Linux Bahamas

Version 2.7 of Ardour, a multi-track audio editor, has been announced. "This release is dominated by dramatic improvements in OS X GUI performance and startup time, but it also contains a lot of significant bug fixes. However, somewhat to my surprise, Ardour also accumulated quite a lot of nice new features since 2.6.1 as you can see below."

The US Federal Trade Commission has announced the first of a possible series of public hearings to explore the evolving market for intellectual property (IP). The hearings will be held beginning on December 5, 2008, in Washington, DC. "The patent system has experienced significant change since the FTC released its first IP Report in October 2003, and more changes are under consideration. The courts and patentees are exploring the full implications of Supreme Court and Federal Circuit decisions on injunctive relief, patentability, and licensing issues. Congress has considered sweeping legislative patent reform, and new debates on the appropriate methods for calculating infringement damages have engaged the patent community. New business models for buying, selling and licensing patents have emerged and evolved since 2003. In addition, there is new learning regarding the operation of the patent system and its contribution to innovation and competition." (Thanks to David A. Wheeler)

Fedora has updated thunderbird (F8, F9: multiple vulnerabilities).

Mandriva has updated libcdaudio (buffer overflow).

Groklaw reports on the final judgment in SCO vs. Novell. "The final judgment from Utah is here at last. It recites what the August 10, 2007 and July 16, 2008 orders said, but it also resolves the recent dispute over SCO's desire to voluntarily waive some claims and then bring them back to the table after an appeal, should it prove successful. Here's SCO's motion to voluntarily dismiss, and Novell's response, so you can verify that this judgment indeed represents another loss for SCO. You'll see that it was Novell that suggested the wording regarding SCO's voluntarily dismissed claims that we see in the judgment, that they be dismissed "without the possibility of renewal following appeal.""

Another 2.6.28 rc is available with the release of 2.6.28-rc6. Most of the fixes are to CIFS and the mips architecture, though there are some other small fixes included. The long-format changelog has all the details. Linus is hoping that while he is gone for a week scuba diving, "you will all have tested it extensively and sent me fixes for any regressions found. Please don't disappoint me."

The 2.6.27.7 stable kernel update has been released. It contains a long list of fixes including one with a CVE number. As usual, "all users of the 2.6.27 kernel series are strongly encouraged to upgrade".

Internetnews.com talks to Gael Duval about the Ulteo enterprise Open Virtual Desktop Solution. "Whatever happened to the founder of Mandrake Linux? He's back on the scene with a new open source startup and looking to break some ground with its first offering called a Virtual Desktop solution. Ulteo's new enterprise Open Virtual Desktop Solution is an attempt to break into the broader virtualization and remote desktop space. It's a market that is fiercely competitive with Citrix, VMware and Red Hat's Qumranet all angling for a piece of the market."

TechTarget reports on plans for the release of the System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) by Microsoft and Novell. "Microsoft and Novell Inc. said the two-year-old collaboration to better manage Windows and SUSE Linux will produce its first fruit in the first half of 2009. Novell will make available the Advanced Management Pack for SUSE Linux Enterprise for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 in the first half of 2009 to coincide with the release of Operations Manager 2007 R2. Novell has not yet set a price. The management pack will supplement the monitoring assessment and deployment features in Operations Manager and let managers view information using one console, said Sanjay Sidhu, director of marketing and business development at Microsoft."

CentOS has updated kernel (multiple vulnerabilities).

Debian has updated python (multiple vulnerabilities).

Mandriva has updated dovecot (multiple vulnerabilities) and kernel (multiple vulnerabilities).

Red Hat has updated thunderbird (multiple vulnerabilities).

Slackware has updated libxml2 (multiple vulnerabilities).

Ubuntu has updated hplip (multiple vulnerabilities).

rPath has announced that its rBuilder and the rPath Lifecycle Management Platform will now support Ubuntu and CentOS, SUSE Linux is already supported. "rBuilder is the category-defining build and release management system for creating virtual appliances and application images. The rPath Lifecycle Management Platform extends rBuilder with a comprehensive system for controlling the cost, complexity and risk of deploying, managing and maintaining application images in virtualized and cloud-based environments. The rPath approach assembles and binds application functionality with an operating system, creating a self-contained application image that can be easily deployed, managed and maintained."

Wired covers the latest twist in the Hans Reiser murder trial. "Hans Reiser wants a trial do-over. Reiser is the Linux guru who in April was convicted of the first-degree murder of his estranged wife. He's the same defendant who, in exchange for a 15-to-life term instead of a 25-to-life term, brought authorities to the Oakland hills where he buried Nina Reiser's body. He even apologized for killing her. But in a handwritten appellate motion, he is appealing his conviction. Yet there's a glaring problem with this appeal, in which he claims he thought the deal would have only sent him away for three years, not 15-to-life."

The LWN.net Weekly Edition for November 20, 2008 is available.

Mitchell Baker reports on the state of Mozilla. Income continues to rise, and continues to come mostly from Google. Beyond that: "Our community remains healthy and vibrant. The percentage of code contributed to Firefox by people not employed by Mozilla remained steady at about 40% of the product we ship. This is true despite a significant amount of new employees in 2007."

The folks over at the Royal Pingdom blog have a comparison of uptimes and home page load times for the web sites of multiple Linux distributions along with Microsoft and Apple. Overall, the results of this month-long monitoring effort reflect quite well on Linux, but the authors are quick to caution that these numbers only reflect a particular point in time. Longer term monitoring is ongoing as well. "It is interesting to see that even with limited resources, many of the teams behind the various Linux distributions are managing a better homepage uptime and load time than Microsoft does, at least during this time period."

Fedora has updated geda-gnetlist (F8, F9: insecure tmp file usage), roundup (F8, F9: permissions bypass), cobbler (F8, F9: arbitrary code execution), libxml2 (F8, F9: multiple vulnerabilities), grip (F8, F9: arbitrary code execution), htop (F8, F9: process name sanitizing).

Mandriva has updated libxml2 (multiple vulnerabilities).

Red Hat has updated kernel (multiple vulnerabilities).

rPath has updated libxml2 (multiple vulnerabilities).

Ubuntu has updated libxml2 (multiple vulnerabilities).

Linux Journal takes a look at the E-Stewards certification program for electronic waste recyclers. "That old CRT monitor the size of a small fridge. The original Apple Newton that kicked the bucket and never woke up. The early-vintage musty VA Linux box - what happens to all of this e-junk after it, if ever, leaves your basement? Ideally e-junk lands at a reputable e-recycler with the equipment to safely recycle and/or dispose of these items that are very difficult to process. What happens frequently is that a less-than-reputable outfit will pack your e-junk onto a container and ship it off to a developing country with lax environmental and labor laws, where it will wreak havoc on the environment and poor people."

The Minimalist GNU for Windows (MinGW) project is a way to get GCC and tools like binutils working to build software for the Windows environment—something that might not sound very interesting to Linux users or developers. But there are a number of advantages to porting and regularly testing free software on Windows, as Red Hat's Richard Jones and Dan Berrange explain. Richard and Dan also describe Red Hat's involvement, how developers can participate, as well as how it all helps the free software cause. Click below, subscribers only, for the interview.

Mandriva has reported its financial and operating results for the 3rd quarter 2008. "Turnover for the quarter is 0.83 million Euros, trading revenue is 1.04 million Euros, costs are 1.67 million Euros and the operating loss is 0.64 million Euros. Turnover and operating results, compared with the 3rd quarter 2007, were 29 per cent down, costs fell by 5 per cent."

Cray has announced the availability of the Cray CX1 deskside supercomputer preloaded with Rocks+ 5, the commercial version of the Rocks Cluster Distribution for Linux users. "Rocks+ is the commercial version of the Rocks Cluster Distribution -- an end-to-end HPCC software stack, which includes the operating system, cluster management middleware, libraries, and compilers; with enterprise class commercial support from Clustercorp, which was founded by the leaders in the Rocks community. Available Rocks+Rolls include the Intel(R) Roll, PGI(R) Roll, OFED Roll, TotalView(R) Roll and Moab(R) Roll (Rocks+MOAB). Clustercorp also supports open source Rolls including the Torque Roll and SGE (Sun Grid Engine) Roll."

Ubuntu has updated mysql (denial of service), firefox and xulrunner (multiple vulnerabilities), clamav (arbitrary code execution).

rPath has updated gnutls (man in the middle attacks).

Mandriva has updated gnutls (man in the middle attacks), firefox (multiple vulnerabilities).

Debian has updated libxml2 (multiple vulnerabilities).

CentOS has updated libxml2 (multiple vulnerabilities).