Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Release Candidate Released

The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the Release Candidate for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Long-Term Support) on desktop and server. Codenamed “Hardy Heron”, 8.04 LTS continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.

We consider this release candidate to be complete, stable, and suitable for testing by any user.

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition features incremental improvements to familiar applications, with an emphasis on stability for this second Ubuntu long-term support release, and is easier than ever to try out with the new Wubi installer.

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition follows in the footsteps of Ubuntu 7.10 with even more virtualization support and security enhancements - enabling AppArmor for more applications by default, improving protection of kernel memory against attacks, and supporting KVM and iSCSI technologies out of the
box.

The Ubuntu 8.04 LTS family of variants, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, UbuntuStudio, and Mythbuntu, also reach RC status today. The final release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS is scheduled for 24 April 2008 and will be supported for three years on the desktop and five years on the server.

Source: ubuntu list

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Microsoft has “dramatically” changed because of open-source software, the company’s Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie said Thursday as part of a wide-ranging discussion during the annual Most Valuable Professional summit in Seattle. He also talked about Microsoft’s mesh concept and the importance of virtualization.

“Microsoft fundamentally, as a whole, has changed dramatically as a result of open source,” Ozzie said. “As people have been using it more and more, the nature of interoperability between our systems and others has increased.” That means that from the very start when Microsoft begins developing new products, it considers what components it will want to open up to outside developers, he said.

Still, that doesn’t mean that Microsoft is changing its approach to business. “We have a software business that is based on proprietary software. We tactically or strategically will take certain aspects of what we do and open source them where we believe there will be a real benefit to the community,” he said. The open sourcing of the .Net framework is an example of that, he said.

Ozzie also spoke a bit about Microsoft’s vision for using the Web to connect devices and content, in what may foreshadow an announcement the company plans for next week. “The Web really is a hub. It can be viewed conceptually as a hub for a social mesh and device mesh,” he said. Using the Internet as a hub for a social mesh means people can connect a wide range of online content like information they tag and rank, content they publish and information they subscribe to, he said.

Ozzie’s vision could hint at a service, Live Mesh, that Microsoft plans to unveil on Tuesday. The company has not revealed any details about the offering except to say it will be unveiled next week during the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. Ozzie briefly described a similar mesh vision earlier this year at the Mix 08 conference.

Microsoft already offers an online sharing service, SkyDrive, which is still in beta. SkyDrive is an online storage system that users can access from their PCs and from any other device with a browser, like a smartphone.

Beyond content, the Internet can also serve as a hub for devices, Ozzie said. “From a device standpoint, the Web can be a hub in terms of bringing devices we have together,” he said. While enterprises often connect and manage thousands of computers in a business, individuals have a variety of devices such as phones, PCs, media centers and music players that are mostly unconnected, he said.

Microsoft has already done some connecting of devices, including a service that lets Xbox and Zune users share media between the devices via the Web.

That model can also be extended to broaden the way that enterprises connect devices, he said. For example, a mobile user could take a photograph and use the picture in a project the user is working on via a PC and the Web, he said.

Ozzie also touched on two other principles guiding the work at Microsoft, including getting the mix of software and services right and moving away from “monolithic” programs to fragmented pieces of software that end-users can choose to use as appropriate.

Virtualization is another area that Microsoft thinks will be increasingly important. “Within the enterprise, virtualization is the simplest and most straightforward way to make the best use of data center resources,” he said.

Ozzie also praised the work the MVPs do in providing feedback to Microsoft. The software industry “used to be so supply constrained,” he said. “You could build almost anything and there’d be an audience waiting for it.” Today, however, there’s an abundance of software and services that users can choose from. That means Microsoft’s challenge is to better understand what users want in order to best target their needs, he said.

About 4,000 technology experts make up Microsoft’s MVP program. Nearly 1,800 of them met this week in Seattle at an annual summit.

Source: PCW

This is very interesting use of Social Network Maps; Greater Manchester Police (GMP) recently announced that it is now using social networking site, Facebook, to help in its fight against crime. Facebook and GMP have collaborated on the development of a Web 2.0 application which provides news feeds, and links to a crime-reporting form, Police Web sites and videos. Facebook members can add the application to their user profiles at http://apps.facebook.com/gmpupdates.

GMP hopes the move will help it raise public awareness of local incidents and facilitate the exchange of information on crime. GMP is the first police force in the UK to use the site in this way.

According to Worklight Inc, a Web 2.0 security specialist, GMP’s use of Facebook is in line with an increasing trend for organisations to use social network sites as business tools. However, Worklight also highlights the need for tight control in order to eliminate security risks. WorkLight claims its technology allows organisations to use Web 2.0 consumer services, including Facebook, for business purposes, without the attendant security risks.

Source:Techwatch UK

Kees Cook of the Ubuntu Security Team has discovered a security hole in Xpdf and libraries and applications based on it, via which attackers can inject and execute malicious code using crafted PDF files. The hole can be exploited merely by opening the PDF file.

The problem is caused by inadequate checking while typefaces embedded in PDF files are being processed, but no further details are known as yet. When manipulated PDF files are opened, injected code can be executed with the user’s rights. An entry has already been added to the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database, but it gives no further details.

In addition to Xpdf, affected software includes the poppler project and, in some Linux distributions, also KOffice, if code from Xpdf is statically linked in, as is the case with Ubuntu. Several Linux distributors are already issuing updated Xpdf, poppler and KOffice packages that fix the problem. Administrators should install these updates without delay.

See also:

• New xpdf packages fix arbitrary code execution, vulnerability report by the Debian developers
• poppler vulnerability, vulnerability report by Kees Cook of the Ubuntu Security Team
• KOffice vulnerability, vulnerability report by Kees Cook of the Ubuntu Security Team

Source: heise-online.co.uk

I installed WP 2.5 only last week, and this has me worried. Concerned. And to be honest, a bit scared too. What if I lose it all some day by accident? Should I revert to an older version? Will there be a patch out? Will it screw up all my plugin settings? Hmm… This will keep me worried for the next few hours, I know…

From Big gotcha in WP 2.5: If you’re a self-hosted Wordpress user and have upgraded to WP2.5, you need to know there is a serious ‘gotcha’ in the revised sidebar widget building section. If you use text widgets to include custom HTML, javascript or other non-PHP code and want to make changes or add new ones then be very careful how you do it.

We discussed 3 days back on the topic OpenMac for $399 — a PC white box running *unmodified* Leopard. How long can Apple let them go?

And it didn’t really take long for the world to take note - and draw an angry response from one of the principal hackers involved in developing the software involved.

Aside from the legal ramifications of selling “white-box” systems running Apple’s Mac OS X, questions have arisen over the exact nature of Psystar, the firm advertising the systems; and even whether it exists. Psystar appears to be a small operation that has only recently established a Web presence, and which is struggling to cope with the sudden interest aroused by its Mac clone. The product’s name has changed over the past week, from Open Mac to Open Computer. Psystar’s e-commerce site has suffered outages, and while it is currently functioning, users have noticed some anomalies–at one point, for instance, the site required users to submit a credit-card number, but then would accept only PayPal payments. There are also posts on the web which suggest that all this is a big joke!

OSx86 anger
If the Open Computer does in fact exist, Apple might not be too happy about it–but neither will the hackers who have developed the “OSx86″ software Psystar claims to use. Thus far, Apple has made no concerted effort to stamp out the OSx86 project, which consists of various patches allowing Mac OS X to run on commodity hardware, no doubt in part because it has been used only on a small scale and is relatively difficult to implement.

Psystar is proposing, however, to use OSx86-developed tools as the basis for its systems. On its Web site, the firm specifically mentions PC EFI V8, an emulator for the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) that lies between OSX and the Intel firmware.

Netkas, the programmer who led the PC EFI effort, retorted angrily to Psystar on his blog. “This is a violation of my authorship rights on PC EFI V8,” he wrote. The patch’s license forbids any “redistribution… for direct or indirect commercial purposes”, Netkas wrote.

Following complaints from OSx86 hackers, Psystar added a statement to its website crediting Netkas for the PC EFI software. “To the open-source community: thank you,” the statement said.

The installation of OSX on a non-Apple computer is expressly forbidden by Apple’s end-user licensing agreement (EULA). Nevertheless, some lawyers have said Apple will have a hard time stopping firms such as Psystar from breaking the agreement, because of the relative weakness of breach-of-contract disputes.

Source: ZDNet, Psystar, Netkas

Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. Think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.” Free software is a matter of the users’ freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.

“Best Free software” is an ever changing list, and it was getting difficult to maintain the original list. To make your reading more relevant, I am linking this post to posts that are more up to date and maintained by communities.

1. Mohawke’s Best of the Best Free and Open Source Software Collection

A very nice list categorized into : Windows :: Macintosh :: Internet :: Operating Systems :: Games :: Web-Sites :: OSSWIN CD ::

2. Ever dependable Wikipedia: List of open source software packages

Again sub-categorized into a lot of relevant areas of interest. A must bookmark.

Also see:

• List of GNOME applications
• List of GNU packages
• List of KDE applications
• List of liberated software
• List of Unix programs

3. Best of CRM, ERP, portals, content management, and collaboration platforms

4. Schoolforge-UK software list - educational software compiled by the Schoolforge-UK community

5. The OpenScience Project - Open Source software for science and mathematics

6. Open Source Help Desk List - Listing of Open Source help desk and bug tracking software

7. Open Souce as an alternative

8. Open Source Software List

9. List Of Open-source Programs (LOOP list) for Windows : Best open-source applications that run on Windows

10. FSF/UNESCO Free Software Directory - a catalog of useful free software

You will also find this list useful:

The table of equivalents / replacements / analogs of Windows software in Linux