Episode 062 – BBQ at Panera?

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Un-edited Live session part 1 – http://youtu.be/NlUFK7thLPk
Un-edited Live session part 2 – http://youtu.be/yrsTyYzZPKc

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Summary

Kernel News: Mat
Time: 14:52
Distro Talk: Tony
Time: 19:35
Mary Distro Review
Time: 27:00
Tech News:
Time: 43:25
Is it Alive? – Mary
Time: 55:43
Listener Feedback
Time: 1:01:30
Outtro Music
Time: 1:07:17

Intro:

Tony Bemus, Mat Enders, and Mary Tomich
Intro Sound bite by Mike Tanner

Kernel News: Mat

Time: 14:52

Kernel News

Release Candidate:
No rc we have new baby kernel aaawwww it’s so cute

Mainline:
3.7 Is out
Here is what Linus had to say about it:

“Whee. After an extra rc release, 3.7 is now out. After a few more trials at fixing things, in the end we ended up reverting the kswapd changes that caused problems. And with the extra rc, I had decided to risk doing the buffer.c cleanups that would otherwise have just been marked for stable during the next merge window, and had enough time to fix a few problems that people found there too.

There’s also a fix for a SCSI driver bug that was exposed by the last-minute workqueue fixes in rc8.

Other than that, there’s a few networking fixes, and some trivial fixes for sparc and MIPS.

Anyway, it’s been a somewhat drawn out release despite the 3.7 merge window having otherwise appeared pretty straightforward, and none of the rc’s were all that big either. But we’re done, and this means that the merge window will close on Christmas eve.

Or rather, I’ll probably close it a couple of days early. For obvious reasons. It’s the main commercial holiday of the year, after all.

So aim for winter solstice, and no later. Deal? And even then, I might be deep into the glögg.”
–Linus Torvlads

Stable Updates:
On Mon, 10 Dec 2012 11:46:13 PST
Greg Kroah-Hartman released kernel 3.6.10
With 29 files changed, 278 lines inserted, and 165 lines deleted

On Mon, 10 Dec 2012 11:47:05 PST
Greg Kroah-Hartman released kernel 3.4.23
With 24 files changed, 406 lines inserted, and 191 lines deleted

On Mon, 10 Dec 2012 11:47:49 PST
Greg Kroah-Hartman released kernel 3.0.56
With 12 files changed, 55 lines inserted, and 20 lines deleted

Kernel Developer Quote:

“Congratulations, +Oxfam America — you’ve just guaranteed that I won’t be donating to you this year. I received the following e-mail SPAM from you:

Subject: Did I leave my jacket at your place?

It’s Aziz Ansari. And of course I didn’t leave a jacket at your place. I’ve never been to your home.

But I’m glad you opened this email, because I actually wanted to talk to you about something much more important…..

Using cheesy tactics like this is just not cool.”
–Theodore Ts’o

Distro Talk: Tony

Time: 19:35

Distrowatch.com

• 12-09 – Toorox 11.2012 “GNOME” – Gentoo-based distribution and live DVD featuring the GNOME 3.6
• 12-10 – siduction 12.2.0 – based on Debian’s unstable branch and offering four separate editions with KDE, LXDE, Razor-qt and Xfce desktops
• 12-11 – Slax 7.0 – Slackware-based live CD with KDE 4.9.4 that fits onto a 220 MB CD
• 12-11 – Webconverger 16.0 – Debian-based live Linux distribution designed solely for accessing web applications
• 12-11 – LuninuX OS 12.10 – Ubuntu-based distribution with a customised GNOME Shell desktop interface
• 12-12 – Superb Mini Server 2.0.2 – minor update of the Slackware-based server distribution
• 12-13 – GParted Live 0.14.1-1 – utility live CD containing tools for disk management and data rescue tasks
• 12-14 – Univention Corporate Server 3.1 – Debian-based server operating system for enterprises

Distro of the Week: Tony

5. Fedora – 1438
4. Debian – 1481
3. Ubuntu – 1543
2. Mageia – 2421
1. Mint – 4246

Mary Distro Review

Time: 17:00

 Linux Review

This week’s review is of a slightly unusual project: Linux BBQ.  First  off, you know what Linux is and, secondly, you know what BBQ is, and when you put Linux and BBQ in the same search, you get things like a chef’s apron with tux on it from Amazon, just in time for Christmas:

 http://www.amazon.com/Linux-BBQ-Geek-Apron-CafePress/dp/B008FATJ3Q

Or an even more fun example about Jimmy’s BBQ in Malvern PA, and whether the customer, who was wearing a The Linux Link Tech Show tee-shirt, had ever met Eric Raymond.  http://silvereclipse.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=2&cPath=2

So just what is Linux BBQ?  First, the vitals…

The Vitals:
Name:  Linux BBQ (Oyster)
Maintainer: Julius Hader
Distro Latest Birthday: Difficult to Determine but project started in August of 2012, afaik.
Derivative:  Debian Sid
Kernel: 3.5.5
Review Desktop: RazorQT, but Oyster has over three dozen window managers.

According to the Linux BBQ web site: “Linux BBQ is a multipurpose OS based on  Debian  Sid,  spiced up with kernels and tools from Siduction, GRML and Linux Mint.”   From this foundation, Linux BBQ let’s you “Roast Your Own” by taking a base BBQ install and customizing and remixing it.

Community contributions are consequently implemented in the frequently updated installation media.

Linux BBQ consists of  ‘base’ releases in both 32bit and 64 bit versions:
OpenBox: Saltimbocca / Escargot
Gnome3:  Bauchspeck
Mate:  Paardenrookvlees
XFCE:  Kielbasa
(Saltimbocca: (Italian: jumps in the mouth) is a dish  made of veal lined or topped with prosciutto and sage; marinated in wine, oil or saltwater depending on the region or one’s own taste.)

From these base systems, a roll-your-own approach is encouraged. The Linux BBQ site lists several:
Rocks XFCE4 64-bit with over40 apps for musicians and producers
Stud – Student version; bundled with tools for students.
Latex – Distro for high-quality typesetting
Mother – XFCE browser, mail client and office suite
Oyster – Multiple Window managers (alpha release)
Free– designed for visually impaired; Assistive technology.
Spectrdrum – experimental 486 edition featuring SpectrWM and CLI apps.

In addition other releases can be downloaded: http://linuxbbq.org/releases_autogenerate.php

With so many variations available in the project you’d wonder where to start. My first choice was Saltimbocca, but several attempts to boot the CD were unsuccessful. It hung during the process.. I  then chose Oyster, mostly because it had over three dozen window managers and I was morbidly curious about how that would look.

…and now you know:

Live Environment: 

The boot to live was nothing special. The desktop has a simple look. There are no icons. There is the  single RazorQT panel at the bottom and Conky  running on the right, monitoring system readings. Displayed below the readings also courtesy of Conky was a list of helpful Linux BBQ shortcuts.  The attractive wallpaper displayed what looked like a picture of  the Dolomite Mountains—in a word crisp looking.

During my testing I tried several different window managers: tiling managers, stacking managers and a full desktop environment, RazorQT, which has made significant progress since the last time I saw it..

Oyster was light on the default tools…

The Big Three
Default Browser: Ice Weasel
Office Suite: None
Mail Client: None
Default File Manager: Thunar

It was clear the focus of Oyster was window managers but you do have access to all applications in the Debian and Siduction repositories, as well as any sources you chose to add.

The Install Process:

I decided to install the Oyster release to a virtual machine. It’s not that I didn’t trust this iso to behave itself, but I considered it an experimental distro and just wanted to be safe. The install process is standard; nothing really to comment about, except at the end of the process during the boot loader install (Grub2).  The system kept spinning and telling me to wait a few minutes while the boot-loader is installed.  Ten minutes later it was telling me to wait a few minutes.  I killed the window and rebooted with no issues.

Installed Environment:

As noted earlier, the claim to fame for this distro is its ability to generate a snapshot of your desktop and create an iso file.  This task is done through a CLI tool called bbqsnapshot and is the only activity I tried.  You can change settings, for example where the snapshot is saved, by editing  etc/bbqsnapshot.conf. To start  remastering iso, use sudo bbqsnapshot. During the process I had an opportunity to edit the boot menu—I left it alone. After 15-20 minutes or so, I had a linuxbbq1.iso file (519MB) and md5 hash.  These files were in /media/CB11_ /home/snapshot directory. Also there were the working files used to build the iso.

Starting my Oyster Roast…

 

it continues…

…and I am done!

I  explored the other directory “work.” and found  the working files and directories that went into the building of my iso.

Other interesting Programs:

NUT Nutrition – This is a terminal program that helps you track what you’ve eaten for each meal. This program cracked me up…Can’t wait for New Years’ Resolutions!

SearchMonkey  was a Yahoo! service which allowed developers and site owners to use structured data to make Yahoo! Search results more useful and visually appealing, and drive more relevant traffic to their sites. The service was shut down in October 2010 along with other Yahoo! services as part of the Microsoft and Yahoo! search deal, but appears to be available on Sourceforge.

System Menu –
Install Siduction to USB – Handy if that is what you want to do.
Kernel Remover  – tool for deleting old kernels. This tool is available in Siduction and Debian

Office menu was empty except for ePDFViewer
Elinks – a full-featured text web browser
Complete Debian menu system – typically included with Debian-based installs.

Accessories menu contains these BBQ tools:
LinuxBBQ Cookbook (documentation for Linux BBQ)
LinuxBBQ Menu (N-Curses menu for various CLI apps—many of these are the same configurations that one encounters during install).
LinuxBBQ Hospital (troubleshooting area, for audio, networking, and monitor/diplay.
LinuxBBQ Training  Center (tutorials for awk, sed, find, permissions, regex, shell
LinuxBBQ WM Help  (man pages for several WMs)

Rating:  3.0

A humorous note from the site:

…Naturally, this means the inclusion of proprietary elements. We are well aware this goes against the grain of the common FOSS ideas, but frankly, we care more for actually getting a working system than for sitting behind our wifi-less computers as the victors of idealism.

Tech News:

Time: 43:25

i386 Support Gone In Linux 3.8

When Ingo Molnar, a Red Hat engineer and Linux kernel developer, requested that the git tree called “x86-nuke386-for-linus” be pulled for kernel 3.8 it marked the end of an era. This will completely remove support for Intel’s 27 year old 386 processor. The 386 was the original processor that Linus started writing Linux on.

Linus was not sentimental and had no problem pulling the tree. He even went on to suggest that maybe it was time to remove FPU (Floating Point Unit) support which allows old 486SX machines to run. After further discussion however it was determined that there were a significant number of industrial embedded machines out there that this cold not be removed.

So in the end the 386 is dead but you will still be able to run it on those old 486SX and DX machines.

New Online Magazine For Fedora

A new magazine for Fedora Users and Developers is in the works. There is currently a skeleton of the mag available here http://wp-fedoramag.rhcloud.com/ it is safe to say they will secure a better address than that before launch. It runs on WordPress on top of an OpenShift server. OpenShift is Red Hat’s platform as a service. Everything is still in the discussion phase like the logo, themes, design, and such. They also have a call out for anyone who wants to help. They’re looking for artists and designers, web administrators, marketing and PR experts, and writers/editors.

At Long Last Samba 4 Is Here

After 10 long years in development it has finally arrived. I personally was beginning to wonder if it was ever going to really happen. It brings complete Active Directory support to Samba. The Samba team was able to recreate the entire Active Directory support from Microsoft documentation and their Interoperability Labs. Both we have courtesy of the EU. He is what Thomas Pfenning, director of development for Windows Server, had to say about it:

“Active Directory is a mainstay of enterprise IT environments, and Microsoft is committed to support for interoperability across platforms,… We are pleased that the documentation and interoperability labs that Microsoft has provided have been key in the development of the Samba 4.0 Active Directory functionality.”

That is what they are saying publicly but you know behind closed doors they are trying to rewrite AD to circumvent interoperability. The only reason Microsoft got so cooperative was because the EU said they had and made them comply. You just have to look back on previous statements they made about Samba. Like this one made by Bill Hilf, who was then General Manager for Microsoft Platform strategy:

“With Samba I’m really familiar with that technology and I’d say that a lot of what they do under the guise of interoperability is clone ability. I wouldn’t say it’s a great relationship but we have a working relationship. They ask things of us and we say, “That’s our IP.” And they say you should do it because all software should be free. “

So don’t be fooled by their current words of praise. They are false and they are just waiting for the right time to break the interoperability.

Congratulations goes to the entire Samba team well done!

Bern Goes Open Source And Officially Bans Microsoft

In an overwhelming majority vote 36 to 20 the city of Bern, Switzerland voted to accept the “Party Motion” put forward over a year ago. Plans for the development of open source design, strategy and implementation should begin immediately.

Here are the key points of the decsion:

Development of an open source strategy that provides for a rule that in all future procurements the open source version is preferred.

Active implementation of an open source development strategy be created using open source technologies and adequate finances for implementation are provided.

National and international network of computer science services that work together for the promotion and cooperation in the field of open source for government.

In education, promote the use of and the transition to open source software with targeted support and train teachers with information and training on open source software.

The only question left is what will the desktop environment be? My guess is KDE as Bern is in the German speaking part of Switzerland and we all know the German roots of KDE.

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Shuttleworth: Ubuntu’s goal is one OS from phones to supercomputers

Ubuntu phones and tablets may not be a reality yet, but Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth says Ubuntu is “close” to running on everything from smartphones to supercomputers.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/12/shuttleworth-ubuntus-goal-is-one-os-from-phones-to-supercomputers/

Secure boot: Microsoft shows up Linux

….The fact that secure boot would be used in Windows 8 was known last September. The ideal solution would have been for all the Linux distributions, plus other companies that depend on Linux for their profits, to band together under the Linux Foundation and use their combined clout to influence things with hardware vendors.

Instead, the distributions have been unable to do anything except to work separately to devise solutions to cope with the technology….

http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/open-sauce/57920-secure-boot-microsoft-shows-up-linux

NetFlix in Kubuntu

I used the instructions here to get Netflix running in Kubuntu

http://ashu-geek.blogspot.com/2012/11/netflix-desktop-released-for-ubuntu.html

KDE Korner

Holiday KDE Wallpapers

http://sathyasays.com/2008/12/15/celebrate-the-holiday-spirit-with-some-kde-christmas-wallpapers/

Muon Suite 1.9.65 (First Alpha Release for Muon 2)

https://jontheechidna.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/muon-suite-1-9-65-alpha-2/

KDE Desktop Recorder
FDesktopRecorder is a program that can video record a single window or your entire desktop using Ffmpeg.
Mary: I could get video running but audio was  no-go.
http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/FDesktopRecorder?content=147844

Vmail

Vmail is a Vim interface to Gmail.
http://danielchoi.com/software/vmail.html

Is it Alive?

Time: 55:43

During this segment of the show, I challenge Mat and Tony to identify whether a Linux Distro is alive or dead? I come at ’em full force this week with a new crop (or is it corpse) of distros. We are not twisting it this week, so the question is very simple Is it alive or is it dead? . The items for the December 17 show:

===================================
Kongoni Linux is a Slackware-based, desktop-oriented GNU/Linux distribution and live CD. Its main features include a graphical installer, a Kongoni Integrated Setup System (KISS), and an easy-to-use Ports Installation GUI (PIG).

http://www.kongoni.org/

MAT: dead
TONY: alive
VERDICT: Alive

===================================
Arch Hurd is a derivative work of Arch Linux porting it to the GNU Hurd system with packages optimized for the i686 architecture.

http://www.archhurd.org/

MAT: alive
TONY:alive
VERDICT: Alive

===================================
Hikarunix [“hee-kah-roo-nix”] was a Linux live CD based on Damn Small Linux and dedicated to Go – a popular Asian strategy game. It is known as Baduk in Korea and Wei Qi in China where the game started somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago.

http://www.assembla.com/wiki/show/Hikarunix

MAT: dead
TONY: dead
VERDICT: Dead

===================================
Buildix was an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution, developed by Global IT professional services firm, ThoughtWorks. Buildix is aimed at helping agile developers to get their projects up and running quickly and easily.

http://buildix.thoughtworks.com/
MAT: dead
TONY: alive
VERDICT: dead

===================================
LPS Linux Lightweight Portable Security (LPS) is a Linux-based live CD with a goal of allowing users to work on a computer without the risk of exposing their credentials and private data to malware, key loggers and other Internet-era ills.

http://www.spi.dod.mil/lipose.htm

MAT: alive
TONY: alive
VERDICT: A live

===================================
Nova Linux was a user-friendly, desktop-oriented Linux distribution developed by the University of Computer Sciences in Havana, Cuba.

http://www.nova.cu/

MAT: dead
TONY: alive
VERDICT Está muerto. (it’s dead)
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Mat: 4
Tony: 3

 

 

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Listener Feedback:

show (at) smlr.us or 313-626-9140
Time: 1:01:30
Chattr -386 kernel support
eastling – tor and china

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Outtro Music

Time: 1:07:17
Oriental Rock Lullaby by Butterfly Tea

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