www.linux-noob.com: Linux News

For the longest time, the default search provider in Ubuntu Linux has been Google, but this is going to change in the next release, Lucid Lynx, scheduled to release April 29. The change comes after Canonical has signed a revenue sharing deal with Yahoo!, so you can imagine who the new default search provider will be.

The change was announced on the ubuntu-desktop mailing list by Rick Spencer. The gist of it all is that the default search provider in the little Firefox search box will be changed from Google to Yahoo!. In addition, Firefox' default home page (the search page thing) will respect the user's choice of default search provider.

Spencer was adamant to emphasise that users cans till change the default search provider to Google with just two clicks. "It's literally 2 easily discoverable clicks to change this setting, a simple matter of switching to that search provider in the [search box] by clicking on the icon and choosing the desired provider," he explains, "Note also that Yahoo! does not share any personally identifiable or usage information."

The reason for this change is obvious and understandable: Yahoo! has signed a revenue sharing agreement with Ubuntu, which is good for the Linux distribution. "I am pursuing this change because Canonical has negotiated a revenue sharing deal with Yahoo! and this revenue will help Canonical to provide developers and resources to continue the open development of Ubuntu and the Ubuntu Platform," Spencer explains, "This change will help provide these resources as well as continuing to respect our user's default search across Firefox."

sudo apt-get remove firefox-3.5 is my favourite command anyway, preferably executed right after installing Chrome, so it bears no relevance on me. I know I'm a minority though, so how about all of you? How do you feel about this change?

via > http://www.osnews.co...vider_to_Yahoo_

LWN.net founder and kernel contributor Jonathan Corbet offered an analysis of the code contributed to the Linux kernel between December 24 2008 and January 10 2010. 18% of contributions were made without a specific corporate affiliation, 7% weren't classified, and 75% were from people working for specific companies in roles where developing that code was a major requirement. "75% of the code comes from people paid to do it," Corbet said.

via > http://www.osnews.co...Paid_Developers

This week, both YouTube and Vimeo opened up beta offerings using HTML5 video instead of Flash to bring video content to users. Both of them chose to use the h264 codec, which meant that only Safari and Chrome can play these videos, since firefox doesn't license the h264 codec. Mike Shaver, Mozilla's vice president of engineering, explained on his blog why Mozilla doesn't license the h264 codec.

Shaver explains that h64 is not a suitable codec for Mozilla, because of two main reasons: licensing cost, and the codec's closed nature.

The h264 codec is patented up the wazoo by the MPEG-LA, and while Google, Apple, and Microsoft have paid for a license to include the codecs within their products, the Mozilla foundation has not, and will not do so. Without this license, it is illegal (in many countries) "to use or distribute software that produces or consumes H.264-encoded content. Indeed, even distributing H.264 content over the internet or broadcasting it over the airwaves requires the consent of the MPEG-LA, and the current fee exemption for free-to-the-viewer internet delivery is only in effect until the end of 2010."

Mozilla has a number of clear and well-argued reasons for not buying the license. First, it's very limited. Google, for instance, paid for a license that transfers to users of Chrome, but if you build Chrome from source yourself or extend the browser, the license does not apply. What's even worse is that the license would not carry over towards, for instance, Linux distributors - not acceptable, of course, for Firefox.

"Even if we were to pay the USD 5000000 annual licensing cost for H.264, and we were to not care about the spectre of license fees for internet distribution of encoded content, or about content and tool creators, downstream projects would be no better off," Shaver explains.

The second important reason not to license the h264 codec is a more ideological one. "We want to make sure that the Web experience is good for all users, present and future," Shaver writes, "I want to make sure that when a child in India or Brazil or Kenya discovers the internet, there isn't a big piece of it (video) that they can't afford to participate in. I want to make sure that there are no toll-booth barriers to entry for someone building a whole new browser, or bringing a browser to a whole new device or OS, or making and using tools for creating standard web content."

more > http://www.osnews.co..._t_License_h264

This month Boxee announced the availability of its public beta release, a major new version of the popular media center software. The update brings significant improvements to the user experience and delivers an impressive degree of aesthetic refinement, but the program lacks stability and will need more work before it is ready to conquer the living room.

Boxee is a multimedia player application that is designed primarily to be used on home theater PC (HTPC) systems. It has a television-friendly user interface that can be seen easily from a couch and operated with either a remote control or conventional input devices. It is based on the open source XBMC media center application. One of the distinguishing features of Boxee is that it has an integrated social networking service that allows users to share what they are watching and see recommendations based on what their friends are watching. The program also has extensive support for playing audio and video content from popular streaming media Web services, including Hulu.

via http://arstechnica.c...tm_campaign=rss

"The Ubuntu development community announced today the availability of Ubuntu 10.04 alpha 2, a new prerelease of the next major version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. This alpha is the first Ubuntu release to completely omit HAL, a Linux hardware abstraction layer that is being deprecated in favor of DeviceKit."

via http://www.osnews.co...i_Panel_Changes

A petition launched in December by MySQL creator Michael 'Monty' Widenius to 'save' the open-source database from Oracle has quickly gained momentum, collecting nearly 17,000 signatures. Widenius on Monday submitted an initial batch of 14,174 signatures to the European Commission, which is conducting an antitrust review of Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems, MySQL's current owner. The petition calls for authorities to block the merger unless Oracle agrees to one of three "solutions", including spinning off MySQL to a third party and releasing all past versions and subsequent editions for the next three years under the Apache 2.0 open-source license.

via osnews.com

This news is already a week old, but it only got submitted to us today, and I didn't notice it all. As it turns out, two malicious software packages had been uploaded to GNOME-Look.org, masquerading as valid .deb packages (a GNOME screensaver and theme, respectively).

The two cases were discovered shortly after one another. First, it was discovered that malware was masquerading as a screensaver. It came as a .deb package, but instead of installing a screensaver, it would execute a script which would mess with some files and download a few other scripts which would make the affected machine take part in a DDoS attack, while also allowing it to update itself.

Not long after, a similar problematic package was discovered, but I can find little information on that one, other than that it was a theme called "Ninja Black". Since only one removal instruction has been posted, I'm assuming it was the same .deb package/script uploaded under a different name.

Speaking of removal instructions - if you've been hit, here's the fix:

sudo rm -f /usr/bin/Auto.bash /usr/bin/run.bash /etc/profile.d/gnome.sh index.php run.bash

sudo dpkg -r app5552

This minor incident highlights both the inherent strength of the repository system, as well as one of its weaknesses. First, though, let's make it very clear that this very minor incident in no way means that Linux, Debian, Ubuntu or other .deb-based distributions are insecure. This is a clear case of social engineering, and there's no remedy for that yet. Of course, GNOME-Look is partly to blame too, but I guess it's virtually impossible to keep such a large site clean. For what it's worth, they removed the offending packages very quickly.

The inherent strength this little incident illustrates is that if you stick to the official repositories for Ubuntu, there's very little to be afraid of. Those packages are well-tested and secure (i.e., they contain no malware, but could of course still contain regular security flaws), and can be installed without fear of repercussions.

The weakness this case illustrates is that quite a few times, the official repositories are simply not enough. A new version might not be there, a program you wan't isn't in the repositories, or whatever other scenario. In those cases, installing something from outside of the repositories is appealing, but it does mean opening yourself up to potential hazards.

All in all though, this is a very minor case, but noteworthy nonetheless, as I think it's one of the first pieces of malware for Ubuntu.

via > http://www.osnews.co...e_on_GNOME-Look

Hello everybody out there using Linux -

Google Chrome is go for beta on Linux! Thanks to the many Chromium and WebKit developers who helped make Google Chrome a lean, mean browsing machine. Here are a few fun facts from us on the Google Chrome for Linux team:

60,000 lines of Linux-specific code written
23 developer builds
2,713 Linux-specific bugs fixed
12 external committers and bug editors to the Google Chrome for Linux code base, 48 external code contributors

Thanks for waiting and we hope that you enjoy using Google Chrome!


Google Chrome Team





http://www.google.co...tl/en/w00t.html

We've seen a lot of reports going back and forth about whether or not Linux is doing well in the netbook space. As it turns out, research firm ABI Research as well as Dell say about one third of their machines ship with Linux pre-installed - which is pretty darn impressive.

According to ABI Research, out of the 35 million netbooks that will ship this year (I'm assuming that's worldwide), 11 million will ship with Linux pre-installed. This figure does not include dual-boot netbooks or those that have Windows removed and replaced with Linux - but nor does it include those where Linux is removed in favour of Windows.

This conclusion mirrors the words of Dell's Todd Finch, who in August stated that nearly one-third of Dell's netbooks ship with Linux pre-installed; Dell added that Linux netbooks' return rates are similar to those running Windows XP. This one third figure is a lot more than Microsoft's official figure, which says that about 93% of netbooks ship with Windows.

ABI Research further added that the arrival of ARM netbooks will push Linux in the netbook space to overtake Windows by 2013. Of course, we've been hearing the same heavenly predictions being made about these elusive ARM nebooks for a long time now, and yet here we are, in 2009, with only 4% of netbooks shipping with an ARM processor. ABI Research's Jeffrey Orr now claims 2010 will be the year of the ARM netbook.

via http://www.osnews.co...Ship_with_Linux

First look at Fedora 12

Fedora I've been using Fedora (and Red Hat Linux before that) on and off for about seven years now and I would say that Fedora is a distribution consistently on the cutting edge of open source software. This means that I've been regularly wowed by new technology and occasionally left virtually bleeding and scrambling for alternative install media. Overall, my experiences have been positive, especially with the project's version 11 release, and I have been looking forward to Fedora 12 for the past few months.

The Fedora distribution comes in various flavours, depending on your needs. There's an all-in-one installation DVD for 32-bit and 64-bit Intel machines. The DVD also has a PowerPC edition. If you'd like to try before you install, Fedora has live CDs. These live CDs feature either the GNOME desktop or the KDE desktop and I decided to try my luck with the KDE live CD. While my download was in progress, I took a look around the web site. The Fedora Project, being a cutting-edge testing ground for new technology, has a technically geared website. It's easy to navigate for people familiar with computers in general and Linux in particular, but for newcomers to the open-source scene, the terms and information are likely to be overwhelming. The site gives the impression of a project run by open source enthusiasts for open source enthusiasts.

To test Fedora, I ran it on my trusty desktop system (2.5 GHz CPU and 2 GB of RAM) and my LG laptop (1.5 GHZ CPU and 2 GB of RAM). To see how the operating system would perform with fewer resources, I also ran it in a virtual machine. The live CD booted up and presented me with a fresh, modern KDE 4.3 desktop. A folder plasmoid (widget) was open, presenting a single icon: a short-cut to the installer. Also on the desktop were the usual taskbar and application menu. Right away I started the installer and got down to business.

full story > http://distrowatch.c...0091123#feature