LinuxMint 15 Olivia Released

After Ubuntu 13.04 gets released last month, almost two months later, LinuxMint 15 Olivia is released with two default flavour: MATE and Cinnamon. Clem announced it on the Mint's webpage and ISOs are now spreading through mirror sites.

There are lots of new features in Olivia:

• MDM
  
• Software Sources
• Driver Manager
• Cinnamon 1.8
• MATE 1.6
• Software Manager
• System Improvements
• Artwork Improvements
• Upstream Components

For known issues, please refer to the release notes

Marking Done

I have finally completed marking all the exams and i will submit the final grades tomorrow and my job is finished for this semester. It's another exciting semester, except for one course in which one student of mine was found cheating during the final exam and i had to gave him an "E" which is Failed.

My focus right now is planning and coordinating the work for service learning which will start next month along with Hongkong Polytechnic University.

Proxmox 3.0 Released

For those who have been waiting for new release of Proxmox, here's your prizes: Proxmox 3.0 has been released.

Proxmox VE is a complete open source virtualization management solution for servers. It is based on KVM and container-virtualization and manages virtual machines, storage, virtualized networks, and HA Clustering.

The enterprise-class features and the intuitive web interface are designed to help you increase the use of your existing resources and reduce hardware cost and administrating time - in business as well as home use. You can easily virtualize even the most demanding Linux and Windows application workloads.

Change log:
Released 24.05.2013:

• pve-kernel-2.6.32 2.6.32-100
• fix CVE-2013-2094
• update ceph packages to 0.61.2
• libpve-common-perl 3.0-4:
• fix bug #381: use persistent reservation file for ports
• new function PVE::Tools::next_migrate_port()
• libpve-storage-perl 3.0-6
• rbd : clone volume to same pool that base volume
• extend storage list API with useful parameters for clone
• fix iscsi session scan bug
• pve-cluster 3.0-4
• depend on fuse (seems most utilities moved from fuse-utils to fuse)
• remove depencency on fuse-utils (this package is no longer required)
• fix warning about uninitialize value
• fix bug 383: restart pveproxy instead of apache2
• pve-manager 3.0-20
• fix login problem when http_proxy is set
• updated Chinese, German and French translation
• allow to upload files with spaces in filename (replace with '_')
• allow to delete pools with non-existent VMs/Storage
• use correct icons for templates
• sort templates after regular VMs
• StorageSelector: allow to use new target option, used by Clone
• fix bug #385: correctly handle Accept-Encoding
• fix bug #374: correctly remove destroyed container from pool
• pve-qemu-kvm 1.4-12
• vma create: only store basename of config file.
• qemu-server 3.0-15
• clone disk : keep source volume params
• clone: check is we can clone to target storage
• fix bug #381: use PVE::Tools::next_migrate_port()
• restore: do not restore template flag
• vncterm 1.1-3
• re-enable javascript-events.patch (needed by migrate)
• based on Debian 7.0 (Wheezy)
• new VM clone feature
• new event driven API server (pveproxy)
• completely replace apache2
• efficient support for HTTP keep-alive
• support bootlogd (boot log can be viewed on the GUI)
• update pve-qemu-kvm to 1.4.1
• update kernel to vzkernel-2.6.32-042stab076.7.src.rpm
• changed default IO Scheduler to 'deadline'
• updated Intel network drivers for e1000e, igb and ixgbe
• Countless bug fixes (for all details see bugtracker and GIT

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)