Episode 072 – Happy Birthday Tony!

Posted by Tony on February 24, 2013 in Show-mp3, Show-ogg | ∞

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Intro:

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

Kernel News: Mat

Time:

Release Candidate:

Mainline:
3.8

Stable Updates:
On Sun, 17 Feb 2013 11:04:04 PST
Greg Kroah-Hartman released kernel 3.0.65
With 6 files changed, 23 lines inserted, and 11 lines deleted

On Sun, 17 Feb 2013 11:04:44 PST
Greg Kroah-Hartman released kernel 3.4.32
With 10 files changed, 43 lines inserted, and 25 lines deleted

On Sun, 17 Feb 2013 11:05:35 PST
Greg Kroah-Hartman released kernel 3.7.9
With 12 files changed, 44 lines inserted, and 44 lines deleted

On Wed, 20 Feb 2013 04:20:49 GMT
Ben Hutchings released kernel 3.2.39
With 65 files changed, 649 lines inserted, and 605 lines deleted

These next two are single-patch updates fixing a buffer overflow in the printk() subsystem.

On Thu, 21 Feb 2013 10:10:38 PST
Greg Kroah-Hartman released kernel 3.0.66
With 3 files changed, 19 lines inserted, and 2 lines deleted

On Thu, 21 Feb 2013 10:11:14 PSt
Greg Kroah-Hartman released kernel 3.4.33
With 3 files changed, 19 lines inserted, and 2 lines deleted

Kernel Developer Quote:
“As people seem to be confused about this, I’d like everyone to know that the 3.8 kernel is NOT going to be a longterm kernel release that is supported by me, or by anyone else that I know of.

Hopefully this puts a stop to this crazy rumor, if anyone has any questions about this, please let me know, and forward this on to anyone else that needs to see it.”
–Greg Kroah-Hartman

Distro Talk: Tony

Time:

Distrowatch.com
Distrozilla.com/

2-17 – madeb 2013.02.17 – a full featured distro with MATE desktop based on Debian Sid
2-19 – IPFire 2.13 – a major new update of the project’s specialist distribution for firewalls
2-20 – Porteus 2.0 – Slackware-based live CD with a choice of KDE 4, LXDE, Razor-qt and Xfce desktops
2-21 – Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 – the latest update of the company’s enterprise-class operating system
2-21 – MINIX 3.2.1 – updated version of the UNIX-like operating system based on a microkernel architecture
2-23 – SolusOS 1.3 – Debian-based desktop Linux distribution with GNOME 2
2-23 – Point Linux 13.02 – a GNU/Linux distribution that aims to combine the power of Debian GNU/Linux with the productivity of MATE
2-24 – SalentOS 12.04.2 – Ubuntu-based lightweight Linux distribution with a choice of Openbox or Razor-qt desktop user interfaces

DistroRank Top 5

Debian
Arch
Red Hat Enteprise Linux
Mint
Ubuntu

Distro of the Week (Distrowatch): Tony

Debian – 1570
Manjaro – 1770
Mageia – 1982
Ubuntu – 2277
Mint – 3776

Mary Distro Review – Manjaro Linux

Time:

Manjaro …. The name sounds exotic…like Mount Kilimanjaro close to what was once known as Zanzibar, present-day Tanzania and Kenya. Actually, Manjaro was started by a defection of some developers from the Chakra project, a cutting-edge, KDE-based distro. After misstating that fact last week, I decided to make amends and review Manjaro this week.

So would Manjaro Linux be like a fast cat on the Serengeti or would Manjaro be nothing more than a toothless Lion…

The Vitals:
Name: Manjaro (http://manjaro.org)
Maintainer: Roland Singer and Philip Müller
Distro Latest Birthday: Every day could be Manjaro’s birthday because it’s a rolling release. This one is 0.8, announced on 2/16/2013
Derivative: Arch Linux
Kernel: 3.7.7-1 (makes my Kubuntu 3.2.0.38 kernel seem absolutely ancient.)
Review Desktop: Mate 1.4.2 (Community Release)

A Note about community releases: The Mate release is part of Manjaro’s Community releases which also include LXDE, KDE, and E17. The official editions include XFCE, Cinnamon/Gnome, OpenBox, and Net install (which is what I call a manual install to the command line. From there a desktop environment can be installed.)

Live Environment:

My first attempt to boot Manjaro Linux to SDA6 provided me with an alarming situation, but only temporarily. It started to spin up, then flashed a UEFI-type blue banner with a partial list of what looked like grub entries. The screen was frozen. Hey, its the blue banner of death, I thought! Normally when a live DVD does not properly load, which happens to me sometimes, I do what many people do—I press the power button to reboot. But nothing happens…I keep pressing it and the blue banner of death is still on my screen. I have to remove my battery to kill the system. I am not off to a good start.

I decide to boot Manjaro from a virtual desktop and it boots without a problem, to an intensely green desktop with what looks like a leaky tree on a globe. Definitely unusual desktop wallpaper but I kinda like it. The system is very polished and the Mate desktop appears to be everything it’s cracked up to be.

The Defaults
Browser: Midori (and Midori private browsing)
Office Suite: LibreOffice Installer
Mail Client: Sylpheed
File Manager: Caja

The Install Process:

Manjaro’s install process closely resembles Cinn Arch’s, another Arch-based Linux I reviewed last summer. But there are a few differences in terms of options. For example…

I had two options: install with the stable installer or use the TESTING installer which provides such options as EFI and btrfs but, according to the message presented to me, might not work for installing Manjaro to my hard drive. Some features aren’t fully tested yet, the notice goes on to say. But it ended with a cheery Good luck! And with optimism like that how can I NOT use the testing installer…

I answered the first few standard questions, including one that I remember from CinnArch regarding whether I wanted to use the GUID partition table which is part of the UEFI standard—the planned replacement for the PC BIOS due to the MBR limitation with 2TB drives, I allotted 8GB in Virtual Box, so I selected No.

Next I was quizzed about how much I wanted to set aside for my boot partition? Normally I don’t get asked that question, but Manjaro is based on the highly configurable Arch so it’s to be expected. And Manjaro continued with the sizing questions–swap, root, and home. Offering suggestions for each portion of my 8GB virtual drive. I am used to Gparted and its passive approach to partition management, so I appreciate the questions.

The next stop is file system selection and I see two experimental options: btrfs and Nilfs2 (http://www.nilfs.org/en/) I will admit ignorance regarding NILFS2 so I did a little digging: NILFS is a new implementation of a log-structured file system. It supports file system versioning, and continuous snapshots which allows users to restore files mistakenly overwritten or destroyed even just a few seconds ago. It creates frequent checkpoints that are available to users for recovery purposes. It made its first appearance in the 2.6.30 kernel. Hey, I was using a virtual drive so I chose NILFS2.

Then I chose how I wanted my device names referenced in fstab—I chose UUID. After my decisions were implemented, the next notice I saw was: “Auto-prepare was successful.” That sounded positive and hopeful. Now I was ready to install the system. After a few thousand spins of the DVD, Manjaro was installed.

Then an interesting little note appeared at the end of the install: Manjaro is fixing some applications…I am not sure what that meant. Perhaps bug fixes or updates were brought down the the virtual machine after after the image was cut.

We moved to the second phase of the install—Manjaro asked if my regular user should have sudo rights. I don’t think I have seen that question during an install before. Of course it should! How else will I be able to do sudo !! Seriously, I like the fact that I was asked.

Then it was time for configuration. It’s a straightforward affair—and if you want to get a taste of Arch you can opt to go into the optional system configuration area and edit configuration files until your heart’s content. I was content to bypass it.

Ok, last-up: The boot-loader which I was looking for. Like CinnArch, my choices are UEFI or a Bios boot-loader. I go bios and choose the familiar Grub.

So far, I am definitely liking the Mate version of Manjaro…

Installed Environment:

After booting to the desktop, which looks exactly like its live counterpart, I update my install. Updating Manjaro is done through Pamac, a Manjaro Exclusive. Pamac is a graphical interface forupdating the system and managing software. It replaces Kalu, Package Browser, and the Pacman-GUI all of which are Arch package management tools. One of the advantages to Manjaro is access to the Arch repositories.

A separate tray icon advises you when updates are available. I click on the orange splat in the system tray. Pamac opens and eleven updates are applied. The next morning, the Pamac tray icon was orange but no updates were available. I don’t think it reset after the last update. I removed the icon and reinstalled it which seemed to work. I checked the Manjaro forum and it appears that Pamac is still being tweaked. Not a big deal, just a little confusing.

I decided to test the installer by installing Libreoffice and was greeted with a slick installer—LibreOffice installer for Arch Linux v1.2.6. Checkboxes for each LibreOffice component allow you to completely customize what is installed and the desktop with which it should be integrated, as well as the default language. I find it interesting that even though Gnome2/Mate is the installed desktop, I have a choice for KDE. I am half tempted to select it just to see what happens but I go with the Gnome. A short while later, it informs me it’s done but the progress bar says 99%. So where’s the 1%…?

I check the menu and there were my LibreOffice components but I noticed the menu name and description are in bold but the pre-installed entries are not. I installed Gimp and noticed the same thing. Not certain if it’s by design but it annoys my aesthetic eye.

Manjaro Mate edition includes Mint-Menu, an attractive and easy-to-use program launcher originally developed for Mint Linux. The menu includes the typical categories and also an “All” option which makes it easy to find your app icon to launch. Simply scroll down the list. Of course a search box on the Mint-Menu makes it easier, still.

Lurking beneath the Minty-Menu goodness is a somewhat lack-luster launch menu editor called Main Menu. It’s really a Gnome2 function but is still there in Mate and still as annoying as it was when it was Gnome2. Adding new programs is not an intuitive process –I was not able to a launcher that actually worked. Yes, I could add the icon but a place for the path to the command to launch the program was not to be seen. It seems that you can’t can’t get there from here. When I attempt to avail myself of the help system by clicking help, nothing happens. Certainly not a showstopper but definitely annoying if you’re someone who likes to customize the launch menu. Later, errors when clicking other help buttons implied that the help system was not installed…

Not to dwell on the launch menu but the tooltips essentially repeat what appears in the menu for each tool my cursor hovers over. I want to disable them. The forum does not appear to have this question bu my research showed that there is no place in the GUI to disable them. Instead, you edit a hidden file (create if necessary) ~/.gtkrc-2.0 and add the line: gtk-enable-tooltips = 0. I made the change and…it made absolutely no difference. I suspect disabling them in Manjaro is similar but I don’t know for sure.

My next stop is the Control Center where system customization can be done. As a KDE-ophile, I’m always interested in how other desktops measure up. It appears to be the standard Gnome2 list, at least I did not see any Manjaro tweaks aside from the greenbird theme in Appearance Preferences.

Other interesting Programs:
There are not a lot of programs installed by default but I do notice VLC media Player, Pluma for text files, an Archive Manager (Engrampa). However, Majaro’s trump card is Arch…and those repositories.

Rating:

Overall I found Manjaro to be a serviceable, clean distro. Aside from the annoyances I noted—which are not necessarily Manjaro’s fault—it’s a fast desktop, and 100% compatibility with Arch’s repositories makes Manjaro a worthy distro for consideration.

2.9 cups of Kenyan coffee.

Tech News:

Time:

Google Has To Defend Another Extortion Attempt By Oracle

Nothing lead anyone to believe that Oracle could win a reversal of last year’s decision in their hot fought battle battle over Java with Google, except Larry Ellison’s ego. So Oracle is appealing the decision by Judge Alsup where he ruled that Oracle’s Java programming APIs were not copyrightable. They’re doing this with a fictional character named, wait for it, Ann Droid plagiarized J.K. Rowling’s book “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”. Ann Droid then beats Miss Rowling to press and hypothetically steals millions. Ann Droid’s defense is that she only copied the chapter titles and the opening line from each sentence, so she in fact wrote most of the work. This is how Oracle’s attorneys say it in their filling:

“Defendant Google Inc. has copied a blockbuster literary work just as surely, and as improperly, as Ann Droid — and has offered the same defenses.”

Josh King, general counsel for Awo.com, had this to say about it:

“While there are limitless ways to write a work of fiction, there are fundamental limitations on what can be done with software — and that’s doubly true when talking about APIs — the only issue here — which are functional bits designed to provide access to the underlying data or applications. It’s more like Oracle is complaining that Ann Droid a) wrote a book, and b) used common words like “and,” “the” and “he.” That’s not copyrightable,”

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
NEW LINKS

Link to Groklaw story
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130213000119924

Link to PDF of filing
http://www.groklaw.net/pdf4/OraGoogleAppeal-43.pdf

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mark Shuttleworth Makes Shocking Statement

That statement was “Canonical still not profitable”, thats right after over four years of desktop, server and cloud innovation Canonical is still losing money. He also said in the same press conference that his Canonical’s move into mobile is what will bring his company to profitability.

With Red Hat topping one billion dollars in sales we know that Linux can be profitable. The big question is will Canonical see profitability before Shuttleworth runs out of money. All I can say is I hope so. For as much as I bash on Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical I hope he succeeds, and maybe this move into the mobile market will work for them.

Canonical offers guide for porting Ubuntu Touch to run on most Android devices
http://liliputing.com/2013/02/canonical-offers-guide-for-porting-ubuntu-touch-to-run-on-most-android-devices.html

When you boot into Ubuntu Touch, you’re kind of booting an Android operating system which accesses the Ubuntu system via chroot so that you get an Ubuntu user interface instead of a typical Android UI.

KDE Korner

Did Sony Pirate KDE Artwork?

Jonathan Riddell posted an interesting blog entry this past week regarding an icon that Sony is using on their hardware configuration site, without attribution or mention of the appropriate licensing language. It’s copied from the KDE Oxygen theme and is the system preferences icon (crossed wrench and screwdriver).

As Riddell notes, this is the same Sony that tried to install a root-kit to prevent people from copying music.

(offending Sony site here: http://www.sony.co.uk/customise/vaio-t-series)

http://blogs.kde.org/comment/9358#comment-9358

Calligra 2.6.1 released this week.

This release is a maintenance release and includes fixes for some bugs, including the one that affected me when I tried to use Calligra a couple of weeks ago.

http://www.calligra.org/news/calligra-2-6-1-released/

T he Luminosity of Free Software – Episode 4

A key question he covers is whether open development matters.
LXDE File manager
…and other topics.

http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-luminosity-of-free-software-episode_20.html

Kup
Adds a configuration module available in system settings. Can configure backup plans, what to include or exclude, where to back up and how often. Another small program that runs in the background with a system tray icon that appears when a backup destination is available and schedule and run backups.

http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Kup+Backup+System?content=147465

March 2013 Linux Convention Scene

AsiaBSDCon
Tokyo University of Science,
Tokyo, Japan
14-17 March, 2013

The conference is for anyone developing, deploying, and using systems based on FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD, Darwin, and MacOS X. AsiaBSDCon is a technical conference and aims to ensure that the latest developments in the open source community are shared with the widest possible audience.
http://2013.asiabsdcon.org/

Chemnitzer Linux-Tage (Chemnitz Linux Days 2013)
Chemnitz, Germany
March 16 -17 2013

Chemnitz Linux Days is a conference that deals with Linux and open source software. It is designed for both novices and experts.

http://chemnitzer.linux-tage.de/2013/

The Northeast GNU/Linuxfest
Harvard Science Center
Cambridge, MA
March 16 – 17, 2013

The northeast GNU/Linux fest is an advocate of Free software. We hope to bring awareness of Free software to college students their schools, programmers and businesses.

http://www.northeastlinuxfest.org/

POSSCON (Palmetto Open Source Software Convention)
IT-oLogy Technology Center
Columbia SC
March 27-28, 2013

Since the Palmetto Open Source Software Conference started in 2008, we’ve brought you many of the biggest names in open source from the world’s top companies. Harper Reeed, Ted T’sao

http://posscon.org/

Is it Alive?

Time:

Yellow Dog Linux

Yellow Dog Linux was a distribution for the Motorola architecture. Now, yellow dog run on the Power Architecture.

http://www.yellowdoglinux.com

MARY: dead
MAT: dead
TONY: dead
VERDICT: Alive

====================================

Trustix (Secure) Linux

Trustix was a security hardened server distribution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trustix

MARY: alive
MAT: dead
TONY: alive
VERDICT: dead

====================================
Gobo Linux

Gobo linux was a distribution that was known for a non-standard folder heirachy, it did not use the standard UNIX /var, /usr, /etc and so forth.

http://www.gobolinux.org/

MARY: alive
MAT: dead
TONY: alive
VERDICT: dead

===================================
Chainsaw Linux

Chainsaw linux was a distribution created by a Maryland (USA) film company for use in editing audio/video.

http://www.chainsawlinux.com/

MARY:alive
MAT: alive
TONY: alive
VERDICT: dead

===================================
2x

2x is a thin client and server distrobution that bills itself as the #1 alternative to Citrix.

http://www.2x.com

MARY: dead
MAT: alive
TONY: alive
VERDICT: alive

===================================

Archie Linux

Archie linux was a distrbution, based on Arch, that was a “simple” distribution that was intended to be run in a live environment (but could be installed on bare metal).

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=archie

MARY: dead
MAT: alive
TONY: dead
VERDICT: dead
===================================

Mat won … 2 weeks in a row!

Listener Feedback:

show (at) smlr.us or 313-626-9140
Time:

Outtro Music

Time:

Look and Feel Years Younger by Brad Sucks

Royalty-free music for professional licensing

This content is published under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

... other posts by Tony

Sunday Morning Linux Review

Episode 072 – Happy Birthday Tony!

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Summary

Intro:

Kernel News: Mat

Distro Talk: Tony

Distro of the Week (Distrowatch): Tony

Mary Distro Review – Manjaro Linux

Tech News:

KDE Korner

Is it Alive?

Listener Feedback:

Outtro Music

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