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Btrfs, a new file system for Linux - from Oracle…

une 14th, 2007 — liquidat

Chris Mason announced the new file system Btrfs at the kernel e-mail list. Btrfs is supposed to become a modern file system delivering all the features you might expect from modern file systems.

The announcement was featured at kerneltrap which also shows the most important features and discussions around Btrfs. There you also find the main features which are currently implemented (marked with a +) or which are supposed to be implemented in the future (marked with a -).

• + Extent based file storage (2^64 max file size)
• + Space efficient packing of small files
• + Space efficient indexed directories
• + Dynamic inode allocation
• + Writable snapshots
• + Subvolumes (separate internal filesystem roots)
• - Object level mirroring and striping
• + Checksums on data and metadata (multiple algorithms available)
• - Strong integration with device mapper for multiple device support
• - Online filesystem check
• +Very fast offline filesystem check
• - Efficient incremental backup and FS mirroring

Obviously, this reminds many people of ZFS - especially the snapshots are quite interesting, I think (think of backup solutions and versioned file systems here). But the file system is still in Alpha and in deep development. It has yet to show if it will be abpe to implement all planned features and if it will be able to become a new standard on Linux.

However, what I found most interesting was the fact that this new file system was developed at Oracle. Although Oracle attacked Red Hat with their unbreakable Linux the most kernel work is done by Red Hat in these days. The only bigger Oracle contribution I’m currently aware of is the Oracle Cluster File System 2, which is more interesting for larger deployments.

I wonder how many resources Oracle will put behind this development - and if their are other aims than providing a good file system. I’m still asking myself what their long term related to Red Hat is…

Anyway, if Btrfs would become stable, fast and usable quickly it could become the new standard for Linux file systems easily. At the moment everyone is looking at ZFS, but there are several problems why it is unlikely that it becomes part of Linux anytime soon. Btw., Dave Jones had a good point about the ZFS discussions: it is not all about the Licence. File systems in Linux are somewhat difficult and there are experienced reviewers missing to deal and properly integrate new file systems into the kernel.

However, since Oracle already brought another file system into the kernel and has lots of experiences in that field I hope that Btrfs matures well and becomes part of the mainline kernel soon. Just imagine the possibilities of a versioned file system in Linux within, say, 12 months. Ha, I like that.

Linux Filesystems and Tools

The Linux filesystem is a complex and the first thing that most new users shifting from Windows will find confusing is navigating the Linux filesystem. The second thing is that not too many people are familiar with how the filesystem works or know how to troubleshoot if any problems arise. The good thing is, there are many different types of file system tools and utilities available to make troubleshooting easier but again not too many people are familiar with them. We’ve put together top 20 of the most useful file systems tools and utilities that you’ll find useful in your Linux environment.

1. XFS - a high-performance journaling file system. It provides quick recovery after a crash, fast transactions, high scalability, and excellent bandwidth.

2. e2salvage - a utility which tries to recover a data from damaged ext2 filesystems. Unlike e2fsck, it does not look for the data at particular places and it don’t tend to believe the data it finds; thus it can handle much more damaged filesystem. Moreover, fsck connects the found i-nodes to lost+found directory. e2salvage instead tries to recover the directory structure.

More Tools

Feature by feature: Firefox vs. Safari

Safari

Firefox

Comparison

Mozilla Rewriting A Lot Of Code For Upcoming Firefox V3

Mozilla programmers are rewriting a lot of the Firefox code for the upcoming version release of the open-source browser, according to the head of product security at Mozilla.

Most of the components in the current version of Firefox are being touched, said Window Snyder, “chief security something-or-other” at Mozilla. She added that programmers are replacing a lot of older code to increase performance, make the code base more modular and handle new security threats, like phishing and malicious Web sites.

“As we’re doing this, we’re considering security features and trying to minimize security issues,” said Snyder in an interview with InformationWeek. “The Web browser has always been an entry point into the system, so it’s been considered a critical application. The environment changes so we need to adapt.”

More Here

KDE/Linux everywhere?

Today I saw that a drugstore where I bought a CD was using a KDE based system for managing there CDs and DVDs. This lead to the question how many hidden KDE installations - and Linux installations in general - are out there.

There are several big installations of KDE around these days - an examples is the Linux system of the city Munich, called LiMux. Other examples are some 80k school computers in Brazil and the German “Oberfinanzdirektion Hannover” with 12k KDE systems (basyskom was behind this one).

These examples are well known. However, since KDE is Open Source no one can track all installations, and several large installations might not be known yet.

The Müller drugstore chain

Today I discovered such an installation: when I bought a CD in a drugstore I realized that one of the two computers on the desk at the information was running KDE. It was heavily customized - no kmenu and a very simple browser window, for example - but kicker was obvious, and the Plastik window style is unique also. I asked the guy at the desk if that system was store wide or personal and he kindly informed me that that installation was used to look up and manage DVDs and other media.
The other computer btw. was some kind of very, very old DOS interface (you still see these often in commercial computer setups).

The drugstore was Müller, which is a drugstore chain with more than 400 shops in Germany and 60something in the rest of Europe. Every shop is running several computer stations (to get an idea: the shop I am talking about was spread over three floors!), but I’m not sure if they use the KDE system only for the media management or also for other purposes. But I think it it save to estimate that there are at least roughly 500 installations.

Of course, 500 installations alone will not change the world, but it is just one example of possibly many hidden installations - and I discovered it the first time today although I know this drugstore for more than four years. Also, as I mentioned, the other system on that desk was an old DOS system. Imagine they start upgrading these systems as well - it would be stupid upgrade these machines to yet another system so there is a good chance that these machines will be upgraded to KDE as well.

How many are we?

The question is now how many other installations are out there which no one realizes? And if you add all these up, what is the outcome? Of course Microsoft Windows is more spread (well, they do have a monopoly, after all), but Apple says itself has only 22 million installations - I wouldn’t be surprised if KDE+Gnome/Linux installations would have a bigger impact than that.

Unfortunately there are hardly any statistics. But half a year ago Mark Shuttleworth estimated 8 million (!) Ubuntu users. Also, Fedora reported almost 3 million installations of Fedora Core 6 in 26 weeks. Both numbers are impressive, but are old (in the Open Source world 6 month is old) and do not even include the corporate installations like SLED or RHEL, not to mention other Linux distributions like OpenSuse, Debian or Mandriva.

This again shows that the Linux community need to gather more statistical data: smolt and popcon are nice starts, but we need more. The best would be a cross distribution project to collect the data - at least among the community distributions, but that is unlikely anytime soon.

Still, even distribution specific data are very valuable. They show the real power behind the project, and they give the developers and the project leaders a stronger voice when these talk for example to hardware vendors about open drivers. Also, such things - done right - are good for advertising the distribution and Linux (or KDE or Gnome) in general:

Pretty nice, isn’t it? Thanks to the Fedora Statistics and Marketing people. We need more of such things!

WengoPhone 2.1 gives Linux Users a Solid Softphone

Wengo — the commercial PSTN-routing SIP provider that is the open source project’s parent company — focused on its Windows builds and essentially skipped over Linux during the 2.0 release cycle. OpenWengo’s Linux developers were never satisfied with the stability of the 2.0-series release candidates, so they never incremented the Linux version number to 2.0.

2.1, on the other hand, is a solid, stable release, although side effects of the missing 2.0 might cause users some confusion. The WengoPhone online documentation makes references to 2.0 code that is nowhere to be found, the 2.1 developers’ site refers to building on top of 2.0, and so on.

OpenWengo’s community development manager Dave Neary assures users that such inconsistencies are in the past, and that the project will be making release schedules much clearer in the future. He also describes the Linux and Mac OS X clients as first-class citizens, equal to the Windows product.Getting started

Desktop Publishing with OpenOffice.org

“Do you offer a program like Microsoft Publisher?” Some version of this question appears regularly on the OpenOffice.org mailing lists. Many people automatic answer “no,” and say that Scribus is more suitable for desktop publishing. But, in fact, OpenOffice.org boasts two mid-level layout programs — Draw and Writer — each of which is far more versatile than its name suggests.

Draw and Writer have similar tools for positioning text, but Draw is better suited for text mixed with graphics or for highly variable pages, while Writer is designed for text-heavy documents with minimal variation in the pages. Both lack some of the fine controls of a high-end layout program, but their features are complete enough that either can be used to produce professional-looking work.

Article

Bringing Free Software Down to Earth

Mark Shuttleworth, software entrepreneur and space tourist, believes that open-source software is not just for geeks. AS HE lays out his vision for the future of open-source software, Mark Shuttleworth is enthusiastic, but he looks tired. He has been up late negotiating yet another deal as part of his mission to bring open source to a wider audience.

A successful South African entrepreneur during the dotcom era, he wants open-source zealots to lose their religion and concentrate on ease-of-use instead. And he is putting his money where his mouth is. Since 2004, he has been using his fortune to fund the Ubuntu project, which makes a user-friendly version of Linux, the open-source operating system. Ubuntu is a Zulu and Xhosa term that roughly means “universal bond of sharing between humans”. Ubuntu’s slogan is “Linux for human beings”, and it is aimed at mainstream computer users. For although Linux is popular on servers, it is not, so far, used on many desktops.

Complete Article from Economist

Linus Torvalds vs Jonathan Schwartz - clash of two titans ?

The fire started when Linus Torvalds wrote a reply to a mail in the Linux kernel mailing list where he pondered on Sun Microsystem's true intentions in willing to release Solaris under a GPLv3 licence and how the rise of Linux has hurt Solaris and how Sun doesn't want to help Linux.

In his own words, this is what Linus said (and I quote parts of the mail):

They may like open source, but Linux _has_ hurt them in the marketplace. A lot.

hey want to use Linux resources (_especially_ drivers), but they do *not* want to give anything back (especially ZFS, which seems to be one of their very very few bright spots).

o to Sun, a GPLv3-only release would actually let them look good, and still keep Linux from taking their interesting parts, and would allow them to take at least parts of Linux without giving anything back (ahh, the joys of license fragmentation).

onathan Schwartz the president and CEO of Sun Microsystems has written a reply on his blog to Linus Torvalds explaining Sun's true intentions and why it is taking so long for Sun to release Solaris under GPLv3.

But most of all, from where I sit, we should put the swords down - you're not the enemy for us, we're not the enemy for you. Most of the world doesn't have access to the internet - that's the enemy to slay, the divide that separates us. By joining our communities, we can bring transparency and opportunity to the whole planet. Are we after your drivers? No more than you're after ZFS or Crossbow or dtrace - it's not predation, it's prudence. Let's stop wasting time recreating wheels we both need to roll forward.

You may also be interested in reading the comment made on Jonathan Schwartz's blog by OpenBSD founder Theo de Raadt.

VirtualBox - Not Bad For Free Virtualisation

Latest VirtualBox 1.4 was released on June 5th, and it is the youngest virtualization player. If you are not aware of this products, VirtualBox is a family of powerful x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use and is available both as open source under the GPL and under a commercial license which, in most cases, allows you to use the product free of charge. Compiled binaries for different Linux distributions and Windows are available from the project’s download page.

With this new edition innotek officially enters the Apple market, already seeing competition between Parallels, with its Desktop solution, and VMware, with its upcoming Fusion, introducing support for Mac OS X (still in beta). This version contains lots of improvements and bug fixing. Here is the sample list of new features and changes in this release:

• Full support for 64-bit Linux
• RDP session shadowing
• Clipboard synchronization
• Serial ports and easier Linux host interface networking
• VirtualBox now supports VMware disk images (VMDK) natively and can give virtual machines access to physical disks and partitions (”raw disk support”)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL5) and Xandros Desktop 4.1 are now officially supported
• Added support for OS X hosts
• Signed all executables and device drivers on Windows
• Added user interface for Shared Folders
• Improved keyboard handling on Linux hosts
• Added first run wizard
• Restore original window size when returning from fullscreen mode
• Fixed screen update when switching to fullscreen mode

Besides these changes there are many more changelog.

Personally I haven’t given a try to VirtualBox on an extensive level but can say that compared to Vmware’s Workstation, my preferred virtualisation (for now), VirtualBox lacks in performance, but then again you can get it for free … so do give it a try.

Flickr uploaders for Linux

Well, I guess you are aware of Flickr. Unfortunately, Flickr does not have a Linux photo uploader. So here are 3 applications that are able to upload photos from your Linux desktop. Pick the one which suites you the most:

• Flock - This a full web browser but its Flickr-integrated photo uploader simply works! But if you are using Firefox, having another one doesn’t make much sense.
• jUploadr - A Java-based photo uploader that supports Flickr and Zooomr, runs on any platform with a Java SE virtual machine.
• kFlickr - A Linux-only photo uploader for KDE, a preferred for KDE users, such as myself.

Shrek 3 and Linux

Dreamworks says:

“All the big film studios primarily use Linux for animation and visual effects. Perhaps no commercial Linux installation is larger than DreamWorks Animation, with more than 1,000 Linux desktops and more than 3,000 server CPUs.

For Shrek 3, we will consume close to 20 million CPU render hours for the making of the film’, says DreamWorks Animation CTO Ed Leonard. ‘Each of our films continues to push the edge of what’s possible, requiring more and more compute power.’ Everyone knows Moore’s Law predicts that compute power will double every one and a half years. A little known corollary is that feature cartoon animation CPU render hours will double every three years. In 2001, the original Shrek movie used about 5 million CPU render hours. In 2004, Shrek 2 used more than 10 million CPU render hours. And in 2007, Shrek 3 is using 20 million CPU render hours.”

HTML entry character lookup

I am sure most people will know the HTML markup for an & or a © (Copyright). But what do you do if you have to display other non-english characters such as currencies of countries like the Japanese Yen, Pound and so on... You refer a HTML entry character lookup.

In Linux, if you are running Gnome desktop, you have the Gnome character map which can be used to copy the required characters and paste in the HTML document.

Fig: Gnome character map

There is another easier way though; you can use the online HTML entry character lookup which prints out the HTML code for the characters you are searching. For example, if you want the code for the Pound sign, just type "Pound" in the text box and the web page spits up the equivalent code for what you have typed.

Fig; HTML character lookup

The features of this facility are as follows :

• Search for entity characters based on how they look (taken from the W3C list of entities)
• Switch between standard and compressed views
• Copy the HTML entity to the clipboard
• Add your own keyword terms and characters to entities
• Settings stored in a browser cookie

Check out the website here.

Howto: Sun Java Web Start on Fedora 7

une 11th, 2007 — liquidat

I recently faced the problem of using a java web start application on my machine and wasn’t sure how to do this. It is a small fix others might want to know as well.

This howto is an addition to the Sun Java on Fedora 7 howto. Therefore you can only use it when you already followed the Java howto.

The main problem is that with the howto mentioned above (and also with a standard install of Fedora’s free Java implementation) there will be no javaws binary in any $PATH directory. When you have installed Sun’s Java there is such a binary, but it is still not in any $PATH directory.

What you have to do is to link it, the best is to do this by using the alternatives system to make sure you can use several Java installations next to each other. In the following code examples make sure your directory paths are set correctly because I use mine as an example, but you might have another Java version, and the version is hard coded into the directory (which is something I will never ever understand):

alternatives –install /usr/bin/javaws javaws /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0.12/jre/bin/javaws 1

In this step we register the real javaws binary from the Java rpm package with the system under the point “javaws” and in the same step link it to the right $PATH directory, here /usr/bin/javaws. Also, we have to give a priority, and of course we set the priority to 1.

That’s it. In case of Konqueror (or also Firefox) you might also want to register the mime type “application/x-java-jnlp-file” with the executable given above. In Konqueror you do so by opening Settings -> Configure Konqueror -> File Associations. Find the type “x-java-jnlp-file” under “application” (or create it, the file type must be *.jnlp) and add the application /usr/bin/javaws to the application list (which is most certainly empty). That’s it.

To test the setup I used the (impressive) Qt Jambi web demo. Sun’s Web Start demos don’t work theough since they have the opinion I haven’t installed Java Web Start yet - I have no idea why…
For Firefox go to the Qt demo, click on the link and choose to open such files with /usr/bin/javaws every time.

It’s Time to Consider Open Source Software

In 1985, Richard Stallman, a computer programmer, released “The GNU Manifesto,” in which he proclaimed a golden rule: One must share computer programs. Software vendors required him to agree to license agreements that forbade sharing programs with others, but he refused to “break solidarity” with other computer users whom he assumed also wanted to use free software.

Many people are surprised to hear that Stallman’s free software dream has been realized. This paper makes the case that using only free software has considerable economic, technical, political, pedagogical and moral advantages — and surprisingly few frustrations. If you are a teacher, and especially if you train teachers, you should be aware that there are Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) applications for common classroom uses.

F/OSS is the foundation of the Internet. The BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain) name server that maps domain names to Internet Protocol (IP) numbers, the Apache Web server that serves most Web sites, the Linux kernel that drives Google and Amazon, and the MediaWiki software that powers Wikipedia are all free for anyone to use, change and redistribute.

More Here

Book Review : The Linux Programmer's Toolbox

What does it take to start writing programs for Linux ? Most people will guess a text editor, knowledge of a programming language and the compiler and libraries of that language would suffice. But ask a professional programmer who has been writing code for Linux and he will differ with you and insist that while the three things stated above can very well help kick start ones programs, other things also come into play in writing efficient programs such as a debugger, memory profiler tools and above all a good understanding of the inner working of Linux kernel and its processes.

The book titled "The Linux Programmer's Toolbox" authored by John Fusco is a book which is a store house of knowledge which aims to make the average Linux/Windows programmer aware of the tools at his disposal which can help him write better programs for Linux.

The book is divided into 10 distinct chapters with the first 4 chapters describing various ways of boosting ones productivity while embarking on writing code for Linux as well as getting to know the various tools at ones disposal.

In the very first chapter titled "Downloading and Installing Open source tools", he talks about the different archive formats commonly used in Linux, various package managers such as Debian's own apt-get, Red Hat's Yum and how to properly authenticate the packages you download to ensure that they are not tampered.

The second chapter deals with building tools from source. Here apart from describing the actual steps involved in compiling the sources, the author also delves into explaining the concept behind the MakeFile, the common variables used in implicit rules and so on. In this chapter one also gets to acquire an understanding of the tools used to create projects as well as examine how these tools work together in the build process.

The book has a chapter exclusively devoted to explaining ways of ambulating through the myriad of documents; tools such as man, info, as well as some of the not so obvious ones. One thing I like about this particular chapter is how the author has provided tables which list a number of recommended manual pages with a short description of each of them.

Linux doesn't have a comprehensive IDE on the lines of Microsoft Visual Studio to develop programs - at least not yet. Most Linux programming gurus are perfectly at home with coding using their favorite text editor. And any book of this stature will be incomplete without a mention of the different editors available for coding in Linux and their pros and cons. The 4th chapter of this book introduces the different editors including Vim and Emacs and discusses their pros and cons. There are numerous tips in this chapter which aims to make writing code much more efficient, productive and a pleasant experience for the average Linux programmer. As a Vi enthusiast, I couldn't help but admire how one can convert Vim editor to work as a code browser with the help of Ctags which is explained in detail.

The fifth chapter titled "What every developer should know about the kernel" is a turning point in the book and gives a comprehensive understanding of the working of the Linux kernel. It is by far the largest chapter - with nearly 100 pages devoted to this topic - in this book. In this chapter the author talks in lucid detail about the different modes in Linux, the process scheduler, device drivers, the I/O scheduler and the memory management in user space, understanding all of which is instrumental in writing better programs for Linux.

The next two chapters deal with Linux processes and the communication between processes. Here one gets to know more about the technical vagaries related to processes such as forking, cloning, process synchronization and the basics of inter process communication. The author has introduced several APIs and basic examples of each.

In the 8th chapter, the author introduces many tools which are installed by default in most Linux distributions which aid in debugging communication between processes. The tools include (but are not limited to) lsof, fuser, stat, hexdump, strace and so on. And each tool is accompanied by its usage and its output with a short discussion of the output.

In the 9th chapter titled "Performance Tuning", one gets to know more about fine tuning ones Linux program. Here the author explains the factors affecting system performance as well as the tools for finding system performance issues.

Finally, the last chapter of this book explores some of the most common debugging tools and techniques for Linux. More specifically, I found the discussion on the use of GNU debugger quite informative.

At the end of each of the 10 chapters in the book, the author has provided a short synopsis of the tools that are used. Also many additional online resources have also been listed where one can acquire more knowledge about the topic being covered. Through out the book, noteworthy sections have been highlighted in dark background which makes it quite eye catching and also easy for quick reference.

The book is written with a slant towards the C language especially when depicting the examples in the latter half of the book. But that is something which can be understood considering that the bulk of the Linux kernel has been written using C language.

Book Specifications

Name : The Linux Programmer's Toolbox
ISBN No: 0-13-219857-8
Author : John Fusco
Publisher : Prentice Hall
No of Pages : 600
Price : Check the latest price at Amazon.com
Verdict : An excellent resource for those who are interested in improving their productivity as a Linux programmer.

Most programmers with Windows background will be forced to make a paradigm shift while embarking to program for Linux. While the Windows programmers could take deceptive comfort within the cozy confines of a Visual IDE, when they make the shift to write Linux programs, they are suddenly faced with the hard facts of programming as it really is. And this book could be an ideal companion for this set of programmers who wish to lessen their learning curve and make programming for Linux a much more pleasurable experience.

Having said that, I found this book to be an ideal companion for any programmer (not necessarily only of Windows background) who wish to develop programs for Linux.

Configuration Mania - Configuring Hidden Settings in Firefox

There is that nice extension called Preferential. Now if editing and configurithat still seemed too complicated with that extension, then you need something that breaks it down even further. How about something that puts the settings in an easy-to-understand interface similar to the existing configuration screen for the Options? Let’s now turn our attention to Configuration Mania!

This extension is cool because it puts a ton of settings together in a way that makes them very easy to understand and manipulate. Before now, almost all of these settings had to be configured through the about:config screen, but now they will almost seem as if they were naturally integrated in Firefox.

Just like the Preferential extension, Configuration Mania has its options located in the Tools menu. This one also has collapsible menus, but it organizes the settings a little nicer. Oh, and don’t be deceived by the small appearance because there are a lot of settings there for you to tinker with. Here is a screenshot of what all the browser settings look like when they’re expanded:

And that is only the settings from one of the 5 tabs! As you can see there are a lot of different things available for you to configure and play with, but it will take some time to go through all of the settings presented here.

A Guide to Using PDFs on GNU/Linux

Although GNU/Linux has long supported postscript format, full support for the related PDF file format has been longer in arriving. Today, however, PDF support is finally starting to equal what is available on other operating systems. Whether you are printing, editing, or viewing PDF files, you now have the choice of a variety of applications on both the command line and the desktops.

What follows is not an exhaustive list of choices, but a survey of the main tools available. Taken together, they should be enough to fill most of your PDF needs.

Printing to PDF

GNU/Linux offers several options for producing .PDF files. At the command line, you can use ps2pdf, a script that comes bundled with Ghostscript. As its name suggests, ps2pdf converts postscript files to .PDF format. You can convert a file to postscript within any application by setting up a postscript printer to print to file (you don’t actually need the physical printer). From there, all you need is to enter the command ps2pdf . If you don’t want to change the path or name of the output file, you can omit it altogether to produce a file that has the same name as the postscript input file, but with a .pdf extension.

Complete Article

Download Netscape Navigator ver 9 for Linux

Remember Netscape - the very web browser which once enjoyed a major browser market share and which was nearly killed by Microsoft's anti-competitive practices by its release of Internet Explorer ? The very Netscape navigator whose code base was then released as open source and which lead to the eventual development of the stable and increasingly popular Mozilla and then Firefox? Guess what, it has re-incarnated as Netscape Navigator ver 9.0.

Contrary to popular belief, Netscape Navigator was not dead though its popularity was severely diminished. One of the reasons for it to fall out of favor with the net users was because its succeeding versions accumulated a lot of unnecessary bloat. I remember using Netscape navigator ver 4.0 which was really sleek and then when I upgraded to the next major version, it some how did not live up to the mark of its predecessor.

The new Netscape navigator has shed a lot of fat and is now much sleeker. It is based on Firefox and has a couple of unique features built-in such as :

• Integration with Netscape portal which is now a social bookmarking site (Yes Netscape website is now a social bookmarking/voting site aka digg.com ). From within the web browser without visiting Netscape, you can share and vote for web pages that you find interesting.
• Read the latest news directly from your browser.
• Netscape navigator fixes commonly mis-typed URLs for you.
• And the highlight of ver 9 release is a link pad (Similar to what you have in Opera) which allows you to save interesting links without cluttering your bookmarks.

Netscape ver 9 is available for Linux apart from that for Windows and Mac OSX and is a modest 8.9 MB download. The minimum system requirements are 256 MB RAM and around 100 MB disk space.

If you are interested, you can download Netscape Navigator 9 and take it for a test drive.

OpenSUSE Edu - Linux for Schools and Educational Projects

Novell’s openSUSE project has launched a new initiative dedicated to advancing the public awareness of the popular Linux distribution in the educational community.

A new section of the openSUSE website has been designated as a place where educators and technologists who use openSUSE can post stories about their successes, applications used, and “how-to’s,” the team said in the introductory announcement.

The goal is to eventually create an “add-on” CD called “The openSUSE EDU-CD” (aka “The SLEducator”) that eases the installation and configuration of an educational network and student desktops, the team said. This could work into a sort of “ERP [enterprise resource planning] for education,” the team stated in the announcement of the initiative.

“As more and more schools evaluate Linux as a cost-efficient alternative for their running systems in a way that will be ‘ready for the future of education’ and as more and more home users find out, that their children need a PC (and good PC knowledge) to have a stake in the future,” the team added.

VirtualBox 1.4 released

nnotek released version 1.4 of its famous Open Source virtual machine VirtualBox. Among the new features are 64 bit Linux host support, synchronized clipboards, a user interface for shared folders and native support for VMWare’s disk images. For the first time there are also prepacked versions for Fedora 7, RHEL 5 and Xandros Desktop 4.1 available.

Several of the features added with this release were often asked by the users: while there were previously already the ability to add shared folders it was quite difficult to set up and required long commands in the shell. Now this is no longer necessary due to the new GUI interface. Also, the clipboard synchronization makes it much easier to work with programs on the host and on the vm at the same time.
The native support for VMWare’s virtual disks brings VirtualBox closer to its competitor, making a transition from VMWare to VirtualBox much easier.
On small new feature I personally like is the new notes feature: with this version you can add simple notes to each virtual machine. This helps keeping an overview over the different vms you’re running.

Besides these changes there are many more changelog: serial ports are now supported which might be interesting in case you only have hardware drivers for legacy operating systems. Also, USB ports can now be dynamically added and removed between the virtual machines or given back to the host. Also, the RDP server now supports session shadowing so that the access from more than one client is possible.

For Fedora and RHEL users there are two new features: first of all there are now prepared rpms available for both Fedora 7 and RHEL 5. But for the first time VirtualBox now also works together with an activated SELinux, making it a possible alternative for data centers with higher security standards.

VirtualBox is available in two licences: most of the software is available under the GPLv2. However, the prepacked versions are only available under the VirtualBox Personal Use and Evaluation License (PUEL). The basic differences between these two editions are that you need to pay a licence if you want to use the PUEL versions commercially (personal and academic use is for free) and that the PUEL version has some features the free version doesn’t. Among them: the Remote Display Protocol (RDP) Server, USB support, USB over RDP, Shared Folders and iSCSI initiator.

Use your iPod in Linux

Really good article for those having iPods (as I do not and do not require it … my HTC Artemis with WM6 does the job) and wanting to manage the collection using Linux.

Many people have Linux installed on their computers, but they are afraid of using their iPod on it. Perhaps corrupt files, or damage detour them from using the myriad programs that currently exist for the Linux operating system.

There is good news, you can use your iPod in Linux, and get away from the control of iTunes. I have assembled the very best programs that will sync, edit photos and copy files onto your iPod.

Complete Article

FSF Releases the Fourth and Final Draft of GPLv3

The final version of the GNU General Public License 3.0 should be published before the end of June, bringing to an end some 18 months of discussions around the new license, the Free Software Foundation said on May 31.

The FSF also released the fourth and final draft of GPL version 3 on May 31, referred to as the “final call” draft, which will be open for comments for 29 days. The final license will be released after that.

The most notable changes found in this latest draft include making GPLv3 compatible with version 2.0 of the Apache license; ensuring that distributors who make discriminatory patent deals after March 28 may not convey software under GPLv3; adding terms to clarify how users can contract for private modification of free software or for a data center to run it for them; and replacing the previous reference to a U.S. consumer protection statute with explicit criteria for greater clarity outside the United States, FSF executive director Peter Brown said in a statement.

Also check out: GPLv3 authors comment on final draft

Google Gears : Your Web applications can now be used even when not connected to Internet

Microsoft has had a definite advantage in being a virtual monopoly in the PC market. In the past few years Google has been trying to grab this enviable market share enjoyed by Microsoft by releasing web applications which have similar features of popular Microsoft software products. Thus you have Google spreadsheet as a potential replacement for MS Excel, Gmail, Google Docs as a replacement for MS Word and so on. But till now Google applications lacked a fundamental feature which was that none of the Google products could be used while you are offline. In other words, you needed an Internet connection to use any of the Google offering except Google Desktop search.

Now this is bound to change for once and all and you can look forward to Google storming one of the bastions of Microsoft which is the PC Desktop. Google has just released what they have named as Google Gears. Simply put, Google gears is a web browser extension which makes it possible to make web applications run while you are offline.

Google Gears provides three key features which are :

1. A local server, to cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.) without needing to contact a server.
2. A database, to store and access data from within the browser.
3. A worker thread pool, to make web applications more responsive by performing expensive operations in the background.

Google has released Google Gears as a open source product which means, interested webmasters can use the API to develop their own web applications which work offline. You can go through a Google gears tutorial as well as access some sample applications to whet your appetite.

But what I find most enticing is the fact that Google has simultaneously released the web extension for Linux too along with that for Windows and Mac OSX. If you are interested in say, writing an email in your Gmail account while offline and then connecting to internet just to send the mail, then you can download and try out Google Gears.

Xandros Takes Microsoft’s Linux Patent Protection

Xandros has become the latest Linux distro to hop into bed with Microsoft, announcing a five-year deal for joint development.

The oddball duo will collaborate on systems management, office suite, and server interoperability. Xandros will get protection from Redmond’s legal high command, and support for its sales and marketing efforts, Novell-style.

Legal ponderers are still trying to fathom what effect the release of the third iteration of the GPL will have on the relationships with Linux firms which are being fostered by Microsoft.

Xandros CEO Andreas Typaldos said: “Cross-platform data centers are a reality. To meet evolving customer needs, vendors need to recognize the value of sharing intellectual property, developing more interoperable solutions, and providing management tools that are familiar and easy to use.”

Microsoft recently renewed legal sabre rattling at the open source community, feeding news outlets with snippets of patent infringment accusations. It says Linux and Open Office trip up 235 Microsoft patents, but doesn’t say what or why.

As part of the deal, Xandros and Microsoft will collaborate on interoperability related to office applications, server interoperability, systems management, sales and marketing support and, of course, intellectual property assurance.

“We believe in and encourage respect for all licensing and development models, and intellectual property is an important component in this environment,” said Bill Hilf, general manager of Platform Strategy at Microsoft, said in a statement. “Our announcement with Xandros is an exciting step to deliver what our mutual customers have been asking for.”

Official Press Release from Xandros

Related: Microsoft Gives Xandros Linux Users Patent Protection

Second Plasma screen cast appears, RandR 1.2 lands in KDE

The latest Commit Digest issue comes along with the second Plasma screen cast, this time explaining data engine code. Also, several games moved from review to the main module, and first work at RandR 1.2 support begins for kcontrol.

The Commit Digest issue 61 features also the first screen cast about Plasma together with some additional words by Aaron. While that one focused on the form factor idea in Plasma, the second video focuses on the data engines available:



There are also video downloads available at the Commit Digest.
As you might notice Aaron actually does not show any RSS Plasma widget. I wondered why this is and might have found the explanation deep inside the Digest

an applet for the cia engine. would look nicer if the layouting actually worked properly…

I’m curious about the other data engines we might get and how they will find their way into appealing Plasma widgets.

In the meantime three games left the review and joined the main module just in time<: Bovo, KJumpingCube and KSudoku. While I’ve never tried or even heard of the first two ones I’m very pleased to see that KSudoku made it into the final module - I really use it a lot and really like it. It is the best Sudoku game I’ve seen so far anywhere.

The Commit Digest also mentions the Oxygen meeting which took place this weekend - however, I haven’t seen any screen shots of the new Oxygen Theme for KDE 4 yet. But judging from the other work these guys are doing I think I will not be disappointed…

Anyway, as with every Commit Digest there are some hidden eggs I really like - this time it was a comment about RandR 1.2: Kcontrol will get RandR 1.2 support:

Rename RandRScreen to OldRandRScreen. A new RandRScreen class will be created to handle randr1.2 requests, but the old one will still be used when randr1.2 is not available.
[…]
OldRandRScreen was not a good choice for the class: renaming to LegacyRandRScreen
Add a basic RandRScreen class which will implement the randr1.2 screen calls

In krandrtray, the functions for the legacy randr interface are properly isolated, now it is time to implement the new interface

I was already wondering when the first RandR 1.2 GUIs would come up, and it is nice to see that they will be well integrated with krandrtray and therefore with KDE. The only thing missing now is a radeon graphics driver supporting RandR 1.2.

KDE 4.0: KDE2 2.0

After the final freeze of KDE 3.X I had some thoughts about KDE 4.0 and the expectations the people will have. After all I read it reminded me a bit of everything I read about KDE 2.0.

KDE 4.0 will be totally rewritten in large areas: Phonon, Solid, Plasma, Sonnet, Nepomuk, Strigi, krunner, Raptor, etc. All these new core technologies add huge possibilities - and therefore the users will have huge expectations.

However, not every application will take every core technology to its edge: the developers will need time to get used to the new APIs and also simply to get used to all the new possibilities - there are just so many.
Also, the core technologies will be out in the wild the first time - that means that there will be bugs and parts of these bugs need a 4.1 release to be fixed. In this regard it is already known that Plasma will see quite some changes for KDE 4.1 since the next Qt release will provide specific functions Plasma would like to integrate.

After all I hear, this situation is comparable to KDE 2. When KDE 2 came out there were several brand new technologies for example DCOP, kio and kparts. Also, the konqueror was brand new. The core technologies needed time to smooth out the rough edges, and the application developers needed time to get used to the new things (at least that’s what I was told, at that time I didn’t even knew what KDE is).
And the KDE 4.0 release will be very similar. In this regard KDE 4.0 will remember many people of KDE 2. Like a second release of KDE 2 - but on a new level.

Still, things have changed over time: the entire KDE project matured quite a bit, has much more people working at it and things will be much smoother than at the KDE 2 release. Therefore I’m pretty confident that with KDE 4.1 you won’t notice that there had been a major rework - if you notice it at all.
Of course that does not mean that you should wait until KDE 4.1 - after all I’ve seen there will be enough crazy people (like me) testing KDE 4.0 Alpha and Beta versions so most of the rough edges should be fixed by release date.

The only thing stopping me by now is that my distribution does not provide pre-compiled packages, and my laptop would melt through the desk…

Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit

The first Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit takes place mid June, featuring the fourth Desktop Architects Meeting, an LSB face to face meeting and various council meetings.

The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, taking place form June 13-15 at Google’s Mountain View Campus in the Bay Area, is supposed to bring company and enterprise orientated minds around Linux together. The invitation-only event combines several previously singular events together, among them also the Desktop Architects Meeting which took place last time in december 2006 and the LSB face2face meeting which also took place last time in that December.

The schedule and agenda of this combined event give an overview over the main talks which will be given:

• State of Linux Kernel Roundtable Discussion — What’s New with Core Development
• State of Linux Roundtable discussion — Where are We Going? Where Have We Been? An Industry Perspective
• Cross Industry/Cross Distro Software Development: The Ubuntu Perspective
• How Do We Get More Apps on Linux? What are the Issues Facing Linux Application Development and How do we Solve Them? (Ha, I can answer that one )
• The Legal Protection of Linux - Patents and Licensing, GPLv3 and the Future
• End Users and Linux: What Works, What Doesn’t?
• How Do We Work Together as a Collaborative Community?
• LF Collaboration Summit Reception
• Joint Meeting of the Vendor, User and Developer Advisory Councils

Besides these talks the sub-events also feature their own talks, which adds up to quite a lot. Here is a list of the sub-events, called tracks:

• Desktop Architect’s Meeting 4, the only track which goes two days long
• User Advisory Council Meeting: Device Drivers
• Vendor Advisory Council Meeting
• LSB Face-To-Face Meeting
• Printing On Linux
• Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) Breakout Meeting
• Mobile Linux
• Kernel messaging
• IPv6
• Testing on Linux
• Multimedia/Audio

Ha, find a topic which is missing. To me it looks like almost everything is covered - and I wonder how many people will attend? It is more or less a conference on its own.

The list of speakers is also a nice read: almost every bigger company and distribution is represented there. Also other companies like Adobe or Real which provide Linux apps have speakers there. If you miss the more community centered groups there, they do appear as attendees.

Actually, the list of attendees reads like a who-is-who of the Linux ecosystem - especially the more business centered part. Interesting here are the numbers (although they probably don’t mean much): the distributions (Novell, Red Hat/Fedora and Ubuntu) has each a fistful of people in the game. But there are companies which send more: Nokia and HP send each 6 people, Google 7, Ricoh and IBM each 9 and Intel even 11 people!
While I can understand IBM, HP and Google and definitely appreciate Intel I wonder why other companies like Ricoh send so many people. And Adobe only has the Flash player and Adobe Reader for Linux, why do they send 4 people? And what about Cisco’s 4 members? Do they sell devices with Linux on them? And what is DreamWorks doing there with three attendees? And where is Trolltech?

Anyway, as I said at the beginning, the meeting is focusing on the topics which are important for companies working in the Linux ecosystem. The important non-company community parts are also represented, but clearly are a minority.
This is not bad (yes, for me even companies are part of the community), but knowing that avoids wondering.

I’m looking forward to the outcome of the meeting. I haven’t found any information about where results will be posted/reported.

KDE 3.x final freeze, KDE 4 module freeze

The KDE team announced that the 3.x branch is officially closed. There will be no further features or changes besides bug fixes. In the meantime, the KDE 4 module is frozen as well.

This is it: everything is now heading towards KDE 4. The book on KDE 3.x is now closed:

The Release Team has decided that it is time to close the books on KDE 3.5.

To quote coolo:
“No more features, no more string changes, no more docu changes….
Bug fixes are allowed and after some time we’ll do another maintenance
update 3.5.8 - e.g. in september.”

So bugfixes only from now on in the 3.5 branch. If the bugfix requires
a string change, you will need to coordinate that change with the translators.

Keep in mind that this does not touch the KDE-PIM releases - afaik they have their own schedules and even run an “enterprise” branch which will be updated with bug fixes for a long time.
I also hope that KDE 3.x will be updated for quite a long time in the future in case of security bugs because KDE 3.x will be used for the next months and even years by many, many people. But I think the KDE team will keep an eye on this baby.

But this freeze also means that everyone is now concentrating on KDE 4. As you know all basic technologies are now in shape for the application developers and it is time to take them up.

Of course many things wont make it into KDE 4.0 because even KDE developers are just humans and can only include so much new stuff into their programs. But that’s another story. I wonder when I should start using KDE 4. It really sounds as it becomes ready enough to be used by totally crazy people. Like I am.

Speaking about KDE 4: today is also scheduled for the KDE 4 module freeze:

Trunk is frozen for new or resurrected applications.

This also marks the day where all module maintainers have to announce if they are going to follow the official KDE release schedule or not - as an example, KDE-PIM does not follow the way. However, I doubt that any other module will leave the core. But you never know…
We should also soon see a list of all applications which will make it into KDE 4: the time now comes where all KDE 4.0 applications have to leave kdereview to enter their module. The Module Status Page already gives a first impression about some apps which might be dropped for the KDE 4.0 release.

However, don’t panic if your favourite application is among these: it still can find a place in KDE extragear (where several important apps like Amarok and K3B live) and it also might find its way back into the core with the next release like KDE 4.1.

New in Fedora 7: xdg user directories [Update]

One seldom mentioned new features of Fedora 7 are the new directories in the $HOME directory. These are due to the xdg-users-dir program from the Portland xdg project. In other news, Hello Planet Fedora.

When I started my fresh Fedora 7 install I found several directories in my $HOME i never saw before. Among them:

• Applications
• Download
• Videos
• Music
• Templates

I was surprised because I haven’t seen that mentioned anywhere recently. But it was ok since I already knew that this was Portland xdg related. The directories are created by the xdg-user-dirs.

The xdg-user-dirs have the aim to create and also manage directories with pre-defined functions like “Music directory”, “Video directory”, “Documents directory”, and so on. These are also localized and are managed in the $HOME./config file.

If you want to change the pre-defined values simply modify the config file. If you want to delete a directory, point it to your home directory and afterwards trash the directory itself - in other cases the directories might be re-created.

In other news: Hello Planet Fedora! My blog has been added - well, at least the Fedora related posts. Thanks for that, I just hope that I can meet the readers’ expectations. We will see.
As a short introduction to these who are not familiar with me: In the Fedora world I am a small package maintainer who sometimes writes a howto or a bug report or tries to keep an eye on the German FedoraWiki. Outside of Fedora I also write about KDE and Linux in general. And that’s it, I guess.

Semantic Desktop and KDE 4 - State and Plans of Nepomuk-KDE

Nepomuk-KDE is the basis for the semantic technologies we will see in KDE 4. Sebastian Trüg, the main developer behind Nepomuk-KDE, provided me with some up2date information about the current state and future plans.

The Semantic Desktop describes the idea where users will not only be able to search existing information, but also to search for the meaning and relation of these information. The Nepomuk project creates open standards and APIs around this idea.
And Nepomuk-KDE is the implementation of these standards for KDE.

Nepomuk-KDE: Basics

Technically Nepomuk-KDE uses mainly RDF/S for storing the aggregated data. RDF/S is the standard for storing meta data for the Semantic Web and is therefore also used as the standard in the Semantic Desktop.
The current implementation of Nepomuk-KDE contains an implementation of an RDF repository which stores all the data. According to Sebastian the data can be accessed by DBUS which is the default way to communicate in Nepomuk-KDE (of course). But there are also other ways which might be more convenient to KDE developers:

For a KDE developer, however, it is much simpler to use the knepomuk library which provides convenience wrapper classes to access the repository.
Additionally there is the KMetaData library which is yet another wrapper library which provides easy access to the metadata by a resource-centric view. This is what is supposed to be used for implementing stuff like tagging or rating in applications.

The definitions (aka Ontologies) how the data like tags, comments and so on should be stored in the repository can be found in kmetadata/ontologies in KDE’s svn or in the directory $KDEDIR/share/apps/knepomuk/ontologies if you install kmetadata on your hard disk.

Last but not least, if you integrate Nepomuk-KDE with an application KMetaData can help generating code that hides all “nasty meta data type and property named and type conversion”. See the tutorial KmetaData First Steps at techbase. Also, have a look at the KMetaData apidox.

Besides these entry links and the homepage itself the best place to entry the development is, of course, subscribing to the Nepomuk-KDE e-mail list. Btw., one of the current topics is about a possible new, more catchy name for Nepomuk-KDE

Nepomuk-KDE: Current State

So much about the basics and development stuff - now to the sparkling bits:
In the current implementation Nepomuk-KDE enables the user to store additional meta data in form of tags, comments or ratings. See Nepomuk-KDE in action within Dolphin:

The music file is rated, has a comment and also a tag below the comment field. And this cannot only be done with music files but with all kinds of files:

These comments and tags can be searched of course:

In the first image everything is searched for the term “environment” - and a file with a comment containing this string is listed. In the second search example the string “KDE4″ is searched, and the result shows files which are tagged “KDE4″.

So, finally, tagging has also reached KDE 4 - I must admit that I’m very pleased with this result because I’ve waited for tag support in KDE for much too long.

Nepomuk-KDE: Future

At the moment Sebastian works at a backend for strigi. The final goal is to share the data backend so that strigi uses RDF as well. This would create one single data pool for all meta data on your machine.

The next steps are to integrate Nepomuk-KDE further with the applications of the desktop: There is a Google Summer of Code project to replace digikam’s rating and tagging system with the one from Nepomuk-KDE. Amarok already has exactly the features supported by Nepomuk-KDE for all files (rating, tagging, comments) therefore it only makes sense to merge the data as well. And of course all PIM applications contain a huge amount of data which should be analyzed semantic wise: think of displaying not only an e-mail by a contact but also all related e-mails by other contacts and also all related files which were sent and received.
You can extend this list of applications with any program which needs or wants to store any kind of additional information to used or modified files.

Besides integrating Nepomuk-KDE into other files there is also work ongoing to bring other meta data to Nepomuk-KDE: while atm tags, rating and comments are supported there will be many more types in the future. As already mentioned above with the PIM example data can be grouped around discussions (which e-mail is a forward or reply to which) but also around origin (where does this file comes from and where have it been before).
Also, think of an image viewer which does not onl display the given image but also all images taken at similar times or with similar people on it (digikam supports this already with person tags) or even taken at similar places (geo tagging or identifying names like barcelona07.jpg).
And if you really dare to have a look at a possible but yet far away future: IBM, a Nepomuk partner, has text analyse tools which could be used to analyze the content of for example mails to get a better understanding of what the e-mail is really about.

And there are other things which have to be done as well: Data export, cooperation with other desktop environments, etc. For example, the Nepomuk project itself plans to create a P2P based solution for sharing files together with their meta data, and at some point in the future Nepomuk-KDE should implement this part of the standard as well.

As you see there are lots of things to do, and there is room for almost every kind of participation. Just send an e-mail to the developers list. You can also simply leave a comment at this post if you are interested, the developers will keepn an eye on the comments.

Howto: Sun Java on Fedora 7

For legal reasons Sun’s Java is not included with Fedora 7 yet. However, with a bit of effort you can install it in a sane way.

The stress is on “a sane way” because the different Java versions could interfere with each other. Also, if you do it the wrong way, your java might be upgraded to the new, Fedora own version gcj.

However, before you start you should be sure that you really need Sun’s Java: read the Java FAQ from the Fedora project and also the information about the current state of OpenJDK on Fedora.
Also, first look at the Current Issues mentioned below before you start following this Howto!

The main part of this howto is taken from Jpackage’s help pages, which are much shorter and not distribution specific.

Download and Install

Here are the steps you have to do:
Prepare your system by installing necessary build tools (yes, you do have to compile stuff, unfortunately): yum -y install rpmdevtools. Also, make sure the package jpackage-utils is installed, which should be default.

Afterwards, download the latest java-1.x.0-sun-1.x.0.x-1jpp.nosrc.rpm package from the non-free branch at jpackage. In this case I took the 1.5.0 file.
It is a source rpm file, therefore it will install itself into /usr/src/redhat/... if installed as root, or into the local package build environment if installed as user.
Afterwards, check the given spec file java-1.x.0-sun.spec which is in .../SPECS or similar but in your home directory. Again, in my case it was a 1.5.0 file.
Now you have to download the appropriate java bin file from Sun - and this can be a bit tricky. In the worst case check the mentioned spec file for any link (search for the string http) - in my case I found the needed binary here.
Take the SDK and download the binary, not the self extracting RPM, to the .../SOURCES directory. Make also sure that the minor numbers of the binary are ok with the numbers given in the spec file: in my case the binary had the minor version 1.5.0-12, while the spec file defined the buildver 11. Correct this if needed.

Afterwards, recreate the java rpm: rpmbuild -ba java-1.x.0-sun.spec. You should find your new java binary in .../RPMS/i586. If they are not there, something went wrong, and you should hurry over to the next Fedora specialized forum.

However, if it did work, you can now install them. There might be some dependencies, solve this by using yum:
yum --nogpgcheck localinstall java*.rpm
You need the no-gpg option here because your local created rpms are not signed, of course.

Configure your system

After the install your basic system should already be configured:
$ java -version
java version “1.5.0_12″
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_12-b04)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_12-b04, mixed mode)

If this did not happen for any reason, change the default java system to Sun’s: /usr/sbin/alternatives --config java

You also might want to install the Firefox/Mozilla plugin:
ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0.12/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin_oji.so

Current Issues

This way has one current issue: the spec file calls the mkfontdir executable at the wrong place, resulting in an error during install of the java-fonts package. However, patching a spec file would go beyond this short point&click howto (although it is already a bit beyond that).