computers. Slackintosh does not work on Intel-Macs. Slackintosh is a PPC distribution.
MAT: Dead
TONY: Alive
VERDICT: DEAD
===================================
Funtoo
Funtoo Linux is a Linux-based operating system created by Daniel Robbins, the creator and former Chief Architect of Gentoo Linux.
MAT: Dead
TONY: Alive
VERDICT: ALIVE
===================================
Puredyne
Puredyne is the USB-bootable GNU/Linux operating system for creative multimedia.
MAT: Dead
TONY: Dead
VERDICT: ALIVE
===================================
Poseidon Linux
Poseidon (GNU/)Linux was designed as a friendly and complete desktop, based on open source software and aimed at the international scientific community.
MAT: Dead
TONY: Alive
VERDICT: ALIVE
================Tie-breaker===================
Nonux Linux
Nonux is a complete and modern operating system for desktop computers and notebook basedon GNU/Linux with a Dutch graphic interface, the Internet and office software.
MAT: Alive
TONY: Dead
VERDICT: DEAD
===================================
Mat: 2 (Loser)
Tony: 3
Listener Feedback
Time: 1:06:48
That Dude – Likes Mary’s Sabian review and commented about nvidia and Kernel
James Kelsh – Wavemon and UEFI
Mat’s Soapbox
Outtro Music
Time: 1:13:37
Funky Banane – Hippie House Jam Band
This content is published under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.