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Edward Shishkin, the lone developer that took over development of the Reiser4 file-system following the conviction of Hans Reiser, has shared a new update with Phoronix regarding the efforts towards pushing Reiser4 into the mainline Linux kernel. Reiser4 has been in development going back to 2004 and had a promising future until the conviction of Hans Reiser and demise of his Namesys company following the murder of Reiser's wife, but since then it's development has been stagnate. In late 2009 I was told by Edward Shishkin that Reiser4 may go for mainline inclusion in 2010. Before pushing again for mainline integration he wanted to publish an article in a scholarly magazine regarding Reiser4's design in order to facilitate some independent expert review.

LXer Feature: 17-Oct-2011

Welcome to this week's collection of big stories from the LXer Newswire. Enjoy!

Friday's filings indicate a couple of things. First, it is becoming increasingly clear that Judge Alsup does not expect this trial to start on schedule, and second, he is going to give latitude in hearing disputes outside of trial to try to reduce the number of issues to be handled at trial. Consequently, while Oracle filed objections to allowing motions on patent marking and striking of portions of Dr. Serwin's rebuttal report, Judge Alsup is allowing both of those motions to proceed along with Oracle's requested motion to strike portions of the Cox/Leonard reports.

An October 5 press release from The Document Foundation provides a bit of information about a vulnerability that was fixed in recent versions of LibreOffice (LO). The vulnerability sounds fairly serious: "This flaw could have been used for nefarious purposes, such as installing viruses, through a specially-crafted [.doc] file." It was evidently fixed, silently, in versions 3.4.3 and 3.3.4 of LO, which were released in August. The details (such as they are) were withheld "until users have been given time to migrate to the new version", but it isn't at all clear that Linux distributions have put out fixes yet. Worse still, OpenOffice.org (OOo) is vulnerable as well, but there has been no release from that project since January.

There was a time when Microsoft despised open source, because open source essentially meant "Linux," and Linux was a serious threat to Microsoft's operating system business. While that threat remains, open source has become such a big tent that Microsoft increasingly feels at home with a broad array of open-source projects. Nowhere is this truer than in its announced support for Hadoop, the open-source software framework that dominates the Big Data movement.

For the first time ever, the Southern California Linux Expo will host the SCALE Kids Conference, a free and open source event where the community leaders of tomorrow will be able to spotlight their talents and ideas. The goal of the conference is to be as "kid driven" as possible. The event offers a unique opportunity for kids 10 to 16 to see and experience the inner workings of planning, determine the content, and help to steer the direction that the conference will take. The SCALE Kids Conference will take place on Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012 in parallel with the main SCALE 10X conference.

One of the many OpenBenchmarking.org features that haven't yet been fully taken advantage is the opportunities presented by the vast collection of system hardware/software information and logs that have been submitted to this collaborative testing platform from Phoronix Media. OpenBenchmarking.org is much more than just being a storage place for benchmark results. After writing a simple plug-in this morning, here's a list of many motherboards that have broken PCI-E Active State Power Management support from their BIOS, which can lead to greatly increased power consumption under Linux.

If another group was trying to take on Android and Apple’s iOS on smartphones and tablets, I’d dismiss them. RIM, BlackBerry’s parent company, is having a heck of a time getting anyone to buy into PlayBook and while HP TouchPad users loved it,HP killed the TouchPad after only a few weeks. So, why should anyone think that KDE, makers of one of the two most popular Linux desktops, should stand a chance with Plasma Active? Well, because KDE has a long history of delivering the goods with minimal resources.

LXer Feature: 10-Oct-2011

In the Roundup this week we have Linux on a flash drive saving the day, Larry the Free Software Guy goes deep into the heart of TexOS, Helios wants to know if you can name that app, My Linux Rig profiles our Publisher Bob Whitinger and Carla Schroder asks do volunteers write better code? Enjoy!

The Free Software Foundation has removed GNU PDF from their list of high-priority projects, since libpoppler and other open-source PDF viewing solutions have matured and support the PDF ISO standard.

While I was away for three weeks, there was an update on LP bug #760131, the infamous bug report on the power consumption being raised significantly higher in Ubuntu Natty. This bug report of high importance now indicates a fix being committed to Natty and a fix being released for Oneiric, but what has changed? Here is an update.

LibreOffice users ought to update their software: a security hole has been discovered in the code used to import Microsoft Word documents into the open-source productivity suite. The latest version of the software contains a fix for the problem.

FlashSoft, which emerged from stealth mode in June with software that supported the use of solid state drives (SSDs) to provide a read and write cache, Thursday announced enhancements to its SE software. The software is presently in beta.

The Linux Foundation and CE Linux Forum announced a schedule for the Embedded Linux Conference Europe (ELCE), set to take place Oct. 26-28 in Prague. Co-located with LinuxCon Europe, ELCE 2011 offers 50 presentations on Linux and Android -- including projects such as Genivi, Yocto, Linaro, and possibly Tizen -- plus speakers ranging from Linus Torvalds to Intel's Dirk Hohndel.

Sources tell us that Nokia is developing a Linux-based replacement for its S40 phones, called Meltemi. The news was leaked, accurately, by the Wall Street Journal last week. Now we can confirm it. The codename turned up in an internal communication we saw in April, referring to opportunities for redundant Meego staff “in the Meltemi organisation”. We inferred that was a Windows project. It isn’t.

Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) is considering a bid for Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O), resurfacing as a potential buyer after a bitter and unsuccessful fight to take over the Internet company in 2008, sources close to the situation said on Wednesday. Microsoft joins a host of other companies looking at Yahoo, which has a market value of about $18 billion and is readying financial pitch books for potential buyers, they said.

Dave needs a new 64-bit Linux for his primary audio production machine. What shall he do ? Read on to learn how and why he decided upon the Arch Linux distribution.

Following a series of embarrassing intrusions that hit the servers used to maintain and distribute the Linux operating system, project elders have advised all developers to check their Linux machines for signs of compromise. Emails sent Friday by Linux kernel lead developers Greg Kroah-Hartman and H Peter Anvin arrived as volunteers with the open-source project worked to bring LinuxFoundation.org, Linux.com, and Kernel.org back online following attacks that gained root access to the multiple servers that host the sites.

IBM presented an update on Linux on its mainframe line of computers. It was refreshing to learn about the success Linux has been having outside of the realm of industry standard X86-based systems. Here’s a quick summary of the session.

Linux is, by design, a very secure operating system, but so what? You can have the best security system in the world on your house, but if you leave your front-door open anyone can still walk in. Even people who know better, like Linux kernel developers, blow it sometimes. That’s what happened to the Linux Foundation’s constellation of sites. Multiple important Linux sites were down for weeks and as of October 3rd, kernel.org is still down. This doesn’t have to happen to you. Here are a few simple suggestions from me, and some more advanced ones from Greg Kroah-Hartman, one of Linux’s lead developers.