- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

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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Oracle Attacks Open Source; Says Community-Developed Code Is Inferior
by Peter Reutemann 15 Oct '13

15 Oct '13

"Oracle has a love-hate relationship with open source technologies. In a whitepaper (PDF) for the Deparment of Defense, Oracle claims that TCO (total cost of ownership) goes up with the use of open source. They're essentially trying to build a case for the use of their own products within the government. 'The skill required to successfully and economically blend source code into a commercially viable product is relatively scarce. It should not be done directly at government expense.' Oracle also attacks the community-based development model, calling it more insecure than company developed products. 'Government-sponsored community development approaches to software creation lack the financial incentives of commercial companies to produce low-defect, well-documented code.'" -- source: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/10/15/1828211 Funny, considering that they have multiple open-source projects... Oracle Linux, MySQL, ... 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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advanced copy
by Peter Reutemann 13 Oct '13

13 Oct '13

Just came across this article on an "advanced copy" command: http://www.tecmint.com/advanced-copy-command-shows-progress-bar-while-copyi… Wasn't to keen on recompiling from source etc. However, when looking through my Linux Mint's Synaptic, I came across "gcp": "gcp is an advanced command line file copy system with an interface similar to that of cp. It features: - transfer progression indication - continuous copying on error (skip to next file) - copy status logging - name mangling to handle target filesystem limitations - forced copy serialization - transfer lists management" Here is an example output: mymachine:[110]~/media>gcp -r maps/ maps.bak Copying 2.26 GiB 100% |##############################| 148.01 M/s Time: 00:00:16 Quite funky for large copy-operations on the command-line, where you'd like to have some kind of progress indicator. 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 is a good file manager for Linux?
by Peter Reutemann 08 Oct '13

08 Oct '13

"One of must-have utilities on Linux desktop is file manager (or file browser). A typical file manager can not only handle common file management operations, but also offer advanced functionality that differentiates itself with others. If you are not happy with a default file manager that comes with the Linux desktop you are using, don’t worry. There are plenty of other file managers to choose from. In this post, I will showcase 13 popular file managers available on Linux. For each file manager, I am going to briefly mention its notable features." -- source: http://xmodulo.com/2013/10/good-file-manager-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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