Cliff’s List Filter – July 1 – 6

Back again with more updates from the Linux Kernel, GNOME, KDE and Mozilla circles. Here’s a glimpse of what we’re pitching at you this week: several add-ons for the Linux 2.6 kernel, including a simple Secure Computing framework, and a Kernel tracer; Linux 2.4.27-rc3; plenty of updates on the Balsa front; reactions to Microsoft’s latest patent on the KDE front; and a couple of Mozilla tips, not to mention a link to the ICS specification for those of you who like details.

Linux Kernel

• We start off this week with a book suggestion for the novice network programmers out there.
• Keith Owens announced the release of kdb v4.3 x86-64 for Linux 2.4.25 on July 1.
• Russell King reported some strange behavior with the binutils tools for ARM that have apparently been around for some two years. Apparently, it is possible for Gnu Assembler for ARM to generate programs with undefined symbols, even when the “–no-undefined” option is given. This problem may soon be fixed in CVS versions of GNU GAS, but in the meantime ARM developers may need to check their compiled code for this problem.

• Those of you interested in using performance counters in the kernel might appreciate the information given in a Q&A session on perfctr.

• Amon Ott announces the release of RSBAC v1.2.3 on July 2. RSBAC is Rule Set Based Access Control, and it provides: various security models (MAC, ACL, RC) including custom security modules you can implement on your own, control over user and program network access, virus scanning, and more. Support exists for Linux 2.4 and 2.6. If interested, you can visit the RSBAC homepage for more information.

• It seems that the Linux FAT filesystem module has been rejecting certain valid (but non-standard) FAT filesystems. A recent patch against the FAT subsystem has relaxed some of the tests which determine whether FAT is really FAT, to accommodate those filesystems, however the possibility of mounting non-FAT filesystems has increased.

• Marcelo Tosatti frees Linux 2.4.27-rc3 from its cage on July 3 and calls it good.

• Wiesner Thomas created HTML versions of the Linux 2.6.4 documents on July 4th, which should improve the documentation presentation and accessibility.

• Andrea Arcangeli provided a patch that provides a simple secure computing facility for Linux 2.6.7 on July 4.

• For the hardcore hardware tweaks out there, Sebastian Witt provided a driver that allows the user to change the frequency of the Front Side Bus on nForce2 platforms.

• Masami Hiramatsu announced the release of LKST v2.1.0 for Linux 2.6.6 on July 5. The Linux Kenrel State Tracer provides a facility for tracing events in the Linux Kernel.

• The Linux Kernel, updates for this week end with Hainz Mauelshagen’s announcement of dmraid v1.0.0-rc1 on July 6. The Device Mapper Raid tool assists in the configuration of software RAID sets using the Device Mapper features in the Linux 2.6 kernel.

GNOME

• Some news for those of you who happen to be following Balsa CVS: Albrecht Dre submitted several patch this week that: hopefully improves some of the Balsa User Interface; adds corrections to some libmutt problems surrounding message character sets; and fixes a minor bug in Message Disposition Notification. It also might be fair to mention that Balsa 2.1.90 was released on July 4, in preparation for the stable 2.2.0 series.

• Do you prefer a neat GNOME desktop, not cluttered with those pesky icons? Lloyd Zusman provides a way to remove them while keeping the desktop context menu.

• GnomeMeeting had its 3rd birthday on July 2. Happy Birthday, GM!
• Here are some of the latest catches, fished from the Digital Lake:
  • Gnumeric v1.2.13 was released on July 3. It’s a medium priority update in the stable series that, among other things, fixes the XLS export issues. If you swap data with Excel users, this update is the one for you.
  • Alexandria v0.3.0 was released on July 3. Alexandria is described as “a GNOME application to help you manage your book collection. Sounds like something that might be appropriate for use on the office library…assuming you have one.
  • If you’re looking for a bit of excitement and escapism for your GNOME system, consider Monster Masher v1.7, which was released on July 6. Nothing like taking a time out and squashing bad guys with big blocks.

KDE

• KPlayer v0.5.1, the mplayer-based media player for KDE, was released on July 6.
• After the announcement of Microsoft’s latest patent on Grouped Taskbar Buttons, the developers discuss their options, and the effect this may have on KDE. Hopefully some form of prior art will be found since taskbars have been around for a long time.

Mozilla

• Sunbird users looking to dig deeper into their .ics files might want to look into the RFC (RFC 2445) that defines the .ics specification.

• Interested in viewing WAP pages with Mozilla? Greg Bair suggests you try WMLBrowser.

• Mozilla users who would like to experiment with Javascript in a more immediate type of environment, might find the Javascript shell helpful.