Episode 039 – Higgs Boson!
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Google Hangout links for the Live show:
Episode 039 – 1 : http://youtu.be/bcVG_ggsQhA
Episode 039 – 2: http://youtu.be/Kvluyg66EXE
Total Running Time: 1:18:06
Summary
Kernel News: Mat
Time: 3:15
Distro Talk: Tony
Time: 4:46
Mary Distro Review
Time: 13:07
Tech News:
Time: 22:30
Mozilla OS Right Around The Corner
A Big Bug Hit Linux Last Weekend
From The Why Are You Running Windows Bag
Mozilla Says Thunderbird Is As Good As It’s Going To Get
Linux central to Higgs Boson discovery
KDE Korner
Google asks Oracle for $4 million in legal fees
KDE’s Dolphin file manager needs additional hands
Crop circles in the shape of the Ubuntu logo appears in Italy
Is it Alive? – Mary
Time:50:13
Listener Feedback
Time: 57:11
Mat’s Soapbox
Time: 1:07:05
Outtro Music
Time: 1:12:48
Intro:
Tony Bemus, Mat Enders, and Mary Tomich
Intro Sound bite by Mike Tanner
Kernel News: Mat
Time: 3:15
Release Candidate:
On Sat, 7 Jul 2012 20:01:27 Linus Torvalds released kernel 3.5-rc6
This is what Linus had to say about it.
“there’s mainly some btrfs and md stuff in here, with the normal driver changes, arm updates and some networking
changes. And a smattering of random stuff (including docs etc). None of it looks very scary, it’s all pretty small, and there aren’t even all that many of those small changes.”
Stable Updates:
On Thu, 05 Jul 2012 02:13:17 BST Ben Hutchings released kernel 3.2.22
There were 47 files changed, 298 insertions, and 143 deletions
Distro Talk: Tony
Time: 4:46
- 7-1 – Ultimate Edition 3.4 – based on Ubuntu 12.04 and featuring the GNOME 3 desktop
- 7-02 – Fuduntu 2012.3 – rolling-release distribution originally forked from Fedora
- 7-02 – DoudouLinux 1.2 – Debian-based distribution designed for children
- 7-03 – Chakra GNU/Linux 2012.07 – final update of the project’s “Archimedes” series of distribution releases featuring the KDE 4.8 desktop
- 7-04 – Porteus 1.2 – Slackware-based minimalist live CD set with a choice of KDE 3 (Trinity), KDE 4, Xfce and LXDE desktops
Distro of the Week: Tony
- Ultimate – 1527
- Ubuntu – 1652
- Commodore – 1825
- Mageia – 2329
- Mint – 2873
Mary Distro Review
Time: 13:07
Review of PureOS 5.0
After recently seeing PureOS on Distrowatch, I decided to take a look at this French-based distro. It’s been around for three years and I figured that it might be a pleasure to review.
Vitals:
Name: PureOS (French)
Maintainer: Marc Poirette
Distro Birthday: 5.0 announcement on Sunday, 24 June 2012
Derivative: Debian (Testing branch)
Kernel: 3.3.6 (via uname -a)
Review Desktop: Gnome 3.4 (KDE and XFCE also are available)
So off I went to pureos.org and downloaded version 5.0, a 921MB file that I fully expected to be pure fun to use and review. The PureOS 5.0 live DVD boots to a grub menu from which you can select your country. After you’ve done this, your language and keyboard are assumed to be what’s predominant in the selected country. Makes pure sense to me. The GRUB-style menu also displays in bold, courier text at the bottom of this screen, the credentials for both the root user and the “guest” user. This approach was a nice convenience and made it easy for me to remember.
The live DVD boots to the Gnome desktop 3.4 desktop but, unfortunately for me, it wasn’t purely Gnome 3.4 because it had the classic Gnome 2 look. This situation was most likely due to my Nvidia card not being handled at all by PureOS. The video resolution options presented to me when I checked were 1024×768 and 800×600. How 1999-ish! To take a page from the Prince song: “we’re going to render like it’s 1999—you get the picture…I didn’t. Old, tired-looking was the only way to describe the less-than-crisp display. PureOS isn’t the first non-proprietary distro I have installed and reviewed. A few months ago, I took a look at Trisquel Linux—another non-proprietary distro. The difference between Trisquel and PureOS was notable. Unlike PureOS, Trisquel automatically loaded the free version of the Nvidia drivers, to produce a clean, crisp desktop. But I bravely soldiered on, deciding to install to see if I could get past this point and enjoy the full power and beauty of the Gnome 3 desktop. After all, the screen-shots looked great.
Now…typical installations go something like this- Select options from a series of screens, confirm partition(s) to use, determine GRUB install, reboot to newly installed desktop. One of the more surprising messages that I received when I started the PureOS install was the following: This installation program does not perform the process of partitioning your hard-disk. It went on to say that if you’re going to perform the installation, you need at least two partitions a blank ext4 partition and a swap partition. If you don’t have prepared these partitions yet, please do it with Gparted before starting again the installation. A button to start Gparted would have been helpful at this point but it just wasn’t there. Of course, I didn’t realize I’d have to exist the installation to confirm my partition, but that’s just what I did.
The install continued. Then I was prompted to create a “guest” user plus a root user. Using the term guest user to discribe the first user to be added seemed a little odd to me. The phrase has a transient tone, an expectation of someone who wouldn’t be around for long. Did that portend my own situation?.
There were no screens or prompts for your location, keyboard or time zone. Despite the fact I selected USA for my location/keyboard/time, when using the live DVD and after the install, UTC looked to be the time that was the default. Did PureOS use my live configuration? It’s hard to say, but the presence of the UTC time zone kind of makes me think not.
When the install concluded, I was presented with a single-sentence message: “The install is finished.” There were no options for continuing to use the live DVD or reboot, like so many other distros present to users after installation. Again, it wasn’t the end of the world for me, just another little annoyance. For someone not familiar with Gnome’s way of doing things (and that would almost be me), he or she’d be left searching for the reboot/halt button. In other words, there was no power button in the upper right end of the Gnome panel, to allow for a shutdown or reboot. I had to click the user name in order to see these options. This was, again, another little missing convenience. But they were adding up.
The post install reboot went fine with exception of this boot message that scrolled past me: No suitable firmware found – iwl4965. I’d recognize that number anywhere. It’s my Intel wireless chip. No surprise since I was tethered with a network cable.
As it was for the live environment, the desktop is simple but not high-definition. And I was forced to cut short my attempt to install the Nvidia drivers due to not enough time to sort through the issues with xorg.conf. Overall, PureOS was a disappointment. There was nothing notable about PureOS, at least from my 1024×768 perspective.
Unfortunately PureOS garners 1.5 cups of a bitter brew.
Tech News:
Time: 22:30
Mozilla OS Right Around The Corner
Mozilla’s plans for a completely open mobile OS based on HTML5 is garnering some big name support. Some of the big names include Deutsche Telekom, Telecom Italia, Sprint, and Spain’s Telefónica. Alcatel and ZTE are going to manufacture the first phone with the new Firefox OS, using Snapdragon™ processors from Qualcomm. The first phones with the Firefox OS are expected to hit the market in Brazil in early 2013.
Firefox OS will utilize the “Boot to Gecko project” technology that allows HTML5 apps access the core functions of the phone. Telefónica teamed up with Mozilla earlier this year to show off a new phone architecture in which every phone feature (calling, messaging, games, etc.) is an HTML5 application.
Chairman and CEO of Telefónica Digital, Matthew Key, had this to say about it:
“Firefox OS will bring a better smartphone experience to a higher proportion of the population at a lower cost. This is crucial for us to accelerate the adoption of smartphones in developing markets. The breadth of support for this initiative across the industry makes it clear that there is an opportunity in the market for a new, open mobile ecosystem.”
Fared Adib, Product Chief at Sprint had this to say:
“Sprint continues to support an open mobile ecosystem that enables choice for Sprint customers and a healthy competitive ecosystem for the technical community. Firefox Mobile OS can help us drive an HTML 5-based platform for creating lower cost smartphone options for prepaid, postpaid and wholesale customers.”
A Big Bug Hit Linux Last Weekend
There was a leap second inserted last Saturday by the NTP pool time servers. These leap seconds are introduced ocasionaly to account for drift. This time however it caused permanent high CPU loads. It was first noted by the Mozilla foundation on their blog. It is easily fixed by either resetting the date manually or rebooting the machine. This deadlock caused by the NTP subsystem appears to effect kernels 2.6.26 upto and including 3.3. This bug is completely unrelated to the leap second bug in the kernel back in 2009. John Stultz, who is involved with the development of the timer functions in the Linux kernel, is in the process of completing two patches to deal with the issue. Another effect that this bug is having on data centers is a significant jump in their power consumption.
From The Why Are You Running Windows Bag
Remember back in November when the DNS changer botnet was taken over by the FBI. Well on Monday July 9th they will be turning off those servers. What that means is that any infected machines out there that have not been fixed will loose there DNS servers. The FBI has given all of you looser Windows users plenty of time to figure this out. Here is the list of addresses tha the FBI says you will have to stop using before Monday the 9th. So check you DNS servers and if it’s in one of the ranges listed below Git er Changed as Larry the Cable Guy might say.
85.255.112.0 to 85.255.127.255
67.210.0.0 to 67.210.15.255
93.188.160.0 to 93.188.167.255
77.67.83.0 to 77.67.83.255
213.109.64.0 to 213.109.79.255
64.28.176.0 to 64.28.191.255
There are still thousands of infected computers in use in the UK. Two months ago, the FBI was still registering queries from around 20,000 UK IP addresses. Since the end of May, Google has been warning users of its search engine if their computers are infected.
Mozilla Says Thunderbird Is As Good As It’s Going To Get
The Mozilla project this week announced that they where putting Thunderbird into security and stability maintenance mode. In the statement they say the “organization will no longer invest resources in innovation on Thunderbird.” They were not going to make this public until Monday however some disgruntled Mozillian leaked the email which allowed TechCrunch to break the story, and forced Mozilla to put up a blog post early. You may ask yourself why is Mozilla putting a feature freeze on one of the most popular open source projects out there. Well according to Jb Piacentino, Thunderbird Managing Director:
“In summary, we’ve been focusing efforts towards important web and mobile projects, such as B2G, while Thunderbird remains a pure desktop-only email client. We have come to the conclusion that continued innovation on Thunderbird is not the best use of our resources given our ambitious organizational goals.”
What makes this especialy interesting is the timing of this announcement. Recently Ubuntu switched from Evolution to Thunderbird and Mozilla signed a deals with registrars such as French Gandi.net and Canadian Hover.com to offer personalized email IDs to users through Thunderbird.
Linux central to Higgs Boson discovery, claims physicist
“In terms of data analysis, Windows could be used in principle. We could also use some type of device that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a simple table of rules. Linux is used because it is most appropriate for the job.”
The systems referred to are those used to sift through the vast amounts of data that are output from the accelerators in search of meaningful signals that might be new particles.
http://www.itworldcanada.com/news/linux-central-to-higgs-boson-discovery-claims-physicist/145734
KDE Korner
Dolphin Copy Path to Clipboard service menu
Adds extra entry on the service menu list that copies the file path to the clipboard.
http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Copy+Path+To+Clipboard?content=151916
Converseen
Imagick is a powerful command-line utility that processes images. Despite its range of capabilities, some may find a command-line tool a bit daunting (come on in, the water’s fine!). If you’re in that category, Converseen is one of several open source tools that you might find helpful. It
s written in C++ with the powerful Qt4 libraries. It supports more than 100 image formats. You can convert and resize an unlimited number of images to any of the most popular formats: DPX, EXR, GIF, JPEG, JPEG-2000, PDF, PhotoCD, PNG, Postscript, SVG, and TIFF. You save a ton of time because you can process more than one image with one mouse click!
http://converseen.sourceforge.net/
Imagemagick command-line equivalents:
convert file1.jpg -resize 640×480 file1.jpg
convert file1.jpg -quality 95 file1.png
http://www.ioncannon.net/linux/81/5-imagemagick-command-line-examples-part-1/
http://www.ioncannon.net/linux/72/5-imagemagick-command-line-examples-part-2/
Google asks Oracle for $4 million in legal fees
http://www.slashgear.com/google-asks-oracle-for-4-million-in-legal-fees-07237557/
The company is asking for no less than $4 million in compensation. Wanna know the craziest part? Of that huge sum of money, $2.9 million in expenses came from copying and organizing documents. Yeah, there were some 97 million documents that Google had to pull during the case.
KDE’s Dolphin file manager needs additional hands
Frank Reininghaus, the new maintainer of KDE’s Dolphin file manager has put out a call for contributors to the project. The original creator of Dolphin, Peter Penz, stepped down from leadership of the project last month and Reininghaus sees involving new developers with the project as one of his most important tasks.
http://freininghaus.wordpress.com/2012/07/04/dolphin-2-1-and-beyond/
Crop circles in the shape of the Ubuntu logo appears in Italy
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/07/ubuntu-shaped-crop-circles-appear-in-italy?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+d0od+%28OMG%21+Ubuntu%21%29
I was amazed to learn of a 12 step program for people who are addicted to distrohoppers…
Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over our distrohopping – that our computers had become unmanageable.
Step 2: Came to believe that a power other than Distrowatch could restore us to sanity.
Step 3: Made a decision to turn our hard drives over to the care of Tux.
Step 4: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of the distros we have installed over the last 6 months.
Step 5: Admitted to ourselves and to fellow Linux podcast participants, the exact nature of our hopping.
Step 6: Were entirely ready to have Tux remove all these defects of character
Step 7: Humbly asked God to stop us from knocking Ubuntu and its derivatives.
Step 8: Made a list of all distros we had installed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Step 9: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Step 10: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it
Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out
Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs
Is it Alive?
Time: 50:13
During this segment of the show, I challenge Mat and Tony to identify whether a Linux Distro is alive or dead? We twisted the concept for last week’s show when I challenged Mat and Tony to decide if the named entity was a Linux distribution or a superhero. This week we are back to our regular premise…is the named distribution alive or dead.. The items for the July 8 show:
====================================
Blank-on Linux
BlankOn is a Linux Distribution developed by Yayasan Penggerak Linux Indonesia (YPLI) and BlankOn developers, which aims to build a linux distribution according to the needs of Indonesian computer user
http://www.blankonlinux.or.id/english/
MAT: Alive
TONY: Dead
VERDICT: ALIVE
====================================
Midori Linux
Midori Linux is an Open Source project for delivering system software on small devices. It includes a build system, a Linux kernel with memory- and storage-conserving features, and system-level support for normal Linux software on platforms which might otherwise require custom “embedded” applications
MAT: Alive
TONY: Alive
VERDICT; DEAD
===================================
Danix Linux
DANIX was distribution of GNU/Linux, which aims to be useable on Desktop by normal endusers. DANIX contains many applications for Internet usage, office work, data recovery, education or just fun.
MAT: Dead
TONY: Alive
VERDICT: DEAD
===================================
Voyage Linux
Voyage Linux is Debian derived distribution that is best run on a x86 embedded platforms such as PC Engines ALIX/WRAP, Soekris 45xx/48xx/65xx and Atom-based boards.
MAT: Alive
TONY: Alive
VERDICT: ALIVE
===================================
aLinux™ is an advanced Office/Multimedia RPM based GNU/Linux distribution.
Installing new programs, applications and updating your system from time-to-time has never been easier using our Synaptic Package Management System.
MAT: Alive
TONY: Alive
VERDICT: LIVE
===================================
FINAL
Mat: 4 (Not the loser)
Tony: 2
Listener Feedback
Time: 57:11
RunningMan – Matt’s mic volume
Brian Hall – Receipe for Matt’s Delight desert
Paul – bluetooth/wireless connections
Mat’s Soapbox
Time: 1:07:05
Outtro Music
Time: 1:12:48
Cupid Kills by artist Falling Blind
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