October 2013 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Ubuntu Touch On a Nexus 7: "Almost Awesome"
by Peter Reutemann 23 Oct '13

23 Oct '13

"I installed Ubuntu Touch "1.0" on my first-generation Nexus 7 tablet and have been using it as my main tablet system for the last four days. Here's how it went. First off, the installation was surprisingly painless. I followed the official instructions and didn't encounter a single problem. That being said, the installation is really geared toward software developers, power users or people already comfortable on a Linux command line. If you're not in one of those categories, I recommend holding off for the time being. Once installed, Ubuntu Touch booted up rather quickly — in only just a few seconds (a fair bit faster than Android 4.x on the same tablet). And, immediately, I was presented with a short tutorial that appears the first time the system is booted, which, I might add, has got to be one of the slickest, least annoying tutorials I've seen. But... there were problems. The battery life was, to put it mildly, terrible. Performance has been mixed, and the OS was prone to what I call 'The Pulsating Seizure Feature' a few dozen times over the weekend. In a nutshell: launching apps (and, occasionally, moving between apps) can cause the device to freeze and begin flashing the screen rapidly." -- source: http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/13/10/22/1344209 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Crunchbang DDoS attack
by Peter Reutemann 21 Oct '13

21 Oct '13

Been trying to update my #! laptop and it continuously failed doing so. Then I found out that #! has been hit by a DDoS attack, unfortunately: "DDoS Attack 2013-10-17 (ongoing) It saddens me to report that the repo and torrent server are experiencing another DDoS attack. As with the previous attack, I do not have much information to share, but I will try and keep everyone informed as to what is happening. When I find out, you'll find out. Apologies for the disruption." http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=29646 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Ubuntu 13.10 has arrived
by Peter Reutemann 21 Oct '13

21 Oct '13

Get it from here: http://www.ubuntu.com/ Would love to have a play around with the phone version: http://www.ubuntu.com/phone/install But, I don't have a spare Galaxy Nexus or Nexus 4. :-) Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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The Navy’s newest warship is powered by Linux
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '13

20 Oct '13

"When the USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000) puts to sea later this year, it will be different from any other ship in the Navy's fleet in many ways. The $3.5 billon ship is designed for stealth, survivability, and firepower, and it's packed with advanced technology. And at the heart of its operations is a virtual data center powered by off-the-shelf server hardware, various flavors of Linux, and over 6 million lines of software code." -- source: http://bit.ly/1aX0Ktb I always have mixed feelings when FLOSS is used by the military... Cheers, Peer -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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WLUG meeting tomorrow night
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '13

20 Oct '13

Hi everyone There is a WLUG meeting on tomorrow night: Elroy Liddington: Raspberry Pi, Asterisk Chris O'Halloran: LaTeX http://www.wlug.org.nz/event_calendar/view/741/meeting Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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How to mount Google Drive on Linux
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '13

20 Oct '13

"As I speak, more than 22,000 people signed up for a petition, desperately wanting to have an official native Linux client for Google Drive, and yet their voice is still being ignored by Google. Perhaps when it comes to boosting their bottom line, Linux desktop market is not a priority for Google. They can ignore Linux desktop market all they want, but they cannot ignore the power of FOSS. Faced with the frustration, the open-source community responded, producing unofficial Google Drive clients such as Grive or SyncDrive. These clients are file synchronization tools which sync files and folders between local file system and remote Google Drive. As such, you cannot mount Google Drive using these tools. If you want to mount Google Drive on Linux, you can try google-drive-ocamlfuse, which is a FUSE-based file system backed by Google Drive. Using this user-space file system, you can mount your Google Drive account on Linux, and have full read/write access to files/folders in Google Drive as if they were local files/folders." -- source: http://xmodulo.com/2013/10/mount-google-drive-linux.html Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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NFTables To Replace iptables In the Linux Kernel
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '13

20 Oct '13

"NFTables is queued up for merging into the Linux 3.13 kernel. NFTables is a four-year-old project by the creators of Netfilter to write a new packet filtering / firewall engine for the Linux kernel to deprecate iptables (though it now offers an iptables compatibility layer too). NFTables promises to be more powerful, simpler, reduce code complication, improve error reporting, and provide more efficient handling of packet filter rules. The code was merged into net-next for the Linux 3.13 kernel. Iptables will still be present until NFTables is finished, but it is possible to try it out now. LWN also has a writeup on NFTables." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/10/19/2118247 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Cinnamon 2.0 now officially available
by Peter Reutemann 17 Oct '13

17 Oct '13

"Prior to version 2.0, and similar to Shell or Unity, Cinnamon was a frontend on top of the GNOME desktop. In version 2.0, and similar to MATE or Xfce, Cinnamon is an entire desktop environment built on GNOME technologies. It still uses toolkits and libraries such as GTK or Clutter and it is still compatible with all GNOME applications, but it no longer requires GNOME itself to be installed. It now communicates directly with its own backend services, libraries and daemons: cinnamon-desktop, cinnamon-session and cinnamon-settings-daemon." -- source: http://www.muktware.com/2013/10/cinnamon-2-0-now-officially-available Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Python classes?
by Bruce Kingsbury 17 Oct '13

17 Oct '13

We've had discussions in the past about running classes in python and/or basic Linux know-how. I'm interested in running a weekly python class at the community center either during the day or after 5pm. Facilities available are ten reasonable computers running Debian 6.0 and I can easily install any IDE or libraries required. Uncapped internet is also available. Unfortunately I don't know python beyond having written a few trivial programs so I'd be learning at the same time, hopefully at least a week ahead of what I'm teaching. If anyone else is interested in running classes and already knows Python that would be much better and I'd come along to those instead. So; discussion about who else would like to attend such classes and/or if anyone would be interested in teaching them?

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https://www.writelatex.com/about
by mailinglist 17 Oct '13

17 Oct '13

If you are into Latex, I was amazed at this site! https://www.writelatex.com/about The above reads like a dodgy spam message I know. But seriously if you're looking to use a text/code based document tool, Latex is pretty cool. I'm just amazed at what people have managed to put together. A web based front end for Latex. Probably heaps more. I haven't started exploring it yet. Cheers, Chris

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