LinuxTag 2013 runs from May 22nd to May 25th in Berlin, Germany. With more than 10,000 visitors last year, it is one of the biggest Linux and open source events in Europe.

You will find the Gentoo booth at Hall 7.1c, Booth 179. Come and visit us! You will meet many of our developers and users, talk with us, plus get some of the Gentoo merchandise you have always wanted.

What? FOSSCOMM 2013

Free and Open Source Software COMmunities Meeting(FOSSCOMM) 2013

When? 20th, April 2013 - 21st, April 2013

Where? Harokopio University, Athens, Greece

Website?http://hua.fosscomm.gr

FOSSCOMM 2013 is almost here, and Gentoo will be there!

We will have a booth with Gentoo promo stuff, stickers, flyers, badges, live DVD's and much more! Whether you're a developer, user, or simply curious, be sure and stop by. We are also going to represent Gentoo in a round table with other foss communities. See you there!

Pavlos Ratis contributed the draft for this announcement.

Figure 1.1: End of World

Gentoo Linux is proud to announce the availability of a new LiveDVD to celebrate the continued collaboration between Gentoo users and developers, ready to rock the end of the world (or at least mid-winter/Southern Solstice)! The LiveDVD features a superb list of packages, some of which are listed below.

A special thanks to the Gentoo Infrastructure Team. Their hard work behind the scenes provide the resources, services and technology necessary to support the Gentoo Linux project.

• Packages included in this release: Linux Kernel 3.6.8, Xorg 1.12.4, KDE 4.9.4, Gnome 3.4.2, XFCE 4.10, Fluxbox 1.3.2, Firefox 17.0.1, LibreOffice 3.6.4.3, Gimp 2.8.2-r1, Blender 2.64a, Amarok 2.6.0, Mplayer 2.2.0, Chromium 24.0.1312.35 and much more ...
• If you want to see if your package is included we have generated both the x86 package list, and amd64 package list. There is no new FAQ or artwork the 20121221 release, but you can still get the 12.0 artwork plus DVD cases and covers for the 12.0 release; and view the 12.1 FAQ (persistence mode is not available in 20121221).
• Special Features:
  • ZFSOnLinux
  • Writable file systems using AUFS so you can emerge new packages!

The LiveDVD is available in two flavors: a hybrid x86/x86_64 version, and an x86_64 multi lib version. The livedvd-x86-amd64-32ul-20121221 version will work on 32-bit x86 or 64-bit x86_64. If your CPU architecture is x86, then boot with the default gentoo kernel. If your arch is amd64, boot with the gentoo64 kernel. This means you can boot a 64-bit kernel and install a customized 64-bit user land while using the provided 32-bit user land. The livedvd-amd64-multilib-20121221 version is for x86_64 only.

If you are ready to check it out, let our bouncer direct you to the closest x86 image or amd64 image file.

If you need support or have any questions, please visit the discussion thread on our forum.

Thank you for your continued support,

Gentoo Linux Developers, the Gentoo Foundation, and the Gentoo-Ten Project.

At the Gentoo Miniconf 2012 in Prague we will install Gentoo on the OLPC XO-1.75, an ARM based laptop designed as an educational tool for children. If you are interested in joining us, come to the Gentoo booth and start hacking with us!



—Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn

Gentoo - Still alive and kicking ...

As the quantity and quality of this year's entries will attest, Gentoo is alive, well, and taking no prisoners!

We had 70 entries for the 2012 Gentoo screenshot contest, representing 11 different window managers / desktop environments. Thanks to all that participated, the judges and likewhoa for the screenshot site.

The Winners!

Building a website that fits the needs of users and editors alike is hard. That's why the Gentoo PR team would like to ask you a few questions about our websites, mainly www.gentoo.org, but also about our other sites.

Take the survey now

Thanks for your time and interest in making our website experience better!

After the success of the 2011 Screenshot Contest the Contest Team is doing it again!

Gentoo Users, Developers, and Staffers are encouraged to submit their sweetest screenshots. This year likewhoa went all out and put together a custom cms for us to use for the contest. Please head over to the 2012 Contest Page for all of the details.

You can visit this forum post for comments and suggestions. OK enough talk, get started tricking out that desktop.

Today, the most ambitious Free Software event of the Czech Republic officially opens registration! We’ve got an awesome event for you in store with sessions on all major subjects in Free Software and around it. Entry will be free of charge for everyone and we’ll give you 4 events AND a bonus track for that money! One of the events will be our very own Gentoo Miniconf 2012.

We hope to see you all in Prague on October 20-23 2012!

Theo Chatzimichos provided the draft for this announcement.

We are pleased to announce the initial x32 release candidate. This is a new ABI for amd64 platforms that aims to marry the best of both worlds: smaller pointers from 32bit x86 with more registers and enhanced instructions from 64bit x86_64. All you need to get started is Linux 3.4!

For more information, please check out the Gentoo developer mailing list.

From now on, we are defaulting ARMv6 and ARMv7 targets to hardfp. Since the ARM definition for these cores mandates vector floating point units, it would be silly to continue defaulting these to soft float. This also keeps us in sync with the cross-distro standardization that is occurring in the ARM space.

More specifically, ARMv6 targets will default to "vfp" while ARMv7 targets will default to "vfp3-d16". This will cause upgrade pains for existing installs, and that makes us sad, but we're looking at the long term here. Updated stages should be available already.

If you have any questions, please consult the Gentoo embedded mailing list.

WSJ: With about three-quarters of Samsung's operating profit coming from the division that makes mobile devices, there is no getting around the fact that a drop-off in smartphone sales would be punishing.

PDO4You is a class that implements the Singleton design pattern for connecting the database using the PDO extension (PHP Data Objects). It provides an abstraction layer for accessing data, regardless of which database you are using, and ensures that there is a single object instance per database connection. It can connect to several possible SQL databases using the available PDO drivers. Currently it supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, MariaDB, Oracle, Microsoft SQL server, Sybase, and CUBRID (a database highly optimized for Web applications). The class can also execute multiple queries at once given a string in JSON format that specifies the type of query, the tables, fields, field values, conditions, etc.

Release Notes: This release adds support for MariaDB databases.

Release Tags: MariaDB

Tags: PDO, CRUD, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, php-classes, PHP, singleton, postgresql, SQLite, MSSQL, Sybase, cubrid

Licenses: GPLv3

Ansel is a Horde photo gallery that provides functionality for managing unlimited photo galleries, with thumbnails, paging, EXIF data, and permissions on a per-gallery basis. It also provides a number of features not normally found in Web-based photo galleries, including cropping, resizing, rotating, watermarking, and greyscale effects.

Release Notes: This release is compatible with Horde 5 and improves support for SQLite.

Release Tags: Major feature enhancements

Tags: Graphics, Presentation, multimedia, photo management, Web Application

Licenses: GPL

'Significantly and substantially increases the probability of violent conflict'

The increasing availability of cell phone coverage in Africa is contributing to an increase of violence on that continent, a recent study contends.…

Big trouble in automated clouds

Puppet Labs has blasted out a security advisory about a vulnerability in the popular infrastructure management tool Puppet.…

FVWM-Crystal aims to create an easy to use, pretty, but also powerful desktop environment for Linux or other Unix-like operating systems. It uses the following programs: FVWM as a window manager and "main core"; different ways to provide icons on the desktop including support for many file managers and custom commands; xterm, aterm, mrxvt, or urxvt as terminal emulators; MPD or XMMS2 as music players (there's built-in support for controlling these programs), and several other tools for different functions, like setting a wallpaper or taking screenshots.

Release Notes: This is bugfix release addresses a possible cursor freeze with the toggle mute and/or pause function. A new toggle mute only function has been added as well, with the Ctrl + XF86AudioMute key binding.

Release Tags: Bug Fix

Tags: Desktop Environment, Window Manager, FVWM, Tutorials

Licenses: GPL

The Washington Post reports that Google has filed a motion challenging the gag orders preventing it from disclosing information about the data requests it receives from government agencies. The motion cites the free speech protections of the First Amendment. "FISA court data requests typically are known only to small numbers of a company’s employees. Discussing the requests openly, either within or beyond the walls of an involved company, can violate federal law." From the filing (PDF): "On June 6, 2013, The Guardian newspaper published a story mischaracterizing the scope and nature of Google's receipt of and compliance with foreign intelligence surveillance requests. ... In light of the intense public interest generated by The Guardian's and Post's erroneous articles, and others that have followed them, Google seeks to increase its transparency with users and the public regarding its receipt of national security requests, if any. ... Google's reputation and business has been harmed by the false or misleading reports in the media, and Google's users are concerned by the allegation. Google must respond to such claims with more than generalities. ... In particular, Google seeks a declaratory judgment that Google as a right under the First Amendment to publish ... two aggregate unclassified numbers: (1) the total number of FISA requests it receives, if any; and (2) the total number of users or accounts encompassed within such requests."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

WASHINGTON/KABUL (Reuters) - The United States will meet the Taliban this week for talks aimed at achieving peace in Afghanistan, where U.S.-led forces and the insurgents have fought a bloody and costly war for the past 12 years, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.

pgBadger is a PostgreSQL log analyzer that generates detailed reports with charts. It aims to replace and outperform the pgFouine script.

Release Notes: This release added many graphical improvements and improved rendering of logs over a few hours. Bugs were fixed, especially in reports of queries that generate the most temporary files.

Tags: stabe

Licenses: BSD Revised

Blue Smiley Organizer is a Web-based script to manage your bookmarks, diary, reminders, to-do lists, contacts, knowledge, and file upload in a multi-user environment. It also includes its own live support help system, blogs, RSS feeds, customizable themes, and a discussion forum.

Release Notes: Various fixes (MySQL 5.5 support, a timezone fix, removal of deprecated PHP commands) and improvements: the search bar has 10 more slots, and to-do has a new status field.

Tags: Communications, Chat, Internet, Web, Dynamic Content, Message Boards, News/Diary, Office/Business, groupware, Office Suites, Scheduling, Email, Address Book, Information Management