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Operating Systems

FSF Criticises Ubuntu For Dropping Grub 2 For Secure Boot 296

Posted by samzenpus from the I-am-dissapoint dept.
sfcrazy writes "The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has published a whitepaper suggesting how free operating systems can deal with UEFI secure boot. In the whitepaper, the foundation has criticized the approach Canonical/Ubuntu has taken to deal with the problem. The paper reads: 'It is not too late to change. We urge Ubuntu and Canonical to reverse this decision, and we offer our help in working through any licensing concerns. We also hope that Ubuntu, like Fedora, will actively support users generating and using their own signing keys to run and share any versions of the software, and not require users to install a key from Canonical to get the full benefit of their operating system.'"
Linux

Has the Command Line Outstayed Its Welcome? 1134

Posted by samzenpus from the time-to-go dept.
dgharmon writes "The Command Line Interface has its uses, acknowledged Mobile Raptor blogger Roberto Lim, but no piece of technology targeted at the consumer market should ever require that something be done via CLI, he says. Keep it as an option or you can take it out all together. 'If it is there, it should just be there for the IT people or tech support to use when you encounter a problem.'"
Businesses

The 'Everyone Gets the Source Code, Donations Get You Binaries' Software Model 341

Posted by Soulskill from the freedom-with-a-side-of-sustainability dept.
TroysBucket writes "One developer who is trying to fund his development work via donations has taken on an 'Everyone gets the source code, donations get you binaries' business model, where he provides installers and binaries directly only to donating users. Quoting: 'A very central goal of everything I am doing, right now, is to show a concrete [and highly documented] way that other developers can fund their own FOSS work. With that in mind One major mistake I made, right off the bat, was that I provided very little direct benefit to people who donate (no “perks”).' Has anyone seen this work well before with other projects?"
Businesses

How Red Hat Decides Which Open Source Companies To Buy 20

Posted by Soulskill from the putting-that-dartboard-to-use dept.
darthcamaro writes "You don't really buy an open source company — since the tech is all open. But then again, Red Hat 'buys' open source companies all the time, they just bought one this week. So when does it makes sense for Red Hat to buy a company versus just building it on their own? Apparently, it all comes down to community. 'When you buy an open source company, if the people aren't coming and passionate about staying then you spend a lot of money for what? Because you don't get a lot of intellectual property,' Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst said."
GNU is Not Unix

GRUB 2.00 Bootloader Officially Released 163

Posted by samzenpus from the hot-off-the-griddle dept.
An anonymous reader writes "After being in development for more than a decade, GRUB2 was released today as stable. The mailing list announcement covers new features including a standard theme, support for new file-systems, ports to new CPU architectures, new driver coverage, better EFI support, and many other new features that have materialized over the years of development to succeed GRUB Legacy."
Hardware Hacking

FishPi: Raspberry Pi Powered Autonomous Boat To Cross the Ocean 136

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the dolphins-protest-sea-drone-program dept.
lukehopewell1 writes "The Raspberry Pi is a triumph in computing, and it's now set to become a triumph in robotics as one developer plans to build a model boat around it and sail it across the Atlantic Ocean, completely unmanned. It's codenamed FishPi and will see a model boat sail across the Atlantic all by itself save for a camera, GPS module, compass and solar panels." The creator is posting updates on the build progress using a forum on his website.
Graphics

Nvidia Engineer Asks How the Company Can Improve Linux Support 581

Posted by timothy from the increase-its-sleep-number dept.
sfcrazy writes "It seems that recent comments made by Linus Torvalds have made the people at NVIDIA take Linux more seriously. Recently Nvidia employee Stephen Warren asked in the Kernel Summit mailing list what could be done differently to make Linux support better. 'In a Google+ comment, Linus noted that we have mainly been contributing patches for Tegra SoC infra-structure details. I'm curious what other areas people might expect me/NVIDIA to contribute to. I assume the issue is mainly the lack of open support for the graphics-related parts of our HW, but perhaps there's some expectation that we'd also start helping out some core area of the kernel too? Would that kind of thing help our image even if we didn't open up our HW?'"
Intel

Intel Releases Ivy Bridge Programming Docs Under CC License 113

Posted by timothy from the buncha-commies dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Ivy Bridge graphics processor from Intel is now fully documented under the Creative Commons. Intel released four volumes of documents (2400+ pages) covering their latest graphics core as a complete programming guide with register specifications. Included with the graphics documentation is their new execution unit and video engine."
AMD

XBMC Developers Criticize AMD's Linux Driver 212

Posted by timothy from the pss-there's-a-conspiracy dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It's not only the NVIDIA Linux driver that has been publicly slammed over lacking support; the AMD Catalyst driver is now facing scrutiny from developers of the XBMC media and entertainment software. The developers aren't happy with AMD due to not properly supporting video acceleration under Linux. The AMD Linux driver is even lacking support for MPEG2 video acceleration and newer levels of H.264. AMD reportedly has the support coded, but they're refusing to turn it on in their public Linux driver."
Operating Systems

Ubuntu Lays Plans For Getting Past UEFI SecureBoot 393

Posted by timothy from the first-you-fake-an-injury dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Canonical has laid out their plans for handling UEFI SecureBoot on Ubuntu Linux. Similar to Red Hat paying Microsoft to get past UEFI restrictions, Canonical does have a private UEFI key. Beyond that they will also be switching from GRUB to the more liberal efilinux bootloader, and only require bootloader binaries be signed — and they want to setup their own signing infrastructure separate from Microsoft."
Linux

Fedora Introduces Offline Updates 287

Posted by samzenpus from the while-you-sleep dept.
itwbennett writes "Thanks to a new feature approved this week by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee, you won't hear Fedora 18 users bragging about systems that have been running continuously for months on end. 'Fedora's new Offline System Update feature will change the current system to something that is more Windows- and OS X-like: while many updates can still be made on the fly, certain package updates will require the system to be restarted so the patches can be applied in a special mode, according to the Fedora wiki page on the feature,' writes blogger Brian Proffitt."
AMD

AMD To Open-Source Its Linux Execution & Compilation Stack 81

Posted by Soulskill from the open-source-execution-is-not-as-bad-as-it-sounds dept.
An anonymous reader writes "According to Phoronix, AMD will be open-sourcing its Linux execution and compiler stack as part of jump-starting the Heterogeneous System Architecture Foundation. The HSA Foundation was started earlier this month at the AMD Fusion Developer Summit and AMD plans to open up its stack so that others can utilize the code without causing HSA fragmentation. This will include LLVM code, the HSA run-time, an HSA kernel driver for Linux distributions, an HSA assembler, and other components."
Graphics

NVIDIA Responds To Linus Torvalds 497

Posted by timothy from the you-can-actually-get-a-degree-in-pr dept.
jones_supa writes "NVIDIA's PR department has issued a statement following the harsh comments by Linus Torvalds last week where he referred to the graphics company as the single worst company he's ever dealt with, called them out on not supporting Optimus, and other issues. Basically the company replied they're committed to Linux using their proprietary driver that is largely common across platforms, and this allows for same-day Linux support with full OpenGL implementation. They also say that they're active in ARM Linux for Tegra and support a wide range of hardware under Linux. Despite having not made any commitment to better support Optimus under Linux nor providing technical assistance to the Nouveau community, NVIDIA assures us that 'at the end of the day, providing a consistent GPU experience across multiple platforms for all of our customers continues to be one of our key goals.'"
Graphics

Unity 4 Adds Linux Support 150

Posted by samzenpus from the welcome-to-the-club dept.
dartttt writes "After more than 14,000 votes by Linux users and efforts by Brian Fargo, Unity has added Linux support to their popular 3D game engine. Starting with Unity 4.0, Linux will be supported as a publishing platform allowing Unity games to be played natively on Linux. Only standalone desktop games will be supported initially. From the article: 'Unity Technologies, maker of a widely used video-game engine, today announced that its fourth-generation product will introduce new animation technology and extend its support for Adobe Systems' Flash Player, Linux, and Microsoft's DirectX 11.'"
Image

Torvalds Slams NVIDIA's Linux Support Screenshot-sm 663

Posted by timothy from the first-person-digital dept.
New submitter jppiiroinen writes "Linus Torvalds received the Millennium prize last week for his work on Linux operating system. He was already in Finland, so Aalto University arranged a talk session with him (video). During the Q&A, a person asks why NVIDIA does not play well with Linux. Torvalds explained shortly that NVIDIA has been one of the worst companies to work with Linux project — which makes it even worse that NVIDIA ships a high number of chips for Android devices (which use Linux inside). Torvalds even summarized that ('Nvidia, f*** you!') in a playful manner. What has been your experience on NVIDIA drivers with Linux?"
Hardware Hacking

12-Core ARM Cluster Beats Intel Atom, AMD Fusion 105

Posted by timothy from the 16-pages-seriously dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Phoronix constructed a low-cost, low-power 12-core ARM cluster running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and made out of six PandaBoard ES OMAP4460 dual-core ARMv7 Cortex A9 chips. Their results show the ARM hardware is able to outperform Intel Atom and AMD Fusion processors in performance-per-Watt, except it sharply loses out to the latest-generation Intel Ivy Bridge processors." This cluster offers a commendable re-use of kitchenware. Also, this is a good opportunity to recommend your favorite de-bursting tools for articles spread over too many pages.
Intel

US-CERT Discloses Security Flaw In 64-Bit Intel Chips 181

Posted by timothy from the yeah-but-who-uses-those dept.
Fnord666 writes "The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has disclosed a flaw in Intel chips that could allow hackers to gain control of Windows and other operating systems, security experts say. The flaw was disclosed the vulnerability in a security advisory released this week. Hackers could exploit the flaw to execute malicious code with kernel privileges, said a report in the Bitdefender blog. 'Some 64-bit operating systems and virtualization software running on Intel CPU hardware are vulnerable to a local privilege escalation attack,' the US-CERT advisory says. 'The vulnerability may be exploited for local privilege escalation or a guest-to-host virtual machine escape.'" According to the article, exposed OSes include "Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, 64-bit versions of FreeBSD and NetBSD, as well as systems that include the Xen hypervisor."
Software

Canonical Announces Ubuntu App Showdown 56

Posted by Soulskill from the pistol-based-apps-not-welcome dept.
alphadogg writes "Linux developers will soon have a chance to compete for prizes of laptops and smartphones, thanks to Canonical's announcement this week of the Ubuntu App Showdown contest. Developers will have from June 18 until July 9 — a total of three weeks — to create an app using Canonical's Quickly development tool, which combines Python and GTK into a single Ubuntu-centric package. The resulting apps will be judged by a five-member panel, with the developers of the top three receiving new Nokia N9 smartphones."
Software

Skype 4.0 For Linux Now Available 196

Posted by samzenpus from the free-and-open-calls dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Anyone who uses Skype on Linux will be happy to hear that a new version has been made available today, bringing with it a host of essential updates and new features. Skype 4.0, codenamed "Four Rooms for Improvement," is long overdue, and Marco Cimmino makes a point of thanking Linux users for their patience on the Skype blog. The main improvements Skype is delivering include much improved audio call quality, better video support, and improved chat synchronization. For video specifically, Skype has spent time implementing support for a much wider range of webcams, so if your camera didn't work before today you might be surprised to find it does in Skype 4.0. Visually, Skype has received a new Conversations View, which brings all chats into a single, unified window (you can revert to the old view if you prefer). There's also a new Call View, presence and emoticons have been redesigned, and you can now store and view numbers within each Skype profile."

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