Joli Os, we bid you a farewell

It was announced today that the Jolicloud Desktop OS will be discontinued In December.

While the Jolicloud people gave good reasons, it's sad to see as unique a distribution as Joli go this way.

The company's reason is that they are going "to entirely focus on the web with Jolicloud 2".

You will still be able to use the operating system for some time, but updates will no longer be supplied.

The company will now take JoliDrive and rename it to Jolicloud 2. The reason given was that JoliDrive has a very large user base, and so obviously that is where they should put their attention.

“JoliDrive is growing to the point where a lot of the actions that used to require an OS no longer do”, Jolicloud’s communications guru Zak Kaufman told OMGUbuntu's Joey-Elijah Sneddon via e-mail.

“Things like file management, music and video playback, can all be done using Jolidrive, available from any web browser on almost every platform”.

I personally liked the directions they where going. Joli's desktop OS was intended to feel like the online version, and yet to function well offline.

The two "desktops" merged pretty well together.

Joli OS desktop version had at one point made me reconsider my current fave, Xubuntu 12.04 LTS.

-Denny

P.S. Here's a screenshot in case you wanted to just get a glimpse at what the desktop looks like.

NSA asked for backdoor to Linux

"Far from being a rumor, word of the approach comes via Linus’ father, Nils Torvalds.

As a Member of the European Parliament (MEP), Nils was present at recent committee inquiry held on the “Mass Surveillance of EU Citizens”. Here, representatives from a number of companies named in documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden were questioned about their own (alleged) involvement.

Following a question put to a Microsoft spokeswoman by Pirate Party MEP Christian Engström on whether the company willingly include “backdoors” for the NSA in their system, Nils Torvalds MEP said:

When my oldest son [Linus Torvalds] was asked the same question: “Has he been approached by the NSA about backdoors?” he said “No”, but at the same time he nodded. Then he was sort of in the legal free. He had given the right answer …everybody understood that the NSA had approached him.

If that sounds familiar to you then you might have seen the snippet on YouTube. Linus went on to insist that he was joking, and that the NSA had not approached him.

But, speaking at November 11th’s inquiry, his father seems to think otherwise.

Following on from allegations that Google, Yahoo!, Facebook and, indeed, Microsoft are among the many companies wilfully cooperating with the agency to provide “backdoor” access to their systems, this revelation is far from earth-shattering. In fact, is makes sense in the grand scheme of things." -OMGUbuntu

I don't think I can add to this... I now realize just how serious the NSA is about gaining information..

Any hole the NSA has added to our software is just another hole others can exploit.

I get why they would want these holes.. I wonder though if they realize the damage they might be causing to those of us who are in the line of fire.

The everyday person just going on the internet, checking their email, and maybe watching youtube or netflix are more vulnerable because of these actions by the NSA...

-Denny

Canonical engineer deems Mint "vulnerable", Mint responds

Canonical engineer Oliver Grawert called Linux Mint a "vulnerable system" because of Mint's security updates system.

Mint holds back certain updates, mainly for stability issues. (This is an opinion, and has not been stated by the Linux Mint team.)

While the statement made by Mr. Grawert is truthful, I believe it isn't quite as serious as some would believe.

Mint does offer the updates, they just don't automatically suggest installation. (Again, I believe for stability reasons.)

Not that security concerns should be in any way brushed off. Linux is not infallible. It's very solid, but no software made by imperfect beings is going to be flawless.

Mint's response to all of this has also made things in the Linux community more tense, mostly because their reasons for not adding the updates automatically have been as clear as mud.

Also their is a unnecessary rivalry between the Canonical/Ubuntu and Linux Mint communities.

” We explained why the Ubuntu update policy was not good enough for us and we consequently developed the update manager to solve that particular problem.

Firefox doesn't come to you later in Mint than it does in Ubuntu (it’s a level 2 update).

Yes, by default you get updates in Ubuntu for kernels and Xorg and not in Mint. Yes, there’s a very good reason for that.”

Why Mr. Lefebvre doesn't expand on his “very good reason” is uncertain.

Again, Mint does not stop users from installing the updates/upgrades.

EFF criticizes Shuttleworth, Canonical

The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) is an organization that protects the freedom of the open source community. In a statement about Canonical and Mark Shuttleworth, they voiced their frustration at the way things have been handled as of late.

If you read my last article about "fix ubuntu" then you know what some of this is about.

Here is the official release from EFF:

“Over the past few days, EFF and one of our staff technologists, the talented Micah Lee, have had an illuminating back and forth with Canonical Ltd over the use of the Ubuntu mark. While we don’t believe that Canonical has acted with malice or intent to censor, its silly invocation of trademark law is disturbing. After all, not everyone has easy recourse to lawyers and the ability to push back,” states the organization on its website.

Mark Shuttleworth also said that Canonical needed to enforce their patents, or they would lose them. This is one of the ideas that has been pointed out by the EFF as a fallacy.

“Canonical’s trademark ‘policy’ does not and cannot trump the First Amendment. Imagine the impact on free speech if you needed a ‘grant of permission’ from BP, Coca-Cola Amatil, or EFF before using one of their trademarks as part of speech criticizing their conduct.”

“It is well-settled that the First Amendment protects non-commercial websites—like https://fixubuntu.com—that use trademarks to comment upon corporations and products,”

For more information on the "fix ubuntu" scandal, check out my post directly below this one.

I personally am glad they spoke up. The fix ubuntu website wasn't even a directly inflamatory attack on Ubuntu or Canonical. It was and is simply a solution to a problem. He doesn't post any opinion at all other than the label "fix ubuntu".

-Denny

P.S. Thanks goes to Softpedia for their continued excellent coverage of the open source and Ubuntu/Linux world.

Canonical launches campaign against critic

fixubuntu.com contains information on stopping the "online services" provided by Canonical in Ubuntu Dash. For those of you who aren't certain what dash is, it's the button on the top left that houses app icons and helps you to find your media quickly.

The scuttlebutt happened after Canonical took notice of the Ubuntu icon and the obvious homage to Ubuntu in the URL.

Canonical, the company that makes Ubuntu sent an official letter to Micah F. Lee, the owner of fixubuntu.com, in which they asked him to take down the Ubuntu logo and to change the domain name (URL).

The letter from Canonical reads:

“It has been brought to our attention that your website: https://fixubuntu.com/ is using Canonical’s trademarks including Ubuntu logo on your website and Ubuntu word in your domain name.”

“To keep the balance between the integrity of our trademarks and the ability to use and promote Ubuntu, we’ve tried to define a reasonable Intellectual Property Policy. As you can see from our policy, to use the Ubuntu trademarks and Ubuntu word in a domain name would require approval from Canonical.”

“Unfortunately, in this instance we cannot give you permission to use Ubuntu trademarks on your website and in your domain name as they may lead to confusion or the misunderstanding that your website is associated with Canonical or Ubuntu.”

Mr. Lee replied with the help of a lawyer, that the first amendment of the constitution protects his right to "manage trademark items in non-commercial websites that criticize corporations and products".

This being said, the owner has removed the logo from fixubuntu.com and has posted a statement that makes it clear he is not affiliated in any way with Canonical.

What does any of this really mean?

Personally I don't think Mr. Lee was trying in any way to mislead people into thinking he was affiliated or held any official position with Canonical.

His website is very straight forward and in now way is an attempt to disgrace/discredit Canonical or Ubuntu.

It's clear from the website (in my opinion) that he simply wished to help people solve an issue he perceived, and that he used the Ubuntu name to make his intentions clear and easy to find.

-Denny

Debian Switches to Xfce

"Debian, the foundation upon which many Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, are based, is to switch to Xfce as its default desktop environment.

News of the switch came by way of this commit from developer Joey Hess. Hess cites a number of reasons as to why Debian 8.0, code named “Jessie”, will benefit from Xfce. These include:

Accessibility support, particularly for visually-impaired users
Xfce being closer to the “GNOME 2″ experience
CD space constraints
But GNOME isn’t out of contention entirely. Developers intend to re-evaluate this decision before Jessie enters freeze. If data shows that GNOME is the better default option for users it is likely be reinstated as default.

A final decision on this will be taken, Hess says, nearer August 2014, and will be informed by:

The numbers of installs of GNOME 3 on Debian whilst defaulting to Xfce
Improvements made to GNOME 3 in accessibility & feature parity to GNOME 2
User feedback on interface changes on-going in GNOME 3 development
For now Xfce will be distributed by default." -OMGUbuntu

I am looking forward to this, being a XFCE user myself.

I am a fan of Debian, and several times I have considered going straight Debian instead of my Ubuntu derivative, Xubuntu.

-Denny

Linux Kernel to jump to version 4

Linus Tovalds is now thinking about changing the numbering of the kernel pretty soon, to 4.0, to mark the launch of a bug fix release.

The Linux kernel developer and maintainer has explained that, at some point in the future, the numbering of the Linux kernel will pass from 3.x to 4.x, to keep things manageable, and that he would do it sooner rather than later.

“I don't want us to get to the kinds of crazy numbers we had in the 2.x series, so at some point we're going to cut over from 3.x to 4.x, just to keep the numbers small and easy to remember. We're not there yet, but I would actually prefer to not go into the twenties, so I can see it happening in a year or so, and we'll have 4.0 follow 3.19 or something like that,” said Linus Torvalds in the Linux kernel 3.12 announcement.

Replacing one numbering system with another just for the sake of it would accomplish nothing, so he came with an interesting idea. All the developers have to focus on bug fixing when the decision to go to 4.x is made, and make the new version a very stable one, worthy of the important prefix change.

“If we have enough heads-up that people *know* that for one release (and companies/managers know that too) the only patches that get accepted are the kind that fix bugs, maybe people really would have sufficient attention span that it could work.”

“And the reason I mention ‘4.0’ is that it would be a lovely time to do that. Roughly a years heads-up that ‘ok, after 3.19 (or whatever), we're doing a release with *just* fixes, and then that becomes 4.0’,” said Linus Torvalds.

Bringing a new, extremely stable 4.0 version would be a serious push for distribution developers who would just jump at the opportunity to integrate such a release into their operating systems.

As originally seen here:
Say Hello to Linux Kernel 4.0 and Say Goodbye to 3.x