- wlug - University of Waikato Mail Lists

Joey Hess Resigns From Debian
by Peter Reutemann 08 Nov '14

08 Nov '14

'Long-time Debian developer Joey Hess has posted a resignation letter to the Debian mailing list. Hess was a big part of the development of the Debian installer, debhelper, Alien, and other systems. He says, "It's become abundantly clear that this is no longer the project I originally joined in 1996. We've made some good things, and I wish everyone well, but I'm out. ... If I have one regret from my 18 years in Debian, it's that when the Debian constitution was originally proposed, despite seeing it as dubious, I neglected to speak out against it. It's clear to me now that it's a toxic document, that has slowly but surely led Debian in very unhealthy directions."' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/08/1448234 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Canonical officially unveils its OpenStack distro
by Peter Reutemann 07 Nov '14

07 Nov '14

'Any doubts you might have had about Canonical, best known for its Ubuntu Linux distribution, refocusing it energy on cloud-based Linux rather than desktop or mobile Linux were put to rest at the OpenStack Summit. [...] With Canonical Distribution for Ubuntu OpenStack, which is now in public beta, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth said: "This is a complete autopilot for your private cloud."' -- source: http://www.zdnet.com/canonical-officially-unveils-its-openstack-distro-7000… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Major Performance Improvement Discovered For Intel's GPU Linux Driver
by Peter Reutemann 07 Nov '14

07 Nov '14

"LunarG, on contract with Valve Software, discovered a critical shortcoming with the open-source Intel Linux graphics driver that was handicapping the performance. A special bit wasn't being set by the Linux driver but was by the Windows driver, which when enabled is increasing the Linux performance in many games by now ~20%+, which should allow for a much more competitive showing between Intel OpenGL performance on Windows vs. Linux. However, the patch setting this bit isn't public yet as apparently it's breaking video acceleration in certain cases." -- source: http://games.slashdot.org/story/14/11/07/1237236 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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OpenSUSE 13.2 Released
by Peter Reutemann 06 Nov '14

06 Nov '14

"The latest version of the openSUSE distribution, 13.2, has been officially released. Key features include integrated support for filesystem snapshots, enabled by a switch to btrfs as the default file system, a new network manager (Wicked), as well as the usual version updates. This release includes seven supported desktop environments (KDE 4.14, GNOME 3.14, Xfce, LXDE, Enlightenment 19, Mate and Awesome) and even preview packages of Plasma 5.1, all presented with a unified openSUSE theme. Download LiveUSB and DVD images now from software.opensuse.org/132." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/06/1837227 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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WLUG meeting next Monday
by Peter Reutemann 05 Nov '14

05 Nov '14

Hi everyone We have a meeting coming up next Monday: "Virtualization has been become commonplace nowadays, with lots of different implementations. Docker provides an as-thin-as-possible approach, making use of the kernel's functionality of resource isolation, eliminating the need for installing an operating system for the guest system. Andrew Parnasov will give an introduction to Docker, how to set it up, how to use and what it can be used for." http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/197652482/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Fedora 21 Beta Released
by Peter Reutemann 04 Nov '14

04 Nov '14

"The Fedora Project has been critical to the development Red Hat Enterprise Linux — RHEL version 7 was largely based off Fedora version 19. Fedora is continuing to evolve with the announcement of Fedora 21 Beta, now available from the Fedora Project website. To make the release ready for Beta testing required addressing 50 beta blocker bugs. If the Fedora Project developers are able to keep up with the final release blocker bugs, then Fedora 21 is expected to be released on December 9th. As a result, support for Fedora 19 is expected to end around the beginning of 2015. Released back in July 2013, Fedora 19 will have been supported for over 540 days by 2015. Previously, the longest a Fedora release was supported was Fedora Core 5 at 469 days. Users of Fedora 19 will be encouraged to upgrade to Fedora 20 or 21 to continue to get critical updates." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/04/201215 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Trisquel 7 Released
by Peter Reutemann 03 Nov '14

03 Nov '14

"Trisquel 7.0 Belenos has been released. Trisquel is a "free as in freedom" GNU/Linux distribution endorsed by the FSF. This latest release includes Linux-libre 3.13, GNOME 3.12, Abrowser 33 (based on Firefox), the Electrum Bitcoin client and many more new features and upgrades. Trisquel 7.0 will be supported until 2019. " -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/04/0517220 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Breaching Air-Gap Security With Radio
by Peter Reutemann 31 Oct '14

31 Oct '14

Not quite Linux, but interesting (scary?) nonetheless... "Security researcher Mordechai Guri with the guidance of Prof. Yuval Elovici from the cyber security labs at Ben-Gurion University in Israel presented at MALCON 2014 a breakthrough method ("AirHopper") for leaking data from an isolated computer to a mobile phone without the presence of a network. In highly secure facilities the assumption today is that data can not leak outside of an isolated internal network. It is called air-gap security. AirHopper demonstrates how the computer display can be used for sending data from the air-gapped computer to a near by smartphone. The published paper and a demonstration video are at the link." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/10/31/141207 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Vulnerabilities Found (and Sought) In More Command-Line Tools
by Peter Reutemann 30 Oct '14

30 Oct '14

"The critical Shellshock vulnerabilities found last month in the Bash Unix shell have motivated security researchers to search for similar flaws in old, but widely used, command-line utilities. Two remote command execution vulnerabilities were patched this week in the popular wget download agent and tnftp client for Unix-like systems [also mentioned here]. This comes after a remote code execution vulnerability was found last week in a library used by strings, objdump, readelf and other command-line tools." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/10/30/2130248 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Linux computer program brings a smile where it's least expected
by Peter Reutemann 29 Oct '14

29 Oct '14

"Reglue is an organization that has been placing Linux computers in the homes of financially disadvantaged kids since 2005. The program started in central Texas and we'd love to see it grow [...]. Using Linux as the operating system has not been a matter of religion or partisanship. Not even a matter of personal choice. It's a matter of pragmatic necessity. To give you a better picture of why, here's the story of Ricky. In short: We installed a computer for a financially-disadvantaged kid. We taught that kid how to use the computer. That kid was supremely happy with his new Linux computer. We left. The end." -- source: http://opensource.com/life/14/10/reglue-program-linux-computers-kids Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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