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Linux

Submission + - SCHED_DEADLINE v4 released (lkml.org)

Submitted by
c1oud
c1oud writes: "After more than one year of development, the 4th version of the SCHED_DEADLINE Linux scheduler has been submitted to the kernel community. Besides taking into account prior comments and observations, this version improves the handling of rq selection for dynamic task migration and has native integration with the PREEMPT_RT project (although a patch for the standard mainline kernel is provided as well). The official development has been moved to a GitHub repository"
Ubuntu

Submission + - Why Ubuntu Is Not Contributing To Linux, Or Is It? (muktware.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: This story is special, as it was created in an open source manner. The story was written in collaborative fashion by 2-3 dozen people working on it simultaneously. The story is a shining example of the collaborative power of Google Docs. We would like to thank all those who contributed to this story. The 'writers' debate the contribution of Ubuntu to the development of Linux kernel.
Linux

Submission + - Ask slashdot: Recommendations for Linux telecommuting tools 2

Submitted by rodrix79
rodrix79 writes: Hi all. I am trying to move from Windows to Linux (Ubuntu, but maybe to Mint). The problem is I telecommute full time and I am having a hard time trying to find the right tools to keep communication flowing with my clients (which are mostly on Windows / Mac). Any good recommendations from Linux telecommuters? Thanks in advance.
Linux

Submission + - Controlling Gnome 3 with Skeltrack (ubuntuvibes.com)

Submitted by dartttt
dartttt writes: Skeltrack is a Free and Open Source Software library by Igalia for tracking the human skeleton joints from depth images.

It is implemented with GLib and uses plain mathematics to detectthe human skeleton and although it does not use any database, it was inspired by Andreas Baak's paper:A Data-Driven Approach for Real-Time Full Body Pose Reconstructionfrom a Depth Camera

Skeltrack devs have recorded very cool videos showing Gnome Shell and Linux games being controlled through gestures.
Linux

Submission + - AT&T Microcell FAIL (fail0verflow.com) 1

Submitted by CharlyFoxtrot
CharlyFoxtrot writes: The geeks over on the fail0verflow blog took apart an AT&T Microcell device which is "essentially a small cell-tower in a box, which shuttles your calls and data back to the AT&T mothership over your home broadband connection." They soon uncovered some real security issues including a backdoor : "We believe that this backdoor is NOT meant to be globally accessible. It is probably only intended to be used over the IPSEC tunnel which the picoChip SoC creates. [...] Unfortunately, they set up the wizard to bind on 0.0.0.0, so the backdoor is accessible over the WAN interface."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft counted as key Linux contributor, for now (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: For the first time ever, and probably only temporarily, Microsoft can be counted as a key contributor to Linux. The company, which once portrayed the open-source OS kernel as a form of cancer, has been ranked 17th on a tally of the largest code contributors to Linux. The Linux Foundation's Linux Development Report, released Tuesday, summarizes who has contributed to the Linux kernel, from versions 2.6.36 to 3.2. The 10 largest contributors listed in the report are familiar names: Red Hat, Intel, Novell, IBM, Texas Instruments, Broadcom, Nokia, Samsung, Oracle and Google. But the appearance of Microsoft is a new one for the list, compiled annually.
Ubuntu

Submission + - Linux on an 8 Bit micro (ubuntuvibes.com)

Submitted by dartttt
dartttt writes: Dmitry Grinberg has successfully booted Ubuntu 9.04 on an 8 bit micro machine with 6.5 KHz CPU and 16 MB RAM.

Grinberg did this experiment on a ATmega1284p, 8-bit RISC microcontroller clocked at 24MHz and equipped with 16KB of SRAM and 128KB of flash storage. Since the RAM was too low, he added 30-pin 16MB SIMM to the machine and a 1 GB SD card to host Ubuntu image.

Minimum system requirements for running Linux are considered to be a 32bit system with proper Modern Memory Management Unit (MMU) and 1 MB RAM. The experiment was done to prove that Linux can successfully run on an 8 bit micro.

To get the world's slowest Linux Computer running, he had to write an ARMv5 emulator which supports 32bit processor and MMU. A similar machine can be made very easily and everything should come in about $20. He has also provided full source code and a porting guide.
Linux

Submission + - 'Linux switch saved city millions and reduced complaints' (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by Qedward
Qedward writes: By migrating to its own Linux distribution, LiMux, the German city of Munich reduced both IT costs and user complaints, according to figures provided by Mayor Christian Ude.

"The current impact on the budget for the LiMux project amounts to a total of €11.7 million," (US$15.6 million) Ude wrote in a reply to questions asked by Marian Offman of the Christian Socialist Union on March 19. The questions were asked because the party was concerned about a failed migration from Windows to Linux in Vienna.

The city of Munich started the LiMux project in 2004 and began migrating from Windows NT to a fully open source desktop infrastructure in 2006, while the mayor revealed that maintaining the Windows infrastructure would have cost many millions more...
Linux

Submission + - Adobe Releases Last Linux Version Of Flash Player (ubuntuvibes.com)

Submitted by dartttt
dartttt writes: Adobe has released Flash Player version 11.2 with many new features. This is last and final Flash Player release for Linux platform and now onward there will be only security and bug fix updates. Last month Adobe announced that it is withdrawing Flash Player support for Linux platform. All the future newer Flash releases will be bundled with Google Chrome using its Pepper API and for everything else, 11.2 will be the last release.
Microsoft

Submission + - How Linus Torvalds Helped Bust a Microsoft Patent (wired.com)

Submitted by inhuman_4
inhuman_4 writes: Last December, Microsoft scored a victory when the ITC Administrative Law Judge Theodore R. Essex found that Motorola had violated four Microsoft patents. But the ruling could also eliminate an important Microsoft software patent that has been invoked in lawsuits against Barnes & Noble and car navigation device-maker Tom Tom.

According to Linus Torvalds, he was deposed in the case this past fall, and apparently his testimony about a 20-year-old technical discussion — along with a discussion group posting made by an Amiga fan, known only as Natuerlich! — helped convince the Administrative Law Judge that the patent was invalid.
GNOME

Submission + - GNOME 3.4 Usability Problems - Does GNOME care about its users? (brad-x.com)

Submitted by
brad-x
brad-x writes: "As reported earlier, GNOME 3.4 is out. This release brings added emphasis on touch and a new emphasis on fullscreen apps, similar to those found in MacOS X.

Unfortunately this new focus on fullscreen apps — which will continue through future GNOME versions to include quite a number of other GNOME applications, provides no discoverable way to revert to a standard windowed multitasking model.

Users both old and new have raised their voices in complaint regarding GNOME 3, but the project's lead developers insist everyone will get used to it. Do they care about their users?"
Linux

Submission + - Munich has saved €4M so far after switch to Linux (golem.de)

Submitted by Mojo66
Mojo66 writes: Mayor Ude today reported (german) (english translation) that the city of Munich has saved €4 million so far by switching its IT infrastructure from Windows NT and Office to Linux and OpenOffice. At the same time, the number of trouble tickets decreased from 70 to 46 per month. Savings were €2.8M from software licensing and €1.2M from hardware because demands are lower for Linux compared to Windows 7.
KDE

Submission + - Greg K-H Updates Tumbleweed Status (ostatic.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Tumbleweed is a repository of rolling updates for the given current release. The latest release has Linux kernel 3.3 as well as KDE 4.8, among other goodies.
Linux

Submission + - Linux-3.3: Making a dent in bufferbloat? (cringely.com)

Submitted by
mtaht
mtaht writes: "Has anyone, besides those that worked on byte queue limits, and sfqred, had a chance to benchmark networking using these tools on the linux 3.3 kernel... in the real world? A dent, at least theoretically, seems to be have made in bufferbloat, and now that the new kernel and new iproute2 are out, should be easy to apply in general (e.g. server/desktop) situations..."
Linux

Submission + - Linux run on a 8-bit microcontroller (dmitry.co)

Submitted by
dmitrygr
dmitrygr writes: "Shown here is linux (kernel 2.6.34) running on an 8-bit avr microcontroller on a hand-soldered board, finally putting to rest the question of minimum system requirements to run Linux. Source code and instructions to reproduce this are provided, as well as video."
Operating Systems

Submission + - Tizen drops EFL for HTML5 (tizen.org) 1

Submitted by DustyMutant
DustyMutant writes: According to one of Tizen's architects Carsten "Rasterman" Haitzler talking to user richrboo on the official project's IRC channel, there will be no option for native development in Tizen nor support for native apps in the application store. Rasterman is also co-author and benevolent dictator of the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL), customized by Samsung for the needs of its Linux platform that gave birth to Tizen in 2011. Tizen OS 1.0 is scheduled for the first quarter of 2012.

While Samsung never announced its roles in Tizen officially (or maybe because of that) Rasterman as Samsung's employee has been informally acting and the spokesperson or community manager for the project within the developer circles. Over a year ago he shared breaking news for open source enthusiasts: "Samsung is putting real resources behind EFL and using it to make a production-ready OS. The OS not only is Linux based, It uses all the other infrastructure from Linux [..] It is also going to be Open Source (GPL, LGPL etc.) and with Opensource upstream gaining contributions back from Samsung."

But last week Carsten admitted that he has already given up pushing EFL as the native GUI framework within Tizen and he does not care about that anymore. "I don't hear anything except 'the future is html5'. [..] So go make webapps and be happy as that is obviously the one and only true future. Go talk to the 'technical steering committee'." — he said apparently embittered.

This is second similar move in Tizen's history after notable removal of the Qt libraries and tools before reusing some other components from MeeGo late 2011. The move has polarized the communities and probably boosted creation of alternative projects such as Mer and Nemo. After the change EFL would be only used internally by some "system" applications like the system's web browser for the GUI. It was not disclosed how the OS will handle natively-running games that are not based on HTML5.

For open-source backers the project's reality is getting bitter every month. Tizen's upstream contributions are largely disputable because git history for the open source packages have never been published. And the fact that the SDK fueling Tizen is closed-source does not help to win more souls. It is not clear if the statement about merge of Tizen with the closed-source bada OS that hit the news in January was just a gossip. Now the state of Samsung's EFL contributions is uncertain. So if this is all true and Tizen goes full steam with Web-only approach, because of fundamental (not just technical) differences, it is hard to consider the project as a continuation of the MeeGo platform, contrary to what the sponsored Linux Foundation declares. But even more practical question can be: why is Tizen any better than other Web-based initiatives?

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