City of Barcelona Kicks Out Microsoft in Favor of Linux and Open Source

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January 12, 2018

Barcelona city administration has prepared the roadmap to migrate its existing system from Microsoft and proprietary software to Linux and Open Source software.

A Spanish newspaper, El País, has reported that the City of Barcelona is in the process of migrating its computer system to Open Source technologies.

According to the news report, the city plans to first replace all its user applications with alternative open source applications. This will go on until the only remaining proprietary software will be Windows where it will finally be replaced with a Linux distribution.

Multimedia Apps for the Linux Console

By

Carla Schroder

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January 11, 2018

When last we met, we learned that the Linux console supports multimedia. Yes, really! You can enjoy music, movies, photos, and even read PDF files without being in an X session with MPlayer, fbi, and fbgs. And, as a bonus, you can enjoy a Matrix-style screensaver for the console, CMatrix.

You will probably have make some tweaks to your system to make this work. The examples used here are for Ubuntu Linux 16.04.

MPlayer

You’re probably familiar with the amazing and versatile MPlayer, which supports almost every video and audio format, and runs on nearly everything, including Linux, Android, Windows, Mac, Kindle, OS/2, and AmigaOS. Using MPLayer in your console will probably require some tweaking, depending on your Linux distribution. To start, try playing a video:

$ mplayer

If it works, then hurrah, and you can invest your time in learning useful MPlayer options, such as controlling the size of the video screen. However, some Linux distributions are managing the framebuffer differently than in the olden days, and you may have to adjust some settings to make it work. This is how to make it work on recent Ubuntu releases.

First, add yourself to the video group.

Second, verify that /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer.conf has this line: #blacklist vesafb. It should already be commented out, and if it isn’t then comment it. All the other module lines should be un-commented, which prevents them from loading. Side note: if you want to dig more deeply into managing your framebuffer, the module for your video card may give better performance.

Add these two modules to the end of /etc/initramfs-tools/modules, vesafb and fbcon, then rebuild the initramfs image:

$ sudo nano /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
    # List of modules that you want to include in your initramfs.
    # They will be loaded at boot time in the order below.
    fbcon
    vesafb
    
$ sudo update-initramfs -u

fbcon is the Linux framebuffer console. It runs on top of the framebuffer and adds graphical features. It requires a framebuffer device, which is supplied by the vesafb module.

Now you must edit your GRUB2 configuration. In /etc/default/grub you should see a line like this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

It may have some other options, but it should be there. Add vga=789:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash vga=789"

Reboot and enter your console (Ctrl+Alt+F1), and try playing a video. This command selects the fbdev2 video device; I haven’t learned yet how to know which one to use, but I had to use it to play the video. The default screen size is 320×240, so I scaled it to 960:

$ mplayer -vo fbdev2 -vf scale -zoom -xy 960 AlienSong_mp4.mov

And behold Figure 1. It’s grainy because I have a low-fi copy of this video, not because MPlayer is making it grainy.

MPLayer plays CDs, DVDs, network streams, and has a giant batch of playback options, which I shall leave as your homework to explore.

fbi Image Viewer

fbi, the framebuffer image viewer, comes in the fbida package on most Linuxes. It has native support for the common image file formats, and uses convert (from Image Magick), if it is installed, for other formats. Its simplest use is to view a single image file:

$ fbi filename

Use the arrow keys to scroll a large image, + and – to zoom, and r and l to rotate 90 degress right and left. Press the Escape key to close the image. You can play a slideshow by giving fbi a list of files:

$ fbi --list file-list.txt

fbi supports autozoom. With -a fbi controls the zoom factor. --autoup and --autodown tell fbi to only zoom up or down. Control the blend time between images with --blend [time], in milliseconds. Press the k and j keys to jump behind and ahead in your file list.

fbi has commands for creating file lists from images you have viewed, and for exporting your commands to a file, and a host of other cool options. Check out man fbi for complete options.

CMatrix Console Screensaver

The Matrix screensaver is still my favorite (Figure 2), second only to the bouncing cow. CMatrix runs on the console. Simply type cmatrix to start it, and Ctrl+C stops it. Run cmatrix -s to launch it in screensaver mode, which exits on any keypress. -C changes the color. Your choices are green, red, blue, yellow, white, magenta, cyan, and black.

CMatrix supports asynchronous key presses, which means you can change options while it’s running.

-B is all bold text, and -B is partially bold.

fbgs PDF Viewer

It seems that the addiction to PDF documents is pandemic and incurable, though PDFs are better than they used to be, with live hyperlinks, copy-paste, and good text search. The fbgs console PDF viewer is part of the fbida package. Options include page size, resolution, page selections, and most fbi options, with the exceptions listed in man fbgs. The main option I use is page size; you get -l, xl, and xxl to choose from:

$ fbgs -xl annoyingpdf.pdf

Learn more about Linux through the free “Introduction to Linux” course from The Linux Foundation and edX.

Linux Smartphone Market Heats Up with PiTalk, Gemini PDA, and Eelo

By

Eric Brown

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January 11, 2018

Since our September story surveying a new crop of Linux smartphone contenders, including the Raspberry Pi based ZeroPhone and Purism’s Librem 5, we’ve seen several more Linux phone projects pop into view. New entries covered here include a successfully Kickstarted PiTalk phone add-on for the Raspberry Pi. There’s also a Gemini PDA with 4G support that dual-boots Linux and Android. It won Indiegogo funding last year and has now opened for additional orders.

Meanwhile, a new privacy focused Eelo project has joined several Linux software projects for repurposing old Android phones. We also have updates on the similar PostmarketOS, as well as Samsung’s project for supporting Linux desktops on its Android-based Galaxy phones when hooked up to the optional DEX desktop dock (see below).

The renewed dreams for a Linux smartphone may prove to be naïve — a fruitless tilting at windmills that will end in the same fate that befell Firefox OS and the Ubuntu Phone. However, the enthusiastic public response to most of these projects suggests there’s widespread appeal for phones that are not locked into the constraints — or opened up to the data mining — of the Linux-based Android. The Librem5, for example, blew past its $1.5 million goal to reach over $2.2 million, and the Gemini PDA earned $1.36 million. Whatever the motivation — greater privacy, increased modularity and recyclability, longer-term support, better compatibility with Linux desktops, or more open platforms for software and/or hardware innovation — the desire for changing the 10-year old smartphone formula is real.

Sign up for ELC/OpenIoT Summit updates to get the latest information:

PiTalk

Like the ZeroPhone, which has yet to launch its Crowd Supply campaign, the SB Components PiTalk is a fully open source platform compatible with the Raspberry Pi ecosystem. Yet instead of incorporating a Raspberry Pi Zero, the modular, hackable PiTalk is instead a shield add-on board that can work with any modern Pi from an RPi Zero to an RPi 3.

The PiTalk shield includes a 40-pin RPi header, micro-USB port, audio interfaces, and analog pins. There’s also a SIM card slot, antenna connector, and a 3G cellular module with support for voice, data, and SMS. You can further extend the board with the capabilities of the underlying Raspberry Pi, including WiFi and Bluetooth on the RPi 3, and customize it with the extensive ecosystem of RPi add-ons.

The campaign has been completed to the tune of 11,995 Pounds ($16,213), so it does not appear you can order one until after the March 2018 estimated delivery date. Funders were able to buy the shield with antenna for 47 Pounds ($64), or add 3.2-inch (65 Pounds), 4.0-inch (70 Pounds), or 5-inch (80 Pounds) touchscreens ranging from 320×240 to 800×480 pixels. Complete kits that added a Raspberry Pi and an SD card loaded with the Python 3.4-built PiTalk software ranged from 95 to 110 Pounds ($128 to $149), depending on screen size. There was also a 125 Pound full kit that added a camera, and a 90 Pound automation kit with an RPi 3 and a PiRelay automation shield, but no screen.

Gemini PDA

Planet Computers’ new Gemini PDA is a clamshell form-factor device with a dual-boot Linux/Android setup available in WiFi-only and 4G models. The device was funded last March, earning $1,359,174, which made it one of the most successful Indiegogo projects of 2017. It has finally begun shipping to backers, and this week, Planet Computers relaunched the device on Indiegogo for $299 (WiFi) or $399 (WiFi/4G).

The Gemini PDA was designed by Martin Riddiford, the chief designer of the Psion PDA of the late ‘90s. The 320-gram device folds open to reveal a 6-inch, 2880×1440-pixel, multi-touch screen, as well as a QWERTY keyboard with a dedicated voice assistance button.

The handheld device features a MediaTek Helio X27 SoC with dual 2.6GHz Cortex-A72 cores, two banks of quad-core Cortex-A53 cores split between 2.0GHz and 1.6GHz, plus an 875MHz Mali T880 MP4 GPU. You get 4GB RAM, 64GB flash, and a microSD slot. There’s also a 4220mAh battery

The Gemini PDA is further equipped with 5-megapixel front-facing camera, dual USB Type C ports, a fingerprint reader, and accelerometer, compass, light sensor, gyro, and magneto-sensor. Standard wireless features include 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0, aGPS, and NFC, and the 4G version adds a SIM slot with available cards supporting GSM, WCDMA, and LTE 1-20.

This week, Liliputing published a mostly positive hands-on review of the prototype device.

Eelo

The Eelo campaign has more than doubled its Kickstarter goal to reach $79,000, with 10 days left to go. The open source community project has attracted interest in part due to its direction by Mandrake Linux creator Gael Duval.

The “privacy-enabled” software ROMs will be based on LineageOS — the fork of the discontinued CyanogenMod. Eelo will be designed to connect to privacy-minded “alternative web services” such as search, cloud storage, and settings recovery services. Updates will be supported for at least three years.

The Eelo phone is currently only a software project intended to create an open source Linux OS for loading onto Android phones. Considering that it’s nowhere close to the estimated 2 million to 2.4 million Euros ($2.4 to $2.9 million) the project says it needs to build its own bezel-less Eelo hardware, it’s likely to remain a software project for the near future.

Most of the funding pledges are simply invitations to join the project. The closest thing to a product is a 1,024 Euro ($1,225) package that gives you an early build of Eelo loaded on a mid-range Android phone such as the Xiaomi Mi 5S, due in Sep. 2018. For twice that, you get a higher end Xiaomi Mi Mix2 due in October.

PostmarketOS and Samsung’s Linux extensions for Galaxy phones

We mentioned the early-stage PostmarketOS in our last report as one of the more promising of the software only Linux smartphone projects. This lightweight, touchscreen-friendly variation on Alpine Linux will be offered for Android phones, complete with a 10-year support lifecycle.

On Dec. 31, the developers released a progress report that shows the open source project has come a long way. It’s still at an early stage, but as this Hackaday story notes: “Incredible progress is being made on everything from mainline kernel development to getting standard Linux desktops such as Gnome, MATE and XFCE4 running.”

Other PostmarketOS improvements include enhancements to the backend process of compiling and packaging components. There are also new ports of Plasma Mobile and the WebOS-based LuneOS UI, and support for many more Android devices.

One of the more interesting Linux smartphone experiments was first reported on in October: a set of extensions released by Samsung that enable its Android based Galaxy phones to run Linux. This is not a post-market replacement of Android, however. Instead, you plug the Galaxy into its optional DEX desktop dock to enable a full Linux desktop on a large display. The idea is to make it easier for Linux developers to launch their desktops from Android phones.

In November, Samsung released a YouTube video that demonstrated a Galaxy/DEX launch of an Ubuntu 16.04 LTS desktop with Eclipse IDE. The Ubuntu desktop springs from the same Linux kernel that the Galaxy uses to run Android. Users can even install multiple Linux distributions on the same Galaxy phone. In a way, the Linux-on-Galaxy trick provides a bit of the “convergence” experience Ubuntu was promising with its now discontinued Ubuntu Phone.

The last Linux-based Tizen phone that Samsung released with back in May with the Z4, a budget phone that shipped in India. It remains to be seen whether Samsung will continue to introduce new Tizen phones. The CE giant certainly continues to push Tizen in consumer electronics, however. At CES this week, it launched a Tizen-based Flip digital whiteboard for multi-party collaboration that competes with the Microsoft Surface Hub.

Container Structure Tests: Unit Tests for Docker Images

By

Google Open Source Blog

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January 11, 2018

Usage of containers in software applications is on the rise, and with their increasing usage in production comes a need for robust testing and validation. Containers provide great testing environments, but actually validating the structure of the containers themselves can be tricky. The Docker toolchain provides us with easy ways to interact with the container images themselves, but no real way of verifying their contents. What if we want to ensure a set of commands runs successfully inside of our container, or check that certain files are in the correct place with the correct contents, before shipping?

The Container Tools team at Google is happy to announce the release of the Container Structure Test framework. This framework provides a convenient and powerful way to verify the contents and structure of your containers. We’ve been using this framework at Google to test all of our team’s released containers for over a year now, and we’re excited to finally share it with the public.

The framework supports four types of tests:

Exploring Node.js with Mark Hinkle, the Executive Director of the Node.js Foundation

By

The New Stack

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January 11, 2018

Even though JavaScript has been around for more than 20 years, it’s becoming the first class citizen for developing enterprise applications. There is a huge developer community behind this technology.

What makes things even more interesting is that, with Node.js, JavaScript can run on server, so developers can write applications that run end-to-end in JavaScript. Node.js is very well suited for service applications because server applications are increasingly becoming single function event-driven microservices.

That’s not all. “Node.js is the number one workload across a serverless infrastructure out there. It was the first solution that ran on Amazon Lambda, Google functions. It’s the largest workload that runs on an IBM Bluemix,” said Mark Hinkle…

As Go 2.0 Nears, AWS Launches Developer Preview of Go SDK 2.0

By

ADT Mag

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January 11, 2018

There’s now a developer preview of an updated SDK for the Go programming language available on the Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) cloud.

Sometimes called Golang, Go is a Google-backed, open source programming language optimized for large-scale apps, such as performant Web apps that can run at tremendous scale. It’s now at version 1.9 stable, but is being moved to version 2.0, a major upgrade whose release data has not yet been revealed.

To help AWS users prepare for that, the company released AWS SDK for Go 2.0.

What is the Future of Wi-Fi?

By

Enterprise Networking Planet

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January 11, 2018

While speed and stability have improved significantly in Wi-Fi networks over the last decade, there are new innovations that will become available in 2018 and into 2019 that will make Wi-Fi faster and more available than ever before.

The Wi-Fi Alliance, which is a multi-stakeholder industry consortium that is all about promoting Wi-Fi is working on a number of programs to advance Wi-Fi in 2018 and beyond. One of those programs is called Wi-Fi Certified Home Design.

Today, Wi-Fi is an afterthought in the home building process, unlike basic utilities like water and power. The general idea behind the Wi-Fi Certified Home program is to change that paradigm and enable home builder to build Wi-Fi technology directly into a new or rebuilt home.

Read more at Enterprise Networking Planet

Meltdown and Spectre Linux Kernel Status

By

Linux Kernel Monkey Blog

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January 10, 2018

If your Linux systems are running a normal Linux distribution, go update your kernel. They should all have the updates in them already. And then keep updating them over the next few weeks, we are still working out lots of corner case bugs given that the testing involved here is complex given the huge variety of systems and workloads this affects. If your distro does not have kernel updates, then I strongly suggest changing distros right now.

However there are lots of systems out there that are not running “normal” Linux distributions for various reasons (rumor has it that it is way more than the “traditional” corporate distros). They rely on the LTS kernel updates, or the normal stable kernel updates, or they are in-house franken-kernels. For those people here’s the status of what is going on regarding all of this mess in the upstream kernels you can use.

4 Days Left to Submit Your Proposal for Open Networking Summit NA 2018

By

The Linux Foundation

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January 10, 2018

Share your expertise and help shape the future of SDN, NFV, orchestration and the automation of cloud, network, & IoT services at Open Networking Summit North America, March 26 -29, 2018 in Los Angeles.

With more than 2000 attendees expected at this year’s event, submit before Sunday, January 14, 2018 at 11:59pm PST to share your ideas and expertise with the open networking community.

View the full list of suggested topics and submit your proposal today.

Oath’s Top 5 Open Source Goals

By

The Linux Foundation

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January 10, 2018

As with many other companies, the open source program at Oath started informally with a group of diligent engineers and a few legal people. But the ad hoc group soon realized it needed a more formal program if it was going to be able to scale to address more issues and achieve specific business goals. With a formal program in place, they are poised to achieve its goals.

The top five of Oath’s numerous open source goals, according to Yehuda, are:

Keep aligned with the industry on open source technology standards by avoiding creating unique tech stacks that Oath alone would have to manage at its own expense.