ppa – Jupiter Broadcasting

Aegisub is a free, cross-platform open source tool for creating and modifying subtitles. Aegisub makes it quick and easy to time subtitles to audio, and features many powerful tools for styling them, including a built-in real-time video preview.

[App Pick] Aegisub – Advanced Subtitle Editor : LinuxActionShow

Weekly Spotlight

Watch Amazon Prime Video on Linux – firefox
- Chrome
Set the user agent to
‘Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de-DE) AppleWebKit/533.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.375.127 Large Screen Safari/533.4 GoogleTV/ 162671’

— NEWS —

Ubuntu PC maker System76 abandons Flash, says it’s too dangerous | Ars Technica

Ubuntu PC maker System76 will stop installing Adobe Flash on its laptops and desktops, saying the software is too dangerous and is no longer necessary.”In 2007 System76 was granted a license from Adobe to pre-install Flash on all our laptops and desktops,” the company said in a blog post yesterday. “In terms of making a great first impression with our customers, especially those new to Ubuntu, this was an important detail.”

FSF and SFC work with Canonical on an “intellectual property” policy update [LWN.net]

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) have both put out statements about a change to the Canonical, Ltd. “intellectual property” policy that was negotiated over the last two years (FSF statement and SFC statement). Effectively, Canonical has added a “trump clause” that clarifies that the licenses of the individual packages override the Canonical policy when there is a conflict. T

Firefox OS fork “H5OS” gets a $100 million boost

Acadine, founded by former Mozilla execs, has received a $100 million investment from China’s Tsinghua Unigroup, to launch a Firefox OS fork called “H5OS.”

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The post Get Going with X2Go | LAS 374 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Linux Wife, Happy Life. | LINUX Unplugged 92

chris — Tue, 12 May 2015 19:24:53 +0000

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We get an update on our resident Mac users switch to Linux & the challenges she’s run into. Ubuntu makes a deal with Microsoft and promises to ship snappy on the Internet of Things, but what the heck is a Snap package? And is it truly a transactional system?

Plus hints on how Debian PPAs might work, the world’s first $9 Linux rig & much more!

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Pre-Show:

PlayOnLinux 5

Catch Up:

Linux Academy

Linux Academy | Linux and AWS Online Training
Angela – Antergos or Not?
Install iPod/iPhone support on Arch

pacman -S libmtp libusbmuxd usbmuxd libimobiledevice exfat-utils fuse-extaf

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Ubuntu jumps into Internet of Things with Acer, GE, and Microsoft

That wasn’t a typo. Canonical and Microsoft, which were already working together on bringing Canonical’s Juju DevOps tools to Windows and bringing Windows Server to OpenStack, are working with DataArt on an IoT industrial predictive maintenance solution. It will combine the three companies’ IoT, cloud, big data, machine learning, and Docker efforts. To integrate all of this they’ll be using “Snappy” Ubuntu apps, DeviceHive, and Juju Charms. Microsoft will also use an Azure service to manage and capture machine data.

TING

Ting – mobile that makes sense

CHIP – The World’s First Nine Dollar Computer by Next Thing Co. — Kickstarter

C.H.I.P. is a computer. It’s tiny and easy to use.

C.H.I.P. does computer things. Work in LibreOffice and save your documents to C.H.I.P.’s onboard storage. Surf the web and check your email over wifi. Play games with a bluetooth controller. With dozens of applications and tools preinstalled, C.H.I.P. is ready to do computer things the moment you power it on.

C.H.I.P. is a computer for students, teachers, grandparents, children, artists, makers, hackers, and inventors. Everyone really. C.H.I.P. is a great way to add a computer to your life and the perfect way to power your computer based projects.

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The post Linux Wife, Happy Life. | LINUX Unplugged 92 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Oh Deere, RMS was Right | LINUX Unplugged 89

chris — Tue, 21 Apr 2015 18:26:15 +0000

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Manufactures claims software integrated with hardware means the end user never truly owns the device, and simply owns a license to use it. Our panel discusses the real world ramifications of this.

Plus MacBook Linux woes, the quick look at the ThinkPad Yoga 3 running Linux, the biggest systemd myth busted & more!

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Novena | Crowd Supply

A new open-hardware computing platform, flexible and powerful, designed for use as a desktop, laptop, or standalone board.

Novena is a 1.2GHz, Freescale quad-core ARM architecture computer closely coupled with a Xilinx FPGA. It’s designed for users who care about Free Software and open source, and/or want to modify and extend their hardware: all the documentation for the PCBs is open and free to download, the entire OS is buildable from source, and it comes with a variety of features that facilitate rapid prototyping.

Catch Up:

elogind — The systemd project’s “logind”, extracted to a standalone package

Elogind is an attempt to rip logind out of systemd. logind integrates with PAM to expose the org.freedesktop.login1 interface over D-Bus. It also integrates with polkit to let polkit know who is logged in at the console. Gnome-session and gnome-settings-daemon both have logind integration of some kind, using the d-bus interface, and actually the logind support is necessary for basic things to work like backlight control and suspend/resume.
Anyway. I forked the systemd repo and removed most of the non-logind parts.

andywingo/elogind

Neil McGovern Elected Debian Project Lead his Platform included adding PPA’s to Debian

The votes have been tallied and Neil McGovern has been elected as the new Debian Project Leader. Neil McGovern was elected on a platform which promotes the implementation of personal package archives (PPAs) which have been popular in the Ubuntu community for years

DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean: SSD Cloud Server, VPS Server, Simple Cloud Hosting

Tendering with Ubuntu | Ubuntu Insights

Today we count over 25 million users and the numbers keep growing rapidly. The demand is coming both from enterprise and consumer segments.

Instant Messaging in Fedora Workstation | Brno’s hat

Because Empathy no longer has any user experience advantages and its development prospects are zero, we’ve been thinking about replacing it with something else. Pretty much the only other GTK+ IM client with support for a wide range of networks is _Pidgin_which used to be the default client before it was replaced by Empathy

LinuxFest Northwest 2015

Bellingham, WA • April 25th & 26th

tl;dr

Going to LFNW 2015: LFNW 2015 – Jupiter Broadcasting Meetup please register, thaaaank you.
Want to attend future JB events in Seattle, or your area? Join our group: Jupiter Broadcasting Meetup – Meetup
Contact | LinuxFest Northwest 2015
Easy rollback after update (btrfs and grub).

Linux Academy

Linux Academy | Linux and AWS Online Training

ebay Macbook Auction Support Angerz Running Linux

TING

Ting – mobile that makes sense

We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Very Idea of Ownership | WIRED

In a particularly spectacular display of corporate delusion, John Deere—the world’s largest agricultural machinery maker —told the Copyright Office that farmers don’t own their tractors. Because computer code snakes through the DNA of modern tractors, farmers receive “an implied license for the life of the vehicle to operate the vehicle.”

It’s John Deere’s tractor, folks. You’re just driving it.

Several manufacturers recently submitted similar comments to the Copyright Office under an inquiry into the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
Kerry Adams, hasn’t been able to fix an expensive transplanter because he doesn’t have access to the diagnostic software he needs. He’s not alone: many farmers are opting for older, computer-free equipment.
Some companies have even leveraged the DMCA to stop owners from modifying the programming on those products.
What does any of that have to do with copyright? Owners, tinkerers, and homebrew “hackers” must copy programming so they can modify it. Product makers don’t like people messing with their stuff, so some manufacturers place digital locks over software. Breaking the lock, making the copy, and changing something could be construed as a violation of copyright law.
And that’s how manufacturers turn tinkerers into “pirates”—even if said “pirates” aren’t circulating illegal copies of anything.
John Deere: The company argues that allowing people to alter the software—even for the purpose of repair—would “make it possible for pirates, third-party developers, and less innovative competitors to free-ride off the creativity, unique expression and ingenuity of vehicle software.”
The pièce de résistance in John Deere’s argument: permitting owners to root around in a tractor’s programming might lead to pirating music through a vehicle’s entertainment system.
General Motors told the Copyright Office that proponents of copyright reform mistakenly “conflate ownership of a vehicle with ownership of the underlying computer software in a vehicle.”
Other automakers pointed out that owners who make unsanctioned modifications could alter their vehicles in bad ways. They could tweak them to go faster. Or change engine parameters to run afoul of emissions regulations.
GM went so far as to argue locking people out helps innovation.
This week, Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Jared Polis will introduce the “Breaking Down Barriers to Innovation Act of 2015, which would substantially improve the DMCA process. Lawmakers in Minnesota and New York have introduced “Fair Repair” legislation that assert an owner’s right to repair electronic equipment they’ve purchased. They want equal access to repair information, replacement parts, and security updates.

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The post Oh Deere, RMS was Right | LINUX Unplugged 89 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Fedora Takes the Lead | LINUX Unplugged 71

chris — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 19:24:43 +0000

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Our virtual LUG reviews Fedora 21 & why we’ve just witnessed one of the most ambitious transformation of any Linux distro of 2014.

Plus Dustin Kirkland from Canonical answers if Ubuntu Snappy could be the future of the entire Ubuntu project & what’s coming soon from the Xonotic project.

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Brewie: Worlds first fully automated home-brewery | Indiegogo

Brewie is a fully automated brewing machine with compact design. Perfect for beginners and experts.

Summary of Brewie specs

Specs listed for the Brewie include:

Processor — TI Sitara AM3358 (may change in commercial version)
Memory/storage — (not specified)
Display — 4.3-inch color LCD touchscreen
Wireless — 802.11b/g/n; RFID transceiver
Other I/O — USB port
Internal sensors — Level, current, and temperature
Brewing features:
- Solid state relay control
- Magnetic valves with brushless pumps
- Stainless steel containers
- 20,000-hour pumps
- Automatic water inlet
- Wort outlet (one button push)
- 2x automatic hop inserters
Other features (Beginner’s model) — 4x 5-liter kegs; 1x ingredient pad
Capacity — 20 liters (5.2 gal.)
Brewing time — 5-6 hours, plus approx. 14 days of fermentation.
Power — 230V/120VAC, 2000 W
Weight — 25 k (55 lbs)
Dimensions — 71.5 x 32.5 x 45cm (21.15 x 12.8 x 17.7 in.)
Operating system — Poky-based Linux; accessible from Android, iOS, and Windows Phone mobile apps, plus a general web interface

FU:

Anyone using Wallbag?
A Proper End of The Year on Linux

Ubuntu Snappy Core for the Desktop?

We ask Dustin Kirkland the Ubuntu Cloud Product Manager and Strategist at Canonical if his new baby could be the future of the Ubuntu Project.

Fedora 21 Community Review

It’s Here! Announcing Fedora 21! | Fedora Magazine

The Fedora Project is pleased to announce Fedora 21, the final release, ready to run on your desktops, servers, and in the cloud. Fedora 21 is a game-changer for the Fedora Project, and we think you’re going to be very pleased with the results.

tl;dr?

Impatient? Go straight to https://getfedora.org/ and get started. Otherwise, read on!

Fedora 21 Release Review: An Impressive Developer Workstation | Linux.com

Sans the Files bug, I found Fedora 21 to be an impressive release. I was able to get the desired software from RPMFusion. Online Accounts and Software are among the many gems that this community has developed and I wish other DEs adopt a similar approach to make people’s lives easier.

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Post-Show

4K Video Playback on two 1080P monitors with the X2Go Linux Terminal Server – YouTube

The post Fedora Takes the Lead | LINUX Unplugged 71 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Switching Ubuntu to Gnome | LAS 330

chris — Sun, 14 Sep 2014 15:54:56 +0000

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Install the latest version of Gnome on your Ubuntu box, without losing your data, or needing to reinstall your apps. Our guide will get you up and running with the latest and greatest in no time. And also provides great insight for non-Ubuntu/Gnome users.

Plus ZFS on Linux gets the green light, the great news for Arch users

And so much more!

All this week on, the Linux Action Show!

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— Show Notes: —

Howto Install Gnome 3.12 on an existing Ubuntu Setup.

Brought to you by: System76

— PICKS —

Runs Linux

iGuardian – The Home Internet Security System by Itus Networks r

The iGuardian is an embedded Linux system based on OpenWRT and runs Snort as an in-line intrusion prevention system. It has been designed and optimized for easy installation and provides advanced threat prevention against a wide variety of attacks. The iGuardian protects your connected devices from Internet threats with a reliable, simple and affordable solution.

The iGuardian protects you against a wide range of threats, including viruses, phishing scams, malicious websites, java, browser, and file exploits, drive-by-downloads, watering-hole attacks, botnets, data-theft, remote access Trojans and key-loggers.

Desktop App Pick

Grsync rsync GUI interface frontend for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X

Grsync is a GUI for rsync, the command line file and directory synchronization tool. While it can work with remote hosts, its focus is to synchronize local directories. With this program you can, for example, keep your mp3s in sync with an audio player, make backups of your home folder, etc.

GNOME Shell DuckDuckGo Search Provider

gnome-shell-searchprovider-duckduckgo

Weekly Spotlight

Builder for GNOME

Builder is a new IDE for writing GNOME software. It is currently under development.

— NEWS —

ZFS On Linux is Production Ready, says Richard Yao

The short answer is yes, depending on your definition of stable.

I believe the ZoL is production ready for the following reasons:

Key ZFS data integrity features work on Linux like they do on other platforms.
ZFS runtime stability on Linux is comparable to other filesystems, with certain exceptions that I document below.
ZoL is at near feature parity with ZFS on other platforms.
ZFS on Linux machine | Bitratchet

Chrome OS can now run Android apps, no porting required

The app code is all running on top of the Chrome platform, specifically inside of Native Client. In this way the ARC (App Runtime for Chrome) apps run in the same environment as other apps you can download from the Chrome Web Store, even though they are written on top of standard Android APIs. The developers do not need to port or modify their code, though they often choose to improve it to work well with the Chromebook form factor (keyboard, touchpad, optional touchscreen, etc).

Android 4.4 mini-PC packs 64-bit quad-core Atom punch

Minix is prepping a sub-$150 mini-PC running Android 4.4 on a quad-core Intel Atom Z3735F and featuring WiFi, Bluetooth, IR, Ethernet, and USB connectivity.

GNOME Software 3.14 Will Work On Arch Linux With PackageKit

Richard Hughes cleaned up the PackageKit back-end for Arch/Pacman this weekend so that GNOME Software will run with it and utilize native AppStream meta-data. This work is through the Alpm/Pacman back-end for using this GNOME application to install and manage new apps for the platform.

GNOME Software on #archlinux with native PackageKit backend, and native…

Ubuntu Phone – Meizu MX4 to come out in December

First it was the Mx3 Q3 but now it looks like Mx4 in December instead. We were also suppose to get a bq in Q3 but no news about any date.

Finally, remember that the MX4 is again pre-order (after registration) with shipments starting from September 25, through our official store, this is the link .

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The post Switching Ubuntu to Gnome | LAS 330 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Ubuntu 14.04 Review | LAS s31e09 (309)

chris — Sun, 20 Apr 2014 14:05:23 +0000

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It’s our review of Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr LTS. It’s Canonical’s latest and greatest, with five years of support. But are there storm clouds on the horizon for this major distribution?

We discuss what’s great about Ubuntu 14.04, what needs some serious work, and why we’re excited about what comes next.

Plus: TrueCrypt audit wraps up, Docker stands out at Red Hat summit…

AND SO MUCH MORE!

All this week on, the Linux Action Show!

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— Show Notes: —

Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr

Brought to you by: System76

TrustyTahr/ReleaseNotes – Ubuntu Wiki

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS will be supported for 5 years for Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Core, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, and Ubuntu Kylin. All other flavours will be supported for 3 years.

New Features in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Desktop:

Linux kernel updated to version 3.13
Ability to change application menu position
Ability To click-to-minimise Application from the Launcher
Borderless windows
A wider range of launcher icons – from 16 to 64 pixels
Appearance improvements for very high-resolution displays
New language status icon in the top menu bar
Harmonised appearance for the lock screen
System Settings (GNOME Control Centre) replaced by Unity Control Center
Multi-task filtering by text input
Opening a guest session triggers a ‘changes are temporary’ warning
Since Ubuntu One is to close in June, 2014, this 14.04 will not support Ubuntu One File Services
First time for Ubuntu community flavours (Edbuntu, Kubuntu etc) to also be approved for LTS status
New Upstart — its last outing before Ubuntu switches to systemd

First Tweaks:

Settings > Appearance > Behavior [x] Enable Work Spaces and Show Menus in the Windows title bar.
10 Things To Do After Installing Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr To Get A Near Perfect Desktop

Here\’s a list of 10 useful things to do to get a near perfect desktop.

Ubuntu Software Center Disappoints…. Still.

Steam is not well exposed or featured.
Installing Steam requires I “buy” Steam.
“Buying” Steam requires I have an Ubuntu One account.
I thought Ubuntu One was shut down?
Confusing messaging throughout the process. A bad onboarding for new XP switchers.

Chris’ Final Take

Ubuntu still impresses, I’d expected my time in ARCH to have made me jaded.
You can feel the reach of the platform when looking up guides/software/info. This can’t be understated for new users or folks short on time.
The theme feels claustrophobically dated now. I quickly added the Numix PPA and installed the full suite.
Ubuntu 14.04 feels fairly modern, with signs of age.
The top bar looks very old, as does the system menu.
In contrast to the Unity dashboard these stand out even more.
New KDE Plasma Desktop 5, the design teams new work, Gnome 3.x getting better and better are legitimate competition to the Unity desktop which does feel like it’s standing a bit a slow.. Or is at least casually walking the marathon.
On the “cloud” side this is is potentially a great, maybe the greatest LTS.
Built in Docker.
Built in btrfs
Kernel 3.13 (legitimately recent for a Enterprise distro)
Ubuntu 14.04 is standing on the edge, and we don’t know what comes next.
The developers are just discussing the start of coverages between the desktop and mobile apps. Questions are being asked as to which classic applications we’ve come to live will be replaced with in-house Qt solutions.

Do any of you plan to switch from other distributions to Ubuntu LTS 14.04

donniezazen writes :

I am thinking about switching from Fedora 20 KDE to Kubuntu and stick with it for a long time.

Doing more with your Unity8 preview session in Ubuntu 14.04

The Unity 8/Desktop preview primarily is not a resurrection of Windows 8 – what you are looking at is the Ubuntu for Mobile UI running on your Desktop/Laptop. Changes to the user experience to move this UI to a Desktop/Laptop environment are coming in the next cycles.

It also is not at a quality level you’d expect from a LTS (hence it’s living in Universe), although it works fairly well on my 2 test machines. Due to limitations discussed in a previous post you might not be able to bring up Unity 8 on NVidia or ATI GPUs. We have not spent a lot of time on Hardware compatibility testing for this release and will focus on that as we march towards Ubuntu 14.10.

Download: Ubuntu 14.04

— Picks —

Runs Linux

Linux-Based Autonomous Sub Leads Malaysia Airlines Flight Search

It could take 60 more days for the Bluefin-21 to completely search the area \”lawnmower\” style. On one of its first dives to the floor of the Indian Ocean, the unmanned submarine reached the limit of its 2.8-mile depth range

Desktop App Pick

Variety

Weekly Spotlight

Are PPA\’s safe to add to my system and what are some \”red flags\” to watch out for?

— NEWS —

TrueCrypt audit finds “no evidence of backdoors” or malicious code

On Monday, after seven months of discussion and planning, the first phase of a two-part audit of TrueCrypt was released.

The results? iSEC, the company contracted to review the bootloader and Windows kernel driver for any backdoor or related security issue, concluded (PDF) that TrueCrypt has: “no evidence of backdoors or otherwise intentionally malicious code in the assessed areas.”

While the team did find some minor vulnerabilities in the code itself, iSEC labeled them as appearing to be “unintentional, introduced as the result of bugs rather than malice.”

Matthew Green, a Johns Hopkins cryptography professor who has been one of the people leading this effort, told Ars. “I think the code quality is not as high as it should be, but on the other hand, nothing terrible is in there, so that\’s reassuring.”

Overall, the source code for both the bootloader and the Windows kernel driver did not meet expected standards for secure code. This includes issues such as lack of comments, use of insecure or deprecated functions, inconsistent variable types, and so forth.

The team also found a potential weakness in the Volume Header integrity checks.
“It did not seem extremely important, but I think it\’s good to know about,” Green noted. “But I think it\’s good that we didn\’t find anything super critical.”

Cinnamon 2.2 Released With System Settings Improvements, HiDPI support And Mor

With Cinnamon 2.2, the System Settings UI was refined, making it look more consistent and also, the settings are better categorized, this allowing the Cinnamon developers to remove the switch between normal and advanced settings modules.

Another interesting improvement added with Cinnamon 2.2 is the way applets work: each applet is now able to register \”roles\” which tell Cinnamon which functionality they provide and this is used to allow Cinnamon to automatically hide systay icons for which the functionality is already present in an applet.

Here\’s an example from the Cinnamon 2.2 release announcement: \”Say you remove the network applet, well… you’ll see the Network Manager GTK systray icon appear. Say you put the network applet back in the panel, the Network Manager systray icon will then disappear.\”

Better systemd/logind support;

New Gnome style CSD seems a bit odd:

Same problem with XFCE, more of a CSD issue:

Red Hat Summit’s 10th Year: Docker Shines

April 14th-17th 2014

A lot of the buzz is around containerization in general and Docker in particular. Docker is set to ship with the latest version of RHEL (RHEL 7.0). Also, Docker will integrate with Red Hat\’s Open Shift PaaS. This is in addition to the earlier announcement that Red Hat is launching certification of applications delivered in the Docker container format.

Besides Red Hat, Docker already ran on the Amazon AWS version of Linux, as well as several other Linux distros. Also, sources tell me that we can expect to see more announcements in the weeks ahead about Docker being included by default in several other of the major Linux distros.

Docker is becoming synonymous with containers in Linux. By the time any other project or competitor look up they will have this one sewn up.

Docker in Ubuntu, Ubuntu in Docker

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The post Ubuntu 14.04 Review | LAS s31e09 (309) first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Graphical Civil War | LINUX Unplugged 33

chris — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 17:12:40 +0000

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Is devastating fragmentation going to doom Desktop Linux, can a case for multiple display servers?

Don’t care about the display server? We’ll make the case why you need to care, and why the biggest community confrontation could be brewing.

Thanks to:

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Show Notes:

FU

SolydXK
Lots of emails from folks switching to SolydXK
Use Docker NOT PPAs in Debian
DigitalOcean unadvertised feature!!
Linux Foundation Course
LinuxFoundationX: LFS101x : Introduction to Linux
Straw Poll: Should LAS Drop Seasons?

Does the Display Server Matter? Depends Who you Ask…

Bob\’s development blog: Why the display server doesn\’t matter

Display servers are the component in the display stack that seems to hog a lot of the limelight. I think this is a bit of a mistake, as it\’s actually probably the least important component, at least to a user.

Why the Display Server DOES matter

Now I don’t know how to put it, the best description is that I’m shocked that Canonical is still not seeing the problems they created by having multiple display servers.

more on why the display server does matter

Does this effect users? It means that some desktop environments will not be available on all operating systems, depending on what display systems are supported. Currently, people can usually pick whatever desktop environment they wish to run on any of the more popular Linux distributions. This will no longer be the case as shells segregate along display system lines.

LAS Subreddit Thread on the post

Feedback Kickoff: Linux Mint Might Use The Same LTS Base For Linux Mint 17, 18, 19 and 20

Linux Mint Might Use The Same LTS Base For Linux Mint 17, 18, 19 and 20

Linux Mint might use the same LTS base for Linux Mint 17 (to be released at the end of May 2014) as well as the next 3 releases.

That means that Linux Mint 17, 18, 19 and 20 might all use Ubuntu 14.04 LTS as a base instead of being based on newer Ubuntu releases.

If that happens, Linux Mint would have a more stable base and it would allow the Mint team to \”push innovation on Cinnamon, be more active in the development of MATE, better support Mint tools and engage in projects we\’ve postponed for years\”.

The post Graphical Civil War | LINUX Unplugged 33 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Mir Monkey Business | LAS s31e05

chris — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 13:32:09 +0000

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It’s been one year and we pay up on the Monkey Suit Mir Bet. We chat with Kevin Gunn Engineering Manager for Display Server & Unity UI at Canonical about how closed drivers will work with Mir, how new devices like the Oculus Rift might work, Wayland, and much more.

Plus: Unreal 4 and GOG.com announce incoming Linux support, AMD could be planning some major video driver changes, Ubuntu Tablet rumors…

AND SO MUCH MORE!

All this week on, The Linux Action Show!

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— Show Notes: —

MIr Chat: Kevin Gunn

Engineering Manager for Display Server & Unity UI at Canonical

Brought to you by: System76

KevinGunn – Ubuntu Wiki
What is your involvement with the MIR Project?
DO you like my hair?
How do you feel that MIR will hold up to time? We’ve seen how initial decisions with X have impacted its ability to preform as our computing needs have changed. Is MIR being designed with as much forward compatibility as possible?
Does or will MIR have the ability to be expanded/extended upon with regard to future devices/platforms? Is it monolithic in that it will exist as a single unit, or can it be altered easily for different systems with different goals in mind?
One of the concerns we’ve heard is that ‘;eventually’ applications will need to be written for MIR, Obviously there is the XMir compatibility layer, but are there plans for a wayland compatibility layer to deal with future Wayland/MIR differences which may creep up over time.
How do you feel MIR will perform as a display server over the next, say, 10 years? Do you believe it will fair better than X has over the past 10 years?
Can you give me a better picture of how closed source drivers will work with Mir?
Will I be able to do ssh with x forwarding from a computer running Mir. Will I be able to do something like ssh -X to a computer running Mir from a computer running X? From a computer running Mir?
And much more!

2013 Followup: our milestones effectively match this line of thought

Launching Mir & UnityNext
Its like a 3 stage rocket for Mir & Unity Next…
First target is integration of Unity Next & Mir (we’ll be discussing this at the upcoming UDS)….
second is actually creating our Ubuntu for Phone with Unity Next + Mir sometime in 4Q13. Lastly we should hit full convergence in 2Q 2014.

– Picks –

Runs Linux:

Indian Banks switching to Linux, rather than taking extended Windows XP Support

Desktop App Pick

Viber – Free calls, Free text messages, photo and location sharing
AUR (en) – viber
Viber – Google Play
Viber on the App Store
On February 13, 2014, Rakuten announced they had acquired Viber for $900 million
Viber – Privacy Policy
Viber founder: ‘People should be concerned about privacy’ | Technology | theguardian.com

Viber’s policy is that if it receives a proper subpoena, it will provide records of who made and received calls, and when, but that no content from those conversations will be shared.

He says Viber does not “have the capability to listen to conversations”. Messages are stored, for two weeks or until they are opened by the recipient, whichever is shorter. Around 80% are deleted in less than a second.

Weekly Spotlight

If Mir fails within one year from now, I’ll wear this on the show (Matt)
Matt Makes the Bet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsTQc0ME1eo&feature=youtu.be&t=24m56s

— NEWS —

First Ubuntu Tablets To Launch This Autumn

“[Tablets] will arrive pretty much simultaneously with phones. Q3, middle of this year we’ll see both phones and tablets running Ubuntu on the market.”

GOG.com Soon On More Platforms

No, don’t duck. This is actually good news. We just wanted to announce that, after much deliberation, **we’ve decided that one of the next steps for us is to support Linux.

We’re initially going to be launching our Linux support on GOG.com with the full GOG.com treatment for Ubuntu and Mint.

Getting geared up for a big kick-off in the fall with at least 100 Linux games ready for you to play.

This is, of course, going to include games that we sell which already have Linux clients, but we’ll also be bringing Linux gamers a variety of classics that are, for the first time, officially supported and maintained by a storefront like ours.

Unreal Engine 4 to Support Linux with Monthly Sub for Devs

For $19/month you can have access to everything, including the Unreal Editor in ready-to-run form, and the engine’s complete C++ source code hosted on GitHub for collaborative development.

We’re working to build a company that succeeds when UE4 developers succeed. Anyone can ship a commercial product with UE4 by paying 5% of gross revenue resulting from sales to users. If your game makes $1,000,000, then we make $50,000. We realize that’s a lot to ask, and that it would be a crazy proposition unless UE4 enables you to build way better games way more productively than otherwise!

This first release of Unreal Engine 4 is just the beginning. In the C++ code, you can see many new initiatives underway, for example to support Oculus VR, Linux, Valve’s Steamworks and Steam Box efforts, and deployment of games to web browsers via HTML5.

The All New Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 (DK2) Virtual Reality Headset to Ship with Linux Support

The Oculus Rift and the Oculus SDK currently support Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Debian Project Leader canidate proposes PPA system

It’s again that time of the year for the Debian Project: the elections of its Project Leader! Starting on March 31st, and during the following two weeks, the Debian Developers will vote to choose the person who will guide the project for one year.

Among this year’s candidates there is the current DPL, Lucas Nussbaum, who admits that “the workload involved in being the DPL is just huge,”

In his platform, Lucas speaks of technical and social steps to improve the project: from reproducible builds for a more secure archive to a renewed effort to run Debian on new platforms (especially smartphone and tablets); from a more welcoming approach to prospective contributors to an easier collaboration with organizations.

Neil McGovern. Neil’s platform focuses mainly on the need to “ensure that we cater to our users, and there’s millions of them. From those running the latest software in unstable, to people who simply want a rock solid core release.”

In his opinion “the size of Debian is increasing, and will reach a point where we’re unable to guarantee basic compatibility with other packages, or the length of time it takes to do so becomes exponentially longer, unless something changes.” To fix this problem, Neil proposes the implementation of PPAs (Personal Package Archives), the modernisation of the current build and infrastructure system as well as generally supporting the various teams.

AMD Is Exploring A Very Interesting, More-Open Linux Driver Strategy .

The short answer of what AMD’s trying to do is seeing about leveraging the existing (with modifications) open-source Radeon (Direct Rendering Manager) kernel driver underneath the closed-source Catalyst driver.

– Feedback: –

Bob’s development blog: Why the display server doesn’t matter

Display servers are the component in the display stack that seems to hog a lot of the limelight. I think this is a bit of a mistake, as it’s actually probably the least important component, at least to a user.

Straw Poll: Should LAS Drop “Seasons” post Episode 300?

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The post Mir Monkey Business | LAS s31e05 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Linux Mint 15 Review: Arch’s Nemesis? | LAS s27e02

chris — Sun, 26 May 2013 14:27:37 +0000

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Linux Mint 15 is about to hit the web. Is this the distro for the disenfranchised Ubuntu user? We’ll demo of some of Mint 15’s best new features, look at MATE vs Cinnamon. And why Mint’s real competition might be Arch Linux, and the Arch challenge is announced!

PLUS: A flash review of 5 great new games for Linux, a huge BIG batch of your feedback…

AND SO MUCH MORE!

All this week on, The Linux Action Show!

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— Show Notes: —

Linux Mint 15 Review:

Brought to you by: System76

8 Month support cycle or so (depends on release). Mint releases not built off Ubuntu LTS will be subject to the shorter support window non-LTS Ubuntu releases now have.
No upgrade path from Mint 14, or to Mint 16 in the future.
MATE and Cinnamon are at their best, current releases really starting to shine.
Tools built by the Mint team are top rate, and fill holes missing on Ubuntu.
Linux Distro Timeline
Linux MintRoadmap · GitHub

– Picks –

Runs Linux:

Vaisala’s Total Lightning Processor Runs Linux

-Sent in by Larry

Android Pick:

Sonic The Hedgehog
Android Picks so far thanks to Madjo in the IRC Chat room!

Desktop App Pick:

Search our past picks:

LASAppPicks

This tumblr contains the Linux app picks from the Linux Action Show. Both the Linux apps and the Android apps

Git yours hands all over our STUFF:

— NEWS —

“This is not about us against new, emerging platforms,” Saarnio said. “This is about new platforms against Android. I think that’s the game.”

Latest Tizen sightings: Samsung phone, Intel laptop demo · LinuxGizmos.com

On May 23, the second day of a three-day Tizen Developers Conference in San Francisco, TechTastic reported confirmation of a rumored debut Tizen smartphone called the GT-I8805 in Samsung’s UAPROF systems. The GT-I8805 (“Redwood”) is listed as running Tizen 2.1 on an ARM Cortex-A9 SoC and offering 1280 x 720 resolution and LTE support.

— /etc: Game Time —

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Dungeon Defenders on Steam

Dungeon Defenders is a Tower Defense Action-RPG where you must save the land of Etheria from an Ancient Evil! Create a hero from one of four distinct classes to fight back wave after wave of enemies by summoning defenses and directly participating in the action-packed combat!

X3: Terran Conflict on Steam

It is the year 2938. The long wished-for encounter of the X Universe and the Earth holds both joy and sorrow for the people. Despite flourishing trade, the clash of the diverse races, cultures and life forms creates new tensions, mistrust and open conflict that need to be overcome!

Don’t Starve on Steam

Don’t Starve is an uncompromising wilderness survival game full of science and magic. You play as Wilson, an intrepid Gentleman Scientist who has been trapped by a demon and transported to a mysterious wilderness world. Wilson must learn to exploit his environment and its inhabitants if he ever hopes to escape and find his way back home.

Shank 2 on Steam

The fan-favorite 2D brawler is back as ex-mob hit man Shank returns to action in Shank 2. With those closest to him under attack, Shank is once again forced on the offensive. Now he must put his trusty arsenal of handguns, shotguns, automatic weapons, chainsaws, machetes, grenades, plus all-new weaponry.

Minetest

Minetest is an infinite-world block sandbox game and a game engine, inspired by InfiniMiner, Minecraft and the like. It has been in development and use since October 2010.

– Feedback: –

Over the past few months we’ve been working with our friends at Collabora to implement the open-source Wayland composition protocol on top of the BCM2835 hardware video scaler (HVS).

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The post Linux Mint 15 Review: Arch’s Nemesis? | LAS s27e02 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Ubuntu 13.04: Best But Boring? | LAS s26e07

chris — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 14:15:03 +0000

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Ubuntu 13.04 was nearly the release that wasn’t, but now it looks like it could be the next great desktop. What happens when you hit the top, and loose your focus?

We’ll answer why even though this release gets two thumbs up, it still leaves us feeling a little disappointed.

Plus our interview with an independent distro builder, and where he finds his motivation to fight the big dogs, Netflix’s HTML5 plans, open source taking over the world…

AND SO MUCH MORE!

All this week on, The Linux Action Show!

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— Show Notes: —

Ubuntu 13.04 Review:

Brought to you by: System76

– Picks –

Runs Linux:

Fanless microserver aims Linux on Core-i7 at harsh environs

Android Pick:

Subway Surfers
Android Picks so far thanks to Madjo in the IRC Chat room!

Desktop App Pick:

Search our past picks:

Linux Action Show Lookup
Thanks to sakuramboo!

Git yours hands all over our STUFF:

— NEWS —

During the week of 8 April 2013, developers from the KDE, GNOME, Unity and Razor-qt projects met at the SUSE offices in Nürnberg to improve collaboration between the projects by discussing specifications. A wide range of topics was covered.

Benchmarks Of The New ZFS On Linux: EXT4 Wins
Power of Arduino and Raspberry Pi combined in $99 Android/Linux PC
UDOO: Android Linux Arduino in a tiny single-board computer by UDOO

— /etc: DescentOS —

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DescentOS: Simple by Design

– Feedback: –
SSD modifications
Ubuntu Software Center on Mint?
Install Ubuntu Software Center in Linux Mint
Rooting the Boxee
Many folks enjoyed the Wirecast Episode
What is light weight?

https://vimeo.com/64497228

Maui Project – Wayland based desktop – development snapshot
xLAva/JediOutcastLinux · GitHub
Geary: a beautiful modern open-source email client | Indiegogo

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The post Ubuntu 13.04: Best But Boring? | LAS s26e07 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Inside Ubuntu Touch | LAS | s25e09

chris — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 14:26:26 +0000

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Much more than just a touch of Ubuntu, we take a deep dive into the Ubuntu Touch Preview and how they’ve pulled it off, the surprising components of Android that are being used, and why it means Ubuntu Touch will be on hundreds of popular devices soon.

Plus we’ve got an explanation of Linus’ recent blow up, the big news for Btrfs, some Steam secrets revealed…

AND SO MUCH MORE!

All this week on, The Linux Action Show!

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— Show Notes: —

Ubuntu Touch First Look

Brought to you by: System76

First Impressions

A PPA and installs the tools, USB Debugging must be turned on the device.
Most of the process is automatic with appropriate images for the device being downloaded from Canonical’s servers and pushed to the devices over USB.
Definitely a demo product at this point, with the majority of the apps just being a place holder.
October feels very close in comparison to the amount of work needed to be done.
That said, we are seeing a product at the early stages that most companies would never show. I think many products shown at trade shows, demoed in keynotes, etc, are very often in this stage. The consumer just never learns that. In this case, we vail has been removed and we’re seeing something that’s still in that stage.
Many of the demo apps are powered by common sense underlying structures. For example, the Gallery app is limited in actual functions beyond looking at the pre-supplied photos. However, one can sftp new photos to the /home/phablet/photos directory and the gallery app will display them. It’s relatively trivial to hook up the UI to some code to populate those folders with photos.
Because it’s based on CM 10.1 many people are calling it just a re-themed Android. But that’s not accurate.
Ubuntu Touch Preview is simply running in a Cyanogenmod10.1 chroot
The Cyanogenmod Fork has been stripped of the Dalvik VM and all other components necessary to run Android Applications.
The Ubuntu filesystem and all applications are kept in /data/ubuntu in the Android subsystem.
Because of this: theoretically you can port Ubuntu Touch to any device that Cyanogemod 10.1 Supports.
It’s based on Ubuntu 12.10 (right now)
Uses the Android compositor, Surface Flinger. This is big, as applications that rely on X11 might be out.
This makes sense when you consider the need to work with binary blob video drivers.
Speaking of drivers, Ubuntu Touch Preview uses libhybris, a way to load Android libraries while overriding some Bionic symbols with those symbols from glibc.

Android Kernels are found on the majority of new mobile devices, Linux ones aren’t. Rather than reinvent the world and write new drivers, using LibHybris, you can use the existing Android drivers to make the job of porting linux userspaces onto these devices much easier.

Resources

Reviews/Write Ups

– Picks –

Runs Linux:

Google Pixel, Runs Linux Mint

Android Pick:

Xabber

Not sure if it’s been mentioned before but there is a nice chat client called Xabber. It supports all the big protocols and even supports Off-The-Record encryption. Free app and they recently went open source too! One thing it lacks is voice and video. Perhaps, with a few supporters we could make a push for that. I’d love to get rid of Skype and keep my dear mom happily conferencing with my son.
https://www.xabber.com/

Sent in by Kalon

Android Picks so far thanks to Madjo in the IRC Chat room!

Desktop App Pick:

Search our past picks:

Linux Action Show Lookup
Thanks to sakuramboo!

Git yours hands all over our STUFF:

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The post Inside Ubuntu Touch | LAS | s25e09 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Don’t Copy That Floppy | TechSNAP 79

chris — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 16:04:46 +0000

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How a Russian Spy ring used floppies to pass sensitive information, how Backblaze made it through the great hard drive shortage, and why the US congress is saying no to Chinese Telco manufactures.

Plus a big batch of your questions, and our answers.

All that and much more, on this week’s TechSNAP!

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How Backblaze dealt with the hard drive shortage

During the hard drive shortage that started a year ago, Backblaze found itself in a rather tight spot, in order to continue offering unlimited storage for $5/month, they needed more drives
The price of a 3TB internal drive shot up from $129 to $349 overnight
However external drives, were prices around $169, at least $100 cheaper than their internal counterparts (mostly because HP, Dell and Apple had bought up most of the supply of internal drives)
BackBlaze fills about 50TB worth of drives per day, so they need a continuous supply of new drives
Between November 2011 and February 2012, Backblaze farmed 5.5 Petabytes worth of hard drives from retailers, mostly consisting of external drives that needed to be removed from their enclosures
The external drives incurred other costs, shucking the drives out of the enclosures, and recycling the leftover shells afterwards
Many stores had ‘limit 2 per customer’ (I remember this well with my own drive buying), and BackBlaze employees employed many devious tactics to try to squeeze more out of each store, including pretending to be a grandmother buying drives for each of her grandchildren for Christmas
Backblaze employees were banned from a number of CostCo and BestBuy stores, or asked to leave empty handed
On Christmas Eve, the CEO of BackBlaze stopped at a friend’s house to pick up 80x 3TB drives his friend had acquired from an online site that forgot to limit the quantity he could order. It had taken the FedEx driver more than 30 minutes to unload all of the drives into the apartment. While loading them into his car, the BackBlaze CEO reflected that the drives he was loading into his car, were worth more than the car
Backblaze still buys external drives when the price is right, ~$30 cheaper than internal drives, to cover the additional cost of preparing the drives
The ‘shucked’ drives can usually not be returned for warranty replacement
Additional Coverage
Additional Coverage
The backblaze storage pod 2.0

Russian spy ring relied on notepad and floppy disks

Sub-Lt. Jeffrey Delisle pled guilty today on charges of breach of trust and two counts of communicating safeguarded information to a foreign entity
The maximum sentence for ‘communicating safeguarded information to a foreign entity’ is life in prison
Delisle was an Analyst at HMCS Trinity, an intelligence facility that tracks vessels entering and exiting Canadian waters via satellites, drones and underwater devices, it is located at the naval base in Halifax, Nova Scotia
He would search for and copy sensitive materials from a secure computer at the base
Copy/pasting the data into notepad, it would then save it to a floppy disk
The floppy was then moved to a regular non-secure computer, where the data was transferred to a USB drive
After taking the USB home, he would access a webmail account, and draft an email, but never send it
His Russian handlers had the username and password to the email account, and would access it, and retrieve the stolen intelligence
The emails were never sent, lessening the chance that they might be intercepted
Delisle walked into the Russian Embassy in Ottawa in 2007 and asked to speak to someone from the GRU (Russian Military Intelligence), offering to sell the secrets he had access to
He was paid $3000/month in prepaid credit cards
the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Equivalent to the FBI in Canada) started investigating him after CBSA (Canada Border Services Acency) Officers alerted the Military when Delisle returned from a short trip to Brazil with a large amount of cash
Additional CBC Coverage

SEC hands out first ever fine for ‘failure to protect customer data’

In the spring of 2005, network traffic at the Florida officers of GunnAllen Financial had slowed to a crawl
The company had outsourced its entire IT department to The Revere Group
GunnAllen’s acting CIO, a partner at Revere Group, asked the manager of the IT team to investigate
A senior network engineer had disabled the WatchGuard firewalls and routed all of the broker-dealer’s IP traffic–including trades and VoIP calls–through his home cable modem
As a result, none of the company’s trades, emails, or phone calls were being archived, in violation of Securities and Exchange Commission regulation
However, this did not appear in the final report from the SEC about the settlement with GunnAllen Financial, which was actually about other breaches of security and policy
Some of the data that was routed through the engineering some connection include: bank routing information, account balances, account numbers, social security numbers, customers’ home addresses and driver’s license numbers
“He’d purposefully break things, then come in in the morning and be the hero, I ended up key-logging all the servers, and I logged him logging in from home at 2:30 in the morning, logging on to BlackBerry servers and breaking them."
Although required by the SEC to keep copies of all emails for 7 years, “There was a point in time for probably two months where no one’s email was logged. I brought it up in a meeting once and was told to shut up [by the acting CIO]”
In 2008 FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) fined GunnAllen $750,000 for a “trade allocation scheme” conducted by former head trader, in which profitable stock trades were allocated to his wife’s personal account instead of to the accounts of firm customers
Employees at The Revere Group were afraid to report issues because other employees had been fired

Bug in facebook mobile app could expose your phone number

A feature of the facebook mobile app allows you to compare your mobile contacts list against facebook, and find any people you have in your phone, but not on facebook
A researcher exploited this feature by adding random phone numbers to his phone’s contact list and was able to determine many users’ mobile phone numbers, despite their privacy settings
Facebook originally denied that this was an issue when he reported it to them, they claimed that rate limiting and privacy settings prevented the exploit
The researcher posted proof , in the form of 100s of phone numbers (random digits blocked out to protect the innocent) with the corresponding person’s name
Facebook has since tightened up the rate limiting
TheNextWeb has an article on how to protect your phone number on facebook

TechSNAP viewer discovers IE flaw

IE8 and IE9 in compatibility mode will sometimes mistakenly render plain text content as HTML
This means that the ‘raw’ view of a pastebin of some javascript source code, could cause the browser to execute it, rather than display it
A proof of concept is providers for you to test your browser

US congressional report says Huawei and ZTE are a security threat

A draft of a report by the House Intelligence Committee said Huawei and another Chinese telecom, ZTE, “cannot be trusted” to be free of influence from Beijing and could be used to undermine US security
The report recommends that the chinese hardware manufacturers should be barred from US contracts and acquisitions, due to the security implications of chinese controlled devices in sensitive US installations
US set to reject UN ITU proposals for changes to Global Telecom systems, citing danger of increased foreign espionage
The US fears nations like China and Russia will gain too much control and impose tracking and monitoring, and assert control over content and user information
US says that ITU regulations are “not an appropriate or useful venue to address cybersecurity,”

Feedback

More Info on digi-pass
- PDF with more info
Could provide some insight to GPG Keys?
- Packages are signed by the GPG key of the person or group who created them
- Your package manager maintains a list of the GPG keys you trust (the default is usually to trust official packages from your distro)
- If you use 3rd party packages, you will get a warning
- You must decide if you trust the 3rd party that signed the package, not to include an exploit in the package
- If you trust the 3rd party, you can add their key to your allow list, and you will not receive the warning
- It is unsafe to ignore the warning if you do not trust the source of the packages, especially if you are trying to install an official package
Switching to Publicly Signed SSL?
- Wildcard SSL certificates cover *.domain.com (something.domain.com, otherthing.domain.com)
- This does not include *.something.domain.com
- Covers future sub domains that you might create
- There are also ‘UCC’ (Unified Communications Certificates) certificates, that allow you to enumerate many domains to be covered by a single certificate. Adding or removing a domain to the certificate requires it to be reissued
- UCC certificates are expensive, but are popular for Exchange servers that must cover multiple domains
Securing Cookies
Darwin writes in with a note that in addition to limiting the length of your password, ‘Microsoft Account’ also prevents you using some special characters, including ‘space’

Round-Up

The post Don't Copy That Floppy | TechSNAP 79 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.