Here’s a review of the latest DreamLinux release candidate by seopher:

I just think the DL guys need to spend a bit more time on the installation process… Especially when underdog releases like Pardus do it so well. In my humble opinion, there are better supported, more usable releases available. Let’s see what the final release is like.

By the looks of it, it’s going to take another RC or two before they’re ready to finalise it.

Boycott Novell is a site that annoys me. Every day there’s something new about how evil Novell is. The issue I take with all that is Novell, for all its fraternising with the enemy, actually contibutes to the open source world. Anyway they wrote a letter pleading with Mark Shuttleworth (South African, space-venturering Ubuntu leader) to ditch the nasty, nasty Novell project, Mono from Ubuntu:

Mark Shuttleworth, whom we have great respect for after maintaining his stern stance against intimidation tactics, has responded to our concerns regarding the existence of Mono in Ubuntu.

So is Ubuntu going to boycott Mono and all other Novell products? No. Shuttleworth writes:

Hi Roy

At this stage we see no significant issues with patents and Mono. There is a risk of a patent claim against almost any component of Ubuntu - across every jurisdiction in which Ubuntu ships, the patent minefield is too complex. Our view is that we can deal with patent suits if they arise, but removing or re-engineering the relevant components.

Yesterday’s announcement from Microsoft suggests that they have come round to the view that patent litigation is not an effective strategy for them.

The real patent risk to free software, in my view, is not a large-scale industry participant like SONY or IBM or Microsoft, instead it is a small, hard-to-identify patent holder who does not actually need to get products out the door. We cannot live in fear of that threat, we can only respond to it as an when it arises.

I don’t mean to undermine the good work that you do in reminding people of the risks, but only to say that we have discussed this in Ubuntu and are confident that the course we are on is a reasonable one.

Mark

I’m not defending Microsoft, but I completely agree with Mark. There’s a threat when they sue. Going around spreading things like “boycott Novell” is really going to help the Linux community mature, isn’t it?

If you’re anything like me, you’ll be aware that some things are just plain nasty to do in Linux (vs Windows or Mac). I’ve been trying desperately to get my webcam working. I’ve had problems with supported hardware, then issues getting anything to see a supported one, and now I just need usable software.

If you’d like to skip out some of the hard work, check out this article at LinuxPlanet!

Drive encryption dead?

A team including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Princeton University, and other researchers have found a major security flaw in several popular disk encryption technologies that leaves encrypted data vulnerable to attack and exposure.

“People trust encryption to protect sensitive data when their computer is out of their immediate control,” said EFF Staff Technologist Seth Schoen, a member of the research team. “But this new class of vulnerabilities shows it is not a sure thing. Whether your laptop is stolen, or you simply lose track of it for a few minutes at airport security, the information inside can still be read by a clever attacker.”

The researchers cracked several widely used disk encryption technologies, including Microsoft’s BitLocker, Apple’s FileVault, TrueCrypt, and dm-crypt. These “secure” disk encryption systems are supposed to protect sensitive information if a computer is stolen or otherwise accessed. However, in a paper and video published on the Internet today, the researchers show that data is vulnerable because encryption keys and passwords stored in a computer’s temporary memory — or RAM — do not disappear immediately after losing power.

According to The INQ:

As we surmised, storage comes in a 1Gb flash flavour. There’s 128Mb of DDR-II memory, a seven-inch 800 by 480 LCD screen with stereo two-channel audio, built-in speakers, a microphone and audio Jack. Wibbling comes courtesy of a Lan/WLAN 10/100M Ethernet with WLAN 802.11g Antenna.

So it is sub-EeePC in many respects. It’s coming with a flavour of Debian (? not that that narrows it down too much!) and a “LNX Code 8 Mobile Processor running at 300MHz”.

So yes, it’s cheap as hell and it has comparable features to the Eee but is a weedy 300mhz budget CPU going to be enough to keep up with some of the cooler aspects of the Eee? I’m thinking video conferencing, watching films, playing simple 3D games (eg Quake) . Even if it does fall short of an Eee, it sure does look comparable to an XO and all for half the price.

We’ll know more in a week’s time when it launches.

From vunet:

The Linux-based ‘One’ laptop weighs less than 1kg and offers a claimed three-hour battery life, Wi-Fi, a Flash-based hard drive, a hard-wearing case and a wireless music server.

Sceptical industry watchers will wonder how many corners have been cut when the product is launched at the Education Show in Birmingham on 28 February. Elonex has declined to release hardware specifications for the device.

This paired with HP announcing they’re entering the budget-UMPC market, means we’re in for some cool stuff over the next few years.

I use gedit for everything I can. I love it so when I saw this article in the Free Software Magazine, I thought I’d share:

Most computer users spend their entire life looking for the Holy Grail. In other words, they spend all their life searching for the perfect editor that supports all their languages, is free as in speech, has spelling, has highlighting… you get the picture. Obviously, there isn’t a perfect editor out there. However, some come pretty close. Ironically, one of them is one that any Ubuntu (or in fact, any Gnome) user has installed, though they may not know it. It’s called gedit (also known as Text Editor).

Somebody from the Middle East is buying SCO (or at least squeezing $100m in their general direction) because they “saw a tremendous investment opportunity in SCO and its vast range of products and services, including many new innovations ready or soon to be ready to be released into the marketplace”.

No more drugs for that Middle Easterner.

Read the whole depressing story at Groklaw.

… or at least they should be.

I read earlier how Claranet (an ISP) became the first victim to the kernel bug disclosed a few days ago:

Hackers used a bug in the sys_vmsplice kernel call, which handles virtual memory management, to gain root privileges and replace Claranet customers’ index.html files with the hacker’s calling card.

The exploit was noticed at about 6pm on Tuesday.

Claranet said: “Malicious activity related to the vulnerability was detected on Claranet’s shared hosting platform. Within 10 minutes Claranet contained and halted the malicious activity, and locked down the platform to prevent further damage.

To be fair to Linux here, this was patched hours after being disclosed, with source released at the very same time. Distribution vendors take more time to build their packages with the new code but this process is sped up logarithmically for security holes — Ubuntu, for example, had patched kernels out the next day.

So source code out there, new kernels available shortly after disclosure. Two days later, an Claranet gets hacked. Their admins should have been all over this. I’m just a user and I knew about this just 4 hours after it came out.

On a different note, if you want a laugh, take a look at the nonsense going on in the Register’s comment thread for their posting on Claranet getting hacked. It’s amazing what people’ll say. One example:

With all you Linux fanbois harping on constantly about how secure your system is you tend to forget that believing your own bullshit compromises your systems.

Sigh. Competancy would have avoided this.

 From LifeHacker

Cross-platform, multi-protocol instant messaging application Pidgin is very functional, but by default it’s not what most people would call sexy. But like many great software projects, from Firefox to foobar2000, the looks and extra functionality are there—you just have to know where to find them. Today we’re taking a look at 10 of the best Pidgin plug-ins for taking Pidgin from drab to fab.

1. Stay Smart Over IM with Text Replacement
2. Encrypt Chat Sessions with Pidgin-Encrypt
3. Start BitTorrent Downloads through Pidgin with Autoaccept
4. Keep Notified of Chats with Guifications
5. Get SMS Alerts of IMs While You’re Away
6. Remember Where You Left Off with Enhanced History
7. Save Your Chat Sessions with SessionSave
8. Add Now Playing Status to Pidgin
9. Get Updates on New Releases with Release Notification
10. Theme Pidgin with the GTK Theme Selector or GTK+ Theme Control