With native UI Fragments and Views for working with Facebook’s Open Graph, the new beta SDK is a major revamp of the company’s Android library.
Read more at The H
Raspberry Pi Mini Computer: Tiny $35/$25 Price-Tag Could Be Squeezed A little Lower — But Don’t Expect Sub-$20 Pi
The differentiator for the Raspberry Pi mini computer is price. It’s not the most powerful single-board computer around but it’s not trying to be. The platform-makers’ big idea was to make a device that kids could learn to code on — meaning it needed to be powerful enough to do cool stuff like play BlueRay-quality video, but cheap enough that kids wouldn’t have to share it with the rest of the family. And at $35 for the current model B — and $25 for the forthcoming model A (which has less memory, fewer USB ports and no Ethernet) — it’s already got a disruptive price-tag.
But how low could the Raspberry Pi’s price-tag go in future? Eben Upton, founder of the not-for-profit Raspberry Pi Foundation and the man behind the Pi’s design, says that while he can’t envisage being able to make a $10 or $15 Pi, there might be room to shave a few more dollars off the cost. ”I think we’re very close to the minimum possible cost, once you’ve put a board, some connectors, a CPU and a bit of RAM down and allowed for a bit of margin,” he tells TechCrunch. “I could see getting to $20 one day for a very bare-bones product, but not soon, and no lower than that.”
Read more at TechCrunch
Distribution Release: Ubuntu Studio 12.10
Ubuntu Studio 12.10, a new version of the official Ubuntu variant compiled to give sound, video and graphics artists a free computing platform on which to unleash their creativity, is out and ready for download: “Ubuntu Studio is the Ubuntu flavour designed for content creation. Improved interface: a….
Read more at DistroWatch
Open Source Cloud News Roundup: Week of Oct. 15
With the OpenStack Summit in San Diego this week, open cloud headlines were dominated by OpenStack announcements and analysis. But some new criticisms of the project emerged as well. A Forrester analyst cautions that companies may not get a return on their investment with OpenStack. And TechTarget writes that some key enterprise features are missing from the new Folsom release.
OpenStack Summit: Open Cloud Platform Gets Big Push
PC Magazine
The OpenStack Summit was held this week in San Diego with several companies including, Rackspace and Cisco, announcing new products and support for OpenStack.
OpenStack Open Source Cloud Distributions Take Shape
ServerWatch
Sean Michael Kerner reports from the OpenStack Summit on a panel about how OpenStack distributions differentiate and why there’s little risk of fragmentation.
With Ubuntu Server 12.10 OpenStack Users Can Stay on the Cutting Edge
Linux.com
The recent addition of Canonical’s Ubuntu Cloud Archive to Ubuntu 12.10 promises to make life much better for companies using both OpenStack and Ubuntu Server.
Forrester Analyst Is Among the Latest to Wonder About OpenStack
OStatic/ GigaOM
A new Forrester report raises questions about what kind of return companies are getting from OpenStack.
Enterprise OpenStack Projects Encounter Feature Gaps
TechTarget
Forrester wasn’t the only critical voice on OpenStack this week. Several key enterprise features are still missing from the latest OpenStack release, according to this coverage from the summit in San Diego.
LinuxCon Europe Co-located Events Offer More Opportunities for Collaboration
Earlier this week I wrote about the VIP/speaker gift we’re giving away at LinuxCon Europe (Twitter hashtag: #linuxcon) and shared with the community how anyone could win their own Linux Futbol Club soccer jersey (make sure to read that story, you could still win if you comment).
I also mentioned the co-located events taking place at LinuxCon Europe. The Linux Foundation works with community members and projects to help host important workshops and summits at LinuxCon events in an effort to maximize opportunities for the world’s most talented software developers and cutting-edge users to collaborate real-time.
Here are some highlights from each of these co-located events.
Embedded Linux Conference Europe
This is a very popular event, attracting hundreds of embedded developers every year. With the dominant role Linux is playing in consumer devices and automotive technologies, we expect the best turnout ever this year. November 5-7.
KVM Forum and oVirt Workshop
With the rise of cloud computing, the role of the hypervisor is more important than ever. KVM Forum attendees will collaborate on this work, as well as work on datacenter virtualization and desktop infrastructure. The oVirt Workshop will be held in conjunction with KVM Forum November 7-9, 2012.
OpenSAF European Symposium
On November 8, OpenSAF users, developers, engineering managers and academics from a variety of industries will meet to advance service and high availability technologies.
EFL Developer Day
On Monday, November 5, developers can come to the EFL Developer day to learn more about Enlightenment, the window manager, compositor and graphics toolkit for the Linux desktop and mobile.
Gluster Workshop
This workshop will take a deep dive into the world of storage. The latest release of GlusterFS will be reviewed, as well as information on how to manage your Gluster instances. This workshop takes place November 8. Check out the short video interview recently done with Gluster Community Technical Lead Eco Willson.
Yocto Project Developer Day
The world’s leading embedded developers will gather together on November 8 to work on advancing the Yocto Project. This Linux Foundation Labs project is an open source collaboration that provides templates, tools and methods to streamline custom embedded Linux development. If you’re wanting to learn about the most cutting-edge embedded Linux development work, don’t miss this.
Wireless Mini-Summit
Taking place November 8 and 9, developers interested in Linux bluetooth, NFC and Wireless LAN (802.11) shouldn’t miss this.
That’s a lot of opportunity for collaboration on some very important open source projects. You can learn more about these events on the LinuxCon Europe co-located events page.
The complete LinuxCon Europe schedule is available online. Hope to see you in Barcelona in just a few short weeks!
With Ubuntu Server 12.10 OpenStack Users Can Stay on the Cutting Edge
Rarely does a day go by in the Linux community without the release of some new distribution update or other, but it seems safe to say that few make as big a splash as Ubuntu releases do.
Today, of course, is the official release day for Ubuntu 12.10 “Quantal Quetzal,” and the buzz surrounding the software’s arrival is definitely living up to that standard.
There are numerous exciting new features in this new Ubuntu release on both the desktop and the server, but one on the server side stands out as being particularly notable for enterprise users. It’s the recent addition of Canonical’s Ubuntu Cloud Archive, and it promises to make life much better for the countless companies out there using both OpenStack and Ubuntu Server.
Linux.com had a chance to speak earlier this week with Mark Baker, Canonical’s product manager for Ubuntu Server, as well as Steve George, its vice president of communications and products, about this promising new capability.
Ubuntu Cloud Archive
Ubuntu Server 12.10 is actually the fifth Ubuntu release to feature OpenStack, and this time it includes the Folsom release of OpenStack along with two major new components: Cinder, for block storage, and Quantum, a virtual networking API.
With this release, Ubuntu Server is also the first operating system to support Intel’s new Open Attestation (OAT) in an OpenStack environment, Canonical says. Meanwhile, Juju, the software’s service orchestration tool, is now natively supported on OpenStack clouds running on Ubuntu, so IT departments can use it on many more public clouds than they could before. Ubuntu 12.10 delivers a first look at a new graphical interface for Juju as well.
Perhaps best of all, however, is that enterprises with infrastructure built on Long Term Support (LTS) versions of Ubuntu can now remain on that software but still deploy compatible versions of the latest OpenStack releases that arrive in interim Ubuntu updates, such as Ubuntu 12.10’s Folsom. That’s because of Canonical’s Ubuntu Cloud Archive, a growing repository of backported versions of OpenStack that gives enterprise Ubuntu users access the latest open cloud software, even if they choose to stick with a fully supported and certified LTS platform.
‘The Heart of All This Innovation’
So, “people can run Essex on Ubuntu 12.04, but if they want to be more current with the latest technology, they can do that and pull down Folsom or even release candidates of future versions,” Baker explained. “A lot of enterprises are testing and evaluating OpenStack, so to be able to pull down the latest stuff or see what’s coming down the pike is very interesting for them.”
Indeed, OpenStack is “a bit like Apache in the early days,” George added. “It’s the heart of where all this exciting innovation is happening.”
Many enterprise users, however, have hardware running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and are very happy with it, so they don’t want to have to upgrade, he pointed out. “This gets around that,” George said. “You can have a stable Ubuntu and still get the latest and greatest release of OpenStack.”
LTS versions such as Ubuntu 12.04, which was released in April, are generally about stability and providing a long-term platform enterprises can depend on, George concluded. “With 12.10, however, we’re looking at where we’re going in future,” he said, “and OpenStack is a big part of that.”
