Episode 006
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Intro:
Tony Bemus and Mat Enders
Time: 0:40
Kernel News: Mat
The current development kernel is 3.2-rc2, released on November 15.
Being an -rc2 release of a large merge-window, it is reasonably sized. Even though this has been the largest linux-next in the history of linux-next, rc2 has the exact same number of commits since rc1 as there were during the 3.1 release. There are numerous fixes and somw ktest improvements.
Stable updates:
The 3.0.9 and 3.1.1 stable kernels were released on November 11. Both contain a large quantity of important fixes.
Distro News: Tony
Time: 2:18
- 11-19 – Tiny Core Linux 4.1
- 11-19 – Puppy Linux 5.2.2 “Wary”, “Racy”
- 11-18 – IPCop 2.0.2 – , a specialist Linux distribution for firewalls designed primarily for home and SOHO users
- 11-17 – Incognito Live System 0.9 – Debian-based live distribution with the goal of providing complete Internet anonymity for the user
- 11-16 – openSUSE 12.1 – one of the oldest and most prominent Linux distributions on the market
Distro of the Week:
- Mint
- openSUSE
- Fedora
- Commodore
- Ubuntu
Tech News:
Time: 7:06
Wine 1.3.33 Has Been Released
Version 1.3.33 of wine for running Windows applications on Linux, BSD, Solaris, and MAC OS X has been released. This version has improvements to bidirectional text layout for writing in Arabic. Also some fixes fir WinHTTP proxy, a new version of Wine Gecko 1.4 based on the Mozilla Gecko layout engine, along with many bug fixes.
New in this release
Text output is now supported in the DIB engine.
Improved HTTP proxy support.
Several cursor fixes.
Actual Android Tablet Beats Microsoft Vaporware Tablet
Microsoft has been kicking around the concept of touch-screen for along time with never having developed a product that is usable by the average user or targeted at the mass market. They are currently working with Samsung (the leading Android phone maker who wrongfuly pays Microsoft a royalty fee for using Android) to release a 40 inch Surface tablet running Windows 7 and the Surface 2.0 software.
Ironically, within a week of Microsofts announcement of the vapourware tablet, an actual Android tablet beat Microsoft’s surface by creating a bigger, 65-inch, tablet running Android.
Ardic Technology’s press release has this to say, “We developed what we believe is the world’s largest Android touch “tablet”. Whether you call it a tablet, smartboard or touch panel, it’s the biggest thing running the Android operating system that we know of. The beautiful 65-inch LCD touch screen can be used to do everything that an Android tablet can do: download apps, play games, watch HD movies, browse the web, edit documents, run photo slideshows and more.”
How it works?
The screen is an optical touch screen that supports two-point gestures. The unit itself does not have a processor, memory or hard disk. Just USB and HDMI ports along with a power source. It is powered by a 10-inch Android tablet that utizes an Nvidia Tegra 2 chip with 1GB RAM. The touch screen has a dock with USB (for the touch input) and HDMI (for audio and video).
What is clearly evident is that Microsoft’s vaporware can’t even keep up with Android’s reality. You can see a video of the Ardic tablet in action at: wacky youtube URL see the show note for the actual URL.
Berlin court upholds the GPL
A DSL router manufacturer lost its case against Cybits, a producer of web-filtering software. The GPL (General Public Licence) was central AVM Computersystems case against Cybits.
AVM Computersystems tried to get a legal sanction against Cybits to prevent them from making changes to the code they use in thier routers, a piece of code covered by the GPL in the Fritz!Box product. AVM filed two suits against Cybits in the last year, stating when people install Cybits’ filtering software on AVM routers, it alters the firmware of the routers’, there by, infringing on AVM’s copyright.
Harald Welte, founder of gpl-violations.org said “I am extremely pleased that the court turned down any request by AVM to control any modification to the GNU GPL licensed components of the Fritz!Box firmware. Enabling and encouraging everyone to innovate based on existing software and products is a key aspect of the Free Software movement,”.
The court however did uphold an anciliary claim by AVM and enjoined Cybits from distributing the software when it causes the web interface to display an incorrect status of the internet connection and web filtering software.
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE’s (Free Software Foundation Europe) German co-ordinator stated “But this is a side issue, the important part is: free software gives everybody the right to use, study, share, and improve it. Nobody should be allowed to prevent others from executing those rights,”.
More On Linux Mint 12
Many bugs fixed:
apturl is now fully functional
adding PPA repositories was fixed
MATE received a critical update to mate-session-manager (this bug prevented MATE to be started from the login screen for i386 users)
mintMenu was ported to MATE
packages now open with gdebi
mgse-menu received keyboard navigation and multiple bug fixes
mgse-windowlist was given a brand new look and now looks extremely similar to the Gnome 2 window list
mgse-bottompanel now makes it possible to switch between workspaces using the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+Alt+Arrow keys
The ability to open directories as root was added to Gnome 3
The feedback from the RC release wasn’t as straight forward as it usually is. As anticipated, Gnome 3 is dividing the Mint community. MGSE was well received and it it aided in the migration to Gnome 3. MGSE had numerous notable improvements. The Gnome 3 experience in the final release of Linux Mint 12 will be vastly improved over the RC release.
With Mate and MGSE Mint 12 is movong in the right direction. It is just not workable to continue using Gnome 2.32 as Mint would then nolonger be compatible with the upstream Ubuntu and Debian repositories. As Mate and MGSE mature they will offer users a very viable alternative to full blown Gnome 3.
Amazon Pays $201.70 To Build $199 Kindle Fire
The ColorHug, an Open Source Display Calibration Device
Richard Hughes – Yesterday 5:11 AM (edited) – For the past 3 weeks I’ve been working long nights on an open source colorimeter called the ColorHug. This is hardware that measures the colors shown on the screen and creates a color profile. Existing hardware is proprietary and 100% closed, and my hardware has a GPL bootloader, GPL firmware image and GPL hardware schematics and PCBs. It’s faster than the proprietary hardware, and more importantly a lot cheaper.
More Talk:
Time: 22:27
Test To Give When Hiring or Interviewing a Junior Linux System Administrator
Tony’s Projects:
Mat’s Projects:
Outtro Music:
Time: 29:31
Jamendo.com
Making Me Nervous by Brad Sucks
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1 Comment
Go where it says input and choose sound card input. and choose your mic