THIS ISSUE: Red Hat thrives OPLC cuts FreeBSD HyperSpace

NetBookS Next gennetbooks New technologies could lead to even more users on Facebook.

hip manufacturer Freescale has i.MX515 processorand related solutions introduced a reference design will dramatically accelerate the C of itsnew i.MX515 processor evolution of this exciting new space.” foruse in netbooks. It’sbeen createdto It doesn’t look like the netbook DigitalMeda. powerdevices with screen sizes of up to market is showing any signs of slowing 8.9inchesand it’sbuilt around an ARM down either; data from ABI Research Beat ure

Cortex-A8 CPU, Freescale’s power suggests growth to 140million usersby nt management and audio codec systems, Ve of and Adobe’s Flash Lite.

“Systemsusingthe tesy The processor scales from 600MHz to 1GHz and features a dedicated video designcouldoffereight Cour block to reduce the need for power Google’s Android hungry fans and bulky heat sinks. This hoursofconstantuse.” on the (relatively) big screen. means that systems using the design could retail forless than $200 and offer 2013.Principal analyst,Philip Solis,said called android_policy_mid, where MID around eight hoursofconstant use. The the sector is driven by costand the stands forMobile Internet Device. The graphics processor is also one of the demand fordevices to accesssocial acronym is ’sname fordevices that first to offer both OpenVG and OpenGL networking applications and email. use its Atom processors,which are cores, while Flash Liteprovidessupport most commonly found in netbooks. for video sharing sites out of the box. They’re on the phone Writing up their experiment, the pair Lisa Su, Freescale’s senior vice Elsewhere, two hackersdiscovered said: “Imagine the billion dollar market president of networking and some interesting code when porting at stake here if Google can make good multimedia, said there were huge Google’s -based Android on this vision. Foramyriad of software opportunitiesinthe netbook market: operating system to the Asus Eee PC. companies, it means a well-backed OS “We believe the combination of the They uncovered a policy document that’s open and ripe for exploitation.”

more crossovers

While Android looks set to make it on to Android-running MoveIt,which offers a netbooks, JohnnyShih, CEOofnetbook 7-inch screen of picture frame-like pioneer Asus,told journalists at the proportions for use around the home. annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that the company was looking into building its own smartphone based on Google’s Android. GiiNii also made waves at CES 2009,demonstrating an Android-based internet device called the MoveIt Mini. The machine features a 4.3-inch touchscreen, 480x272 resolution, 256MB RAM, a built-in mic and a Freescale has traditionally been associated with the camera for Skype use. The MoveIt Mini embedded market,but it’s now seen an opportunity to will soon be joined on the market by the build power-efficient processors for netbooks.

8 March 2009

LXF116.news 8 19/1/09 3:48:24 pm Newsdesk

CommuNity OLPC dropsLinux Negroponte puts laptop on Sugar-free diet.

fter years of development effort other non-profit companiesinthe and advocacy, the OneLaptop current economic climateand needed A PerChild (OLPC)project has to refocus for the future. “While we’re elected to abandon itscommitment to saddened by this development, we Linux and shed half of its workforce. remain firmly committed to our mission OLPC,the brainchild of techno- of getting laptopstochildren in evangelistNicholas Negroponte, was developing countries,”hesaid. “The intended to create ahardwareand futurebringswith it some uncertainty The design of the OLPC device has varied over the years, software combination that could be sold and difficulty, but alsothe excitement but it’s never quite hit the magic $100 price point. forunder $100,enabling governments that comeswith the rededication to a in Africa, South sight of itsaims,demoralising manyof America and Asia to “thedevelopmentof the developers who remained. provide the devices The smaller teamof32contributors for school children. Sugarwillbepassed to the project will nowbeasked to take So far500,000 pay cutsastheywork towardsthe unitshavebeen overtothecommunity.” second generation of the device, while shipped, but the the development of Sugar will be passed organisation has failed to achieve its causeand anew path that will allowus overtothe community. The latter may intended sub-$100 price point. to realise the moral purpose of OLPC.” mean that Windows will become the Negroponte told the OLPC The move away from Linux isn’t only platform officially supported on the communitythat the organisation was entirely unexpected. The project initially device and the commitment to a child- facing the same problems as many attracted awidespreadcommunityof centred user interfacewill be dropped in open source developerskeen to favour of the standard XP/Windows 7 UI. seeitsucceed. However, in April The project also faces competition 2008 it wasannounced that the from manufacturerssuch as Asus,Acer device would become multi- and Elonex, who are competing with platform and that Microsoftwas low-cost laptops of their own. working on a version of Windows XP that runs the Sugar . An The second generation of OLPC spokesman said at the time OLPC machines that Linux wasn’tbeing dropped, but areexpected that an ‘open’ platform shouldn’tbe to feature dual closed to a particular vendor.The touch screens. move led to the departureofa number of high-profile contributorswho worried that the project had lost

Will the focus on aWindows operating system really help OLPC to achieve its laudable moral goals?

March 2009 Linux Format 9

LXF116.news 9 19/1/09 3:48:25 pm Newsdesk

eNterpriSe Comment Flashby Red Hat bucks the economic trends name Thecompanysaysbelt-tighteninginthe MichaelMeeks enterprise market has favoured open source. efying the current economic in terms of operating income,net This monthI conditions,Red Hat continues income and cash flow. “While significant hadsomefun D to post increasing quarterly devaluations in most foreign currencies results. It shows, the companysaid, that depressedour reported revenue,a playingwitha itsfocus on low-cost and high-quality combination of cost management and drop-in SATA has left it in a great position to ride out natural currencyhedging enabled the flash drive, kindly donated by SanDisk. Having the economic recession. RedHat’s company to deliver a better-than- long been interested in reducing filesystem revenuesfor the thirdfinancial quarter expected operating margin,”he latency – particularly around my IOGrind tool – of 2008 were $165.3 million, an explained. “We also took advantage of it was great to experiment with the ultimate increase of 22% from last year’s third unusual market conditions and answer to reducing seek latency. quarter and 1% over quarter two. repurchased some of our convertible It was interesting to see some of the known- Subscriptions have remained flat over bonds and common stock. Ourbalance the previous quarter,but were up by sheet remains strong.” slow scatteredI/O bottlenecks suddenly 17%onthe previous year.The company RedHat has alsosigned a vanish. One of these is reading lots of scattered alsosaid that it had suffered due to the collaboration agreement with Google to desktop files to build various application weakness of the US dollar,which wiped support its Google Web To olkit (GWT). menus: previously this involved chasing out almost $7 million of revenue.The The move will seethe toolkit integrated pointers all over a rotating disk with a 10ms net income was $24.3 million. intothe JBoss SeamFramework, giving latency each time to read small files. With the Jim Whitehurst,president and chief developers additional options when flash disk, even with a cold cache, this was executiveofficer of RedHat, said the creating rich internet applications (RIA). solid resultsrepresented the company’s Craig Muzilla, vicepresident of Red almost instantaneous. Also,I was pleased to strong position within the sector. Hat’smiddleware business, said the win a few seconds of boot time on OpenSUSE “Purchasing decisions forIThave partnership wasintended to increase 11.1 by removing two redundant ‘sync’ calls, changed dramatically for CIOs,”he said. choice. “Webelieve developersshould which were writing lots of modified state to “In this budget-constrained be able to select technologies such as disk. While scattered reads perform environment, IT professionals are GWT, Spring Framework and Adobe wonderfully, largelinearreads areslow(for adopting open source and, more Flex, while using JBoss to provide the now). This means that the previous read-ahead specifically,Red Hat to save moneyand best operational and most flexible enhance their competitiveness.” platform for running their applications,” optimisations to avoid seeking on rotating Charlie Peters,the company’schief he said. media cannow makethingsslowerratherthan financial officer,said that despitethe Support for GWTwill be added to faster, and should be disabled for flash drives. challenging conditions Red Hat had JBoss Enterprise Application Platform delivered better-than-expected results subscriptions over the coming months. Superfly flash Of course,Linux is leadingthe wayhere: prototyping and shipping new features such as Trim/Discard wherebyfilesystems cantellsuch devices which data blocks are not in use (eg when you delete a file). This can be used to help inform theinternalremapping, andwear- levelling algorithms, further improving lifetime andperformance. With the spot price of flash plummeting to under$1/GB,itseems theworld of theflash disk is arriving sooner than anticipated. Is it time to buy a USB caddy for your big, slow internal hard-disk, and buy a smaller, less power hungry, flash disk to use inside your Linux system?

Michael is a pseudo engineer,semi-colon lover, Google Web Toolkit is being integrated into Red Hat’s software stack over the Novell OpenOffice.org hacker and amateur pundit. next few months,giving developers more choice.

10 Linux Format March 2009

LXF116.news 10 19/1/09 3:48:26 pm Newsdesk

LAptopS Comment Jump to HyperSpace Monkey New Instant On solution may not be GPL-friendly. magic IOS maker Phoenix between Windows or HyperSpace, while Te chnologies has launched a the Hybrid edition gives the option of B new Splashtop-like Instant On running both systems simultaneously, DavidCartwright product designed to give laptop owners switching between the two with asingle the option to perform simple tasks button press. The former costs $39.99 Regular without booting their main operating for an annual subscription, while the readers will system. However, unlike Splashtop, latter is $59.99. HyperSpacecan be installed alongside Oneissue remains: the tangly one of know that I Windows on anylaptop and doesn’t the availability of source code for the have areal require embedded software. product. As HyperSpace is based on love-haterelationshipwith MySQL.Thisthing Woody Hobbs, the company’s Linux, it should come under the really is both the best and the worst of open president and CEO, said the new obligations of the GNU General Public source software. The best aspects of MySQL software offered network connectivity Licence, which stipulates that source are, of course, that it’s really fast, it scales very akin to cell phones, improved battery code to aproduction should be freely well, it has excellent query analysis features, life and provides rapid access to key available in addition to the binaries. and it’s free. You get native client libraries for a applications.“In less than afew Phoenix had yettomakethis code seconds,you’reupand running,”he available at the time of writing, but this variety of development platforms such as Java added. Hobbs also mentioned that may be rectified soon. and.NET, andthe documentation is plentiful Phoenix had been working with service and, on the whole, reasonably helpful. providersincluding Google and Ya hoo! But to paraphraseHenryWadsworth to add new applications to the system. Longfellow: “When it was good it was very, very Analyst Tim Bajarin of Creative good/But when it was bad it was horrid”. The Strategiessaid that the technology latest“Oh,you’vegot to be kidding”moment could be 2009’s big thing. “Laptop and netbook userstypically surf the internet from the magic of MySQL relates to replication 90% of the time,” he said. “Instant –which, it should be said,ispretty good most access to the web, current information of the time. So I told it: “Replicate the whole of and online applications makes their X, and just tables A and B from time online more fun and productive.” database Y”. So what did it do? Well, it only did The packageisavailable in two Will HyperSpace bring the GPL the data from one of the two and flavours. Dual allows the userstoselect lawyers down on Phoenix? ignored the other completely. Take out the references to X, and it replicated A and B from Y; take out the latter and it replicated the whole embedded Linux news of X. Put ’em both in, and I could wave goodbye Amid the usual from the Zaurus’sinternal memory, but to half the data. storage hardware requires access to an SD or Compact Matthew Szulik hason been Iomega’ withssRetandd Hat sinceFlash19ca98rd.I andt’s been became inspired CEOby inNokia’s2001. at this year’s CES was the Home Media Handheld Mojo project,which is Dumb driven cattle Network Hard Drive – a product that currently attempting to bring Ubuntu Then I RTFMed. And realised that the letter of combines 500GB–1TB of storage with to its N8xx range of internet devices. network media playback facilities via themanualstatesthatyou caneitherspecify a an embedded . The Nokia N8xx users are in for a shock database or a set of tables, but not both. devices areaimed at home users, offer when the next edition of is Replace the reference to database X with a acentralised storageand print server released. The earlier devices are to lose string of references (one for each table in X) and can serve up data to PCs based on their support as the effort shiftsfrom all three main OSes, gamesconsoles OMAP2 to OMAP3.However, Nokia and all is well. So it does what it says on the tin, and digital picture frames. saysithopesacommunityeffort will but it’s still a dumb way to make it work. be launched to port the newversion of It seems I’m not the only one with mixed Dedicated users of the the OS.The next experiences of MySQL, too. If you want a laugh, Sharp Zaurus now version of have their own Maemo will you can get some MySQL “comments”from edition of Ubuntu for featurecellular the horse’s mouth at http://monty-says. support.The project, support,so we blogspot.com/2008/11/oops-we-did-it- found at www. may see the OS again-mysql-51-released.html. omegamoon.com, in the next is afully functional generation of port of Ubuntu 8.04 Nokia’s mobile David is an IT consultant with a penchant for cross- platform integration, CTI and proper beer. that runs mostly phones too.

12 Linux Format March 2009

LXF116.news 12 19/1/09 3:48:27 pm Newsdesk

DeSktop Newsbytes A new flavour of Wine Ubuntu Eee, the distroaimed at experimental netbook users, has Commercial offering adds easy UI to open source emulation. been renamed Easy Peasy for its 1.0 release. The developerssaid the changemeans the newname doesn’t If you need new version of Bordeaux, a infringe on Canonical or Asus access to the commercial implementation of trademarks. The packageincludesthe latest edition of Wine,has been released with Netbook Remix UI that’s specifically A MS Office,and designed for small screens. support for applications including you don’t want Office 2007, Google’s Chrome to run Windows, Boxee,amedia player that was browser and Valve’s Steam delivery install Wine or a previously only available through service. In addition to supporting Linux, simple derivative. a closed beta, has opened up to Mac the application is alsoavailable for and Ubuntu users. The software offers FreeBSD and PC-BSD. accesstoalarge selection of content Similarly to Crossover Office, software in the six months before the from Hulu, Yo uTube and CNN, while Bordeaux adds a simple interface to releaseofversion 1.6are entitled to a UK residents are now able to access Wine –which itself allows the running of free upgrade.Moreover, the company the BBC’siPlayerserviceaswell. The various Windows applications on Linux has said that it intends to releasea changecoincideswith the start of an machines–enabling morecasual users ‘community edition’ of the software in alpha test for the Windows client. to access the technology. the near future, which will be available The packageisavailable nowand free of charge. costs $20, but users who purchased the The main Wine project has alsoseen a significant upgrade recently with the Like Wine, release of Wine 1.1.12. Despitethe small Bordeaux is incremental change in version number, adept at running Photoshop CS2, this releasenow includessupport for but makes it basic 64-bit applications and subpixel easier to install. font rendering. Their addition makes a dramatic difference to the look of text rendered in applications such as MS Boxee nowofferssmart media Word and Photoshop. playback on your Linux machine.

KDE developershavebeen on a eNterpriSe bug squashing rampagein preparation forthe imminent release of KDE 4.2 and KOffice 2.Sincethe Sun’scloudyfuture releaseofthe lastbeta of KDE 4.2, the project has notched up over 1,600 Q-Layer bolsters their profile, but will the company survive? fixes and is now reportedly feature- completeand ready forproduction un Microsystems has purchased When announcing the acquisition, environments. Sincethe releaseof KDE 4.1over10,000 fixes have been Q-Layerinaneffort to bolsterits David Douglas,senior vicepresident of committed. To herald the release, the position in the cloud computing cloud computing and chiefsustainability S project is taking a leaf out of Fedora’s application market. Q-Layerhas arange officer,said: “Q-layer’stechnology and book and has encouraged usersto of solutions,including NephOS, and will expertise will enhance Sun’s offerings, host release parties. become part of Sun’snewly formed simplifying cloud management and Cloud Computing Business unit. speeding up application deployment.” EMC Computer Systems has However, despite its history of acquired SourceLabs, the network computing, Sun has struggled support services companybehind the to capitaliseoncloud computing and SWiK website. The purchase was recently posteda$1.7billion loss forthe made for an undisclosed sum. last financial quarter.In addition to The MacWorld conferencein dwindling IT spending in the US SanFrancisco sawthe releaseof economy, the company’ssharepriceis PersonalBrain 5.0,anewly updated under attack with Goldman Sachs data visualisation package for Linux, changing its status from neutral to sell, OS Xand Windows. The package is citing the availability of more cost- designed to allow users to link notes, effective solutions in Sun’s market. webpages and filesthrough an This position has led to some intuitive interface. Afree version is speculation that Sun mayitself be a available from the company’swebsite takeovertarget, though analysts say www.thebrain.com. CEOJonathan Schwartz has seen Sun’sshareprice fewcompanieswould have the nosedive by 80% in a single year. resources necessary to pursue it.

March 2009 Linux Format 13

LXF116.news 13 19/1/09 3:48:29 pm Newsdesk

ALterNAtiVe oS Comment FreeBSDupdated Cron not New Gnome and KDE, plus OpenSolaris goodies. he engineers and developers FreeBSD is one of the family of OSes wrong behind the FreeBSD project that grew out of the Berkeley Software t have released version 7. 1 of the Distribution. UnlikeLinux, the software operating system, completewith isn’t released under the GPL, instead SimonPickstock new(ish) versions of the two common having its own licence structure that desktops,moreboot options and doesn’tput the same obligations on Beinga support for DTrace. The latest release code users to redistribute their changes. freelancer, shipswith KDE 3.5.10,Gnome 2.22.3 and their core applications.It’salso everysooften capable of booting from a range of I find I have devices including USB drives and GPT- some unexpected time to fill (otherwise known labelled devices. The addition of DTrace as aperiodofunemployment),orIneed to put –usedtotroubleshoot kernel and off that pressing deadline, so like to waste my application problems –comescourtesy time in a variety of geeky ways. Although the of Sun’s recently released OpenSolaris rest of the Linux Format team wouldhaveyou project, added after collaboration believe that I spend 90% of my waking hours between Sun and FreeBSD engineers. It’s part of the build-up to its eighth playing EveOnline, this is a fallacy. It’s actually major releaselater this year,which will much closer to 70%, but then I do also seem to support a virtualised network stack, spend an inordinate amount of time on other giving users the option of having per- Eve-related activities. instance firewalls,VPN and routers. Recently Itaskedmyselfwithsetting up Virtual 802.11 accesspointsshould also my in-gamecorporation’skillboard, which be added, making it possible for Wi-Fi FreeBSD may live in the shadow of tracks our ship kills and losses.A simple networkstooffer arangeofSSIDsvia a Linux, but it has astrong community single access point for the first time. of users and developers. enough affair, although discovering that my web host only gives me one SQL database was a bit annoying, as it was already being used by teLepHoNy somethingelse. New VoIP rings true Iwantmore! Setting up the site though, wasn’t enough:I CD quality sound over standard networks. wanted customisation andautomation!So, armed with the API data I needed and some reeSwitch,an open source VoIP consider bandwidth usage: 48kHz of solution, has released anew super high-qualityaudio requires amere lines of code to run a Cron job, off I set, only to F version of itsflagship software 48kbps of bandwidth. By comparison, discover that for reasons best known to my alongside an integrated codec that the venerable PCM mu-law codec, web host, it doesn’t support Cron. This was a offers CD-quality audio over standard G.711u, consumes64kbpsofbandwidth heavy blow, but somehow I managed to pick network connections. and yields only 8kHz audio quality.” my way through the cowpats left by the devil’s The companysaysthat version 1.0.2 These two additions offerboth open own satanic herd (otherwise known at the will push the boundariesofwhat is source and proprietary routes to world wide web) and found something called possible with a VoIP system. Their CD-sound qualityoveratelephony partnership with Polycomgives users network and are perfect alternatives to Virtual Cron, which enables me to run the job access to the Wideband and Ultra- patent-encumbered formatssuch as remotely,byembeddinganimage link in Wideband Siren codecs, while G.729, which is coveredby52different anotherweb page,whichcalls aPHP file to run integration of the CELTopen source patents. The company believes that the the Cron jobfor you. codec offers 48kHz sampling. The CELT new codecs place FreeSwitch perfectly Sure, it’s a clunky workaround, but for some module wasdeveloped by Jean-Marc forthe advent of wideband networks reason the fact that it works warms the cockles Valin, the leader of the CELTproject. and high definition telephony. of my soul. Of course it would have helped if I’d Michael Collins,FreeSwitch In addition to the newcodecs, this bothered to checkjustwhatmyweb host community volunteer,said that the releaseincludessupport forawide CELTmodule offered both quality and range of technologies including SIP, supported in the first place, but where would bandwidth improvements. “The only H.323,IAX2 and GoogleTalk,which be the fun in that? badnews hereisthat youmight need to make it easy to drop into existing upgrade your headset so that your systems.It’scurrently available for Simon is aformer PC Answers editor,part-time microphone is sensitiveenough to Windows, OS X, BSD, Solaris and cider expert and full-time software tinkerer. handle such a wide range,”he said.“Also, various flavours of Linux. LXF

14 Linux Format March 2009

LXF116.news 14 19/1/09 3:48:30 pm