Episode 069 – Live Audio Difficulty
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Total Running Time:
Un-edited Live session – http://youtu.be/VfJSrvOI6qU
Contact Us:
show (at) smlr.us or the Contact us page
Summary
Kernel News: Mat
Time: 9:29
Distro Talk: Tony
Time: 12:23
Mary Distro Review
Time: 17:05
Interview:
Time: 34:49
Tech News:
Time: 52:10
Is it Alive? – Mary
Time: 1:17:00
Listener Feedback
Time: 1:22:35
Outtro Music
Time: 1:35:40
Intro:
Tony Bemus, Mat Enders, and Mary Tomich
Intro Sound bite by Mike Tanner
Kernel News: Mat
Time: 9:29
Release Candidate:
On Fri, 1 Feb 2013 12:43:33 EDT
Linus Torvalds released kernel 3.8-rc6
This what he had to say about it:
“It’s been a week since -rc5 (perhaps not counting timezone changes), so -rc6 is out now.
I have to say, -rc6 is bigger than I’d like it to be. I’d really like things to calm down by rc6, because usually I aim for rc7 to be roughly the last rc in the series, and that means that I don’t want to see hundreds of patches. But hundreds of patches it is. Not good.
…
So I’m hoping that rc7 would be better quite quite on its own.
But since I don’t trust you sneaky bastards, I have a CleverPlan(tm) to make *sure* that rc7 will be better and much smaller. That plan largely depends on me being unreachable for the next week due to the fact that there is no internet under water.
Paraphrasing the Alien films: “Under water, nobody can read your email”.
And once I dry off enough, I’m going to be really pissy (“And how is that different from the normal Linus, pray tell?”) …
So think twice – or thrice – before sending me patches or a pull request for -rc7…
In other words, “It fixes a bug” just isn’t good enough. The bug needs to be something that actually matters.”
Mainline:
3.7
Stable Updates:
On Sun, 27 Jan 2013 20:56:58 PST
Greg Kroah-Hartman released kernel 3.7.5
With 56 files changed, 491 lines inserted, and 208 lines deleted
On Sun, 27 Jan 2013 20:58:36 PST
Greg Kroah-Hartman released kernel 3.4.28
With 27 files changed, 230 lines inserted, and 92 lines deleted
On Sun, 27 Jan 2013 20:59:31 PST
Greg Kroah-Hartman released kernel 3.0.61
With 19 files changed, 188 lines inserted, and 44 lines deleted
Kernel Developer Quote:
“Some Lenovos will only boot Windows or Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I recommend drinking, because as far as I know they haven’t actually got around to doing anything useful about this yet.”
–Matthew Garrett
Distro Talk: Tony
Time: 12:23
- 1-30 – SparkyLinux 2.1 “Ultra” – a Debian-based lightweight distribution with Openbox as the default desktop user interface
- 1-30 – Parted Magic 2013_01_29 – Linux live CD with specialist tools for disk management and data rescue tasks
- 1-31 – PCLinuxOS 2013.02 – “KDE” and “KDE MiniME” editions, version 2013.02,
- 2-1 – Linux Lite 1.0.4 – Ubuntu-based distribution with a customised Xfce desktop
Distro of the Week: Tony
- Fedora – 1572
- Ubuntu – 1842
- PCLinuxOS – 2177
- Mageia – 2349
- Mint – 3675
Mary Distro Review
Time: 17:05
Linux Review
During last week’s episode we briefly discussed the RazorQT desktop. The general consensus, if I recall correctly, is that we were not all that enthusiastic about this lean, QT-based desktop. I reviewed RazorQt 4.1 when I took a look at Siduction Linux back in episode 34. My biggest complaint at the time was the inability to switch mouse buttons if you were left handed. Well one year has passed since I last took a look at RazorQt. Time to see if it’s a sharper desktop than it was last year.
I am reviewing razorQT via the Linux distro, SalentOS, so there will be a little of both during this week’s What’s on SDA6. SalentOS claims it’s the first distro completely inspired by the Salento region of Italy, a land molded by the sea and wind, steeped in history and art in the south of the Italian peninsula. For those of you unfamiliar with this region, it’s Italy’s boot heel.
The Vitals:
Name: SalentOS
Maintainer: Gabriele (from Italy)
Distro Latest Birthday: December 12, 2012 or 12/12/12
Derivative: Ubuntu
Kernel: 3.2.0-36
Review Desktop: RazorQT
Live Environment:
The first visual that greets you is the colorful nature of SalentOS uses. Very green, orange, and yellow. Must be a regional thing. There’s an elongated blob to the right which I figured out was the Salento region of Italy. Once live, I discovered some good news: both my graphics and wireless are handled properly by SalentOS running RazorQT.
Graphics: ( nouveau but also loaded nVidia driver which worked)
Wireless: (iwl4965)
The Big Three
Default Browser: Chromium
Office Suite: Abiword, Gnumeric
Mail Client: Sylpheed
Default File Manager: PCManFM
The Install Process:
The install process was completely Ubuntu. Someone needs to remind me not to blow up my current Grub install BEFORE I install a test distro..
Installed Environment:
SalentOS boots to a crisp-looking RazorQT desktop. Frankly It looks pretty good. Single panel at the bottom with the typical cast of characters. An futuristic analog clock at the top of the screen. Set of standard desktop folders. It turns out that these are desktop items are desktop widgets.
Widgets on the desktop – Unlock desktop (right click), then select Add New Desktop Widget… RazorQT comes with several on its list.
RazorQT comes with some desktop effects enabled by default. My menus were wobbly and they also had a little fade going on. RazorQT uses the Cairo composite manager for its desktop effects and accessing them was easy from the system tray. I decided to deactivate them for my review. After disabling a couple of effects, the window froze. I closed and reopened it and was able to complete my work.
After I had disabled effects, I suddenly noticed that I had tool-tips balloons. The only problem – they were white font-on-white boxes. Not too helpful.
My first order of business was to switch my mouse buttons. I was looking for options in all the right places and DID NOT FIND IT!! A quick bit of research reveals it’s still broken. Disappointing that RazorQT still has not added this functionality! However, I found a work-around that I was able to use via xmodmap, a utility for modifying keymaps and pointer button mappings in X.
All I had to do is drop a single command (xmodmap -e \”pointer=32145\” )into the Autostart section of the Razor Session Configurator in Preferences > RazorQT Settings. I rebooted and the setting worked.
Here is a link to the solution I used:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/razor-qt/WHZ7_n9tKjM
I opened Abiword and noticed, after maximizing the document window, it was shifted several inches to the right and down. My attempt to move the Abiword window to the left via the title bar was unsuccessful. Alt + F opened the File menu where it should be if the underlying Abiword window NOT been shifted. The mouse behaved as expected. I deactivated the mouse button fix, thinking that it had cause this issue. Nope. I also shifted the desktop widgets thinking that their location affected the placement of the window. Nope. I uninstalled the Nvidia restricted driver. Nope. I think you
I inserted a SD card and the system properly recognized it and mounted the two partitions that were on it. Looked good
I attempted to perform an update via the update manager. For some reason it stalled twice and would not allow me to “apply the changes” I was not sure what was going on—all I knew was my update wasn’t going to happen. It was a kernel upgrade, so I was sightly concerned…
And the list goes on…
Rating:
Although RazorQT has improved since the last time I reviewed it, it still does not have the mouse button situation solved and the other issues I encountered make it and SalentOS a less than stellar distro for day-to-day use. Yes, it’s usable but you better be prepared for glitches.
1.9 cups of tepid columbian served in a left-handed mug.
Interview:
Time: 34:49
::: CACTI :::
http://www.cacti.net
Cacti is a complete network graphing solution designed to harness the power of RRDTool’s data storage and graphing functionality. Cacti provides a fast poller, advanced graph templating, multiple data acquisition methods, and user management features out of the box. All of this is wrapped in an intuitive, easy to use interface that makes sense for LAN-sized installations up to complex networks with hundreds of devices.
http://www.cacti.net/documentation.php
http://forums.cacti.net/
Install cacti on Ubuntu Server with Apache and PHP-FPM:
http://www.garron.me/linux/install-cacti-on-ubuntu-php-fpm.html
::: MUNIN :::
http://munin-monitoring.org
Munin the monitoring tool surveys all your computers and remembers what it saw. It presents all the information in graphs through a web interface. Its emphasis is on plug and play capabilities. After completing a installation a high number of monitoring plugins will be playing with no more effort.
http://munin-monitoring.org/wiki/Documentation
::: MONIT :::
http://mmonit.com/monit/
Monit is a free open source utility for managing and monitoring, processes, programs, files, directories and filesystems on a UNIX system. Monit conducts automatic maintenance and repair and can execute meaningful causal actions in error situations.
http://mmonit.com/monit/documentation/
::: SMOKEPING :::
http://oss.oetiker.ch/smokeping
SmokePing keeps track of your network latency:
Best of breed latency visualisation.
Interactive graph explorer.
Wide range of latency measurment plugins.
Master/Slave System for distributed measurement.
Highly configurable alerting system.
Live Latency Charts with the most ‘interesting’ graphs.
Free and OpenSource Software written in Perl written by Tobi Oetiker, the creator of MRTG and RRDtool
http://oss.oetiker.ch/smokeping/doc/index.en.html
Install tutorial guide:
http://www.howtoforge.com/monitoring-network-latency-with-smokeping-ubuntu-9.04
Tech News:
Time: 52:10
Chrome OS Soars Windows 8 Sinks
Windows 8 market share has sunk below Vista’s market share for the same opening time frame. With Chrome OS being the big winner in the debacle. Acer’s Chromebook now accounts for between 5 and 10 percent of the companies sales. Acer is not the only player to have noticed the increased popularity of Chromebooks with Lenovo and HP introducing their own Chromebooks. These guys are not jumping in the pool because they love Linux. They are doing it because the see potential huge sales. They realize that when a consumer is confronted with a radically different interface on a familiar product or a familiar interface on a new product, they will choose the familiar every time. Price is another key factor with the Windows 8 models coming in at an average of $867 while the Chromebooks come in at an average of $350.
Kernel Bug Bricks Samsung Laptops
Boot Linux only once with UEFI on some Samsung laptops and turn them into expensive paperweight. The problem has been reported on the folowing models 300E5C, NP700Z5C, NP700Z7C and NP900X4C series laptops. Secure boot does not affect the problem, but only occurs when Linux is booted using UEFI. If the Compatibility Support Module (CSM) you bypass the issue. Intel developer Matt Fleming posted two kernel changes, one of which prevents the Samsung driver running if Linux is started using UEFI. This should be sufficient to prevent damage to Samsung laptops. The only problem is these two patches have not been merged into either the main Linux development tree or recently released stable and long-term kernels 3.0.61, 3.4.28 and 3.7.5. Samsung developers are working to develop a firmware update to prevent the problem. This is what Greg Kroah-Hartman says about the issue:
“Hm, who would have thought that just randomly poking memory of a laptop would brick it. Long ago Samsung told me that it was just fine to be doing this, and that there would not be any problems (I based the samsung-laptop driver on code that Samsung themselves gave me.)”
Google Glass Awaiting FCC Approval
With the Google Glass Foundry events happening, San Francisco last week and New York on February 1st, you had to figure that the device was close to approval. The filing is at the FCC just awaiting approval. This filing doesn’t tell us any new information. The wireless connectivity is going to be 802.11b/g with Bluetooth 4.0 as an alternative. The bone conduction technology is also there. Once it gets approved Google will to distribute them in the United States. But you won’t be getting any unless you are a developer who pre-ordered at last year’s Google I/O.
CBS Censors CNET Journalists
At this years Consumer Electronics Show (CES) CNET’s editors put up Dish networks Hopper for “Best In Show.” Not so fast said the CBS lawyers, CNETS parent company. They said we are currently in litigation with dish over the Hopper you can’t say it is “Best in Show.” That censoring of CNET’s choice for the award has sparked alot of criticism of CBS. One of CNET’s premenint journalists, Greg Sandoval, has left over the fracus. CES has also spoken out about the censorship saying that they are apalled at the behavior of CBS and will not allow CNET to produce the “Best of CES” awards.
This is what Gary Shapiro, CEA President:
“We are shocked that the ‘Tiffany’ network which is known for its high journalistic standards would bar all its reporters from favorably describing classes of technology the network does not like,”
He went on to talk about the famous “Betamax” decision:
“We believe that the Dish Hopper DVR is fully covered by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios Inc. The simple fact is making television easier to watch is not against the law. It is simply pro-innovation and pro-consumer.”
Shapiro had an even harsher statement in a USA Today op-ed piece:
“CBS … will never be viewed again as pristine … The ethical media rule is that corporate business interests should never interfere in journalism—or at least not so blatantly, publicly, and harmfully. It made me wonder if 60 Minutes had ever suffered the same treatment.”
This item is from “That pig is cleared for take-off” department
I was looking out my window last week and noticed a pig take flight (Porcine 03 turn left heading 2-7-0 climb and maintain 5 thousand.) I live in Detroit and that is not what I normally see out of my window. This week’s pig fly-by was due to Microsoft announcing that its Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 and Team Foundation Server 2012 developer tools will both support Git, the version control system widely used by open source project
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/01/microsoft-announces-support-for-linus-other-baby/
In the platform wars, open is ultimately more valuable than closed, says Betaworks
Microsoft’s 64GB Surface Pro will only have 23GB usable storage
http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/29/3929110/surface-pro-disk-space-windows-8
Red Notebook
http://rednotebook.sourceforge.net/
Kde Korner
Residents of KDE Nation are looking forward to the release of KDE SC 4.10 this coming Wednesday. We are having a release party, If you’re in the area, come join us at Atwater Brewery, which is at the water’s edge—of the Detroit River.
Kexi 2.5.5 was released last Sunday
As we recorded last week’s podcast, Kexi 2.5.5 was released. Kexi is a database program that is part of the Calligra office suite. It’s cross platform and should be available in your distro’s repositories.
Rekonq 2.1 was released last Sunday
This information is probably old news as most of you who use KDE and have Rekonq installed. If you regularly update your installed software and already have Rekonq installed, you already are running 2.1.
KDE plans to merge Plasma desktops
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/KDE-plans-to-merge-Plasma-desktops-1794552.html
Aaron Seigo published a lengthy blog post this pas week regarding the future direction of KDE plasma… I sum it up….one Plasma to lead them.
Aaron Seigo says:
We also learned in Plasma Active that we could write a rather generic shell and populate it entirely with QML. Sebastian’s efforts bring those lessons deep into the core of Plasma. So in Plasma Workspaces 2, we want to provide a single shell binary with desktop, netbook, tablet and other form factors all being serviced by it. This will also give us the infrastructure to easily and elegantly switch between interaction concepts, e.g. between a mouse+keyboard-centric Desktop to a touch driven tablet experience. These transitions could be triggered by hardware events (docking, screen connected via HDMI, etc) or user configuration.
He goes on to say:
One use case I’m personally looking forward to is plugging my laptop into the T.V. and having Plasma Desktop be replaced with Plasma Mediacenter automatically.
Here are the links to Aaron Seigo’s blog posting
http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2013/01/plasmanext.html
http://www.notmart.org/index.php/BlaBla/Help_make_Plasma_Active_4_shine
What’s new with Nepomuk 4.10
Major changes include replacing the monolithic indexing with two streams—one for the metadata (name, etc) and a second indexing process which will handle the text. This will speed up the availability of content for search and retrieval.
The second major change is the replacement of Strigi, the search daemon for Nepomuk. Although technologically superior, Strigi is difficult to maintain. The replacement will be easier to maintain and will provide a better user experience.
Other Recent Releases:
Kdenlive 0.94!
On January 28, Kdenlive 0.9.4 was released. This release fixed 124 bugs and added eight new features, one of which is: clip analysis. Briefly, some MLT effects can now analyze a clip and store the result for further use.
http://mltframework.org/bin/view/MLT
MLT (aka media lovin’ toolkit) is an open-source multimedia framework, designed and developed for television broadcasting. It provides a toolkit for broadcasters, video editors, media players, transcoders, web streamers and many more types of applications.
1. automatic scene detection: Kdenlive can now parse clips to find different scenes and add markers or cut the clip accordingly. The process is currently very slow but it’s a start.
2. Improved motion tracking: Kdenlive can also now analyze an object’s motion, and the result of this can be used as keyframes for a transition or an effect. For example, you can now have a title clip that follows an object.
KeyFrame: In non-linear digital video editing as well as in video compositing software, a key frame is a frame used to indicate the beginning or end of a change made to the signal. For example, a key frame could be set to indicate the point at which audio will have faded up or down to a certain level.
http://www.kdenlive.org/discover/0.9.4
http://kdenlive.org/users/j-b-m/kdenlive-094-released
Gwenview changes version numbering.
Up until now, Gwenview followed the KDE numbering system, except it used a 2 instead of a 4, So the version of Gwenview that came with KDE 4.9.5 was 2.9.5. Now, with KDE 4.10, Gwenview is jumping version numbers to be in sync with KDE.
http://agateau.com/2013/01/31/little-bits-of-news-about-gwenview/
Bond Network Interfaces In CentOS 6
Bonding allows you to aggregate multiple ports, providing redundancy, fault tolerance and load balancing. There are various types of bonding available.
First, we need to have a line the says that the device is a bonding device, so the the bonding module will manage it:
alias bondX bonding
It should also have one of the following lines:
options bond0 mode=0 miimon=100
or
options bond0 mode=1 miimon=100
But the mode parameter has a meaning that the system administrator should choose:
Mode 0 or balance-rr is the Round-robin policy which gives fault tolerance and load balancing. This mode sends are receives package on each node in a sequential order. So the load is distributed on all NICs.
Mode 1 or active-backup which gives only fault tolerance without load balancing. This modes sends all packets through the one active slave. The slave changes only if the active slave fails.
Other, more advanced modes are documented in the Kernel documentation at Documentation/networking/bonding.txt and the RHEL References guide – bonding Module Directives.
In this setup I have two connections to different switches in case one fails the other takes over and services are not disrupted.
Setup Bonded Interface
Create a file in /etc/modprobe.d called bond.conf and add the following
alias bond0 bonding
Create the bonded interface file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bond0 with the following contents
DEVICE=bond0
IPADDR=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
NETMASK=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
USERCTL=no
BONDING_OPTS=”bond0 miimon=80 mode=1″
Modify the interfaces you want to bond to look like:
DEVICE=ethX
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
USERCTL=no
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes
Restart networking for the changes to take effect:
service network restart
Checking The Status
You can check the status of the interface by running:
cat /proc/net/bonding/bond0
Is it Alive?
Time:
During this segment of the show, I challenge Mat and Tony to identify whether a Linux Distro is alive or dead? Every other week, I twist the concept for our game show and challenge Mat and Tony to decide if the named entity was a Linux distribution or something else.
After last week’s controversy resulting in a contentious segment, we’re returning to normal and I challenge I challenge Mat and Tony to decide whether the named Linux distro is alive or dead. The items for this week’s show are::
====================================
BOSS Linux (Bharat Operating System Solutions) GNU/Linux distribution developed by C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing) derived from Debian for enhancing the use of Free/ Open Source Software throughout India
MAT: Dead
TONY: Alive
VERDICT: Alive
====================================
Zeus Linux – ZEUS is the first Greek distributing Linux. Is a clone of Slackware , but with many improvements to support Greek users, such as rebuilding the init scripts, as well as new precompiled kernels for workstation machines.
MAT: Alive
TONY: Dead
VERDICT: Alive
===================================
xPUD Linux
xPUD is an unique Linux distribution, consisting mainly of a web browser and a media player, with a simple user interface on top. It can turn your computer into a kiosk-like station by leveraging web technologies, making surfing and watching movies as easy as pie.
MAT: Dead
TONY: Dead
VERDICT: Alive
===================================
Thisk Linux
Thisk Server was a Debian-based Linux distribution designed for PBX (Private Branch Exchange) environments. It uses Asterisk – a free software implementation of PBX.
MAT: Dead
TONY: Dead
VERDICT: Dead
===================================
Slo-tech
Slo-Tech Linux was a Slovenian desktop Linux distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux and Morphix.
https://slo-tech.com/linux/
MAT: Dead
TONY: Dead
VERDICT: Dead
===================================
Univention Linux
Univention Corporate Server is an enterprise class distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux. It features an integrated management system for central administration of servers, Microsoft Active Directory-compatible domain services, and functions for parallel operation of virtualised server and desktop operating systems.
MAT: d
TONYa:
VERDICT: Alive
===================================
Tony: Won by 2!!
Listener Feedback:
show (at) smlr.us or 313-626-9140
Time:
Outtro Music
Time:
No Payday In Detroit by Derek Van Hold
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