March 2014 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Google To Replace GTK+ With Its Own Aura In Chrome
by Peter Reutemann 12 Mar '14

12 Mar '14

"Google's Chromium team is working on an alternative of Gtk+ for the browser, called Aura. Elliot Glaysher, a Google developer explains, 'We aim to launch the Aura graphics stack on Linux in M35. Aura is a cross-platform graphics system, and the Aura frontend will replace the current GTK+ frontend.' The Free Software community is debating: is Google trying to do Canonical? Couldn't Google just switch to Qt, which is becoming an industry standard?" -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/03/12/0147256 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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$2, 400 'Introduction To Linux' Course Will Be Free and Online This Summer
by Peter Reutemann 09 Mar '14

09 Mar '14

"Earlier this week, The Linux Foundation announced that it would be working with edX, a non-profit online learning site governed by Harvard and MIT, to make its "Introduction to Linux" course free and open to all. The Linux Foundation has long offered a wide variety of training courses through its website, but those can generally cost upwards of $2,000. This introductory class, which usually costs $2,400, will be the first from the Linux Foundation to run as a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/03/08/2258208 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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KDE Releases Calligra Suite 2.8
by Peter Reutemann 08 Mar '14

08 Mar '14

"The Calligra team is proud and pleased to announce the release of version 2.8 of the Calligra Suite, Calligra Active and the Calligra Office Engine. Major new features in this release are comments support in Author and Words, improved Pivot tables in Sheets, improved stability and the ability to open hyperlinks in Kexi. Flow introduces SVG based stencils and as usual there are many new features in Krita including touch screens support and a wraparound painting mode for the creation of textures and tiles." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/03/08/0454245 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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New attack on HTTPS crypto might reveal if you're pregnant or have cancer
by Peter Reutemann 07 Mar '14

07 Mar '14

"As the most widely used technology to prevent eavesdropping on the Internet, HTTPS encryption has seen its share of attacks, most of which work by exploiting weaknesses that allow snoops to decode cryptographically scrambled traffic. Now there's a novel technique that can pluck out details as personal as someone's sexual orientation or a contemplation of suicide, even when the protection remains intact." -- source: http://bit.ly/1czsdHI 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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Computer History 6/6
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 05 Mar '14

05 Mar '14

Some old classics there. But boy, have we come a long way since characters made out of spheres and cylinders...

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Computer History 4/6
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 05 Mar '14

05 Mar '14

And if you want to see how far computer graphics has come, try this one:

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Canonical Ports Chromium To The Mir Display Server
by Peter Reutemann 05 Mar '14

05 Mar '14

"Months after Intel ported the Chromium open-source web browser to Wayland, Chromium is now running on Ubuntu's Mir. The Mir display server port ended up being based on Wayland's Chromium code for interfacing with Google's Ozone abstraction framework. The Ubuntu developer responsible for this work makes claims that they will be trying to better collaborate with Wayland developers over this code." -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/03/05/1240226 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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Google Won't Enable Chrome Video Acceleration Because of Linux GPU Bugs
by Peter Reutemann 04 Mar '14

04 Mar '14

"Citing 'code we consider to be permanently "experimental" or "beta,"' Google Chrome engineers have no plans on enabling video acceleration in the Chrome/Chromium web browser. Code has been written but is permanently disabled by default because 'supporting GPU features on Linux is a nightmare' due to the reported sub-par quality of Linux GPU drivers and many different Linux distributions. Even coming up with a Linux GPU video acceleration white-list has been shot down over fear of the Linux video acceleration code causing stability issues and problems for Chrome developers. What have been your recent experiences with Linux GPU drivers?" -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/03/04/1926233 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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Bug In the GnuTLS Library Leaves Many OSs and Apps At Risk
by Peter Reutemann 04 Mar '14

04 Mar '14

"According to this article at Ars Technica, '[A] bug in the GnuTLS library makes it trivial for attackers to bypass secure sockets layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protections available on websites that depend on the open source package. Initial estimates included in Internet discussions such as this one indicate that more than 200 different operating systems or applications rely on GnuTLS to implement crucial SSL and TLS operations, but it wouldn't be surprising if the actual number is much higher. Web applications, e-mail programs, and other code that use the library are vulnerable to exploits that allow attackers monitoring connections to silently decode encrypted traffic passing between end users and servers.' The coding error may have been present since 2005." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/03/04/2150223 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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Ars walkthrough: Using the ZFS next-gen filesystem on Linux
by Peter Reutemann 04 Mar '14

04 Mar '14

"There are lots of options for running ZFS, and very little of this walkthrough will really depend on your use of Ubuntu in particular or even Linux in general. You can always visit http://zfsonlinux.org directly for help with the initial installation if you prefer RHEL or Fedora or Arch or what have you--and if you're a BSD fan, ZFS is available from the base installer in either PC-BSD or in the latest 10.0 release of FreeBSD itself." -- source: http://bit.ly/1filf41 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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