Open Source Pixels

The Linux Mint team has announced the release of Linux Mint 13 ‘Maya’ RC. Linux Mint 13 features the choice between a productive, stable and mature MATE 1.2 desktop and the brand new modern-looking and exciting Cinnamon 1.4.

Over at the Guardian, Cory Doctorow writes about two problems that govern the relationship between politics and technically oriented folks (“nerds” in Doctorow-speak): “nerd determinism” and “nerd fatalism”. “But, while it’s true that geeks can get around this sort of thing – and other bad network policies, such as network-level censorship, or vendor locks on our tablets, phones, consoles, and computers – this isn’t enough to protect us, let alone the world. It doesn’t matter how good your email provider is, or how secure your messages are, if 95% of the people you correspond with use a free webmail service with a lawful interception backdoor, and if none of those people can figure out how to use crypto, then nearly all your email will be within reach of spooks and control-freaks and cops on fishing expeditions.“

Debian has updated openoffice.org
(code execution) and ikiwiki (cross-site
scripting).

Mandriva has updated imagemagick (2010.1, ES 5.0; 2011.: multiple vulnerabilities).

SUSE has updated openssl (SLE 11:
two vulnerabilities).

Ubuntu has updated sudo (privilege
escalation).

The H reports on a vulnerability in sudo when it is configured for IP-based restrictions on users (typically only for centrally managed sudoers files). “When the developers added IPv6 support, they inadvertently made the matching routine used for IPv4 networks call the IPv6 matching routines when no IPv4 match was found. Because the IPv6 fields would be uninitialised, it was possible for the system to think it had found a match where there wasn’t one. Finding a match would, in turn, mean permission would be granted for whatever command the rule was controlling, even when the system was on a different network.“

“As April draws to a close we are pleased to share more code for Open webOS. This month’s scheduled release includes support for Node.js as well as updates to Enyo and Ares. In addition, we are pleased to announce early delivery of the System Manager Bus (which was originally scheduled for July) and a release of three policy components based on our Platform Portability Layer. We’re happy to be ahead of schedule in getting this component of the Open webOS platform into your hands.” Can’t wait for the day I can run an up-to-date WebOS version on my SII.

As a company, Inktank, one of the open source ecosystem’s newest commercial enterprises, is only days old. But it has already made a determined foray into the Linux server market with the announcement this week of integration of the Ceph distributed file system into Ubuntu 12.04. [url=http://www.thevarguy.com/2012/05/15/open-source-startup-inktank-sets-gaze-on-ubuntu-server/]Here’s the scoop[/url], and what it says about both Inktank and Ubuntu.

Two years after its initial attempt to sell Nexus smartphones directly to consumers flopped, Google is apparently trying to revive the strategy. This time, though, it’s added a few new touches. It’s going to work with up to five device manufacturers at a time to create a portfolio of Nexus-line devices that include smartphones and tablets.

It’s basically the same as Mandriva 2011 "Hydrogen", but that is by design.

While IP battles might not concern lesser players, the ones among the tech titans hurt us all by creating an atmosphere of uncertainty in the market.

If you are using dual booting (windows 7 and ubuntu 12.04) on your PC/Laptop and want to mount automatically Windows NTFS partitions in Ubuntu. this tutorial is going to show you how Mount Automatically NTFS Drive in Ubuntu 12.04.