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Headlines for July 4, 2008
TechWorld takes a look at KOffice 2.0 Alpha 8. "KOffice 2.0 Alpha 8 ships as a suite of applications. In addition to the familiar word processor (KWord), spreadsheet (Kspread) and charting (Kchart), and presentation applications (KPresenter), KOffice has a wealth of tools for content design, manipulation and display. For the creative professional, there's Krita a fully-fledged graphic design and image manipulation tool, Karbon14 a Scalable Vector Graphics editor, and Kivio for flowcharts and diagrams. Also included is Kexi for database development (touted as "Microsoft Access for Linux"), and KPlato for project management. Other tools are KnetAttach, a network folder wizard, Kformula for mathematical formula editing, and a thesaurus." (Found on KDE.News)
SUSE has updated sudo, courier-authlib, gnome-screensaver, clamav, php5, ImageMagick, GraphicsMagick, mtr, bind, pcre, tomcat, squid, freetype2 (various issues).
Mandriva has updated php (multiple vulnerabilities: 2007.1, Corporate 4.0, 2008.0, 2008.1, Corporate 3.0, Multi Network Firewall 2.0, Corporate 4.0).
Fedora 8 has updated ruby (multiple vulnerabilities).
Debian has updated wordpress (several vulnerabilities).
Google's purchase of YouTube always seemed questionable to some observers: it looked as if Google were buying itself a whole new source of copyright lawsuits. One of the benefits of that purchase came through on July 2, when a U.S. District Court ordered Google to hand over its complete set of YouTube traffic logs, containing information about every video viewed on the service. See Groklaw for the full text of the order. If this order stands, millions of users worldwide will have their viewing data handed over to a litigious entertainment industry company. There's a couple of important implications to draw from this turn of events, so LWN will venture a little far afield and take a look.
The first maintenance release to the Ubuntu "Hardy" release is available. They've fixed a number of issues, but not all of them... "While we have fixed a number of audio-related issues, including a scheduler problem that caused audio stuttering under load, other audio playback problems may still exist, because so far we have been unable to verify a targeted fix that does not cause regressions for other users."
Free Software Magazine reviews the Acer Linpus Linux Lite ultra portable laptop. "It is due to launch here in the UK in early July with the GNU/Linux version with a price tag of £199. (Yes, surprise, surprise, they’re offering Windows XP too.) Given the specification (Intel atom N270 chip, 8.9 inch screen, webcam, 1024 x 600 resolution, 8GB SSD, three USB ports, VGA, and two SD card slots, two mini PCI slots (one for the WiFi and one for upcoming Wimax or HSDPA), Ethernet port, touchpad, 802.11b/g WiFi and a default 512MB of memory with a spare slot to add more) the Aspire One represents stonking good value for money."
Purple Labs has announced the acquisition of Openwave Systems. "Purple Labs, a French developer of Linux-based mobile software, today announced that it has completed its acquisition of the mobile client software business of California-based Openwave Systems, in an asset sale valued at more than $32 million. The browser and messaging products acquired in the deal are among the best-selling mobile applications in the world, having already shipped in more than 1.5 billion mobile phones. Following the acquisition, Purple Labs now supplies mobile browser software to all of the top 5 phone manufacturers, which together produce over 80% of the world’s mobile phones."
CentOS: has updated seamonkey (multiple vulnerabilities) and firefox (multiple vulnerabilities).
Fedora 8 has updated glib2 (buffer overflow), openldap (denial of service) and linuxdcpp (denial of service).
Fedora 9 has updated glib2 (buffer overflow), openldap (denial of service), linuxdcpp (denial of service), ruby (multiple vulnerabilities) and squid (denial of service).
rPath has updated mercurial (unauthorized access) and tshark/wireshark (multiple vulnerabilities).
c|net reports on Invitrogen's switch to servers running SUSE Linux. "Invitrogen is a billion-dollar supplier to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, with 4,700 employees worldwide and a history of supplying many of the world's leading laboratories in groundbreaking research like the discovery of the AIDS virus. To help promote its innovative work, Invitrogen announced this week that it is standardizing on Novell's SUSE® Linux Enterprise for its servers."
The 2.6.25.10 stable kernel update has been released. "It contains a number of assorted bugfixes all over the tree. And once again, any users of the 2.6.25 kernel series are STRONGLY encouraged to upgrade to this release."
The LWN.net Weekly Edition for July 3, 2008 is available.
Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition
- Front: More DTrace envy; Mozilla plans for Firefox 3 and beyond; Netgear's open router.
- Security: Ruby security flaws expose release process problems; New vulnerabilities in firefox, kernel, mysql, perl,...
- Kernel: Making power policy just work; TASK_KILLABLE; Some development statistics for 2.6.26 - and beyond.
- Distributions: A look at openSUSE 11.0; Ubuntu "Intrepid" alpha; Debian teams survey results; openSUSE 11.1 Roadmap
- Development: The OLPC project releases 10GB of sound samples, ratproxy open-sourced, new versions of Busybox, libnetfilter, nginx, Accelerator, jack_capture, pyogp, WOMBAT, wxPython, Perceptual Diff, Wine, Claws Mail, MediaInfo, OxygenOffice Pro, Firefox, NSS, ConfigObj, Docutils, GIT, diff3-ov.
- Press: Feature on Google Android, rant on Linux 3D graphics, Red Hat profit grows, Linux laptops in India, Morgan Gillis interview, Guido van Rossum interview, about:mobile debuts, don't fork KDE 4.
- Announcements: Final Fedora board appointment, CadSoft Eagle 5.1, Xandros buys Linspire, LiPS and LiMo merge, Netgear's open wireless-G router, Openmoko Neo Freerunner available, BA-Con CFP, CCC CFP, piksel08 cfp, Python Papers cfp, Deepsec registration, Web 2.0 keynotes, LugRadio ending.
Barracuda Networks has announced the filing of a software patent countersuit against Trend Micro, using three freshly-acquired patents. "'The reality is that Trend Micro is asking Barracuda Networks to pay for the use of the free and open source ClamAV software,' said Dean Drako, president and CEO of Barracuda Networks. 'We have asserted all along that Trend Micro's actions are unjust and could have serious implications against the open source community and other free and open source projects.'"
See also: this LinuxWorld article on the countersuit.
Debian has updated sympa (denial of service).
Fedora has updated the kernel (heap corruption and buffer overflow).
Red Hat has updated seamonkey (multiple vulnerabilities), firefox (RHEL4, RHEL5: multiple vulnerabilities), Red Hat Application stack for RHEL4 (obscure MySQL vulnerability) and RHEL5 (same plus several PHP vulnerabilities).
SUSE has updated the kernel (multiple vulnerabilities).
Slackware has updated xorg-server (multiple vulnerabilities).
Ubuntu has updated firefox (multiple vulnerabilities).
Nearly a year ago, we looked at the status of SystemTap in the context of Sun's much-hyped DTrace tool. Since that time there has been progress, but the basic problem still remains: Linux does not have a good, ready-to-run answer to those wanting the equivalent functionality of DTrace. Due to an apparent disconnect between the developers of SystemTap and the kernel hackers, tracing for the Linux kernel—never mind user space programs—is not up to the competition. This article (subscribers only) looks at recent discussions on the issue and possible paths toward a solution to this problem.
Here's an ars technica article telling frustrated KDE 4 users to give the project a bit more time. "The single greatest strength of Plasma is the inherent mutability that it brings to the desktop. It provides a very flexible framework within which the developers can experiment with completely different paradigms for basic components of the user interface. That is why a fork is a profoundly misguided option at this stage."
Openmoko has announced that its long-awaited phone will go on sale on July 4. "The Openmoko Neo FreeRunner utilizes GNU/Linux and comes with core software for dialing, SMS and recording contacts. Openmoko will supplement these features with periodic downloads beginning with a software suite that takes full advantage of the phone's hardware platform. The new software, debuting at Linux world in August, will provide exciting new location based applications."
Now that openSUSE 11.0 is out, the project is looking forward to the 11.1 release. It's planned for December 18, and includes GNOME 2.24, KDE 4.1, and the 2.6.27 kernel. "Want to get involved? The start of a release cycle is a great time to get involved in openSUSE development."
Xandros has sent out a set of questions and (not entirely satisfying) answers from its CEO regarding the acquisition of Linspire. On the question of how big the combined company will be: "Xandros has been on a fast growth path for the last couple of years; has an aggressive headcount and revenue growth plan at this time; and is currently in heavy hiring mode. We believe that at this point Xandros is already the third largest Linux Company in the world, and that we may already be the largest private Linux Company in the world."
cloudsecurity.org has an interview with Guido van Rossum on the topics of Google App Engine, Python and Security. "cloudsecurity.org: I recently attended a fascinating talk by Justin Ferguson (a Seattle based security consultant) at eusecwest in London. He gave a great talk exploring security vulnerabilities in language interpreters and specifically highlighted some security weaknesses in Python App Engine. What are your thoughts on his research and specifically the Python issues he highlighted? When do you anticipate they will get fixed? GvR: We’ve anticipated all of the possibilities raised in Justin’s talk, and took measures to protect our users. Justin highlighted weaknesses in Python, but not in App Engine. Furthermore, our security model does not rely solely upon protections within the Python interpreter; there are additional protections that these external analyses have missed."
Linux-Watch looks at Linux laptops for school children in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. "In evaluating laptop hardware, ELCOT claims to have two primary tests. One is a "fire walk test" that requires laptops to survive being stood and walked upon by 175-pound people. The other -- hopefully easier to pass -- requires that they fully support Linux."
The Linux Hater's Blog has a rant on the state of 3D graphics in Linux. "Alright, so as soon as I started bitching about graphics, my coworker, lets just call him Linux Graphics Hater (warm applause everyone! ready those tomatoes!), went off on a rant the technical reasons why open source ATI and intel drivers still suck ass. He also corrected me that nvidia might actually be making money from some of these linux drivers. Good for them, but as long as they're still kind of hiding the fact that they're only really doing it for their paying customers, I think it supports my overall point." (Thanks to Bob Miller)