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Articles by James Darvell
Inside the Mechanics, Struggles of Berlin Airlift
The weather was far from ideal as Major General Tunner approached Tempelhof airport. Under normal situations, all flights would be grounded. Solid sheets of rain blocked radar signals, and heavy storm clouds had descended to crest the nearby buildings. Visibility was poor to zero. Normally, the heavily laden C-54 Skymaster would have been redirected 600 miles to the nearest serviceable landing field. But nothing about the last few weeks had been normal.
VIDEO: Cooking With Linux: Lots and Lots of Word Processors! The Tuesday Linux Journal Show
VIDEO: Cooking With Linux: Lots and Lots of Word Processors! The Tuesday Linux Journal Show
Peppermint 7 Released
Peppermint 7 launched a few days ago. Peppermint is a lightweight Ubuntu-based Linux distribution with an emphasis on speed and simplicity. Although the name is similar to Linux Mint, the projects aren't directly related. Peppermint originally was envisioned as a "spicier" alternative to Mint—whatever that means! Many distros come with a wide assortment of feature-rich applications, and that's great for power users who need those apps.
SuperTuxKart 0.9.2 Released
Linux gamers all over the world will be happy to hear that a new version of SuperTuxKart is available. This should strike a nostalgic chord to people who have used desktop Linux to play games during the past ten years. At first glance, it bears more than a passing resemblance to Mario Kart, but it has its own charm. With a number of unique tracks and game modes, the gameplay is quite different (but still very familiar).
OpenSwitch Finds a New Home
OpenSwitch has joined the Linux Foundation's stable of networking projects. This is a significant step. It means the network operating system's development will be driven by community needs, instead of the needs of few private companies. OpenSwitch was released as an open-source project by Hewlett-Packard. It's a complete network operating system (NOS) based on Linux. As the name suggests, it's designed for use in data-center switches.
Snappy Moves to New Platforms
Canonical's Snappy package manager is taking its first steps outside the Ubuntu world. As of now, you can install it on Arch, Debian, Fedora and several other popular distros. And with developers like Mozilla getting behind it, it could soon become a new "universal standard". Snappy has more than a few fans—and plenty of detractors too. It certainly seems to be stirring up some strong emotions online. Could it be the next systemd?
Git 2.9 Released
A new version of Git was released this week, bringing a number of improvements that will be a welcome sight to software developers. Alongside the normal bug fixes and general maintenance work, some interesting new experimental features have been added. Git is an open-source version control system. If you have no experience in software development, you may be scratching your head right now.
Blender for Visual Effects
Video editing and visual effects are two closely related fields. They're also dominated by expensive proprietary software. There are open-source alternatives to some of these packages, and some of them stand up very well by comparison. Blender and Natron are two outstanding examples of FOSS software that give the big names a run for their money. Blender was once a commercial package, but the source was opened and given to the community.
Ubuntu Online Summit
There's a fundamental difference between conferences for community-driven projects and closed-source commercial software. While Microsoft, Apple and other large companies hold regular meetings to keep developers updated, the information almost always flows in one direction. They (the software owners) tell us (the software users) what they are working on and what they are about to release. These releases almost always come out of the blue often leave the developer community scrabbling to catch up.
Google's SwiftShader Released
Year by year, plain-old HTML 5 websites are becoming fancier, and right now, the home entertainment world is buzzing about VR and 3D. But most sites are missing the boat; they have no 3D content. Well, that's about to change. Google recently opened the source code for its SwiftShader project. If you have used Google Chrome or Android, you probably have seen SwiftShader in action before. It's a high-performance software renderer that improves the performance of games or 3D content on low-end machines.
Libarchive Security Flaw Discovered
When it comes to security, everyone knows you shouldn't run executable files from an untrustworthy source. Back in the late 1990s, when web users were a little more naive, it was quite common to receive infected email messages with fake attachments. The attachments usually were disguised as images or mp3s, but a quick look would tell you they were executables. Nevertheless, the promise of illicit images often overwhelmed common sense, and millions of machines were infected.
A Code Boot Camp for Underprivileged Kids
A science center in Johannesburg, South Africa, has opened the doors to a five-month course in Linux-based Web apps and entrepreneurial skills. The training is available free of charge to underprivileged students from nearby townships; if it's successful, it will be rolled out nationwide. The Sci-Bono Discovery Center, based in Newtown, has been a strong supporter of education for school children and youth of the townships since it opened in 2006.
Tor 0.2.8.6 Is Released
The latest version of the Tor project was released this week, offering greater security and anonymity to individuals and organizations. Here's why you should care. Once upon a time, worrying about government surveillance was a sure sign of paranoia. Unless you were building bombs or stealing secrets, the spies and spooks couldn't be bothered. Today, governments can and do spy on all of us.
Better Cloud Storage with ownCloud 9.1
A new version of ownCloud community edition has been released, and it brings a number of important updates, new features and security improvements. The result is a more useful and safe environment for collaboration and cloud storage. OwnCloud is an open-source alternative to commercial services like Dropbox and Google Drive. It offers complete control over the environment, and the only storage limit is the physical size your hard disk. It's extremely useful to organizations and individuals.
New Version of GParted
Back in my Windows days, disk maintenance was a task that filled me with dread. I remember the endless hours spent scanning, defragmenting and scanning again. And partitioning the hard disk always held a special terror for me—I'd heard too many stories of hard drives bricked when Windows decided to reboot at a critical point in the process. Life on Linux has been much less stressful. The modern filesystems have made endless defragging a thing of the past for me, and partitioning is much simpler too.
Sony Settles in Linux Battle
When Sony released its PlayStation 3 console in 2006, most fans were excited by the enhanced graphics and processing power, but a small (yet significant) group of buyers was excited about an entirely different feature. The PS3 allowed users to install an alternative operating system on their machines—a feature they called Other OS. Users were free to choose from several operating systems, including Linux. And, it wasn't the first time Sony had released a Linux-compatible console.
The FBI and the Mozilla Foundation Lock Horns over Known Security Hole
The Mozilla Foundation and the FBI recently have clashed over security weaknesses. The FBI is aware of a weakness in the Tor browser that may affect Firefox—it's a weakness the FBI has exploited during an investigation. Mozilla wants the FBI to reveal the details of the exploit ahead of the trial, but the FBI is playing its cards close to its chest. Because of the potential risk to its users, Mozilla has turned to the courts to force the FBI to reveal its information.
The US Government and Open-Source Software
As part of the "Second Open Government National Action Plan", the federal government is planning to share the source code behind many of its software projects. To begin with, the plans call for federal agencies to share code with each other. This will help reduce development costs when government departments each work on the same functionality independently. Solving the same problem twice (or more often) is expensive and a waste of taxpayer's money.
Open-Source Project Secretly Funded by CIA
It's fair to say that the interests of governments and the FOSS community are not always aligned. That's not to say that the US government is out to crush every FOSS project or that every FOSS user is on a secret mission to destroy the government. Nonetheless, the relationship is often a strained one.
Tighter Security in OwnCloud v9
OwnCloud is a free Web-based app that provides Dropbox-style file hosting. With the release of version 9 on the horizon, it's a good time to take a look at the improved security features. Storing your data in the cloud is highly convenient, but it does increase the risk of data theft or tampering. Security is an essential feature of any cloud-based storage platform. And, security is a never-ending arms race between developers and crackers.
The Ubuntu Conspiracy
A recent rumor has sparked waves of fear and outrage throughout the Linux community. The word is that Microsoft is in secret negotiations to purchase Canonical, the Ubuntu company. With Ubuntu and its derivatives installed on millions of home computers and Web servers, the takeover would be disruptive to say the least. After all, in a world where most people think that Windows is "just how computers work", not using Microsoft products is a deliberate choice.
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