The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux and collaborative development, today announced the OpenChain Workgroup, a community effort to standardize common best practices for open software compliance. It is expected to reduce costs and duplication of efforts and ease friction points in the software supply chain.
Founding members of the OpenChain Workgroup include ARM, Qualcomm, Samsung, SanDisk and Wind River.
Read more at LInux Foundation
Meet Amelia Lorenz, the Disney animator behind our new #WorldWithoutLinux series.
Where are you from and where do you live today?
I am from Sebastopol, a little hippie town about an hour north of San Francisco. Today I live in Glendale, California, because it’s very close to the studio. In fact, many animation studios are located all around the Glendale/Burbank area. It’s a good place and there is an enormous animation community here!
When did you first become interested in animation? What other projects have you worked on?
I always enjoyed drawing as a kid, but when I was 13 or 14 I saw a behind-the-scenes vignette on how the animation studio Pixar made Monsters, Inc. That little vignette made me realize people actually draw for a living! So I have pursued animation ever since.
I interned at Pixar over the summer of 2011. The following summer I interned at JibJab and then was hired as an animator and storyboard artist. I was there for a year and a half before moving to Disney TV.
I have worked on a TV show called Gravity Falls, and I am currently working on a TV show called Star vs the Forces of Evil.
What’s it like working at Disney?
Working at Disney TV is great. I enjoy drawing characters acting and reacting. That’s really the most fun part to me. One cool perk is that I can bring a few friends to Disneyland with me for free. I have taken advantage of that quite a lot in the year and a half that I’ve worked there.
What inspires you to be an animator?
I am inspired by the people around me, by nature, and by stories. Animation is a way for me to observe how cool life is and interpret it the way I see it. I am often inspired by music, art, and other animators’ work.
How did you connect with Linux Foundation? What got you excited and interested in doing this project?
The Linux Foundation’s video producer, Gary Schillinger, found one of my student films online and contacted me. When he told me he was interested in working in a similar style for a new project, I realized this was a pretty unique opportunity. It’s not often I get to do something in my own style unless I’m just sketching for myself.
What is unique or fun to you about the World Without Linux series?
These characters are constantly getting into predicaments that may frustrate the average joe, but they always react in a light-hearted and fun manner. No character is ever mean spirited or a bully to another character, and yet it stays entertaining the entire time. I think that kind of storytelling is hard to do, so bravo, writers and voice actors!
What was your favorite part of drawing this series? What was most challenging?
I loved the process of designing the two characters, Annie and Sam. Initially, I thought I might be animating a little Linux penguin, which also sounds pretty fun, haha. But I got to animate characters that I designed myself. It was a pretty unique opportunity.
The most challenging part of the project was probably balancing work and life stuff. All of the work on this series was done on evenings and weekends, but I also never felt the “pressure” to work on it. The Linux Foundation made it very clear to me that they didn’t want this project to take over my free time, and that was a big relief.
What was your process? How did you approach this work?
Once I get a script, we talk about the shots we want and what kind of location the characters should be in. If we have some time to spare, I work on the background illustrations while we wait for the voices to be recorded.
Then I am sent the audio file of the voice actors reading the script. Sometimes I work from an animatic I’m provided, and other times I create the animatic. An animatic is when you take the storyboard of the script and time it to the voices, like a blueprint of the short.
Once that is approved, I move on to animation. This part takes the longest, especially character dialog. Sometimes it takes a whole month to get through it! But once the animation is approved, I put a few texture filters over the animation to give it a more “paper-y” feel, and then composite the animation, and backgrounds together into the final vignette.
The video producer at the Linux Foundation adds music, sound effects, and title cards to make it into the final version you see on the website!
Did you develop a relationship with the characters? If so, how?
I find myself quoting Annie sometimes. Just the way that she phrases her sentences is very fun and funny. I like her a lot.
What’s your favorite episode? Why?
I think “Space” is my favorite episode (“a world without Linux is a world without exploration”); it was fun to work on because I got to research the ISS, and it was a bit simpler an episode to tackle. Annie is the star, and she has a handful of funny one-liners. {Editor’s Note: this episode is scheduled to be released in November or December.)
What kind of environment do you create for when you draw? Do you listen to music? Go outdoors, indoors?
If I could work outdoors I totally would! But my work is digital these days, so I am tied to the computer. I do make it a point to go outside and take walks, get boba drinks, and listen to music or audio books.
One benefit of working at home is that my cat will sometimes curl up on my lap. This has been beneficial in that she keeps me company; plus I am obligated to work a little while longer, since I can’t get up if she’s sitting on me.
What’s your workspace like?
I have a nice cozy corner to work at. My favorite part is that I am on the second story of the building, and the windows are right at tree-level. Kinda feels like I am working in a tree fort.
Now that you know a little bit about Linux, what do you think of it? What have you learned?
I have a much better appreciation for Linux after having worked on the series! To be very honest, Linux intimidated me a little when I had to use it at Pixar over my internship a few years ago. But now, I would welcome any classes on how to use it. There is such a strong, positive, intelligent community creating Linux together, that I am honored now to somehow be a part of that. Thank you, Linux!
Linus Torvalds has just announced that Linux kernel 4.3 RC4 has been released, taking this kernel branch a little bit closer to a final release.
We were expecting to see some kind of mention from Linus Torvalds about the 24th birthday of the Linux kernel that will be celebrated tomorrow, but it looks like he’s not going to make a big deal out of it. In fact, he did mention the date of the announcement, which is the second celebration of the kernel, but that was back in August.
Read more at Softpedia Linux News
I’ve been doing graphic design for a long, long time. During that time, I’ve used one tool and only one tool… Gimp. Gimp has always offered all the power I need to create amazing graphics from book covers, to promotional images, photo retouch, and much more. But…
There’s always a but.
Even though Gimp has a rather powerful (and easy to use) set of filters, those filters tend to be very much one-trick-ponies. In other words, if you want to create a complex look on an image, you most likely will wind up using a combination of multiple filters to get the effect you want. This is great, simply because you have the filters at your command. However, sometimes knowing which filter to use for what effect can be a bit daunting.
That’s why GREYC’s Magic for Image Computing (aka G’MIC) is such a breath of fresh air. This particular plugin for Gimp has saved me time, effort, and hair pulling on a number of occasions. What G’MIC does is easily extend the capabilities of not just Gimp, but the Gimp user. G’MIC is a set of predefined filters and effects that make using Gimp exponentially easier.
The list of filters and effects available from G’MIC is beyond impressive. You’ll find things like:
Arrays & tiles
Bokeh
Cartoon
Chalk it up
Finger paint
Graphic novel
Hope poster
Lylejk’s painting
Make squiggly
Paint daub
Pen drawing
Warhol
Watercolor
Charcoal
Sketch
Stamp
Boost-fade
Luminance
Decompose channels
Hue lighten-darken
Metallic look
Water drops
Vintage style
Skeleton
Euclidean – polar
Reflection
Ripple
Wave
Wind
Noise
Old Movie Stripes
And more. For an entire listing of the effects and filters available, check out the ascii chart here.
At this point, any Gimp user should be salivating at the thought of using this wonderful tool. With that said, let’s install and get to know G’MIC.
The good news is that you can find G’MIC in your distribution’s standard repositories. I’ll show you how to install using the Ubuntu Software Center.
The first thing to do, once you’ve opened up the Ubuntu Software Center, is to search for Gimp. Click on the entry for Gimp and then click the More Info button. Scroll down until you see the Optional add-ons (see Figure 1 above).
From within the optional add-ons listing, make sure to check the box for GREYC’s Magic for Image Computing and then click Apply Changes.
With the installation of G’MIC complete, you are ready to start using the tool.
I will warn you: I currently use the unstable version (2.9.1) of Gimp. Although unstable, there are features and improvements in this version that blow away the 2.8 branch. So… if you’re willing to work with a possibly unstable product (I find it stable), it’s worth the risk. To install the 2.9 branch of Gimp on a Ubuntu-based distribution, follow these steps:
Open a terminal window
Add the necessary repository with the command sudo add-apt-repository ppa:otto-kesselgulasch/gimp-edge
Update apt with the command sudo apt-get update
Install the development build of Gimp, issue the command sudo apt-get install gimp
The above should also upgrade G’MIC as well. If not, you might need to follow up the install with the command sudo apt-get upgrade.
Now it’s time to start using G’MIC. If you search through your desktop menu, you’ll not find G’MIC listed. That is because it is integrated into Gimp itself. In fact, you should see G’MIC listed in the menu structure. If you click that entry, you’ll see G’MIC listed, but it’s grayed out. That is because G’MIC can only open when you’re actually working on an image (remember, this is a set of predefined filters that act on an image, not create an image). With that said, open up an image and then click G’MIC > G’MIC. A new window will open (Figure 2) showing the abundance of filters and effects available to you.
The first thing you need to know is the Input/Output section (bottom left corner). Here you can decide, first, what G’MIC is working on. For example, you can tell G’MIC to use the currently active layer for Input but to output to a brand new layer. This can sometimes be handy so you’re not changing the current working layer (you might not want to do destructive editing on something you’ve spent hours on). If you like what G’MIC did with the layer, you can then move it into place and delete (or hide) the original layer.
At this point, it’s all about scrolling through each of the included pre-built effects and filters to find what you want. Each filter/effect offers a varying degree of user-controlled options (Figure 3 illustrates the controls for the Dirty filter under Degradations).
One thing you must get used to is making sure to select the layer you want to work on before opening G’MIC. If you don’t, you’ll have to close G’MIC, select the correct layer, and re-open G’MIC. You also need to understand that some of the filters take much longer to work their magic than others. You’ll see a progress bar at the bottom of the Gimp window, indicating the filter/effect is being applied.
If you want to test G’MIC before installing it, or you want to test filters/effects before applying them to your own work, you can test it with this handy online demo version. This tool allows you to work with G’MIC on a demo image so you can not only see how well the effects/filters work, but get the hang of using G’MIC (it’s not hard).
If you’re a Gimp power user, G’MIC is, without a doubt, one of the single most important add-ons available for the flagship open source image editing tool. With G’MIC you can bring some real magic to your digital images… and do so with ease. Give it a go and see if it doesn’t take your Gimp work to the next level.
The Linux community often recognizes two anniversaries for Linux: August 25th is the day Linus Torvalds first posted that he was working on Linux and said “Hello, everybody out there…” and October 5th is the day he released the first kernel.
To mark the anniversary of the first kernel release in 1991, we look at some facts and consider the progress that has been made since that early version.
Version 0.01 of the Linux kernel had 10,239 lines of code (source: Wikipedia).
Version 4.1, released in July 2015, has more than 19 million lines of code (source: Phoronix).
The current Linux kernel is the result of one of the largest collaborative projects ever attempted.
According to the “Who Writes Linux” Linux development report published in February of this year:
Nearly 12,000 developers from more than 1,200 companies have contributed to the Linux kernel since tracking began 10 years ago.
The rate of Linux development is unmatched. The average number of changes accepted into the kernel per hour is 7.71, which translates to 185 changes every day and nearly 1,300 per week.
In recent years, the powerful growth of the Linux kernel and resulting innovation has inspired others to adapt the principles, practices and methodologies that makes Linux so successful to solve some of today’s most complex technology problems.
Just this week The Linux Foundation released a first-ever report estimating the worth of open source development with its Collaborative Projects as the sample size. The data is both interesting and impressive, surfacing that the collective value of Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects is more than $5B (using David A. Wheeler’s model).
According to the report:
As of last month, 115,013,302 total lines of source code were present in The Linux Foundation’s Collaborative Projects.
It would take a team of 1,356 developers over 30 years to recreate the code base in these projects.
The total economic value of this work is estimated at more than $5 billion.
We’ve learned so much from Linux and have no doubt that learning will continue. Please join us in celebrating Linux and all of its Distributed Genius. Follow our Linux Foundation Twitter feed and our event-specific feed for up to the minute information as we celebrate this anniversary next week from Dublin, Ireland at LinuxCon Europe.
