digiKam 3.2.0 is Out

digiKam 3.2.0 has been released and it contains quite a lot of bug fixes compared to previous version. What's new on this version? Taken from the blog

This version include a new album interface display mode named list-view. Icon view can be switched to a flat item list, where items can be sorted by properties columns as in a simple file manager. Columns can be customized to show file, image, metadata, or digiKam properties.

Face recognition is planned for the next digiKam 3.3.0 release. You can see the progress on YouTube. It seems that it should be released on 3.2.0, but the developer doesn't seem to think it's ready for public usage.

Go get the source or wait for your distribution to package this application

Linux Kernel 3.8.x Gets Extended Support

As +Greg Kroah-Hartman has EOL'ed Linux Kernel 3.8.x starting from 3.8.13, there are no LTS support for any modern Linux Kernel releases since Greg are maintaining two kernel version already and he didn't want to add the third one (not until he released one of them).

Slackware Linux is planning to use Linux Kernel 3.8.x for their default kernel stock in their next release (don't ask when. IT WILL BE RELEASED WHEN IT'S READY), but doubt has rising in since the kernel has been EOL'ed and that means no further support for this tree, which is no good for a distribution.

Ubuntu Kernel Team is stepping forward to take care of the Linux Kernel 3.8.x branch since they used the same kernel version for their 13.04 Ubuntu Linux until August 2014. More information about Ubuntu's approach can be seen on their wiki page.

Hopefully Pat is convinced with this good news and keep 3.8.x for the next Slackware release and not using the old 3.4.x (which has LTS support from Greg).

G7 Reunion

It has been several months since our last reunion, but we finally managed to meet after Andre came back from US for the next two weeks in Indonesia and we had a long holiday this week. We were planning to stay in Kaliurang for two nights, but i can only join them partially since i have a baby to be taken care of.

Last night, we decided to join the party and we had a short BBQ party, but the party didn't last long since she was crying so loud and didn't stop for some time, so i guess she is not ready for that kind of party. We had to take her home and left the party earlier.

Sorry guys for not being able to join the party longer, but i do have higher priorities on the baby first.

New Editor and Image Upload Support in Blogger iOS App

Blogger has just updated their iOS application to support new WYSIWYG editor and also support for image upload through the editor. This is something that i have been waiting for since up to yesterday, there are no way to upload images using the native apps in iOS. The only way is to use the web version.

Thanks to Google for updating the apps and implementing this feature in iOS :)

KDE 4.10.3 Released

A monthly update for KDE 4.10.x branch has been released by KDE Team. They are polishing this branch by releasing KDE 4.10.3 on May 7 2013. The focus is bringing bug fixes and translation updates. It's safe to upgrade to this version if you have been using previous 4.10.2 or even if you used older version of KDE, namely KDE 4.9.

As with last month, the main area that KDE tried to improve is KWin and also PIM suite. See the KDE's Bug Tracker for complete list of bugs that has been fixed on this release.

WebPG for Firefox and Chrome

I have been searching for a software replacement for fireGPG, a GnuPG tool management for Firefox to manage GnuPG operations/management. The project was discontinued three years ago because the author didn't have time to continue following GMail's changes.

Today, i found the alternative and that is WebPG. It's available for Firefox and Chrome. It's actively developed in github repository (Firefox and Chrome) by Kyle L. Huff. It still has some issues, but for most cases, it's not completely their fault and some of them are GMail's fault.

Let me know if you like this project :)

New NVidia Linux Driver

NVidia has released a new version of Linux Driver: 319.17. This new version brings a lot of new features mentioned below:

• Added support for the following GPU:

• GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST
  GeForce GT 720M
  GeForce GT 735M
  GeForce GT 740M
  GeForce GT 745M
  GeForce GT 750M

• Fixed a regression that caused multiple BUG messages to be printed in the kernel log on SMP systems.
• Fixed a bug that could cause the X server to crash when repeatedly enabling and disabling displays.
• Updated nvidia-settings to preserve the relative positioning of displays when changing from a layout where multiple displays are on the same X screen to one where the same displays span multiple X screens.
• Fixed nvidia-settings to dlopen(3) "libvdpau.so.1", rather than "libvdpau.so".
• Added nvidia-persistenced, a daemon utility, to the driver package. nvidia-persistenced can be installed to run on system startup or manually run to allow the NVIDIA kernel module to keep persistent driver state allocated when no other user-space NVIDIA driver components are running.This can improve startup time for other user-space NVIDIA driver components.
• Fixed CVE-2013-0131: NVIDIA UNIX GPU Driver ARGB Cursor Buffer Overflow in "NoScanout" Mode. This buffer overflow, which occurred when an X client installed a large ARGB cursor on an X server running in NoScanout mode, could cause a denial of service (e.g., an X server segmentation fault), or could be exploited to achieve arbitrary code execution.

• For more details, see: http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3290

• Added initial support for restoration of efifb consoles on UEFI systems where the primary display is driven over VGA or TMDS (e.g. DVI, HDMI, or LVDS).
• Added support for the xorg.conf Monitor section options "Ignore", "Enable", "Primary", and "Rotate".For example, to rotate a monitor identified by a specific EDID hash, one could add the following to /etc/X11/xorg.conf or a file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d:

• Section "Monitor"
  Identifier "DPY-EDID-ee6cecc0-fa46-0c33-94e0-274313f9e7eb"
  Option "Rotate" "left"
  EndSection

• See the README and the xorg.conf(5) man page for more information.

• Added an Underscan feature in the nvidia-settings X Server Display Configuration page which allows the configuration of an underscan border around the ViewPortOut.This feature was formerly known as Overscan Compensation.
• Added support for application profiles to the NVIDIA client-side GLX implementation. See the "Application Profiles" chapter of the README for more information.
• Added support to nvidia-installer for crytographically signing the NVIDIA kernel module. See the "Installing the NVIDIA Driver" chapter of the README for more information.
• Added the "PanningTrackingArea" and "PanningBorder" MetaMode attributes.
• Added support for RandR 1.3 panning.
• Improved performance when the Accel option is disabled.
• Added initial support for RandR 1.4 Provider objects with the Source Output capability, which can be used to render the desktop on an NVIDIA GPU and display it on an output connected to a provider with the Sink Output capability, such as an Intel integrated graphics device or a DisplayLink USB-to-VGA adapter.See the README for details.
• Added nvidia-modprobe, a setuid root utility, to the driver package. nvidia-modprobe can be used by user-space NVIDIA driver components to make sure the NVIDIA kernel module is loaded and that the NVIDIA character device files are present.When possible, it is recommended to use Linux distribution native mechanisms for managing kernel module loading and device file creation. This utility is provided as a fallback to work out-of-the-box in a distribution-independent way.
• Updated the nvidia-settings command line interface to accept display device names, as well as optional target qualifiers, e.g.

• nvidia-settings -q [DVI-I-0]/RefreshRate
  nvidia-settings -q [GPU-1.DVI_I-1]/RefreshRate

• Updated the nvidia-settings command line interface to no longer assume the "X screen 0" target, when no target is specified in query and assign operations.Instead, all valid targets of the attribute are processed.
• Fixed a memory leak that occurred when destroying a GLX window but not its associated X window.
• Fixed a bug that could cause nvidia-installer to fail to delete directories created as part of a previous installation.
• Updated nvidia-installer to report failures to remove installed files or restore backed up files with a single warning message, instead of a separate message for each individual failure.
• Improved the performance of modesets in cases where the mode timings remained the same, but other parameters of the mode configuration, such as the ViewPort or panning domain, changed.
• Fixed an issue with RENDER convolution filters.The driver will no longer normalize filter kernels before accelerating them.
• Improved debuggability of the NVIDIA OpenGL libraries by including proper stack unwinding information on all supported architectures.
• Updated the dkms.conf file and the makefile for the NVIDIA Linux kernel module to allow DKMS installations on systems with separate source and output directories.
• Fixed a bug that caused RENDER Pictures to be sampled incorrectly when using nearest filtering in some cases.
• Added support for the RandR "Border" and "BorderDimensions" Output properties, which can be used to configure the ViewPortOut of an RandR output.This is functionally equivalent to the "ViewPortOut" MetaMode token.
• Fixed a bug where RRGetCrtcInfo could report incorrect size information when an RandR output has a custom ViewPortIn.
• Further improve performance of some versions of HyperMesh with Quadro GPUs.
• Added a VDPAU page to the nvidia-settings control panel, to display information about the decoding capabilities of VDPAU-capable GPUs.
• Added support for dynamic mode management through RandR, e.g. via the --newmode, --rmmode, and --delmode options in xrandr(1).
• Increased the number of pages that are shareable across multiple processes in the x86 build of libnvidia-glcore.so, by reducing its R_386_PC32 relocation count.
• Fixed a bug that caused XVideo applications to receive BadAlloc errors after VT switches and mode switches that occurred while a composite manager was running.
• Removed the X driver's support for "CursorShadow".
• Updated nvidia-installer to attempt unprelinking files whose checksums do not match the checksums recorded at installation time.
• Switched .run package compression from gzip to xz.This provides a higher level of compression.

Go grab it here (32 bit and 64 bit version)

Good Bye 2, Welcome 3

Oh well, i'm 30 years old now and Google also knows about it too. I guess it's time to say good bye to 2[0-9] and welcome 3[0-9] :)

Dropbox Auto Update Service

For those who have been using Dropbox service, you might notice that since version 2.0, Dropbox has an ability to auto-update to the latest version, meaning that we no longer need to download every update manually. Let your computer connected to the Internet and it will download the update and upgrade it automatically.

If you haven't upgraded to 2.0 yet, it's time to do so since there has been a lot of improvements since then. Please refer to Release Notes document for more information about the changes in Dropbox.

Ubuntu 13.04 Released

Ubuntu 13.04 aka Raring Ringtail has been released and it's available for download. There are several flavor: Desktop, Server, Cloud, and Chinese version (Kylin).

Here are the highlights of this release:

• Linux Kernel 3.8.8
• Unity 7
• Upstart 1.8
• LibreOffice 4.0
• CUPS 1.6.2 and cups-filter-1.0.34
• Python 3.3

There are other variants such as Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, and UbuntuKylin which was released on the same day. Check the Release Notes for more information about this release and possible known issues.

MU Claimed Their 20th Title

After they got beaten by Manchester City to the title race last year, Manchester United finally claimed their trophy back to Old Trafford after crushing Aston Villa 3-0, thanks to Robin Van Persie's hattrick. This is 20th EPL title for MU, 13th for Sir Alex Fergusson and first for some new players who have joined MU this season, including our hero of the match, RvP and also Shinji Kagawa.

Visit Manutd's Champions 2013 page for more story about their journey to reclaim their title.

Viva Manchester United

IRIS II Completed

Finally the second season of IRIS KDrama has been completed with another same ending, the main character died. This time, it's not by gunshot, but he died due to health problem and also because he took the nuclear bomb with a helicopter to an island far away from Seoul to minimize the casualties due to the effect of nuclear explosion which was estimated of bigger than the bomb exploded in Hiroshima Japan long long ago.

It's been a great movie, but then the ending that makes me kinda disappointed with the writer. I hope they produce IRIS III with a better plot in the end.

Patrick Volkerding's CafePress Account

I saw an interesting thread on LQ about Patrick Volkerding's CafePress account. I recall few years ago, i tried to buy items from this site and yet it failed, because they weren't shipping to Indonesia and decline my transactions.

Since Ruario started this topic, i got curious if they have improved or not, so i tried to buy two items from them and it seems that they accepted my transactions this time. This is a great news since by doing this, i can directly help Slackware Project financially and it provides another alternatives to Slackware Store.

Let's wait for the next few weeks before the items reached my house. Can't wait to use them :)

Hacking Secret Ciphers With Python

If you like Cryptography and you like to learn programming language, then i would suggest you to read Hacking Secret Ciphers with Python. It's available for free in PDF format or the online HTML version or you can buy it for $25 in Amazon.

What you will get is a fun tutorial with Python on Cryptography. This book is aimed at people who have no experience programming or with cryptography. The book goes through writing Python programs that not only implement several ciphers but also can hack these ciphers.

The book's website is available on http://inventwithpython.com/hacking

H@dfex Conference

Last Saturday, i attended H@dfex conference in Royal Ambarrukmo after i got a free pass for the conference from the commitee. They even gave 5 discount voucher for students who would like to participate on this conference.

There i met several colleagues which was invited as a speaker and we had some discussions about security and also other things. Chances like this doesn't happened so often, so that's why i forced myself to attend this event even though i also have other activities on Saturday which is supervising the KKN program, but my schedule is for next week.

Thank you UII commitee for the free pass :)