Open Source Pixels

At the Linux.conf.au conference, an Australian-based "Lunar Numbat" project presented its plan for a Linux-based flight control computer for a lunar spacecraft. The open source flight computer will be part of the "White Label Space" entry in Google’s $20 million Lunar X-Prize, to be awarded to a team that can send a working rover to the Moon and transmit back images.

pepper is a flexible statistics generator for source code management software. It can be used to create graphical or textual reports of code repositories, independent from the actual SCM software used.

Changes: This release adds a new report showing a histogram of file types in the repository. The command-line argument for the repository can be omitted to use the current directory. Additionally, the cache check is now performed by the new built-in check_cache report. A bug preventing graphical built-in reports from plotting on some locales as well as a potential segmentation fault when reading revision data from the cache has been fixed.

Release Tags: features, Bugfixes

Tags: SCM, Statistics, git, Subversion, Reports, mercurial, Repository

Licenses: GPLv3

wmjump provides keyboard navigation for the Linux
desktop. Use the keyboard to switch between
windows and workspaces. A menu is shown with the
colored list of windows, marked by the letters
a-z. Pressing the key a-z "teleports" to that
window. The colors of the buttons are configurable.

Changes: This release fixes bugs. It introduces a new command line option –timeout= to set the dialog window timeout in seconds. It adds an optional header message, read from the file ~/.wmjump/wmjump-message; this is useful e.g. for showing time.

Tags: Desktop Environment, tools

Licenses: GPL

BikeRoute is an Android application providing GPS-based route planning and cycle parking location worldwide. (Google cycle directions in the US, CycleStreet directions in the UK, and Google driving directions elsewhere). It features A to B route planning, nearby cycle parking location, step by step directions, routemap, satnav, and a ‘remember where I parked’ route finder using data and maps from the OpenStreetMap project.

Changes: This release restores the unpark dialog when navigating back to a parked bike and fixes several crashes when using imperial units.

Tags: Android, navigation, bicycle, Java, GIS, osmdroid, openstreetmaps

Licenses: GPLv2

“Processor design company ARM has today unveiled two new updates to its Cortex-R range of processors: the Cortex-R5 MPCore and the Cortex-R7 MPCore. While the Cortex-A processors can be found in mainstream consumer products such as cell phones and tablet devices, the Cortex-R chips are meant for deeply-embedded and system-on-a-chip duties. Notably you can find the last generation Cortex-R4 in hard disk drive controllers, wireless baseband processors, and automotive systems.”

Clam AntiVirus is an anti-virus toolkit designed especially for email
scanning on mail gateways. It provides a number of utilities, including
a flexible and scalable multi-threaded daemon, a commandline scanner,
and a tool for automatic database updates. The core of the package is an
anti-virus engine available as a shared library.

Changes: This release brings many improvements, including complete Windows support (all major components compile out-of-the-box under Visual Studio), support for signatures based on SHA1 and SHA256, better error detection, and speed and memory optimizations.

Release Tags: RC

Tags: Utilities, Communications, Email, Filters, Security

Licenses: GPL

“Intel just announced that it has identified a bug in the 6-series chipset, specifically in its SATA controller. Intel states that ‘In some cases, the Serial-ATA ports within the chipsets may degrade over time, potentially impacting the performance or functionality of SATA-linked devices such as hard disk drives and DVD-drives’. The fix requires new hardware, which means you will have to exchange your motherboard for a new one. Intel hasn’t posted any instructions on how the recall will be handled other than to contact Intel via its support page or contact the manufacturer of your hardware directly.”

A vulnerability has been reported in Microsoft Windows, which can be exploited by malicious people to conduct cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. The vulnerability is caused due to an error in the way the MHTML (MIME Encapsulation of Aggregate HTML) protocol handler interprets MIME-formatted requests for content blocks within a document.

In November of 2009 we reported that the Reiser4 file-system may go into the mainline Linux kernel in late 2010. We’re now into 2011 with the merge window having closed earlier this month for the Linux 2.6.38 kernel and there’s no sign of this open-source file-system designed to succeed the popular ReiserFS. So what gives? Well, we have another update from its lead developer.

Well, most of us knew this moment would come, with the only debate left being when this moment would come. Market analyst firm Canalys keeps track of worldwide smartphone shipments, and has concluded that in the fourth quarter of 2010, more Android smartphones were sold than Symbian phones. After a decade of supremacy, the Symbian dominance has been toppled (according to these figures, of course).