Episode 086 – New Audio Game
Podcast: Play in new window
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Downloads:
MP3 format (for Freedom Haters!)
OGG format (for Freedom Lovers!)
Total Running Time: 1:14:53
Un-edited Live session – http://youtu.be/fv6as3sijg0
Contact Us:
show (at) smlr.us or the Contact us page
Summary
Kernel News: Mat
Time: 7:30
Distro Talk: Tony
Time: 10:10
Mary Distro Review
Time: 23:15
Tech News:
Time: 34:32
Toolbox
Time: 53:10
Listener Feedback
Time: 1:04:10
Outtro Music
Time: 1:06:15
Intro:
Tony Bemus, Mat Enders, and Mary Tomich
Sound bites by Mike Tanner
Kernel News: Mat
Time: 7:30
Release Candidate:
On Sun, 26 May 2013 17:03:38 PDT
Linus Torvalds released kernel 3.10-rc3
This is what he had to say about it:
“Another week, another rc.
A *big* one.
I’m not thrilled about it, and -rc3 is much bigger than -rc2 was, although there isn’t anything particularly scary that stands out. Just a lot of small details. A number of people apparently missed rc2, and then made rc3.
Oh, well.
I can pretty much guarantee that -rc4 is going to be smaller, because (a) I’m going to be grumpy if people try to push as much to rc4 as happened to rc3, and (b) I’m going to be traveling for most of next week (and part of the week after). I’ll have internet, but I really really hope and expect that things should be calmer coming up. Right?
RIGHT GUYS?Anyway, it’s mostly fairly small changes, and mostly to drivers. Network, staging, usb, video, drm.. There’s some arch updates too: arm, mips and powerpc. And random stuff all over.
Go at it,”
–Linus Torvalds
Mainline:
3.10-rc3
Stable Updates:
On Fri, 31 May 2013 14:06:11 GMT
Ben Hutchings released kernel 3.2.46
With 104 files changed, 905 lines inserted, and 425 lines deleted
Kernel Developer Quote:
This weeks Kernel developer quote comes from the man himself again:
“Linux conferences is when we get together and discuss important issues face to face …
Issues like “How did Jon ever graduate from kindergarten?” and “Gender issues in the kernel community – do girls have cooties?”
Very mature, Jon. Very mature”
–Linus Torvalds
Describing a photo of himself with another gentleman while Jon Corbet bunny ears Linus.
Distro Talk: Tony
Time: 10:10
- 5-28 – Superb Mini Server 2.0.4 – Slackware-based distribution for servers with Webmin
- 5-29 – Linux Mint 15 – code name “Olivia”
- 5-29 – Chakra GNU/Linux 2013.05 – distribution for 64-bit computers
- 6-1 – Vinux 4.0 – Ubuntu-based distribution for visually impaired users, offering text-to-speech and Braille support right from the boot-up
Distro of the Week: Tony
- Mageia – 1472
- Ubuntu – 1594
- Fedora – 1827
- Debian – 1919
- Mint – 5072
Mary Distro Review
Time: 23:15
This week’s review actually focuses on two new features in the most recent release of Chakra Linux: A front-end for Pacman and the move away from Bundles.
The Vitals:
Name: Chakra Linux
Derivative: Independent (forked from Arch)
Latest Kernel: 3.7.6
Review Desktop: KDE
Live Environment:
I didn’t spend much time here
Graphics: ( i915)
Wireless: (iwl3945)
The Defaults
Browser: Rekonq
Office Suite: Calligra
Mail Client: Kmail
File Manager: Dolphin
The Install Process:
Chakra sports arguably the most attractive install process I’ve seen.. Keep in mind, I’ve done over 50 different distro installs in the last year…well, better make that 20 since probably 30 were Ubuntu installs, and probably should be counted as one, just like they do for LinuxMint on Distrowatch.
In addition to offering the standard options and questions you see during a Linux distro install, Chakra also provides you with a few other choices—you can opt to create a root password or select the option of using the regular users password as root.
You also have the option of customizing the initial Ramdisk, letting you activate support for booting from a variety of devices: USB, NFS Shares, LVM volumes, Firewire, etc.)
Boot loader settings are easily accessible and simple to interpret– you either want Grub2 installed in the master boot record or you don’t. I chose not to install Grub2 but run update-grub in my root distro, Kubuntu.
Rebooted…
Installed Environment:
Chakra walks you through a Kapudan, a set-up wizard (for lack of a better term) which assists you in finalizing settings during your initial login. Functions like mouse button, type of launcher, folders in your home directory etc. In the more choices that there’s space for tradition, you have vthe choice of five different launchers:
- Kick-off Menu (default KDE 4 menu)
- Simple menu (KDE 3 style Menu)
- Lancelot (Launcher style menu, similar to Default)
- Homerun (Full screen Menu)
- AppMenuQML (Multi-Column launcher) I chose this app launcher—Oddly enough it started as a tiny window that I had to manually enlarge by dragging the border. I only needed to do that once.
The two things I was particularly interested in were the a) replacement for Chakra’s bundles and b) the new graphical interface for software update and installs.
With this release, Chakra replaced its bundle system (where a single bundle contained all files required to run an application) with a separate repository that holds the files for GTK packages. However, It does not come activated by default. To use it you have to edit pacman.conf, uncommenting the “Extras” repository where the GTK apps (GIMP, Inkscape, firefox, etc.) are maintained. I’ll cover it more in a minute.
This release of Chakra also sports a new graphical front end for Pacman. Oktopi, spelled with the obligatory ‘k’. Incidentally, it’s spelled with a ‘c’ in kde-apps.org. Chakra’s history with graphical installers takes a few more twists than a pretzel. When Chakra split from Arch a graphical package manager was used but abandoned it because it did not handle complex updates well. CLI updater was used in its place while the developers worked on a replacement. That project appears to be still underway, but Oktopi certainly is serviceable for anyone wanting the comfort of graphical package manager.
OK, back to the process—Follow this change by updating the repositories in Oktopi and you are ready to install. I installed GIMP to test the process. After I found and and selected GIMP in Oktopi, I right-clicked my selection and the install began. It identified the dependencies which I acknowledged, opened a terminal window and asked me if I wanted to proceed. Yes was my answer and the install commenced. After it was over, the terminal instructed me to press any key to “close the shell.”
Figure 1: Oktopi front end
Figure 2: the terminal opens as part of the install
Figure 3: Install complete.
As part of the install another directory is added to the root file system, called Extra. Within this directory a filesystem is set up to hold the install files.
/extra
/extra/etc
/extra/bin
/extra/lib
/extra/usr
/extra/opt
Figure 1: Directory tree before install
Figure 2: Directory tree after install…something extra this way comes…
Essentially all the packages in the Extra repository are installed inside /extra, leaving the natural filesystem intact, i.e. free of Gtk packages.
The second install, this time Inkscape went through the process but the screen froze and I had to do a hard reset in order to clear it. Not a huge deal but a little annoying. Probably was a plasma crash… 🙂
Tech News:
Time: 34:32
From The ‘Resistance is Futile’ Category
For longer than most of us want to remember, Bob Muglia made statements declaring why Microsoft’s server was so good. Well Muglia doesn’t work for Microsoft any more, he now works for Juniper going on two years now. He also doesn’t manage a software stack based on Windows either. Juniper, like practically all the other networking vendors out there uses Linux. So now Muglia manages a software stack with Linux at its core.
Here is what he said recently about Linux:
“It was a no brainer for me coming into Juniper, because Linux is the operating system that has broadened in use… Most systems these days outside of the Apple and Microsoft ecosystems are all Linux based.”
Australian Government Standardizes On ODF
Back in 2011, the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) decided to standardise on Microsoft Offices Open XML. However the massive outcry from the public forced them to reconsider, which they have now done. The Australian Government CTO (AGCTO) announced on their blog that government agencies should at a minimum support Open Document 1.1. This does not preclude the use of other formats, nor mandate the use of ODF 1.1. ODF 1.1 was chosen as the baseline because it is based on common and open standards.
Shuttleworth Closes Bug 1
Mark shuttleworth closed Bug 1 which simply stated this “Microsoft has a majority market share.” Well on Thursday May 30th he closed this bug after being open for almost nine years. This is what he said about it:
“Personal computing today is a broader proposition than it was in 2004: phones, tablets, wearables and other devices are all part of the mix for our digital lives. From a competitive perspective, that broader market has healthy competition, with IOS and Android representing a meaningful share …
Android may not be my or your first choice of Linux, but it is without doubt an open source platform that offers both practical and economic benefits to users and industry. So we have both competition, and good representation for open source, in personal computing.
Even though we have only played a small part in that shift, I think it’s important for us to recognize that the shift has taken place. So from Ubuntu’s perspective, this bug is now closed.”
Best Linux distros for power users
http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/best-linux-distros-for-power-users-1153562
A Beginners’ Guide to Installing Arch Linux
http://news.softpedia.com/news/A-Beginners-Guide-to-Installing-Arch-Linux-352365.shtml
Raspberry Pi puts holes in China’s Great Firewall
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/29/raspberry_pi_helps_hassle_free_circumvention_great_firewall/
Linux Distro Screenshot Directory
http://www.thecodingstudio.com/?linux
Octopi 0.1.7.3 KDE System Tool
http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Octopi?content=158620
Kdenlive Update
http://kdenlive.org/users/j-b-m/kdenlive-spring-cleaning
The Toolbox
Time: 53:10
Finding The Uptime
First we have the uptime command:
[mat@blue ~]$ uptime
17:09:34 up 14 days, 6:53, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
The first number is when the command was run, next we have how long the machine has been up (14 days 6 hours 53 minutes), next is how many users are logged into the machine. Lastly but certainly not least we have the load average for the last 1, 5, and 15 minute. As you can see the load on this machine is very light. So lets make a up number so we can talk about the output. So if the load was 0.48 that would mean you are using 48% of a single core then 1.00 would mean 100% of a single core, and since this machine has 2 single core processors 2.00 would be 100% usage. A good rule of thumb is that your machine should not use more than about 70% of its processing power on a consistent basis that leaves you some head room for spikes. Another rule to follow is that if your machine is consistently at 100% you need to investigate and solve the problem now.
However when getting the uptime you usually want some more information. The following command will show you the uptime along with some more information.
The w command:
[mat@blue ~]$ w
17:42:19 up 14 days, 7:26, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT
tony pts/0 [IP] 16:36 38:55 0.13s 0.13s -bash
mat pts/1 [IP] 16:52 1.00s 0.27s 0.17s w
This shows the same information as uptime on the first line then starting with the second line gives us more information. Like the users who are currently logged in, on what terminal, from where, and when they logged in. Then we have JCPU time which is how much processor time that user has used since logging in, and PCPU which is the processor time that their last command consumed. Lastly we see their last command that they issued.
Then we have top and the more friendly htop which give a lot more information and deserve their own toolox segment.
Listener Feedback:
show (at) smlr.us or 313-626-9140
Time: 1:04:10
Outtro Music
Time: 1:06:15
Rag Doll Physics by Diablo Swing Orchestra
This content is published under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.