When should open source projects release?

When they're done or on time?

31 December 2008 by Dj Walker-Morgan

Over the past few years, scheduled releases of open source projects have become the norm. Projects tend to release new versions according to a regular schedule as opposed to releasing when the developers consider all the work proposed, has been completed.

Releasing "When it's done" is based upon the simple proposition that if you only release when you think the software is complete and usable, then that release will be of higher quality. How a project makes that decision of completeness would be up to the project; an active benevolent dictator's project could be simply decreed complete, while a larger community project may use voting or other feedback, to create an aggregate decision. Whichever way though, there will always be the possibility of issues missed, or downgraded without the community noticing and therefore holding up the release while those issues are fixed.

More seriously though, when software goes through a major feature revision, feature creep can enter into the process, where the developers want to keep adding functionality to "get it in the next release". This can lead to the "eternal beta" problem, where there is an older more stable release and a new enhanced beta, which will be released just as soon as one more feature is added, or when a bug in a recently added feature is fixed. There are numerous projects that go into this rolling, feature-creep phase and after a while, the disparity between "The next version" and "the current stable version" leads to frustration in the users of the current version, sometimes this is enough to make those users look elsewhere.

Another problem is when there is a project community who get a stake in deciding when a project is ready for release and the community find the very basis of the project a matter for debate. Take the recent Debian Lenny 5.0 controversy; back in September there was hope that the release would be soon, but then a debate emerged over whether Lenny should include "non-free firmware". The debate then degenerated into a argument over the very nature of the Debian project (see also: Ts'o calls for pragmatic Debian). Lenny has yet to get a firm release date.

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There.  Aren't you glad?  No Linux 2009 predictions from me (grin).  I don't need to prove what has been already proven over and over again:

Linux is here for good.

Attempts to marginalize are futile and with each new year come more innovative ways of putting Linux to good purpose.

All the more, in such troubled economic times, the need to find cost-effective ways to manage IT sits squarely with the prospect of putting Linux to work.

Thus, my purpose here at Linux IT Consultant is to highlight and aggregate information about Linux and its key role in IT.

Anyone with a keen eye on the trends in IT knows what matters in practical application requires nimbleness, cost-effectiveness, and an operating system that cannot only do light-duty Desktop but also do the heavy-lifting.  That's Linux.

I sincerely hope that this blog brings more Windows IT Folk who possess a very excellent skill-set to follow along with my reasoning during the year 2009.  They have as much an opportunity to be nimble and cost-effective and are sufficiently flexible and reasoned to recognize the need to adapt to changing economic conditions that warrant an understanding of how best to put alternate operating systems such as Linux to work.

Here's is hoping that your new year 2009 is a Healthy, Happy New Year!

With Kindest Regards,

--Dietrich

Debian, Philosophy, and People

December 28th, 2008

by Theodore Ts'o

Given the recent brouhaha in Debian, and General Resolution regarding Lenny's Release policy as it relates to Firmware and Debian's Social Contract, which has led to the resignation of Manoj Srivastava from the position of Secretary for the Debian Project, I'm reminded of the following passage from Gordon Dickson's Tactics of Mistakes (part of Dickson's Childe Cycle, in which he tells the story of the rise of the Dorsai):

"No," said Cletus. "I'm trying to explain to you why I'd never make an Exotic. In your calmness in the face of possible torture and the need to kill yourself, you were showing a particular form of ruthlessness. It was ruthlessness toward yourself--but that's only the back side of the coin. You Exotics are essentially ruthless toward all men, because you're philosophers, and by and large, philosophers are ruthless people."

"Cletus!" Mondar shook his head. "Do you realize what you're saying?"

"Of course," said Cletus, quietly. "And you realize it as well as I do. The immediate teaching of philosophers may be gentle, but the theory behind their teaching is without compunction--and that's why so much bloodshed and misery has always attended the paths of their followers, who claim to live by those teachings. More blood's been spilled by the militant adherents of prophets of change than by any other group of people down through the history of man."

The conflict between idealism and pragmatism is a very old one in the Free and Open Source Software Movement. At one end of the spectrum stands Richard Stallman, who has never compromised on issues regarding his vision of Software Freedom. Standing at various distances from this idealistic pole are various members of the Open Source Community. For example, in the mid-1990's, I used to give presentations about Linux using Microsoft Powerpoint. There were those in the audience that would give me grief about using a non-free program such as MS Powerpoint, but my response was that I saw no difference between driving a car which had non-free firmware and using a non-free slide presentation program. I would prefer to use free office suite, but at the time, nothing approached the usability of Powerpoint, and while dual-booting into Windows was a pain, I could do a better job using Powerpoint than other tools, and I refused to handcap myself just to salve the sensibilities of those who felt very strongly about Free Software and who viewed the use of all non-Free Software as an ultimate evil that must be stamped out at all costs.

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Perl 5 completes move to Git
22 December 2008, 09:37

The Git distributed source code management system has won over another major project, Perl 5. The Perl Foundation has announced that they have completed moving the source code of Perl 5 from Perforce to Git and are now opening the system up for developer use. Git is the open sourced source code control system created by Linus Torvalds to manage Linux development. The move to Git gives developers equal and easier access to the Perl source code and the distributed nature of git will allow developers to work on experimental changes to the language more easily.

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This site is written entirely in Perl.
--Dietrich

Bothered with these Desktop icons you can't even move? 

Posted on Monday 22 December 2008

Original story

Reminder to Smolt... we want your hardware profiles!

Monday, December 22nd, 2008 by Zonker

Just a quick reminder - when you install openSUSE 11.1, please be sure to run Smolt to send the hardware profile to the Smolt project. I'm looking over on the Smolt Web site and the participation seems to be a bit less than 30% in terms of people who've run Smolt vs. people who seem to have installed openSUSE and run an update.

Every bit helps, and the more hardware data the Smolt project has, the better.

You should be prompted to run Smolt the first time you run the updater. If not, you can run Smolt from the command line or run it using "smoltGui" (see the Smolt site for more info).

Link to original story

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Smolt I said. Schnell!
--Dietrich ;)

Debian- What It Means To Me

After performing a clean install of openSUSE 11.1 the other day, it left Desktop Effects turned off by default.

I decided to try enabling Desktop Effects and discovered that it had no Window Decoration.

Long story short, if you've experienced this symptom or any other, first uninstall Compiz-Fusion, Emerald, etc. and go to the openSUSE Build Bervice, search on 'compiz-git-all' and one-click install it.

Everything works fine now.

--Dietrich

I am happy to report that an outstanding USB connectivity issue I reported with VirtualBox now works in version 2.1.0 using Nokia NSeries PC Suite 2.0. (The PC Suite software would not see the phone connected via usb cable yet recognized it over bluetooth.)


So, with that, I immediately dispatched to removing the copy of VMware, which I kept only because the usb 1.0 connection worked.

--Dietrich

Why the latest IE flaw proves Linux got it right from the start
Sunday, 21 December 2008


You've all heard a major new flaw has been found affecting Internet Explorer all the way back to version 5. Microsoft pushed out a fix out of their regular "patch Tuesday" monthly schedule. The flaw has prompted some commentators to call for the replacement of IE with alternate browsers like Firefox. Just what was so serious? And what do Microsoft say that show Linux has the superior design?

This security update is rated Critical for Internet Explorer 5.01, Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1, and Internet Explorer 7.

It could be critical for previous versions of Internet Explorer too but Microsoft didn't test them because they're no longer supported.

Being a curious type when I saw all the hubbub about a new major critical vulnerability in Internet Explorer I wanted to know just what it was about.

First, the best way to get the fix for your Windows operating system, irrespective of flavour, is Windows Update. Yet, the text accompanying the update is typically brief:

Security Update for Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista (KB960714)
Published 18th December 2008
Update type: Important

Security issues have been identified that could allow an attacker to compromise a system running Microsoft Internet Explorer and gain control over it. You can help protect your system by installing this update from Microsoft.

While that doesn't tell us much, the knowledge base article (or "KB") 960714 referenced does spill the beans.

Fundamentally, it was discovered that program code - of a malicious person's construction - be executed on your computer, if a user views a specially crafted web page with IE.

In particular, a rogue script can allocate a block of memory (an array) then apparently release it without updating the array's length, meaning that the block of memory still remains preserved.

Then, if data binding is enabled (which it is, by default), a rogue web page can take advantage of an incorrect handling of certain XML tags within IE to cause the browser to pass control to the supposedly free memory location.

If the script had pre-filled that memory with actual executable instructions then the author has effectively been able to cause your computer to do something of their bidding, under your user credentials.

You can find a harmless code example over the page which will make calc.exe (ie Windows Calculator) display itself. The code is merely presented in a readable format; it will not actually run.

CONTINUED - PAGE 2

SuSEGeek: Fix BCM4311/4312/4321/4322 Wireless in openSUSE 11.1 and earlier
Posted by admin on December 20th, 2008

In openSUSE 11.1, laptops installed with the BCM4311/BCM4312/BCM4321/BCM4322 Wireless LAN cards like the Dell Inspiron 1525 do not have drivers installed and hence do not work out of the box. In Dell this Wireless card is labelled as "Dell 1395 Wireless card". Broadcom has released a linux version of its driver both 32-bit (x86) and 64bit (x86_64) editions for BCM4311, BCM4312, BCM4321 & BCM4322 Wireless cards. A 1-click install Yast Metapackage file (YMP) is available for install from Packman which makes it easy to get your wireless up and running in no time.

While this procedure is written for openSUSE 11.1, it should just work fine for openSUSE 11.0, openSUSE 10.3 as well as the 1-click install supports these versions.

Check the install Wireless module to confirm it is one of the above listed Broadcom Wireless devices.

openSUSE11_1:~ # lspci|grep -i broad
0b:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev 01)

Click this to download and automatically start YaST Package manager. Click Next on the installation Welcome screen and click "Customize" on the screen showing the Repository and the packages selected to install. Click Next on the repository selection and screen.

And finally, in the screen showing the list of packages selected to install, untick the drivers for custom Kernels like Kernel-pae, Kernel-trace & Kernel-xen (unless you use any of these Kernel versions than the default one).

This means you will untick the following:

Broadcom-wl-kmp-pae
Broadcom-wl-kmp-trace
Broadcom-wl-kmp-xen

and finally, click Next on the proposal screen. This will start adding the packman repository and download and install the required driver packages and required dependencies. Click Finish when the drivers have successfully installed on your openSUSE.

Now, insert the installed wireless module

openSUSE11_1:~ # modprobe wl

Now, confirm the Kernel module is loaded on your openSUSE

openSUSE11_1:~ # lsmod | grep wl
wl                   1080320  0
ieee80211_crypt         6476  2 ieee80211_crypt_tkip,wl

Confirm with the iwconfig command:

openSUSE11_1:~ # iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

pan0      no wireless extensions.

eth1      IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:""
Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:32 dBm
Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
Power Managementmode:All packets received
Link Quality=5/5  Signal level=0 dBm  Noise level=0 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

You are now ready to go, you should already see your KNetworkManager adjusting itself to insert the wireless (eth1 in my laptop) into its list of active devices.

From KnetworkManager, click "New Connection" and select your wireless device (eth1) in my laptop, select your Wireless Network from the list of scanned networks (or manually enter the details if your Wireless network doesn't broadcast), click next and enter your Encryption details and click Connect & Save. You should now be up and running with your Wireless.

openSUSE11_1:~ # iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

eth1      IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:"SKY12345″
Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: 00:11:42:F3:AA:6E
Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:32 dBm
Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
Power Managementmode:All packets received
Link Quality=5/5  Signal level=-29 dBm  Noise level=-89 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:14  Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

pan0      no wireless extensions.

Original story

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A big Thank You to SuSEGeek for putting together this how-to!--Dietrich

What Gmail does better than its competitors
December 17, 2008 3:47 PM PST
Posted by Don Reisinger

As someone who spends an inordinate amount of time wading through e-mails, finding the best e-mail service is paramount in my life.

Realizing that, I've done my fair share of shuffling from one e-mail program to the next--trying to find the best service that not only offers speed and stability, but also reliability and spam control. And although e-mail services are getting better, it's abundantly clear that few offer the kind of experience I'm really looking for in an e-mail client. But Google's Gmail app is different. It's better than its competition on a number of levels and provides the kind of e-mail experience that's simply unrivaled online.

Spam, Spam, Spam

I've used practically every e-mail service on the Web and I can say, without a doubt, that Gmail blocks the most spam. To those who open a new account, spam may not be a serious concern. Your spam folder will likely remain empty for a while until your new e-mail address makes its way into the wild. But for my e-mail address, which is widely available and easily attainable, spam is a constant headache.

On services like Yahoo Mail, Windows Live Hotmail, and AOL Mail, the spam blocker tried but failed on too many occasions. In fact, dealing with spam in my already bloated in-box was a daily occurrence that got worse as more messages piled up. But Gmail is different. Right now, I have thousands of messages sitting in my spam folder that never made their way to my in-box. Even better, I can say with all honesty that I only see about two or three spam messages per day in my in-box--not perfect, but much better than anything the competition is offering.

Google Apps

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This site's email is managed by Google Apps. Thanks Google!--Dietrich

SUSE against the tide

Posted December 19th, 2008 by Richard Hillesley

SuSE was founded in Nuremberg, Germany in 1992 when the Linux kernel was still almost new. by Hubert Mantel, Burchard Steinbild, Roland Dyroff and Thomas Fehr, with the objective of distributing Slackware (based on the earlier SLS Linux from Soft Landing Systems), in sets of 40 floppies, translated into German, with the approval of Patrik Volderding, the guiding light and sole developer of Slackware.

The SuSE organisation began life as Gesellschaft für Software-und Systementwicklung mbH, which later became Software und System Entwicklung (Software and System Development), from which sprang the friendly acronym SuSE. SuSE's own distinctive version of Linux came into being with the absorption of Florian LaRoche's Jurix Linux and the development of the SuSE installer YaST in 1995, and but for a mild stutter after the collapse of the NASDAQ, has never looked back since. SuSE became the favoured distribution of Linux in Germany, and Germany was the country with the fastest uptake of Linux in Europe. By the late 90s SuSE had opened offices in the UK, Italy, the Check Republic, and the United States, and was second only to Red Hat in popularity among the growing community of Linux users.

Quick, not slick

There was always something endearing about SuSE Linux. Maybe it was the artless lizard (or is it a chameleon?) that is the SuSE logo, mascot, and general good luck charm that goes by name of 'Geeko', earnest and likeable with a kink in its tail, but definitely not slick. SuSE was always more businesslike and thorough than stylish in its choices, although this gave it a distinctive style of its own, unadorned and utilitarian, like the Lloyds building, where all the mechanical parts, pipes, lifts and escalators are visible on the outside wall.

Maybe it was that, even in the latter years of its independence, even a minimum install of a home version of SuSE Linux always entailed crouching over your CD-ROM drive waiting to eject and load an endless succession of CDs, as if the SuSE engineers were nostalgic for the good old days when a Linux installation came on a large pile of floppies. And however bare and tidy you thought your desktop was, one of those disks had always gone missing...

Or maybe it was that SuSE was Linux with a girl's name, although the correct pronounciation was something closer to a Brummie saying "buzzer", (think Ozzie Osbourne), or an Ulsterman saying "user", or as in Sousa, the late 19th century composer of music for marching bands, the Wurlitzer and the fairground.

Or maybe it's because SuSE Linux always came with endless options that you could easily tailor and configure to your own particular preferences. What was truly impressive about most things SuSE was the thoroughness and attention to detail. If you weren't happy with one way of doing things SuSE provided you with the possibility of at least three other ways to get there. Just fire up YaST, throw in a CD, and there it was - with a message entreating you to "Have fun".

Or maybe it was that from the beginning, the manual, like the logo, was so compelling, hundreds of pages filled with hard facts covering areas of Linux that the light had never seen before, and then they gave you more. Old SuSE manuals are still a perfect resource for finding your way around your system when there is some command that you have lost or forgotten.

On the downside, SuSE, unlike other popular distributions of GNU/Linux, didn't provide a freely downloadable version. This was because SuSE included proprietary add-ons, and YaST, SuSE's install manager, did not come with a free software license. SuSE could only be bought in a box, which went against the spirit, if not the law, of the emergent Linux community. But SuSE escaped the sanctions that others encountered, because it always gave back to the community.

This little piggy

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No such thing as a free Linux distro


 by Joe Brockmeier December 20th, 2008

A few Linux distributions emphasize license freedom as a goal, but Tom "Spot" Callaway says that there's no such thing as a free Linux distro.

Callaway, Fedora's engineering manager, writes that "you'd need to do an incredibly thorough audit of every file in the system to be sure that every single file is under a known license," and the evidence says that most distros haven't actually done it.

When we find something non-free, it almost always exists in the "100% Free GNU/Linux distributions". I don't spend time checking these things out, honestly, but for example, all of them were shipping GLX under SGI's god-awful FreeB (and GLX) licensing at one point, well after Fedora and Debian both were aware of it. The number of things I have found (and continue to find) along with the surprise from upstreams when I inform them of the issues, forces me to draw the conclusion that the "100% Free" distributions are not doing proper audits (or if they are, they're not talking to the upstreams about it).

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OpenSUSE 11.1: A new license signals renewed community




Posted by Matt Asay
December 18, 2008 12:37 PM PST

Novell officially released openSUSE 11.1 on Thursday, unleashing a torrent of new features like a Linux 2.6.27.7 kernel, improvements to YaST, and others. While the new features are nice, it's the improved community development process in openSUSE 11.1 that I think signals the biggest change in SUSE, starting with an upgraded license to open up SUSE to more unfettered redistribution. I caught up with openSUSE Linux community manager, Joe Brockmeier, who confirmed the importance of the revised license and focus on community development:

This release marks a major milestone for the contributor community. It's the first release to be built in the openSUSE Build Service entirely, and paves the way for much more community collaboration directly in building openSUSE. We've modified the openSUSE license to allow freer redistribution and have removed some non-free components (Agfa fonts, Sun Java, for example) and replaced them with free software components. The non-free software is still available online, but in order to try to make openSUSE the easiest Linux to use and obtain, we've taken steps to simplify redistribution.

Despite the stick that I and others have given Novell for its community-swatting patent partnership with Microsoft, Novell clearly wants to make peace with the Linux community. These moves are big steps in that direction, but Novell has more in store, as Brockmeier told me:

We're looking forward to 11.2 already, and opening up some of our planning processes to the community as well. We're working on opening our feature tracking system and we're already having discussions on the openSUSE-project mailing list about the release schedule and trying to develop a release schedule that works as well as possible for all stakeholders. (This is not easy, given the development cycles of KDE and GNOME -- as they're hitting 3 months after one another, which makes it hard to ship the latest and greatest of both simultaneously.)

Novell has opened up its openSUSE board, but this shift in licensing and platform for openSUSE should expedite Novell's shift away from company development for openSUSE to community development. That's a good shift, and one that may well counterbalance the harm it did with its Microsoft patent agreement.

Original story

Adobe brings AIR to Linux

Three distros, more due?

By Gavin Clarke
18th December 2008 12:30 GMT

The promised Linux edition of Adobe Systems' AIR 1.5 rich internet application (RIA) play is due to hit Linux today.

AIR 1.5 for Linux follows versions for Windows and the Mac, and has been built for Ubuntu version 7.10 and above, the Fedora core 8.0 and above, and openSuSE 10.3 and above.

AIR 1.5 will run on Linux distros that use an RPM package manager, so that also covers Mandriva Linux, Linux for the PlayStation 2, Red Flag Linux, Yellow Dog Linux and TurboLinux among others. Adobe, though, is only providing formal support for Ubuntu, Fedora and openSuSE at this stage.

Adrian Ludwig, group product manager for Adobe's Flash platform business unit, told The Reg Adobe wants feedback on what other operating systems AIR should support.

AIR on Linux is part of a campaign to get Adobe's RIA software on mobile devices. Adobe's been relatively late in putting its content development and runtime tools on Linux, a platform that's suffered as a result for lack of a decent, mass-market media player.

Full story

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This is just 32-bit Folks--Dietrich

Debian secretary quits over Lenny release vote

by Sam Varghese

Friday, 19 December 2008

Long-time developer Manoj Srivastava has resigned as the secretary of the Debian GNU/Linux Project and is thinking of leaving the project altogether.

In a message posted to one of the project mailing lists, Srivastava said he had taken the step of quitting the post of secretary due to the dissatisfaction over the options offered in a recent vote about the release of the next version of Debian, Lenny. The voting process ends on December 21.

There are moves afoot by some developers to ask for his removal from the project altogether and this is why Srivastava has held out the possibility of leaving Debian.

At least two other senior developers - Martin Krafft and Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho - have indicated that if Srivastava were asked to leave they would follow suit.

Lenny was expected to be out in September but there has been a protracted debate going on over whether it should be released with firmware blobs or not.

Full story

I spent the morning today downloading openSUSE 11.1 64 bit.  It was much faster than I anticipated and took about two hours to get the 4Gig DVD downloaded, md5summed, burned and about another half-hour to install.

The only glitch I had in an otherwise smooth, professional high-quality Qt install was not having the wireless drivers automatically configured for me.  Fortunately, I know the drill, had the previous set of drivers from my 11.0 install in my $HOME directory and it was two shell commands to install them and up came wireless.  This was not an 'update'--rather I chose to do a clean 'new' install.

If you've done your homework, keeping your root mount point partitioned separate from /home really saves alot of unnecessary configuring and jiggering afterwards.

A couple of things needed to be installed afterwards that the new 11.1 doesn't do for you.  Namely, it will delete during install any software it detects as being non-oss.  Which is fine given that this is open source.  During the install a license appears that you can optionally read, but gone is the EULA that traditionally forced you to [x] checkmark and agree before you could get on with the installation process.

If you haven't already done so, you 64-bit gearheads can now gloat about having 64-bit Flash and Java.  Adobe Labs recently released an alpha 64-bit flash here and just the other day SUN came across with the goods here.  Finally SUN comes through!  May the Schwartz be with you.

If you go to openSUSE's web site you can download the Nvidia 'one-click' driver installation here.

Of course, you'll need to logout and restart your X server to get the Nvidia driver to load.
At that point when you reach the Desktop, might I suggest you get yourself some TrueType eye candy?--go to the openSUSE Build Service Search page and type in 'webcore'.  It should return you a free set of Windows TrueType fonts.  Select the 'one-click' install and when done go into your Slab Menu (Computer Glyph, lower left), Control Center, Appearance, select the Fonts tab and make all Tahoma 10 pt, with Window Title Font Tahoma 10 pt Bold and Fixed Width Font Courier New.  Then set rendering to subpixel smoothing and click on the Details button at the lower right and set the Font size to 96-dpi.

There much better on the eyes, yes?  Fantastique!

Now no Linux jockey is going to live with just that--we need to wratchet up the tech volume a bit with a Virtual Machine of some kind, right?  You may opt for VMware, if you are a glutten for punishment--personally I only use it when absolutely necessary and have SUN's xVM Virtual Box 2.1 installed, which just came out yesterday by the way.

Again, if you've partitioned /home separate from root /, then put your VMs off your home directory, then reinstalling VirtualBox is just a 'sudo rpm -ivh VirtualBox-2.1.0_41146_openSUSE11-1.x86_64.rpm' away.  Be sure to go into Yast, Security, Users and Group Management and add yourself to the vboxusers group!  If you get any complaints from VirtualBox about USB problems then you might want to read this entry at their forums that resolved my issue.

If that wasn't enough to satisfy your tech thirst, try installing the nightly Mozilla build of Firefox 3.1b3pre 'Shiretoko'--see my Minefield install how-to here.

It's only been a few hours of messing and a few things I've tried have succeeded in 11.1 that I couldn't do in 11.0

You can now go into Evolution email and create and sync an address book with your Google contacts.

The NetworkManager (systray) now allows you to define and recognize a cellular modem/card--very convenient and I might add that NetworkManager also now recognizes my Nokia N95's JoikuSpot as an ad hoc access point.  Also very convenient--just start JoikuSpot and select it from the NetworkManager wireless access point list and connect like any other AP--no bluetooth--no usb cable--easy.

The Desktop sports a new green 'hue'--slightly different from 11.0, but I like it.

Outwardly everything else looks, operates the same, but I'll live with it and if I find anything noteworthy to report, you can be sure I'll write about it here.

By the way, if you are about to install 11.1, don't close that laptop lid as it causes a problem with the SaX2 routine that configures the display--leave it open Folks.

Here's a link to the release notes.

I am very proud of what the openSUSE development team have done with 11.1.  The hard dedicated work shows through and through and in terms of ease of use openSUSE is better than Ubuntu at this point in overall comprehensiveness and quality.

Hat's off to the openSUSE Development Team and the upstream developers.

--Dietrich

Debian Developers to Determine Lenny's Fate

Dec 17, 2008  (Britta Wuelfing)
 

The Lenny Release General Resolution that brings the issue to a vote among Debian developers solicits responses in one of seven choices, as required by the Debian Constitution. Each of the choices is explained in detail and developers are required to rank the seven choices and return the ballot signed with a public key. The vote acknowledges the constitution and what further action to take based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG).

The debate centers around whether or not to accept proprietary firmware in Debian, with or without published source code, and if the guidelines could thereby be violated. Part of the debate also addresses possible violations of the GPL. One of the choices is to assume that these proprietary firmware "blobs" comply unless proven otherwise. Blobs are typically microcode that drive hardware components. As described in the First Call for Votes, these blobs are often distributed by firmware vendors without sources or documentation. Through one of its voting choices, the release team allows the option to exclude these source requirements: "By excluding such firmware from Debian we exclude users that require such devices... or make it unnecessarily hard for them."

Full story

Microsoft Issuing Emergency Fix for Browser Flaw
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 16, 2008

REDMOND, Wash. (AP) -- Microsoft Corp. is taking the unusual step of issuing an emergency fix for a security hole in its Internet Explorer software that has exposed millions of users to having their computers taken over by hackers.

The ''zero-day'' vulnerability, which came to light last week, allows criminals to take over victims' machines simply by steering them to infected Web sites; users don't have to download anything for their computers to get infected, which makes the flaw in Internet Explorer's programming code so dangerous. Internet Explorer is the world's most widely used Web browser.

Microsoft said it plans to ship a security update, rated ''critical,'' for the browser on Wednesday. People with the Windows Update feature activated on their computers will get the patch automatically.

Full story

openSUSE News:
Sneak Peeks at openSUSE 11.1: The Latest GNOME Desktop

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 by kdupuy9
 

In our continuing series of Sneak Peeks at openSUSE 11.1, we're introducing the newest version of the GNOME desktop into openSUSE. openSUSE 11.1 will contain the latest version of the GNOME desktop, GNOME 2.24. Not only does this new version bring with it great new features, but as always the GNOME developers in the openSUSE Project have added our own unique polish to make a truly unique, polished desktop experience.

New in GNOME 2.24

As always, a new version of GNOME means new features and enhancements that make using your computer easier. Many times, they're small features that once you start using them, you can't live without. One example is the new tabbed browsing in Nautilus, the file browser.

Communication

openSUSE 11.1's GNOME Desktop includes some of the latest and greatest in communication and organization tools in Evolution, Pidgin, and Ekiga. The newest version of Evolution contains new functionality to make anyone who sends out many similar emails a day, or those who are fans of Google's online communication tools very happy.

Evolution can now save mail as templates. Need to have a simple, standard message to send out to contacts who all ask the same question? Or do you want a standard message to send to new clients? Either way, you'll find a use for this handy feature.

Living in the Gmail universe, but don't want to lose the safety and speed of having a desktop client? Now with Evolution, your Evolution Address Book can be synchronized with Google Contacts, meaning you now have the full range of Google support: Gmail through IMAP mail support, Google Calendar which synchronizes with your Evolution Calendar, and now contacts synchronization support.

Frequent instant messengers will be happy to see that the new version of Pidgin, our multi-network instant messaging and chat client, is included.

Pidgin can connect to all of your different instant messaging clients and social networks, including AIM, MSN/Windows Live, Yahoo! IM, and MySpace Chat. Pidgin also serves as an IRC chat client, through which community support for openSUSE can be received.

What to talk with your friends or family by voice or face-to-face? Meet Ekiga, the openSUSE Internet telephony client.

With Ekiga, a compatible microphone or webcam, and an SIP account (all of which can be set up upon first running Ekiga), talking to your friends, family, or colleagues is easy and free if they're also using a SIP client. With an appropriate SIP call out plan, you can make affordable voice calls over the normal phone system, right from your computer!

Entertainment and Multimedia

When the work is done, it's time to play! openSUSE 11.1's GNOME contains some of the best multimedia playing and building applications available, from Banshee, our state-of-the-art music player; to Brasero, an innovative DVD and CD burning application which enables you to make videos from your computer burn on a DVD to share with friends and family; to F-Spot, an amazing yet amazingly simple photo organizer.

openSUSE's Banshee Media Player is incredibly powerful, yet dead-simple to use. Bring over music from another operating system, a CD collection, or an MP3 player, and Banshee will catalog and apply cover art to them all. Organize and enjoy your movies with the video playback features. Stay up to date and entertained with your favorite audio and video podcasts, or listen to one of many streaming radio stations available. You can even discover new music with Last.fm, a music social network that's built right in to Banshee.

Several new features are available in Banshee in openSUSE 11.1. Banshee now supports compilation albums. So whether it's the greatest hits of the '90s or the soundtrack to your favorite movie, Banshee now recognizes and correctly organizes compilation albums.

The developers of Banshee have taken special attention to the look and feel of Banshee. One of the areas this is most noticeable is the new Now Playing window. Although this pane is meant for showing videos, new in Banshee is that when playing audio, this window displays the album cover and song/show information, making it perfect for parties so your friends can see what's playing.

Banshee also now supports Internet Radio. The application comes pre-installed with dozens of stations already, ranging from all spectrums of music to talk. Want to add more? As long as the Internet radio stream you wish to add has a compatible stream, it's as simple as a click of the mouse in Banshee.

Managing photos on openSUSE is easy and fun with F-Spot, the photo manager. With F-Spot, you can browse your photo collection by date or tags, and making basic photo corrections is a snap. You can even export your photos to Internet photo websites, such as Flickr, Picasa, or SmugMug. F-Spot is also extend-able, with extensions written to make F-Spot even more powerful or more useful, such as an extension to export photos to Facebook. These are easily installed with just a few clicks of the mouse.

F-Spot in openSUSE 11.1 features a redesigned user interface, giving easy access and better descriptions to the photo editing tools, as well as easier access to photo metadata information in the sidebar.

Every now and then, you may have had duplicate photos show up in your library. What's more annoying than that? Having to delete each one, one by one. Now, not only does F-Spot prevent duplicate photos by detecting duplicates upon importing new photos, but with a click of a mouse, F-Spot will analyze your entire photo library for duplicates and eliminate them.

You've got music, video, and photos on your computer. But what if you want to take them off your computer once in a while? With Brasero, the CD/DVD burning utility, it's as easy as can be, and is included in openSUSE!

With Brasero you can save movies on DVDs to watch on your TV, save songs and other audio shows on CDs to play in the car, or burn ISO images onto discs.

Finally, when it's just time to have fun, there's Cheese. Cheese is a webcam studio app that, with a compatible webcam, allows you to take pictures or videos of yourself and your friends.

With Cheese, you can apply special effects to the pictures or video, and make a funny video to upload to YouTube or other video sharing website. You can even apply multiple effects, to create a unique image!

Configuration Improvements

openSUSE 11.1 features several new improvements for the GNOME desktop's administration and configuration, including further YaST integration with GNOME, setting up 3G cellular data connections, and more.

YaST Integration Improvements

Even with the improving integration of YaST into GNOME, YaST has still remained with the same button and UI structure of it's KDE counterpart, which doesn't exactly match GNOME. With openSUSE 11.1, YaST has been given a visual refresh. Now, at the top of every YaST screen is a short description of what the YaST module does, with a link to getting further help. The buttons have also been relabeled so they match the GNOME standard, meaning YaST now truly looks at home on the GNOME desktop!

Cellular Broadband Connectivity

Since openSUSE 11.0, openSUSE has been able to easily connect to cellular broadband networks (with the correct card installed in the computer). This continues for openSUSE 11.1, with NetworkManager handling the connectivity. So connecting to cell networks is nearly as simple as connecting to a WiFi hotspot.

Multi-monitor Support

Another feature that has been in openSUSE for a while is the great multi-monitor support. With a simple applet and automatic configuration of extra monitors, using more than one monitor in openSUSE 11.1 is as simple as can be.

New Login

openSUSE 11.1 includes a revamped login screen for GNOME. Simply click on your name, and enter your pasword. No more having to remember and type both usernames and passwords, it's a simple process. Plus, access accessibility and multi-monitor settings right from the login screen, making the experience more open to everyone. In addition, the background in the login screen is time sensitive: if it's midnight where you are, your screen is a pleasant dark color. If it's high noon, you're in for a bright login!

Counting Down the Days

With only days to go until openSUSE 11.1 is released and you can try these features for yourself, so get ready! Plus, there are more Sneak Peeks coming in the next few days, so stay tuned to openSUSE News for all things openSUSE!

Full story at openSUSE News

Phoronix: Sun Provides 64-bit Java Plug-In For Linux

Posted by Michael Larabel on December 15, 2008

Intel's USB 3.0 for Linux

Dec 16, 2008

Intel developer Sarah Sharp describes her work on USB 3.0 in her recent blog with these words: "Now that the bus specification is public, I can finally talk about the code... I've been writing a Linux driver for xHCI (the new USB 3.0 host controller), and changing the Linux kernel stack to support USB 3.0 devices." As she says, the wire speed will be 5 Bbps, while USB 2.0 languishes at 480 Mbps:

"Roughly speaking, it means that a file that takes 30 minutes to transfer over USB 2.0 could take 3 minutes to transfer under USB 3.0."

Full story

Linux Drivers

The Extraordinary Happenings At BitTorrent

by Michael Arrington on December 15, 2008


"I have never seen anything like this" said a corporate law partner at a large silicon valley law firm. He was referring to the undoing of a $17 million venture round at BitTorrent and subsequent recapitalization that we reported yesterday.

In one board action, $10 million was removed from the company's bank account and the valuation slashed from $177 million to just $35 million.

Recapitalizations, where existing stockholders are crammed down to near zero equity in anticipation of a new round of financing at a lower valuation, are common. Particularly in down markets. Old investors are forced to put in new capital to maintain their ownership. New stock options are awarded to current employees. Anyone who's left the company, even founders, are left with nothing. Even though they've often paid hard cash to exercise stock options.

Recaps are the only way to make bloated startups that have run out of cash healthy again. But they only happen when a company is desperate for cash and has no other options. The reason is clear - the board of directors has a fiduciary duty to protect stockholders. Recapitalizations are not good for existing stockholders, and can only be approved when the company has no other choice.

But what happened at BitTorrent wasn't a standard recapitalization. Nothing about the BitTorrent reorganization was standard, in fact. The company, which laid off more than 2/3 of staff (65 to 19 employees), had over $20 million in the bank before this transaction, says a source close to the company. They weren't generating much revenue from toolbar and device installations - just $5 million or so annually - but at least the company had plenty of runway left.

In other words, the fiduciary duty of the board of directors to the stockholders of BitTorrent was almost certainly disregarded.

Full story

More background about the Cisco case

Submitted by brett. on 2008-12-11 12:06 PM.

This morning the FSF filed a lawsuit against Cisco, alleging that the company has infringed our copyrights by distributing programs under the GNU GPL and LGPL without respecting the licenses' terms. You've probably seen the press release; if you're especially curious, you might also want to read the complaint. Since we expect a lot of people to be interested in this case, I wanted to take a little time to explain what has happened, and why we're doing this, in plain language.

Back in 2003, we learned that the Linksys WRT54G, a popular wireless router, used a GNU/Linux system in its firmware, but customers weren't receiving all the source code they were entitled to under our licenses. You might remember that case--a lot of developers were interested in it and it was discussed in several different forums.

As we always do in violation cases, we began a process of working with Cisco to help them understand their obligations under our licenses, and how they could come into compliance. Early on it seemed likely that we could resolve the issues without any fuss.

While we were working on that case, though, new reports came in. Oth