February 2014 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Android Presentation
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 26 Feb '14

26 Feb '14

I suppose it’s time to start thinking about my presentation on Android development on 24th March. I’ll bring a couple of my own devices (must remember a USB cable as well...). If I can have access to the demo machine about an hour before the presentation, I can install the Android SDK on it—I normally put that just in my own user directory. However, I’ve found I have trouble accessing connected devices unless I launch the ADB server as root. I can pull down various bits of sample code off GitHub and developer.android.com. I’ve been able to do Java compilations with OpenJDK as a replacement for Sun JDK. I assume we can project the desktop machine display for everyone to see, but I’m not so sure how we do that with an Android device. (My devices may speak some version of MHL, if that helps.) Or we could run sample apps on an emulator on the desktop machine?

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Saturday Linux workshop
by Bruce Kingsbury 20 Feb '14

20 Feb '14

I'll be running another Saturday Linux Workshop tomorrow; February 22nd, 2014 10:00 am - 2:00 pm *Te Whare O Te Ata* 60a Sare Cres Hamilton, 3214 07 8557804 This is a GNU/Linux-focused workshop where people can bring their PCs, Pi's, Android devices etc for trouble-shooting and to learn or try out new skills. All visitors welcome - light lunch provided - gold coin donation appreciated

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Ubuntu store apps won't work across mobile and desktop in 14.04
by Peter Reutemann 14 Feb '14

14 Feb '14

One of Canonical's main goals in bringing Ubuntu to mobile devices is to create a converged platform across smartphones, tablets, and PCs. As such, a developer should be able to write an app that has a single code base yet runs on all three types of devices, presenting a different interface to the user on each form factor. ... Technically, this has already been achieved [with Unity 8]. ... The current goal is to get Unity 8 on the desktop in 14.10, "but we are always assessing our roadmap and reviewing what is realistic," Bacon wrote.' -- source: http://bit.ly/1jdrISm 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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Wine On Android Starts Allowing Windows Binaries On Android/ARM
by Peter Reutemann 13 Feb '14

13 Feb '14

"Wine on Android is happening slowly but surely ... Wine is now in a state to be able to run your favorite Windows (x86) game on your Android-powered ARM device, assuming the game is Windows Solitaire. Wine has been making progress on Android to allow simple applications to run on Wine, but they have run into some challenges, as noted in the annual talk at FOSDEM." -- source: http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/14/02/10/0251201 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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Godot Game Engine Released Under MIT License
by Peter Reutemann 12 Feb '14

12 Feb '14

"Godot is a fully featured, open source, MIT licensed, game engine. It focuses on having great tools, and a visual oriented workflow that can deploy to PC, Mobile and Web platforms with no hassle. The editor, language and APIs are feature rich, yet simple to learn. Godot was born as an in-house engine, and was used to publish several work-for-hire commercial titles. With more than half a million lines of code, Godot is one of the most complex Open Source game engines at the moment, and one of the largest commitments to open source software in recent years. It allows developers to make games under Linux (and other unix variants), Windows and OSX." -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/02/10/2332205 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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What Are the Weirdest Places You've Spotted Linux?
by Peter Reutemann 11 Feb '14

11 Feb '14

"Bryan Lunduke recently pulled together a collection of the weirdest places he's found Linux, from installations in North Korea and the International Space Station to a super-computer made out of Legos and computer engineer Barbie. Seen any weird places for Linux not mentioned in this list?" -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/02/11/174210 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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Red Hat Hires CentOS Developers
by Peter Reutemann 11 Feb '14

11 Feb '14

"Karanbir Singh and a handful of other CentOS developers are now full-time Red Hat employees, working in-house on the CentOS distribution with more transparent processes and methods. None of the CentOS developers will be working on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The CentOS project would become another distribution and community cared for by Red Hat, like Fedora, and Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens says the company is planning its future around OpenStack, not just Linux." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/02/11/157217 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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Growing the Linux Community
by Peter Reutemann 11 Feb '14

11 Feb '14

"An unfortunate truth of the Linux community is that sometimes the most enthusiastic proponents of desktop Linux are the biggest hindrance to adoption on a wider scale. Nothing illustrates this point clearer than reading through the comments of posts that are either suggesting change or are simply disparaging the concept. Two such articles were recently published, David Gewirtz, writing for ZDNet lists five reasons he would rather run Windows 8 than Linux at the end of January, and Jack Wallen suggests talking about Linux in a language we can all understand on TechRepublic, also a ZDNet site. Neither article is that interesting in itself, but the comment stream of each reveals much about the state of the community." -- source: http://ostatic.com/blog/growing-the-linux-community 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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Kingsoft Office For GNU/Linux Looks As Good As MS Office, Performs Even Better!
by Danial Jose 09 Feb '14

09 Feb '14

Hi All, I installed Kingsoft Office on my Ubuntu powered laptop and found it pretty good. There are three applications in the suite as below - - Kingsoft Writer – MS Word alternative - Kingsoft Spreadsheet – MS Excel alternative - Kingsoft Presentation – MS PowerPoint alternative Kingsoft Office is very much compatible with new versions of MS Office. I tried to open many .docx and .xlsx files in Kingsoft Office, and I can say that compatibility is around 95% even for the complex documents. Best part is that the user interface of Kingsoft Office is very similar to MS Office including the Ribbon interface. In fact, you can think of Kingsoft Office almost a clone of MS Office. This will reduce the learning curve for the new users who have recently migrated from Windows to GNU/Linux. One more useful feature is that multiple documents can be opened in Tabs so there is no need of switching between multiple windows. Don't believe me? Try out the Kingsoft Office yourself! http://wps-community.org/download.html "If you like our product, tell your friends, if you don't, please tell us! > (^_^)" http://wps-community.org/forum/ http://goo.gl/LwaMwe http://goo.gl/dyisOc http://goo.gl/hfMGHG Cheers, Danial José

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Adobe Flash Remote Code Execution Flaw Exploited In the Wild
by Peter Reutemann 09 Feb '14

09 Feb '14

"Adobe has released an emergency patch for a critical vulnerability affecting Flash Player for Windows, Linux, and OS X, the exploitation of which can result in an attacker gaining remote control of the victims' systems. The flaw is being actively exploited in the wild, but apart from crediting its discovery to researchers Alexander Polyakov and Anton Ivanov of Kaspersky Labs, no details about the ongoing attack has been shared." -- source: http://it-beta.slashdot.org/story/14/02/05/1421229 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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