Steam Machines Will Be “Front and Center” at GDC 2015, Valve Confirms

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January 9, 2015

Valve has once again released a statement concerning its planned presentations at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2015 event in March, now confirming that the Steam Machines will be “front and center.”

Valve made a lot of waves in the games industry back in late 2013, when it confirmed that it was spearheading an offensive for the living rooms of gamers from around the world. The studio pledges to work with hardware makers to roll out special PCs called Steam Machines, designed for the l… (read more)

Go 1.5 Is Still Working Towards Being Written In Go

By

Phoronix

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January 9, 2015

The plan for the upcoming release of Google’s Go 1.5 language is to have its tool-chain be written in Go. In order to bootstrap the new Go compiler tool-chain, they’ll depend on Go 1.4 to compile the new code…

6 New Things Fedora 21 Brings to the Open Source Cloud

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OpenSource.com

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January 9, 2015

When Fedora 21 finally hit release last month, I was excited and ready to go. By the end of the day, I had every desktop machine I own up and running on the new version, and I was enjoying playing with the latest version of some of my favorite open source software which was packaged inside. But what next?

How To Install Software In Linux : An Introduction

By

Mohd Sohail

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January 9, 2015

In any operating system we need to install applications to complete our day to day tasks. In the world of Windows, every program has a simple Setup.exe or a program.zip file. On a Mac a package is a program.dmg or a program.sit file. In both theoperating system you can simply click it and it will ask you some very basic configuration questions like, do you accept the licence agreement or the directory you want to install the software to. Although in Linux, It seems tough to install the programs/softwares but It’s not true.

Also read How To Install/Upgrade To Linux Kernel 3.18.1 In Ubuntu/Linux Mint

The second package manager format is DEB, stands for Debian. Debian packages and the APT (Advanced Packagin Tool) has made advanced features that are now commonly used, like, automatic dependency resolution and signed packages. Debian packages are used by Debian/Linux, and some of the most used Linux distributions, like, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Mepis etc. The .deb/Debian files look like this program-version-other.deb

APT For Debian based distributions, like, Ubuntu, Linux Mint etc.

The APT is the tool, commonly used to install packages, remotely from the software repository. In short it’s a simple command based tool that you use to install files/softwares. Complete command is apt-get and it’s the easiest way to install files/Softwares packages. This easy tools informs you about packages that are currently being installed and also it informs you about the packages that are available in repositories.

apt-get install ${packagename}

To remove/uninstall any software, just use remove

apt-get remove ${packagename}

The software packages are somewhere in the online repositoies, APT handles a local database on the user’s hard drive that contains informations about the available packages and where they are located. So when the types the command, apt-get install conky, the APT will start finding the package named conky in the database and will install conky once user types ‘y’ (yes). To get the all newly uploaded packages on the repositories, user need to update APT regularly.

To update APT database:

apt-get update

To update the APT database and also upgrade the security updates and patches that might be available for some installed softwares, users may do it at once just by using the commands like this:

apt-get update; apt-get upgrade

And remember all of the package management tools I am discussing, will need user to be in root or superuser, for example to install software in debian based distributions you will use apt-get followed by sudo then It will ask you to enter password.

sudo apt-get install conky
sudo apt-get remove conky
sudo apt-get update

Install Software in Linux, Ubuntu, debian

Insert password to install any package

yum: For RPM based Linux distributions, like, Fedora, Red Hat

You will not have any trouble understanding yum because its same as apt-get. As ‘apt-get‘ installs software packages for Debian packages, like that ‘yum‘ installs software packages for RPM packages. It can also like apt-get download and install packages from a repository.

Yum install ${packagename}

To remove software packages, just use remove

yum remove ${packagename}

There is one thing to note that yum does not keep a local database by default in user’s hard disk. So there is no need to update it. But to install available security paches and bug fixes, use the following command:

yum update

If user wants to update any single package then do it in the following way:

yum update ${packagename}

Tar Balls

You would remember in Windows you’ve Zip files .zip or in Mac .sit. The same way here in Linux you have Tar Balls (files) ending with extentions, like, .tar, .tar.gz, .tgz, or something else. To unpack a tar ball (file), use the following command:

tar -xzvf ${filename}.tar.gz

The parameters are x to extract files, z to filter through gzip for decompression (leave this off if the file does not have a gz extension), v for verbose mode so you can tell what’s going on, f indicating there will be a filename to follow. You may want to create an alias called “untar” that feeds in these options if you have a hard time remembering command line options as I do.

The command will not install the software, but it will extract the archived files. After extracting files then you can install the extracted files by reading README file or INSTALL file (because there you can instructions for installing those particular files).

Other Linux Packaging Managements

Afcourse there are many distributions, so the packaging managing tools. Like, SUSE uses RPM as its native package format, but has its own tool to manage softwares on system.

Yast is the packaging managing tool used in openSUSE Linux distribution, as well as SUSE’s derived commercial distributions. I’ll cover Yast in my other post.

I will cover some more majorly used packaging management tools like, ‘dpkg’ in my other post. The work and attributes of some other packaging management tools will be discussed in that post.

Also Read important article The Linux Permissions: An Introduction

Set up GlassFish 4.1 Nova-Docker Container via phusion/baseimage on RDO Juno

By

Boris Derzhavets

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January 9, 2015

The problem here is that phusion/baseimage per https://github.com/phusion/baseimage-docker should provide ssh access to container , however it doesn’t. Working with docker container there is easy workaround suggested by Mykola Gurov in http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27816298/cannot-get-ssh-access-to-glassfish-4-1-docker-container
# docker exec container-id exec /usr/sbin/sshd -D
which is of no help in case of Nova-Docker Container. To bring sshd back to life
I added to Dockerfile :-
RUN echo “/usr/sbin/sshd > log &” >> /etc/my_init.d/00_regen_ssh_host_keys.sh

Complete text of posting may be viewed here

Cloud App Policy Violations Are a Growing Concern

By

eWeek

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January 9, 2015

The January 2015 Netskope Cloud Report shows an increasing use of cloud applications by enterprises.

New Stable Kernels

By

LWN

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January 9, 2015

Greg Kroah-Hartman has released four new stable kernels: 3.10.64, 3.14.28, 3.17.8, and 3.18.2. Each contains important updates and fixes. The 3.17.8 release is also noteworthy because it will be the last release in the 3.17 series. 3.17 users need to move to the 3.18 series as soon as possible.

Linux Shines at CES with Smart TVs and Home Automation Gizmos

By

Eric Brown

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January 8, 2015

samsung tizentv Each year, as I search through CES product launches to see which run Linux, I get the feeling I’m looking at an iceberg. There are probably a lot more tuxified devices out there than I’ll ever have time to track down. At this year’s Internet of Things-laden show, the list of potentially Linux based gizmos has grown even larger.

Certainly, there are plenty of vendors that openly proclaim their products’ Linux roots (see farther below), but more often vendors keep mum, implying they created the secret sauce all by themselves. Even when you ask, they often don’t tell. It’s easier to identify technology using the Linux-based Android, but now that Android’s cool factor has waned due to its overwhelming success, some vendors even obscure their Android foundations.

Some product categories are easy: A new smart TV? It almost certainly runs Linux or in some cases Android. Media players are typically Android or Linux. A home automation hub or router? Linux is inside about four times out of five. And of course smartphones and tablets are almost always going to be Android.

Other product categories are trickier. Audio equipment such as smart wireless speakers often run on Linux, although most are simpler affairs. Home automation sensor devices, wearables, and other Internet of Things endpoints are more often than not too resource constrained for Linux or Android, but that’s changing, especially with Android Wear and the more advanced sensor devices. Car computers are typically QNX, and to a lesser extent Windows, but Linux and Android are coming on strong.

Semi-autonomous drones and robots are usually APM or ROS-only, but we’re seeing more and more Linux devices, especially among the terrestrial bots. Most of the CES offerings, however, seem to be simpler, non-autonomous devices controlled solely by smartphones.

Here’s a bird’s eye view of what a Linux-seeking hawk might have observed at this year’s CES show in the categories of TVs and home automation, plus a grab-bag of seven highlights from other categories.

Smart TVs

Most so-called smart TVs have run simple Linux builds for years, but their limitations have driven consumers to more capable Linux or Android-based media player boxes, such as the Roku. Now, TV vendors are replacing their dumb penguin brains with smarter, more open distributions, often borrowed from the mobile Linux movement. The platforms provide improved performance and rich UIs, mobile apps, integration and hand-offs with mobile devices, and potentially a role in home automation and gaming.

Last year, LG started the trend by shipping its first WebOS-based smart TVs, which proved to be a big success. At this week’s CES LG announced it was launching more WebOS models, including 4K TVs running WebOS 2.0. (LG is also squeezing WebOS into a smartwatch that can unlock Audi cars.)

LG ultra HD TVs

Then came the unsurprising, but still significant news that Samsung will place Tizen in all its 2015 smart TVs. Better yet, the TVs will interact with a wide variety of mobile devices, not just Samsung models.

firefox os tv Last year, Panasonic said it was working on a Firefox OS based smart TV, and it’s finally delivering, with four Firefox OS-based Life+Screen Smart TVs due this spring. Meanwhile, the Matchstick startup that will soon ship a $25 Firefox OS-based media player dongle, announced an open source Flint reference platform for building similar devices.

Roku, which is already shipping on TCL and Hisense smart TVs, is now expanding to Haier and Insignia, as well as 4K TVs. The other major player is Google, which has replaced Google TV with Android TV. At CES, Sony, Sharp, and Philips all said they would ship Android TV devices.

Razer announced an impressive looking Android TV game controller called Forge TV. The company also announced plans to release an Open Source Virtual Reality (OSVR) helmet, sort of a more refined version of Google’s Cardboard.

Home Automation

By August of last year, we were able to identify 12 home automation hubs based on Linux. At CES, a few more broke cover, including the Linux-based, AllSeen-compatible D-Link Connected Home Hub and the Android-derived Smart Home Cloud Center from Marvell .

One automation platform that attracted considerable attention at CES was a newly revamped SmartThings Hub. Just before SmartThings was bought by Samsung last summer, a rep confirmed to us its next hub would move from a real-time OS to Linux. Indeed, a SmartThings rep has now confirmed a switch to Linux for the new hub, and noted that “We will be moving to Tizen over time.”

The SmartThings Hub, which ships in the second quarter, has a more powerful processor, backup battery power, and expanded cellular connectivity. It ships with smaller, more power-efficient sensor devices, and supports a number of new third-party devices, including Samsung smart appliances and the Tizen-based Gear S smartwatch.

The new hub will also offer a local app engine and open platform. At the CES keynote, Samsung’s president and CEO, BK Yoon announced that the SmartThings ecosystem would be completely open. “I’m making a promise,” said Yoon. “Our IoT components and devices will be open. We will ensure that others can easily connect to our devices.”

CES also brought us a number of Linux-based smart sensor devices, cameras, and connected appliances that can be controlled by automation hubs. D-Link, for example, announced new WiFi Water Sensor and Wi-Fi Siren devices that connect to its new hub, as well as some security cameras and a baby monitor.

Google’s Nest expanded its third party support to include Philips Hue lightbulbs and LG smart refrigerators, among other devices. Meanwhile, Belkin updated its popular Linux-based WeMo, including water leak, motion, and door/window sensors, as well as a WiFi-to-ZigBee bridge.

7 notables from CES

CES wasn’t only about TVs and home automation gizmos of course. Here are just a few of the many cool product launches at CES that run Linux or Android:

Marvell 3D Printing Kit — Hardware/software kit for OEMs to make Linux-based, WiFi and touchscreen enabled, standalone 3D printers.

D-Link Ultra Series AC5300 router — 802.11ac router with Wave 2 extensions that can achieve a claimed5.3Gbps.

Parrot RNB6 — Android-based aftermarket in-vehicle infotainment system with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay support.

Dell Venue 8 7000 tablet — 6mm thick, Atom Z3500 based Android tablet with 8.4-inch, 2,560 x 1,600 display and Intel RealSense Snapshot Depth Camera.

GE ChillHub refrigerator — WiFi-enabled fridge with Linux, eight USB ports, an open SDK and a FirstBuild developer community.

AscTec Firefly drone — Commercial hexacopter with either an Ubuntu- or Intel Core-based computer and six Intel RealSense depth cameras.

WattUp — Energous’ Linux-based wireless charging device with beam forming for charging devices up to 15 feet away.

Looking for all things Linux may be an eccentric hobby at best. One might argue that what really matters is which products offer the best functionality for the price. Others might say the question should be which offer open source flexibility, a frequent, but not universal, side-car to Linux. Good questions both. In the meantime, we will follow our endless quest: Is that a tux you’re wearing?

Laying To Rest That Odd Linux Kernel Regression

By

Phoronix

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January 8, 2015

Former Red Hat employee Dave Jones has provided some closure to that Linux 3.18 kernel bug that was initially viewed as a “worrisome regression” and turned out to be very difficult to track with no official fix within the mainline Linux kernel…

Harman Brings Linux-Based IVI to Entry-Level Cars

By

LinuxGizmos

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January 8, 2015

Harman’s Linux-based IVI system for entry-level cars integrates Aha Analytics, and supports Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, and MirrorLink connectivity. A year ago at CES, Harman announced a Linux-based in-vehicle infotainment system featuring an HTML5 development environment, a type 1 hypervisor, and integration with driver assist functions. Now the company is offering a simpler IVI system […]