greengreed - Slashdot User

Comment Re:I heard the same about 8.10 and 9.04 and 9.10 (Score 1) 567

by greengreed on Friday April 30, 2010 @10:49AM (#32044224) Attached to: Ubuntu Linux 10.04 Review (Lucid Lynx)

For example, I first built a Gimp without jpeg support. Who the fuck would want Gimp without the ability to even open jpg files? That's stupid. This is the default unless you explicitly add jpeg to the USE variable.

This is what happens when you don't use the desktop profile. Run `eselect profile list` and then `eselect profile set NUMBER`, where NUMBER is the number of the desktop profile. Also, you need to recompile your packages if you want your new USE flags to take any effect. Try `emerge --ask --tree --verbose --update --newuse --deep world` next time.

I still haven't figured out how I'm supposed to keep track of what USE flags I want or do not want to use (these can affect other packages both now and in future).

USE flags are probably the main reason I use Gentoo. Are the 10 minutes needed to read the online portage documentation too much for you? Tip: see /etc/make.conf, /etc/portage/package.use and euse.

Sorry, but you really need to RTFM if you want to get the most out of Gentoo.

Local Privilege Escalation On All Linux Kernels 595

Posted by timothy on Thursday August 13, 2009 @04:54PM from the uriah-deems-it-scary dept.

QuesarVII writes "Tavis Ormandy and Julien Tinnes have discovered a severe security flaw in all 2.4 and 2.6 kernels since 2001 on all architectures. 'Since it leads to the kernel executing code at NULL, the vulnerability is as trivial as it can get to exploit: an attacker can just put code in the first page that will get executed with kernel privileges.'"

Ksplice Offers Rebootless Updates For Ubuntu Systems 211

Posted by timothy on Sunday June 28, 2009 @01:50AM from the uptime-preserver dept.

sdasher writes "Ksplice has started offering Ksplice Uptrack for Ubuntu Jaunty, a free service that delivers rebootless versions of all the latest Ubuntu kernel security updates. It's currently available for both the 32 and 64-bit generic kernel, and they plan to add support for the virtual and server kernels by the end of the month, according to their FAQ. This makes Ubuntu the first OS that doesn't need to be rebooted for security updates. (We covered Ksplice's underlying technology when it was first announced a year ago.)"

State of Sound Development On Linux Not So Sorry After All 427

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday June 19, 2009 @05:44PM from the sounds-like-improvement dept.

An anonymous reader writes "There have been past claims by Adobe and others that development on Linux is a jungle, particularly with regards to audio. However today, the author of the popular 'The Sorry State of Sound in Linux' has posted a follow up showing Adobe's claims to be FUD, as well as being a good update on where OSS and ALSA are holding today, and why PulseAudio isn't a good idea."

A Visual Expedition Inside the Linux File Systems 85

Posted by kdawson on Monday June 15, 2009 @04:54AM from the data-porn dept.

RazvanM writes "This is an attempt to visualize the relationships among the Linux File Systems through the lens of the external symbols their kernel modules use. We took an initial look a few months back but this time the scope is much broader. This analysis was done on 1377 kernel modules from 2.6.0 to 2.6.29, but there is also a small dip into the BSD world. The most thorough analysis was done on Daniel Phillips's tree, which contains the latest two disk-based file systems for Linux: tux3 and btrfs. The main techniques used to establish relationships among file systems are hierarchical clustering and phylogenetic trees. Also presented are a set of rankings based on various properties related to the evolution of the external symbols from one release to another, and complete timelines of the kernel releases for Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. In all there are 78 figures and 10 animations."

Pleo Robot Dinosaur Back From Extinction 42

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @08:15AM from the one-pleosaur-please dept.

robotsrule sends in a follow-up to our earlier discussion of the bankruptcy of Ugobe, maker of the Pleo robotic dinosaur: "Jetta Company Limited, based in China and Hong Kong, the company that manufactured the Pleo baby robot dinosaur for Ugobe, has bought the intellectual property rights and other assets at the Ugobe bankruptcy sale that occurred on May 21. Jetta is an established company with a 32-year history in manufacturing. They have issued a short press release announcing Pleo's rebirth. Steve Ohler, the US liaison for Jetta, confirmed the news, saying that the company is firmly committed to re-launching Pleo and continuing the line including producing accessories such as the vital battery and charger components. Jetta, as the original manufacturer, is the best possible company to have acquired Ugobe's intellectual property and to announce plans to re-launch Pleo. Ohler remarked that all of the equipment needed to produce Pleos and accessories is still intact and ready to go."

Harsh Words From Google On Linux Development 948

Posted by timothy on Saturday May 30, 2009 @02:49PM from the constructive-criticism dept.

jeevesbond writes "The alpha version of Google Chrome is now available for GNU/Linux. Google Chrome developer and former Firefox lead Ben Goodger has some problems with the platform though. His complaints range from the lack of a standardised UI toolkit, inconsistencies across applications, the lack of a unified and comprehensive HIG, to GTK not being a very compelling toolkit. With Adobe getting twitchy about the glibc fork and previously describing the various audio systems as welcome to the jungle, is it time to concentrate on consolidation and standardisation in GNU/Linux in general, and the desktop in particular?"

Submission + - Developer creates DIY 8-bit CPU (wired.com) 1

Submitted by MaizeMan on Friday May 29, 2009 @08:11PM

MaizeMan writes: Not for the easily distracted. A Belmot software developer's hand built CPU was featured in wired recently. Starting with a $50 wire wrap board Chamberlin built his CPU with 1253 pieces of wire, each wire wrapped by hand at both ends. Salvaging parts from 70's and 80's era computers, the final result is an 8-bit processor with keyboard input, a USB connection and VGA graphical output. More details on the developer's blog

Submission + - L0phtcrack (v6) rises again

Submitted by FyreWyr on Friday May 29, 2009 @06:10PM

FyreWyr writes: L0phtcrack--now 12 years old--used to be a security "tool of choice" for black hats, pen-testers, and security auditors alike...that is, until it was sold by L0pht to @stake, then Symantec, to be released and subsequently dropped as LC 5. As an IT security consultant, I used this tool to regularly expose vulnerabilities or recover data when there were few other options available...then let it go as tech evolved away.

Now returned to its original developers, version 6 was released this week with fresh features: support for 64-bit multiprocessors, (current) Unix and Windows operating systems, and a number of other features, including enhanced handling of NTLM password hashes (indicated here) and support for rainbow tables.

Interested parties--especially consultants--will find this shiny new version sports a hefty price tag. It raises doubts in my mind whether it can effectively compete with open source alternatives by similar names, but as I found earlier versions so useful, its re-emergence seems worth the mention.

SATA 3.0 Release Paves the Way To 6Gb/sec Devices 248

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday May 27, 2009 @06:39PM from the greased-lightning dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) has just released the new Serial ATA Revision 3.0 specification. With the new 3.0 specification, the path has been paved to enable future devices to transfer up to 6Gb/sec as well as provide enhancements to support multimedia applications. Like other SATA specifications, the 3.0 specification is backward compatible with earlier SATA products and devices. This makes it easy for motherboard manufactures to go ahead and upgrade to the new specification without having to worry about its customers' legacy SATA devices. This should make adoption of the new specification fast, like previous adoptions of SATA 2.0 (or 3Gb/sec) technology."

Canonical Demos Early Stage Android-On-Ubuntu 165

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 26, 2009 @09:47PM from the source-code-soon dept.

An anonymous reader notes Ars Technica's report from the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Barcelona, where Canonical has unveiled a prototype Android execution environment that will allow Android applications to run on Ubuntu and "potentially other conventional Linux distributions." "Android uses the Linux kernel, but it isn't really a Linux platform. It offers its own totally unique environment that is built on Google's custom Java runtime. There is no glide path for porting conventional desktop Linux applications to Android. Similarly, Java applications that are written for Android can't run in regular Java virtual machine implementations or in standard Java ME environments. This makes Android a somewhat insular platform. Canonical is creating a specialized Android execution environment that could make it possible for Android applications to run on Ubuntu desktops in Xorg alongside regular Linux applications. The execution environment would function like a simulator, providing the infrastructure that is needed to make the applications run. Some technical details about the Android execution environment were presented by Canonical developer Michael Casadevall... They successfully compiled it against Ubuntu's libc instead of Android's custom libc and they are running it on a regular Ubuntu kernel."

Why Linux Is Not Yet Ready For the Desktop 1365

Posted by timothy on Monday May 18, 2009 @07:58AM from the choose-your-own-misadventure dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Every now and then a new- or old-media journalist tries to explain to everyone why Linux is not yet ready for the desktop. However all those men who graduated from their engineering universities years ago have only superficial knowledge about operating systems and their inner works. An unknown author from Russia has decided to draw up a list of technical reasons and limitations hampering Linux domination on the desktop." Some of the gripes listed here really resonate with me, having just moved to an early version of Ubuntu 9.10 on my main testing-stuff laptop; it's frustrating especially that while many seemingly more esoteric things work perfectly, sound now works only in part, and even that partial success took some fiddling.

Google Puts the Brakes On Saving the World 179

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 05, 2009 @05:03PM from the taking-a-little-longer dept.

An anonymous reader sends along a sharp and snarky article that takes Google to task for taking longer than expected to award $10M in its competition to find and fund world-bettering ideas. The submitter comments, "After using its tenth birthday as occasion to solicit philanthropic ideas from Web users through its Project 10^100, Google appears to have backed off from its commitment to provide $10 million in funding to the winner. While the company was supposed to reveal the Project 10^100 winner in February, Google has since delayed the vote once and now suspended it indefinitely, due to the overwhelming response — Google says it received 150,000 entries. A Google spokeswoman wouldn't commit to a new date, saying only it would be delayed 'for a while longer.' She further apologized for the company's 'over optimistic assumptions about how quickly we could analyze all the ideas that we've received.'"

Linux Kernel 2.6.29 Released 265

Posted by kdawson on Monday March 23, 2009 @10:07PM from the fullly-baked dept.

diegocgteleline.es writes "Linus Torvalds has released Linux 2.6.29. The new features include the inclusion of kernel graphic modesetting, WiMAX, access point Wi-Fi support, inclusion of squashfs and a preliminary version of btrfs, a more scalable version of RCU, eCryptfs filename encryption, ext4 no journal mode, OCFS2 metadata checksums, improvements to the memory controller, support for filesystem freeze, and other features. Here is the full list of changes."

TomTom Sues Microsoft For Patent Infringement 166

Posted by timothy on Friday March 20, 2009 @08:08AM from the gentlemen-do-not-consult-each-other's-patents dept.

CWmike writes "GPS device maker TomTom has shot back at Microsoft with a claim of patent infringement, after the software giant raised concerns in the Linux community with a recent lawsuit against TomTom. In a suit filed earlier this week, TomTom alleges that Microsoft infringes on four patents in mapping software Microsoft Streets and Trips. TomTom is asking for triple damages for willful infringement, since it says it had notified Microsoft about its alleged infringement. Microsoft said it was reviewing TomTom's filing and that it remains committed to a licensing solution and has been for more than a year."

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