Software News

One of the greatest strengths of Linux is the fact that is can be used to enable the smallest embedded devices and scale all the way to literally the most powerful computer on Earth.

Despite valiant efforts by Fedora developers to try and get the Fedora 18 release (aka the Spherical Cow) out before the end of 2012, that's just not going to happen.

The Fedora 18 beta has been delayed again, pushing out the final general availability of the Spherical Cow until January of 2013. Fedora 18 Beta release is now set for Nov 27th with a final release set for January 08, 2013.

On a forward looking basis, the Fedora community is now voting on the Cow's successor name for Fedora 19. There are eight possible choices that the Fedora community will vote on:Cubical Calf, Higgs Boson, Loch Ness Monster Martian Blueberries, Newtonian Dynamics, Parabolic Potassium, Schrödinger's Cat and Tiddalik

Voting for the Fedora 19 name ends on November 15th with the winner set to be announced on November 16th.

Though it doesn't have as funky a name as the upcoming Fedora 18 release, the Linux Mint 14 release is definitely something that many Linux users are looking forward too.

Now at the RC stage, the Linux Mint 14 release, aka Nadia is now out in both MATE and Cinnamon flavors.

"After 6 months of incremental development, Linux Mint 14 features an impressive list of improvements, increased stability and a refined desktop experience," Linux Mint founder Clem Lefebvre wrote. " We’re very proud of MATE, Cinnamon, MDM and all the components used in this release, and we’re very excited to show you how they all fit together in Linux Mint 14."

Both Fedora and Linux Mint are primarily aimed at modest usage requirements (though modest is difficult to define). Linux can and does scale far beyond its humble community roots to power the most powerful computers in the world.

Not just one or two of them, but nearly ALL of them.

The latest Top 500 Supercomputer list debuted this week and the numbers for Linux are staggering with 469 out of 500 machines on the list are currently powered by Linux.

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.

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Free Newsletters : Server Tech Daily October 22, 2012By Sean Michael Kerner

Ubuntu is one of the most popular Linux distributions in the world today. Depending on who you believe, the number of Ubuntu users could well top 20 millions for both desktop and server installations.

This past week Ubuntu 12.10, the Quantal Quetzal was officially released, marking the second and final major update to Ubuntu Linux this year.

On the server side, the Ubuntu 12.10 release is noteworthy primarily for one key item: the OpenStack Folsom cloud. Ubuntu was the first major Linux distribution to embrace OpenStack and continues to be the core reference implementation for the wildly popular open source cloud platform.

Ubuntu isn't just packaging and supporting Folsom, the Linux vendor is also enabling more robust provisioning and control by way of enhancements to Juju. Juju is the Ubuntu provisioning system and in Ubuntu 12.0 the system has been improved with a new visual interface. The goal of the new interface is to make it easier for system administrator to visually understand, control and orchestrate their environments, physical, virtual or cloud.

On the desktop side, Ubuntu 12.10 take aim at bringing the cloud and its myriad applications down to the desktop level. The improved Dash interface has the ability to search both local as well as cloud storage. Search also includes the somewhat controversial inclusion of Amazon results.

"Ubuntu 12.10 is the operating system for the multi-device era," Jane Silber, CEO at Canonical stated. "It makes life significantly easier for users by adapting Ubuntu to the way people really access their content today: online and on the hard drive, at work and at home, on the phone and, of course, on the PC."

As Ubuntu 12.10 went out the door, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth announced initial plans for the next major release, 13.04. The first big reveal was the new name – the Raring Ringtail.

"Go read the dictionary. R is just loaded with juicy stuff we can’t use without invoking the radge wrath of the rinky-dink chorus. Sigh," Shuttleworth blogged. "Nevertheless, somewhere between the risibly rambunctious and the reboantly ran-tan, the regnally rakish and the reciprocornously rorty, there was bound to be a good fit. Something radious or rident, something to rouse our rowthy rabble."

While the name of each new Ubuntu release is an interesting exercise, perhaps more interesting this time around was a surprise decision to bring some development in-house instead of doing all the development work out in the open.

"We thought we would extend the invitation to people who trust us and in whom we have reason to trust, to work together on some sexy 13.04 surprises," Shuttleworth wrote. "The projects range from webby (javascript, css, html5) to artistic (do you obsess about kerning and banding) to scientific (are you a framerate addict) to glitzy (pixel shader sherpas wanted) to privacy-enhancing (how is your crypto?) to analytical (big daddy, big brother, pick your pejorative)."

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.

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Few topics on the Linux Planet are as contentious as those that deal with Microsoft, Secure boot and Money.

Microsoft's UEFI Secure Boot plans for Windows 8 have been an issue of concern to the Linux community for much of this year. With Secure Boot, only signed code can run at boot time on validated Windows 8 hardware, with the signing tightly aligned to Microsoft. The fear is that hardware that is originally built and shipped to run Windows 8, will not be able to run Linux.

Linux distribution including Red Hat, Ubuntu and SUSE have all proposed their own respective approaches and potential solution to the problem in recent months. Last week, the Linux Foundation weighed in, with a potential stop gap solution that is distribution agnostic and might just work for all Linux distributions.

"In a nutshell, the Linux Foundation will obtain a Microsoft Key and sign a small pre-bootloader which will, in turn, chain load (without any form of signature check) a predesignated boot loader which will, in turn, boot Linux (or any other operating system)," James Bottomley, Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board explained. "This pre-bootloader can be used either to boot a CD/DVD installer or LiveCD distribution or even boot an installed operating system in secure mode for any distribution that chooses to use it."

This pre-bootloader will be obtained by the Linux Foundation and made freely available to all Linux users. The issue with the Linux Foundation's approach though is that it doesn't necessarily enhance Linux security, but rather is just an enabling approach.

"The current pre-bootloader is designed as an enabler only in that, by breaking the security verification chain at the actual bootloader, it provides no security enhancements over booting linux with UEFI secure boot turned off," Bottomley said. "Its sole purpose is to allow Linux to continue to boot on platforms that come by default with secure boot enabled."

The Ubuntu 12.10, aka the Precise Pangolin release is set to officially become generally available on Thursday October 18th. While Canonical will offer various forms of commercial support (Ubuntu Advantage, Landscape) that provides monetization options, Ubuntu 12.10 offers a few new options.

One of them is the option to simply donate.

"By introducing a ‘contribute’ screen as part of the desktop download process, people can choose to financially support different aspects of Canonical’s work: from gaming and apps, developing the desktop, phone and tablet, to co-ordination of upstreams or supporting Ubuntu flavour," Canonical's Steve George wrote in a blog post. " It’s important to note that Ubuntu remains absolutely free, financial contribution remains optional and it is not required in order to download the software."

One of the most popular and widely used Linux distributions in the cloud, is the Amazon Linux AMI virtual distribution.

The Amazon Linux AMI 2012.09 update provides the Linux 3.2.30 kernel, PHP 5.4 and OpenJDK 7.

"After we removed the “Public Beta” tag from the Amazon Linux AMI last September, we’ve been on a six month release cycle focused on making sure that EC2 customers have a stable, secure, and simple Linux-based AMI that integrates well with other AWS offerings," Amazon Linux AMI developer Max Spevack wrote in a blog post

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.

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Free Newsletters : Server Tech Daily November 26, 2012By Sean Michael Kerner

There is no shortage on the Linux Planet of different Linux flavors to enjoy This past week, we saw three very different distributions put out milestone releases to suit different user tastes.

Ever since it first appeared on the Linux scene, Linux Mint has been an attractive Linux flavor for desktop usability.

Linux Mint founder Clem Lefebvre has been a leading voice for alternatives to Gnome 3's Unity and Shell, providing users with viable Gnome based alternatives. The Mint 14 release provides the latest version of the MATE and Cinnamon Linux desktops as well as providing users with the latest Linux goodness. Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu 12.10 and leverages the Linux 3.5 kernel.

Mint 14 includes MATE version 1.4 which according to the release notes, " …not only strengthens the quality and stability of the desktop but it goes beyond GNOME 2 by fixing bugs which were in GNOME 2 for years and by providing new features which were previously missing."

While MATE is based on Gnome 2, Cinnamon is based on Gnome 3 and provides it's own set of innovations with Linux Mint 14.

"Within this release cycle, Cinnamon developed at an amazing pace and its development was frozen in preparation for Linux Mint 14," the release notes state. "The result is impressive and despite all these new features, Cinnamon 1.6 is more stable than its predecessor."

One of the key new features in Cinnamon 1.4 is the Nemo file browser which is intended as a improvement over the Nautilus file browser that is typically the default in Gnome.

While Linux Mint Founder Clem Lefebvre created the Cinnamon desktop, it's a project that is open source and available to any that choose to embrace it.

One such project that has chosen to spice its distribution with Cinnamon is the Cinnarch distributions. Cinnarch leverages the Cinnamon desktop on top of the Arch Linux distribution.

Arch is a rolling release, and as such the Cinnarch 2012.11.22 release is really a milestone snapshot for media. For those users looking to install a fresh system, there are still some bits that aren't quite as friendly as they one day will become.

For one, Cinnarch 2012.11.22 still does not yet have its own graphical installer (so command line goodness it is!).

While Linux Mint and Cinnarch are all about the desktop experience, Vyatta is about the network.

This past week Vyatta released Vyatta Core 6.5, the latest release of its network operating system. The new release provides a new Virtual Tunnel Interface (VTI) features for VPNs.

"A VTI provides a termination point for a site-to-site IPsec VPN tunnel and allows it to behave like routable interfaces," Vyatta staffer Stephen Harpster wrote. "In addition to simplifying the IPsec configuration, it enables many common routing capabilities to be used because the endpoint is associated with an actual interface."

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.

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There are more than a few folks that aren't happy with the current direction of systemd and the udev device manager. One of those folks is none other than Linus Torvalds who recently called out udev development as entering into 'crazy mode' where known problematic changes are introduced.

"After speaking with several other Gentoo developers that share Linus' concerns, I have decided to form a team to fork udev," Gentoo developer Richard Yao wrote in a mailing list posting. "Our plan is to eliminate the separate /usr requirement from our fork, among other things."

Gentoo developers could also potentially be joined by Debian developers in what could turn out to be a groundswell of protest against the Red Hat led developments in systemd.

"As Gentoo guys and some major kernel people are protesting about the insanity Kay and Lennart have done to udev, probably this is a window of opportunity to stop being annoyed in Debian, by brutal RedHat decisions which we don't necessarily (have to) agree on (eg: move to /usr, merge with systemd, etc.)," Debian developer Thomas Goirand wrote on the Debian developers mailing list.

Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman, one of the original authors of udev has chimed in on the Gentoo fork and he isn't all that convinced it will succeed.

"As I posted elsewhere, working on a project based on "hate" only lasts so long," Kroah-Hartman wrote on a Gentoo mailing list. " I should know, that's the reason I started udev in the first place over 9 years ago.You need to have a real solid goal in place in order to be able to keep this up in the long-run. Otherwise you are going to burn yourself out,and end up alienating a lot of people along the way."

Peppermint Three came out and the end of July. Peppermint is a cloud/desktop hybrid Linux operating system that is based on Lubuntu, the LXDE variant of Ubuntu.

With the new respins, Peppermint users get updated installation media for the July release. Beyond just a media update, there is also a noticeable desktop change that has been made.

"We changed the desktop notifications back to the way they were in Peppermint Two after several users noted that the way they were implemented in Three seemed to be a bit of a step backward compared to the previous iterations," Peppermint developer Kendall Weaver wrote in his release announcement.

What could be the final Linux kernel release of 2012 is now almost done. Linus Torvalds released the sixth release candidate for Linux 3.7 late Friday. With the U.S Thanksgiving holiday he's on vacation this week, but that might not stop him from putting out a release.

"I'll have a laptop with me as I'm away, but if things calm down even further, I'll be happy," Torvalds wrote. "I'll do an -rc7, but considering how calm things have been, I suspect that's the last -rc. Unless something dramatic happens."

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.

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The Common Criteria Certification process is a long and arduous one. Common Criteria provides Evaluation Assurance Level that is the standard that U.S. Government and other large enterprises use as the basis of software qualification for production usage.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 is now certified at EAL 4+ for the Operating System Protection Profile (OSPP). It's a process that has taken nearly two years since the RHEL 6 distribution was first released back in November of 2010.

RHEL 5 received its EAL 4+ certification back in June of 2007, nearly 18 months after the initial release of RHEL 5 in March of 2006.

"This is marks our 15th completed Common Criteria certification for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, earning Red Hat a place at the top of the list of the industry’s most certified operating systems," Paul Smith, vice president and general manager, Public Sector operations at Red Hat, said in a statement. "We’ve been deeply committed to security certifications so that customers can confidently turn to Red Hat for the expertise to deploy open source solutions at maximum security levels, and our work with Dell, HP, IBM and SGI on this certification reinforces that government customers can run Red Hat Enterprise Linux with confidence on a wide variety of hardware from many of the industry’s top providers."

The move to a new alternative to X11 is now going to start getting real with the release of the Wayland 1.0 protocol this past week.

"As I've said before, 1.0 doesn't mean we're done or that the protocol can't move forward," Wayland developer Kristian Høgsberg wrote. "What it means, is that we're confident that the protocol we have now covers the basic features and that we can build whatever new functionality we need with and on top of 1.0."

Linux creator Linus Torvalds pushed out the third release candidate in the Linux 3.7 release cycle, on Sunday. The third release candidate is following the normal cadence of approximately one release candidate per week following the code merge.

The biggest item for Linux 3.7 remains the unified approach to ARM. Instead of multiple ARM branches, Linux 3.7 will have one, making it easier to maintain and deploy.

Torvalds also used the rc3 release to let loose on light hearted rant about naming and in particular the name Linus.

"Christ people, some of you need to change your names," Torvalds wrote. "I'm used to there being multiple "David"s and "Peter"s etc, but there are three different Linus's in just this rc. People, people, I want to feel like the unique snowflake I am, not like just another anonymous guy in a crowd. I'm getting myself a broadsword."
Linus "there can be only one" Torvalds

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.

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Free Newsletters : Server Tech Daily October 7, 2012By Sean Michael Kerner

This past week, Linux 3.6 was released, but perhaps the bigger news is what is coming in Linux 3.7 as the continuous evolution of Linux pushes development forward.

ARM has long been a thorn in the side of Linux creator, Linus Torvalds. Unlike x86 which is a relatively unified architecture, ARM is fragmented which has posed some non-trivial challenges for Linux. That's all about to change with the Linux 3.7 kernel.

Torvalds merged code in last week that will fundamentally change the way ARM is handled in Linux.

"This is a pretty significant branch," the code commitstates. " It's the introduction of the first multiplatform support on ARM, and with this (and the later branch) merged, it is now possible to build one kernel that contains support for highbank, vexpress, mvebu, socfpga, and picoxcell."

So instead of having multiple ARM branches, which has led to additional complexity and Linux development challenges, there will now be one.

The move towards ARM is an important one for both mobile devices that build on ARM as well as new scale-out architectures for server deployments as well. Ubuntu, Red Hat and SUSE all now have active ARM efforts as server vendors including HP take aim at building the nascent ARM server market.

Arch is a rolling release based distribution and as such each milestone release isn't the big deal that say a new Ubuntu or Fedora release typically is. That said, there are still plenty of new builds and new users that start with Arch in any given month and for them, new milestones are important as they update the baseline install for Arch.

"The October release of the Arch Linux install medium is available for Download and can be used for new installs or as a rescue system," Arch developer Pierre Schmitz wrote in his release announcement.

As usual, the updated installation media includes a pile of updated packages. At least one of them though will make a significant difference for new users. As of the 2012.10.06 update, systemd is used to boot up the live system. Schmitz also noted that, "initscripts are no longer available on the live system but are still installed by default on the target system. This is likely to change in the near future."

On a somewhat related note, a Cinnamon desktop based derivative of Arch debuted this week with its Cinnarch 2012.10.01 update. Cinnarch now also used the same systemD as the mainline update for Arch. Cinnarch differs in that it includes Cinnamon 1.6.1 by default for desktop users, as an alternative to GNOME Shell.

Also on the subject of incremental updates last week is the LibreOffice 3.6.2 update. This is the third release from the 3.6 branch of LibreOffice and is primarily a stability and bug fix update.

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.

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