Download Shim

Secure Boot bootloader for distributions available now

Download Here:

http://www.codon.org.uk/~mjg59/shim-signed/

Linux (slowly) comes to Windows 8 PCs with UEFI secure boot

One of the largest underlying changes to Windows 8 is the long-overdue shift from BIOS to UEFI. UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is superior to BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) in almost every way, except for one: At the moment, UEFI prevents Linux distributions from being installed on Windows 8 machines.
UEFI, in essence, is a light-weight operating system that your computer loads at boot time. (See: Demystifying UEFI, the long-overdue BIOS replacement.) Because it’s an operating system, UEFI has full access to your hardware, and it can be programmed to do just about anything (thus the Extensible part of its acronym). UEFI interfaces can be mouse-driven (pictured below), and can perform complex tasks such as surfing the web or backing up your hard drives.
The UEFI specification itself also introduces a few new features to improve performance, flexibility, and security. The feature that has received by far the most attention is secure boot, as it can be used by PC OEMs to prevent other operating systems being installed on their hardware. Dell, if it so wishes, could build a PC that only runs Windows. On the flip side, Apple could stop Windows from being installed on its hardware.
Ostensibly, secure boot isn’t meant to be used maliciously, though: Its primary purpose is to prevent a malware-infected PC from booting, thus protecting the user from possible data theft or worse. Secure boot works by means of cryptographic signing: A chip on the motherboard stores the cryptographic hash/key of important operating system files and drivers, and during boot-up those files are checked — if their hashes have changed, they’re assumed to be compromised, and the boot process stops. If you try to boot Linux, secure boot detects the altered hashes and halts boot. While Linux obviously isn’t malware, secure boot doesn’t know that.
The solution, of course, is to add the Linux file/driver hashes to the secure boot chip — but to do that, you need a secret password. In the case of Windows 8 machines (i.e. official OEM machines bearing the Windows 8 logo), only Microsoft and the OEM know the password. If the key was public, then malware authors would be able to add their own hashes, and thus the system would be worthless.
Where does this leave Linux? One solution is to simply disable secure boot. Some OEM machines allow you to do this, while some (most notably the ARM-powered Windows RT devices) don’t. This is a bit of an unfair compromise, though, as it leaves your computer vulnerable to malware and rootkit infection. Another option would be for Linux distributors, such as Red Hat and Canonical, to collaborate with Microsoft to get their distros added to the secure boot system. It doesn’t seem like there has been much movement in that area, though.
The currently favored solution is a workaround: a pre-bootloader signed by Microsoft (so it passes secure boot) that can then be used to load a normal Linux bootloader without further signature checking. One Linux developer, Matthew Garrett, has managed to get Microsoft to sign a pre-bootloader called Shim. You can download it today and use it to boot Linux on your Windows 8 machine. Shim should soon find its way into SUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, and other major Linux distros. The Linux Foundation is developing an “official” workaround, but as of November it still hadn’t received Microsoft’s blessing.

Source:http://www.extremetech.com/computing/144204-linux-slowly-comes-to-windows-8-pcs-with-uefi-secure-boot

Linux tablet ?

The year of the Linux tablet is, like the year of the Linux desktop, destined never to arrive.
That doesn't mean we won't see Linux on a tablet, but you'll see Linux on a tablet the way you see it on the desktop - clinging to a tiny percentage of the market.

There is of course Android, which does use a Linux kernel somewhere under all that Java, but when Canonical or Red Hat talk about building Linux tablets, obviously Android is not what they have in mind.

For most, the dream of a Linux tablet means running a distro like Ubuntu, Mint or Fedora on some sort of tablet hardware.
Indeed, intrepid users have already hacked Linux onto Android tablets. But the first shipping Linux tablet looks like it will be the $99 "PengPod," a Frankentablet that will run both Android and Linux proper. The PengPod will, assuming its creators follow through with their plans, arrive in buyers' hands in January of 2013.
Unfortunately, the PengPod seems doomed to mediocrity. The PengPod was funded through the Kickstarter-like site Indiegogo that ensures a market, no matter how small, does exist. But the device itself looks like little more than an off-brand Android tablet with Linux running from a micro SD card. There is also an option to have Linux pre-installed on the internal flash, but those aren't shipping right away.


The PengPod may well satisfy the enthusiasts who backed it, but it's hardly going to make a flagship example of Linux excellence in a brand new form factor.
In fact the best evidence that there's never going to be a year of the Linux tablet is that it doesn't even look like there's going to be a year of the Windows tablet.
Microsoft's Surface tablet effort is not, according to early numbers and a plethora of anecdotal evidence, flying off the shelves and hardware manufacturers don't seem to be rushing out the Windows 8 tablets.
So far, despite Microsoft's best efforts, the tablet world is still very much orbiting the twin stars of iOS and Android.
Having used a Samsung Windows 8 tablet for a few months, I have a theory as to why: you think you want a full desktop computer on your tablet - I certainly did -- but you don't. It simply doesn't work.
In the case of Windows 8 you can blame some of the "not working" on the buggy, incomplete software that is Windows 8, but not all of the problems can be attributed to a shortcoming of touch APIs.
Much of what makes a full desktop interface terrible on a touch screen tablet is simply the whole desktop paradigm was never designed to be used on a tablet and it shows. The Metro interface for Windows 8 is excellent; different, but in my experience really well done.
Where Windows 8 on a tablet falls apart is when you try to bring the software keyboard to the traditional desktop interface on a tablet. The software keyboard takes up half the screen, which makes even simple tasks difficult. How to you rename a file and move it? First you tap it to select it, then you tap the button to bring up the keyboard, then you type, then you touch away the keyboard, then you touch the file again. It isn't just awkward and slow; it's downright antagonizing.

Read Full Story: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/26/year_of_the_linux_tablet/

Linux Mint 14 (Nadia) and Linux Mint Debian Edition-Christmas Mint

The elves in the Linux Mint development team have been very busy the past few weeks, and just in time for Christmas they have produced new and updated relases for all of the Mint distributions.
The main branch, Mint 14 (Nadia), derived from Ubuntu 12.10 with the Gnome-based Cinnamon and MATE desktops came out in November, then Linux Mint Debian Edition Update Pack 6 at the beginning of December.
That was followed last week by the release of the Xfce version, and the set was completed this weekend with the release of the KDE version. In the following gallery I will show the default desktop and menus, and give a brief description of the content and some of strengths of each version. But there is no substitute for trying it for yourself.
All of these distributions are "Live" images, so you can download and burn them to a DVD or copy them to a USB stick, and boot it up on your own computer without changing anything on your disk. Running the live image you can see whether all of your hardware is supported - don't believe all of the FUD that people spout about having to find device drivers, compile kernel modules or whatever.
The screenshots in this gallery were taken on six different laptops, with a variety of Intel and AMD cpu and graphics, and Wi-Fi adapters from Intel, Broadcom, Atheros and Ralink - and they all worked from the base installation. If the live distribution works for you, the Mint installer will help you get it installed on your system alongside Windows.

Credits:http://www.zdnet.com/linux-round-up-a-bunch-of-mints-for-christmas-7000009158/

How to easily install the very latest GNOME in any Distro with JHBuild

The point for having an upstream GNOME installation built from sources is if you are going to build an extension, a theme or a GTK App and take advantage of all the new features of next GNOME. However it is also useful if you want to help GNOME to get better by submitting bugs  ..or it could be useful if you are just curious to see what’s coming next :)

The tool for building GNOME is nothing else than JHBuild. 

Intro

I am not going to write a full guide for how to install GNOME with JHBuild by just giving some commands, instead I will explain some basic points and then you can check on the official documentation before you start building. So this is just a quick intro and doesn’t explain all possibilities of JHBuild tool.

What JHBuild is?

JHBuild is a small application/tool, that helps us to install software from sources by setting a sandboxed environment. It also handles every dependency of the software we want to build by downloading it, configuring it, building it and installing it.

JHBuild is part of freedesktop.org and started for GNOME, but today many applications provide JHBuild modulesets. In this tutorial we just get bother only with building GNOME.

Will JHBuild brake my system?

Absolute no! JHBuild will use an isolated from the rest of your system installation similar to NPM and RVM. However it can mess up with your Apps configuration files. For example if you build Gimp with JHBuild and you have also Gimp distributor package, both installation will use the same configs.

You can easily avoid that, by using a different account just for running latest GNOME.

How much time will take to build GNOME?

It depends from your connections and your system! A typical installation (in my case) includes Gnome-Shell, Gnome-Control-Center, Empathy and Gnome Themes ..plus all their dependencies. That means downloading and building around 120 packages from GIT. With my ~7Mbps connection and and an Intel Ivy Bridge i5, it takes approximately 3-4hours and it uses around 6-7GB of space.

However there is not need to staring at it, right? Updating is much faster.

Read More:http://worldofgnome.org/how-to-easily-install-the-very-latest-gnome-in-any-distro-with-jhbuild/

Linux 3.8's features staked out

Linus Torvalds has announced the first pre-release version of Linux 3.8, releasing it on the "longest night of the year". As previously reported, it includes support for the Flash-Friendly File System (F2FS), which has been designed for use on flash storage devices such as USB flash drives, memory cards, and internal storage in devices such as cameras, tablets and smartphones.
The developers have also merged a number of basic core functions developed under the "balancenuma" name. These are aimed at enabling future kernels to automatically keep processes and the memory areas they are using in close proximity. This is important for optimum performance on today's popular multiprocessor systems with NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access). Further improvements likely to be merged in Linux 3.9 and later versions will significantly improve this automated placement and will build on the foundations merged in 3.8.
Code for a "huge zero page", which can reduce memory usage in some setups, has also been merged. The kmem extension for the "memory" cgroup controller can now be used to limit the memory used by the kernel for processes in a group. Appropriately configuring these limits enables the kernel to keep the lid on any fork bombs run from the shell.
The addition of inline data support means that the Ext4 filesystem is now able to store very small files together with the inode entry, thereby saving storage space. The kernel has also been given a simple driver for the graphics cores on NVIDIA's Tegra family of SoCs (system-on-a-chip). The code for using the acceleration functionality offered by these chips, which is being co-developed by NVIDIA, has, however, not yet made it into the kernel. To simplify maintenance and ongoing development, the kernel developers have removed support for Intel 386 and related CPUs. 486 and other x86-32 processors will continue to be supported.
This is, as usual, the first release of the new version of Linux, coming after the closing of the "merge window" where the majority of the changes for the new version are merged into the main development branch of Linux. The next phase, the stabilisation phase, will mostly include corrections and fixes to the new features and any regressions that appear as developers test the new kernel. Details of these and many other changes will as ever be provided by The H's Kernel Log. Assuming the kernel developers keep to their usual tempo, Linux 3.8 is likely to be released in mid-February.

Source:http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Linux-3-8-s-features-staked-out-1774113.html

Steam Linux enters open beta, give it a go now

All aboard the Steam train – yes, even you, Linux users. The Steam Linux beta is now open to everyone, officially ditching the closed beta that began in early November.

Linux users will need to have Ubuntu 12.04 and the latest version of the Steam client; complete instructions for setting up Steam are on the Ubuntu wiki, with a brief rundown on the Steam community page. Steam has an entire catalog of Linux-supported games, including Team Fortress 2, Amnesia, Killing Floor, Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery, Trine 2, World of Goo and more.

Source:http://www.joystiq.com/2012/12/20/steam-linux-enters-open-beta-give-it-a-go-now/

Using the PHP/Java Bridge to Combine PHP and Java in the Same App

As you probably know, PHP 4 supported an extension for combining PHP with Java, but to combine PHP with Java in PHP 5 or PHP 6 you should install the PHP/Java Bridge, which the website describes as:

"... an implementation of a streaming, XML-based network protocol, which can be used to connect a native script engine, for example PHP, Scheme or Python, with a Java virtual machine."

In this article you will learn how to install and configure the PHP/Java Bridge and how to use Java classes in PHP scripts in a demo application. To use the PHP/Java bridge, you should have knowledge of Java SE and the PHP5 core, as well as how they interact.

Using the PHP/Java Bridge

The current distribution of the PHP/Java Bridge is available for download as a .zip file from the project page. The installation process depends on which Java platform will be interacting with PHP through this bridge. For J2SE, installation is simple:

1. Install J2SE 1.6 or above.
2. Install PHP 5.1.4 or above.
3. Extract the php-java-bridge_5.2.2_j2ee.zip to a folder.
4. From the command prompt, navigate to this folder and type: …>java –classpath JavaBridge.war TestInstallation
5. In the current folder, you should see an ext folder that contains four .jar files. Copy JavaBridge.jar and php-script.jar to your J2SE/Java SE ext directory ({JAVA_HOME}/jre/lib/ext).

Article link:http://www.developer.com/java/other/php-with-java-using-php-java-bridge-tutorial.html

Japanese toilet answers nature's call via Android

Japanese bathrooms are about to become a little more interactive, thanks to a new smartphone-controlled toilet known as the Satis. Manufactured by Tokyo-based Lixil, this Bluetooth-enabled commode can be controlled with an Android app called "My Satis," allowing users to flush, raise the toilet seat, and activate a bidet jet stream with the touch of a button. The app also lets you stream music through the toilet's speakers and will automatically monitor "usage history," giving you a better idea of how much electricity and water you're consuming with each visit.

Complete Story

Mozilla Firefox 20 Will Speed Up Page Load Times

Firefox 20 is sure shaping up to be a really big release for Mozilla. We already knew that it would finally be the release that provides Private Browsing as it should be. Now it looks like Firefox is finally getting a really interesting Network load fix that seems obvious and sure could make a huge performance difference.
Firefox 20 will load stylesheets before images.

Read More:http://www.internetnews.com/blog/skerner/mozilla-firefox-20-will-speed-up-page-load-times.html

HTML5 Still Not a Standard Until 2014

The W3C announced  that the HTML5 definition is now complete. This is a big deal for the web and all of us that work and use it…but it's not end of the story.

The definition is not a final standard for HTML5, though it is an important milestone. HTML5 will not likely be a full bona-fide standard until mid 2014 according to what Jeff Jaffe told me during a conference call  to talk about HTML5.

Credits:http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/html5-still-not-a-standard-until-2014.html

Linux servers targeted by new drive-by iFrame attack Serves online banking malware

The Linux/Chapro.A. attack is starting to look like part of a trend for using 64-bit Apache as a malware conduit, bearing a resemblance to the similarly-crafted but apparently unrelated ‘Snasko' rootkit attack discovered last month. 

Aimed at Russian and European bank users, Chapro injects malicious content into web pages, targeting Windows users vulnerable to one of several well-known Java, IE and Adobe flaws using the ‘Sweet Orange exploit pack hosted on a remote server.
A secondary main task is to hide itself from admins for as long as possible, dropping a cookie and recording the IP address of the infected machine. That means the PC will not be infected over and over when returning, making it harder for researchers to detect where a given infection happened.
"The attack described in the present analysis shows the increased complexity of malware attacks.  This complicated case spreads across three different countries, targeting users from a fourth one, making it very hard for law enforcement agencies to investigate and mitigate its effects," said ESET's Pierre-Marc Bureau.
The main difference between the new attack and Snasko is its greater menace; the latter seemed rough around the edges. This one looks like a fully-functioning attack system, albeit that ESET said it hadn't detected many examples of the attack in the wild.

Read more: http://www.techcentral.ie/20549/linux-servers-targeted-by-new-drive-by-iframe-attack#ixzz2FWNwzhfb

Three new features coming in Linux Mint 15

It's been just a few weeks since the launch of Linux Mint 14 “Nadia,” but already the project behind the popular distribution has been making plans for its next release.

In fact, last week project lead Clement Lefebvre laid out a roadmap for Linux Mint 15, whose nickname is still to be decided.
Linux Mint has remained at the top of DistroWatch's page hit rankings for the past year or so, making its next version a topic of widespread interest.
Ready for a rundown? Here are three features we can expect to see in Linux Mint 15.
1. Cinnamon 1.8
It's already been a full year since the launch of the GNOME 2-like Cinnamon desktop environment, and the next version of Linux Mint will use Cinnamon 1.8.
Included along with that popular desktop will be desklets, or desktop widgets, such as for system monitor, terminal, and picture, video, and slideshow frame; themes with configurable color schemes; calendar events similar to those in KDE; and new applets including an email notifier and an RSS reader similar to Pulse.

Also coming will be bump maps and a control center governing settings for both Cinnamon and GNOME properties, among other features.
2. Nemo 1.8
Cinnamon's default Nemo file manager, a fork of Nautilus, will be upgraded to version 1.8 in the next Linux Mint release, according to the roadmap. Along with it will come an action API, disk management, file preview capabilities, and user interface improvements.
3. MDM 1.2
Version 1.2 of the Mint Display Manager (MDM), meanwhile, will bring new capabilities as well. Themes, for example, will be able to have borders around text fields.
Other new features coming in Linux Mint 15 include user interface improvements for software management and the live installer as well as a new screensaver and driver manager.
Based on Ubuntu, Linux Mint issues new releases twice a year. The current version, “Nadia,” was rolled out in November. 

Linux Top 3: Hello ARM, Goodbye 386

Last week was a busy one on the Linux Planet with new kernels, new distributions and a (not so) fond farewell to Linux's first architecture.

1) Linux 3.7

The Linux 3.7 kernel was formally released by Linus Torvalds last week ushering in a new era for Linux on ARM. After years of fractured development across multiple version of ARM, unified system architecture support for ARM landed in the 3.7 kernel. The 3.7 kernel also provides full support for ARM v8 which provides 64-bit capabilities.
Btrfs continues to mature in Linux 3.7 by way of a number of incremental improvements including fsync()speedups and the remove of hard link limits.
On the networking side, Linux 3.7 now support VXLAN (Virtual eXtensible LAN), which is a tenant of the Software Defined Networking (SDN) movement). VXLAN is a layer 2 overlay over a Layer 3 network. VXLAN was started as a joint effort of Cisco and VMware and is not in the process of moving through the IETF for standardization.

Also on the networking side for Linux 3.7 is TCP Fast Open for servers. TCP Fast Open is a new Google led networking approach tha delivers an optimized method for performing the initial TCP handshake in a data connection. The initial code commits for TCP Fast Open debuted on the client side in Linux 3.6 in October of this year.

2) Linux 386

The cycle of kernel development never ends. When one kernel is released that the signal for the merge window on the next kernel.
While it is still early in the merge window for the Linux 3.8 kernel, we already know off at least on thing that will not be included: support for 386.
That's right Intel's original 386 has remained supported in the bleeding edge of the mainline kernel since the day Linus started and remains so today. That won't be the case in the mainline kernel beginning with Linux 3.8 in 2013.
Linux kernel developer Ingo Molnar got Linus Torvalds to pull in the, 'x86-nuke386-for-linus' code tree on Tuesday. According to Molnar,"this tree removes ancient-386-CPUs support and thus zaps quite a bit of complexity: 24 files changed, 56 insertions(+), 425 deletions(-)... which complexity has plagued us with extra work whenever we wanted to change SMP primitives, for years."
Molnar noted however that there is a cost.
Nostlagia.
"Your old original 386 DX33 system from early 1991 won't be able to boot modern Linux kernels anymore. Sniff," Molnar wrote.

3) Slax 7

Some distributions have milestone updates somewhat less regularly than others. Case in point is the Slackware based Slax distribution.
This past week, the first major Slax update in three years was released with Slax 7.0, code name, Green Horn.
"Slax 7.0 is the major update of Slax Linux live operating system. It includes newest Linux Kernel, KDE4 desktop, GCC compiler and lots of other stuff and that all in just a ~210MB download," Slax developer Tomas Matejicek wrote in his release announcement


Credits:http://www.linuxplanet.com/news/linux-top-3-hello-arm-goodbye-386.html
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