linux

Again on Linux ...

... and of course, the surround sound of my notebook no longer works, for reasons. And fingerprint login makes a lot less sense when you have to enter the password for the keyring after login anyway. If it at least came up for the first time when a password was needed, that would be okay, but it comes up directly after login. Bah.

Otherwise, however, I am pleasantly surprised at how good the Linux support for the Lenovo T480 is. Everything else has been working flawlessly so far.

What I considered worth reading during the week and did not want to link separately, collected here and uncommented.

LiveCode Community Edition Overview | RunRev. Yep, it's out. GPL3 version of LiveCode. And yes, all target systems are included - OSX, Windows, Linux, Android and iOS. And they've streamlined it too, the DMG is significantly smaller than the one from the last release (ok, many of the missing things are things that belong to the commercial parts, but still). And it really looks nice, sure, the language is wild, but hey, it's a much better GUI Builder than anything currently delivered with Android tools.

abique/tmfs. Poorly blogged, could be helpful someday - a user-space filesystem for Time Machine backups on Linux.

blueMarine is a project I was previously unaware of, taking inspiration from Lightroom and Aperture. However, it currently has no RAW editing functions (while Darktable has non-destructive editing), but focuses solely on image management. This might actually work in my favor for Linux, as I usually just want to view images there, with editing mostly happening on the Mac.

darktable seems to have completely passed me by unnoticed - an open-source alternative to Adobe Lightroom for Linux. I should really take a look at it. I really like Lightroom, but it's always good to know an alternative, as there's no guarantee that I'll always like Adobe in later versions ... (and for Linux I will always need an alternative as long as Adobe doesn't support Linux)

It seems that the Sony Alpha NEX-Open-Source-Firmware is Linux-based. I can't yet say exactly what's behind it, but Sony has Linux Kernel downloads (and the usual embedded tools) for the NEX on the server. If there's really a Linux running on it, this could become a hacker's paradise in the long run!

Shotwell - stumbled upon this, a photo manager for Linux that is quite similar to iPhoto on the Mac. Will likely replace f-spot in the upcoming Ubuntu (which I think is a good thing, as f-spot is too primitive, even for casual users). Looks quite nice.

Back In Time - looks quite good, it offers about what TimeMachine does. Ok, Linux-typically a bunch of options and selections have been added and simply / as a source for the backup does not work, but well, if you manually include the relevant directories (and remember to update the selection occasionally when changes are made), you can actually do something with it. The basis is rsync with hardlinks, so in the end really usable backups, because you can also manually restore them if necessary. What I haven't tried yet is what happens when you back up to removable media and they are not present. But there it also failed with faubackup. UPDATE: works quite well with removable media, it does issue an hourly message if the drive is not present, but it recognizes it cleanly and skips the backup run then. It would be nice to have an "automatically back up when the drive appears".

Ceph: A Linux petabyte-scale distributed file system - too bad we don't need a distributed cluster file system in the company anymore because of the big NetApp - this sounds really interesting and looks like it actually addresses the weaknesses of previous solutions.

Bug #387308 in Ubuntu One Client: “[Wishlist] Proxy Support” - Ubuntu One has been included by default with Ubuntu since the karmic koala. And does not use the proxy settings. Tinkering!

Fingerprint Readers on Linux Laptops and Notebooks - because my company notebook has one. And surprisingly: it works! The new Fujitsu S-Series boxes are very Linux-friendly.

Bug #317781 - Comment #45 - very interesting analysis of the data loss problem with ext4. Summary: crap applications and libraries. Unfortunately, it also affects parts like sqlite (though only performance) and unfortunately larger parts of Gnome and KDE, which is why kludges are now being introduced in ext4 to work around them.

eeebuntu - available with Netbook Remix and classic Gnome. Should also have quite comprehensive drivers for the hardware.

Ubuntu Eee - one of the many Ubuntu-based EEE PC distributions. This one sounds very complete and uses the new Netbook Remix interface. According to forum comments, it also runs smoothly with all versions and has full drivers installed.

UMTS USB Sticks: with Xandros (Linux) OVERVIEW - and as I can see here, things still look pretty bad for my UMTS stick under Linux (I have the black thing from TMO), so I'll probably have to continue using Windows for now.

It's L-i-n-u-x, that is an Operating System - ouch. You can't make this up, only reality can bring this.

Sic Transit Gloria Laptopi - "Nicholas' new OLPC is dropping those pesky education goals from the mission and turning itself into a 50-person nonprofit laptop manufacturer, competing with Lenovo, Dell, Apple, Asus, HP and Intel on their home turf, and by using the one strategy we know doesn't work. But hey, I guess they'll sell more laptops that way." - about the alleged downfall of OLPC. A good idea, but apparently a poor implementation in key areas such as deployment and actual use as an educational tool.

Consequences of the SSH/SSL weakness - clear words about the impact of the bug. Only 32767 different keys were generated for the machines during the time the defective OpenSSL version was in use (at least since spring 2007, if you were on stable). Ouch.

Debian OpenSSL Predictable PRNG Toys - and here are the matching toys to play with the hole. Generating the 32767 keys for various key architectures.

Debian and OpenSSL: The Aftermath - for anyone who has doubts whether they need to recreate their keys: "However, rather than fix the calls to RAND_add(), the Debian maintainer instead removed the code that added the buffer handed to ssleay rand add() to the pool. This meant that the pool ended up with essentially no entropy. Clearly this was a very bad idea." - yes, "essentially no entropy" when generating keys is a really bad idea. Ouch.

Vendors Are Bad For Security - about the "bugfix" in Debian that has made all generated OpenSSL keys more or less unusable since 2006. Thanks for the extra work, you idiots. Funny also the comments in which the OpenSSL developer gets his own rant stuffed back down his throat because the OpenSSL idiots did not deem it necessary to deal with the fix suggested by the Debian developers (except for one who actually signaled thumbs-up). Well. All software sucks.

The new business plan of SCO is already facing rejection in advance - "A trustee in bankruptcy will only be appointed if the company owners are unable to carry out the reorganization or final bankruptcy due to fraud, age, or proven business incompetence." - fits SCO well. Okay, they are not that old yet, but the rest ...

This is The End My Friend: Negroponte Says XP on XO in 60 Days - "With the Sugar User Interface, OLPC can claim to have a Constructionist learning methodology, it can claim to be promoting exploration and learning, it can even hope to activate the view source key. But once you put on XP, no matter how much it may be customized to leverage the XO hardware, children will not be taught to "learn learning" as Negroponte promised. They will be taught "ICT skills", a phrase Negroponte himself railed against."

Cooperative Linux - crazy, the Linux kernel recompiled as a Windows executable. Booting Linux happens by running the Linux kernel and all drivers are redirected to Win32 APIs.

SCO vs. Linux: Complaints until the end, but without Darl McBride - "An additional $95 million should be provided as a loan over a period of five years, which will be offset against the claims from the lawsuits with Novell, IBM, Red Hat, Autozone, and other companies. The interest on this million-dollar loan should be 17 percent above the current interbank credit rate. Currently, the interest would be approximately 21 percent." - And if they don't pay, the big men with the clubs come and smash a few kneecaps? That sounds more like loan sharks. Therefore, it's probably bearable if they go down with the nonsense of SCO.

In-Depth TimeVault Review: Backing up in Ubuntu is Finally Made Simple!! - when I look at something like this, it's a nice example of a problem in the Open Source community: they understand the features and techniques, but they have no clue about user interface design.

Unshaking and refocusing your photos - a few interesting tools linked, worth checking out.

SCO requests creditor protection - the IBM lawyers will have to hurry if they want to reach a settlement before SCO goes bankrupt. Or will there be another fool who throws money into SCO's coffers?

Court Rules: Novell owns the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights! Novell has right to waive! - "That's Aaaaall, Folks! The court also ruled that "SCO is obligated to recognize Novell's waiver of SCO's claims against IBM and Sequent". That's the ball game. There are a couple of loose ends, but the big picture is, SCO lost. Oh, and it owes Novell a lot of money from the Microsoft and Sun licenses."

ext3cow - versioning file system. Interesting approach for revision-proof data storage.

Debian 4.0 finally arrives! - mist. I don't want to update servers.

Alioth: Debian Root Software Raid Documentation: Detail: 303419 XFS issue / solution - important tip for lilo, RAID1 and XFS.

Debian Administration :: Migrating To RAID1 Mirror on Sarge - enabling a RAID system after the main system has already been set up.

RAID-1, Part 2 | Linux Journal - additional information about setting up RAID1 afterwards - also covers LILO.

GeeXboX uShare UPnP A/V Media Server HomePage - simple, small uPNP server for Linux. Could be interesting for me to access my collected MP3s at home via the Nokia tablet (I already have a firewall running, which can also be a media server).

Nokia N800 is now public & available! - Wow! Now with built-in camera for video telephony over the internet. And of course still open source and Linux based, faster, cooler ...

cutmp3 - a nice little MP3 editor for the console - ideal for quickly cutting pauses out of songs and similar tasks on a streaming server.

VIA closes driver sources - it would be best to simply boycott VIA. Somehow, the company is just too arrogant.

Oracle Linux uncovered - shows how Oracle wants to attack market leader Red Hat: with Red Hat Linux, where all the red hats have simply been removed ...

AMD talks about ATI - possible open-sourcing of the drivers?

PS3 comes with Linux

PS3 to ship with Linux, Sony confirms:

Sony President Ken Kutaragi confirmed that the Playstation 3 (PS3) has been delayed, at a press conference in Tokyo earlier this week. Kutaragi additionally confirmed that the gaming console will ship with an upgradable 60GB hard drive pre-installed with Linux, according to in-depth coverage at 1up.com.

Wow. This is already an amazing thing if it actually happens - at Sony, you only know what they are doing when they have done it. Wouldn't be the first plan that is quietly dropped. But a gaming console with an "official" Linux would be interesting.

SharedAppVNC - interesting VNC variant that only replicates application windows, not the entire desktop. Also with special OS X support.

Wasabi Systems has a quite useful analysis of what the GPL actually means for companies. Furthermore, there is also a chapter that deals with binary kernel modules - and why these represent a GPL violation.

IBM is now gaining momentum

Does anyone remember this ongoing court case between SCO and IBM? GROKLAW brings a series of documents with IBM's demands to various companies. Microsoft, Sun, HP, Baystar - with a lot of very interesting questions. Hey, the procedure could slowly become interesting again.

The Linux Kernel Driver Interface - why the Linux Kernel has not designed its internal kernel interfaces as a "stable binary interface" (or even as a "stable interface").

ZNC - RottenBoy - interesting IRC bouncer (proxy) for multiple users. Significantly more powerful than the Muh I have used so far.

Pressure on Hardware Manufacturers

Suse Linux in the future without proprietary drivers - good thing, in my opinion. The more pressure is put on hardware manufacturers, the more likely we will actually get better OpenSource drivers or interface disclosures.

Powerful Remote X Displays with FreeNX - interesting for remote servers, as it has significantly better responses and lower bandwidth requirements than X or VNC.

AVM could simply write drivers under GPL

AVM warns of restrictions for proprietary kernel modules:

The consequence for AVM would be to stop supporting Linux. A reaction to the email is not yet available. The kernel developers are likely to be little bothered by AVM's threat, as their goal of keeping the kernel and its entire environment free seems to take priority due to their mixed experiences with proprietary drivers. Alternatives to AVM exist, and GPL drivers for AVM hardware are not excluded, even if they do not come from AVM.

Exactly that: Alternatives exist. It's time for the alternatives to pay off with better Linux support - then maybe AVM will also become reasonable. The binary modules without source cause more trouble than joy.