Annunciato il rilascio della release candidate di Linux Mint 17.2, nome in codice "Rafaela", sia per l'edizione Cinnamon che per l'edizione Mate.

Maggiori dettagli sulle nuove funzionalità presenti nelle due edizioni sono disponibili a questa pagina per l'edizione Cinnamon, e a questa pagina per l'edizione Mate.

Download possibile da questi link: linuxmint-17.2-cinnamon-64bit-rc.iso (1,563 MB), linuxmint-17.2-mate-64bit-rc.iso (1,632 MB).

I ricercatori del Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), del MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), hanno annunciato di aver sviluppato un nuovo linguaggio di programmazione chiamato "Halide".

 Halide è stato progettato per semplificare lo sviluppo di applicazioni riguardanti l'Image Processing.

Adding a new function to an image-processing program, or modifying it to run on a different device, often requires rethinking and revising it from top to bottom.

Researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) aim to change that, with a new programming language called Halide. Not only are Halide programs easier to read, write and revise than image-processing programs written in a conventional language, but because Halide automates code-optimization procedures that would ordinarily take hours to perform by hand, they’re also significantly faster.

Rilasciato sotto licenza MIT, Halide è disponibile per piattaforme x86-64/SSE, ARM v7/NEON e CUDA. Il compilatore è attualmente disponibile per le recenti release di Mac OS X e Linux. Il supporto per sistemi Windows è tecnicamente fattibile, ma per ora non è stato testato su sistemi Windows.

Rilasciata la release candidate di Zorin OS 6, distribuzione Linux basata su Ubuntu

After a long year of development, The Zorin OS Team are very proud to release the Zorin OS 6 Core Release Candidate, the pre-release version of our groundbreaking new operating system. Zorin OS 6 has been our most significant leap forward since Zorin OS’s initial release nearly 3 years ago. At the core of Zorin OS 6 lies our new, unique desktop environment named "Zorin Desktop" instead of the Unity, Gnome Shell and Cinnamon offerings. Zorin Desktop embraces all of the latest and greatest of Open Source software and technologies such as Gtk3 and other software from the GNOME 3 software stack, all without affecting the familiarity and usability of the desktop which still retains its Windows 7-like default look and our innovative Zorin Look Changer which allows users to choose between the Windows 7, XP and GNOME 2 graphical interfaces. Zorin Desktop uses AWN as the default panel to allow for unparalleled customizability and support for our different looks in the Zorin Look Changer. Along with the new desktop environment Zorin OS 6 RC packs a ton of software updates, a newly redesigned Software Center, Linux Kernel version 3.2 and a load of other improvements and features. We also include our  Zorin Web Browser Manager to ease the installation of web browsers. As Zorin OS 6 is based on Ubuntu 12.04 it is an LTS (Long Term Support) release, provided with 5 years of security updates.

Download da questa pagina.

Annunciato il rilascio di Linux Mint 13 'Maya' Release Candidate.

The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 13 "Maya" RC.

Available in two editions, Linux Mint 13 features the choice between a productive, stable and mature MATE 1.2 desktop and the brand new modern-looking and exciting Cinnamon 1.4. These two desktops are among the best available, they’re perfectly integrated within Linux Mint and represent great alternatives to Gnome 2 users. Linux Mint 13 is also an LTS (Long Term Support) release and it will be supported until April 2017.

Note di rilascio disponibile a questa pagina. L'elenco completo delle novità in questa versione è disponibile a questa pagina. Download da questa pagina.

Rilasciato un aggiornamento di SystemRescueCd, LiveCD basato sulla distribuzione Linux Gentoo che dispone di numerosi strumenti utili per la riparazione del sistema, per recuperare dati dopo un crash di sistema, per gestire le partizioni, per la creazione di immagini di singole partizioni o di intere unità.

• Updated standard kernels to Long-Term-Supported linux-3.2.16 (rescuecd + rescue64)
• Updated alternative kernels to latest stable: linux-3.3.5 (altker32 + altker64)
• Updated btrfs-progs from Fedora 17 sources (btrfs-progs-0.19-19.fc17)
• Updated xfs filesystem tools: xfsprogs-3.1.8 and xfsdump-3.1.0
• Updated system packages: gcc-4.4.7, openrc-0.9.8.4, portage-2.1.10.49
• Updated OpenSSH to 5.9_p1-r4 and partclone to 0.2.47
• Added debian and redhat package management tools (dpkg, debootstrap, rpm)
• Updated sysresccd-pkgstats script to avoid warnings
• Updated list of graphical programs used by sysresccd-cleansys
• Removed GObject introspection data to save space

Download da questa pagina.

Annunciato il rilascio di Linux Mint 12 "LXDE" edition

The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 12 LXDE.

Linux Mint 12 LXDE comes with updated software and brings refinements and new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use.

LXDE

This edition features the fast and lightweight LXDE desktop.

Hybrid ISO images

This is the first release of Linux Mint using Hybrid ISO images. Traditionally, tools such as 'Startup Disk Creator' or 'UNetbootin' were needed to install Linux Mint via USB. With hybrid images, you can simply use the "dd" command or a graphical frontend to make a bootable USB stick with no efforts which acts exactly like a liveDVD.
Pros:

• The resulting USB stick will act exactly like a liveCD/DVD
• The process is fast and simple
• Hybrid ISOs are still compatible with Unetbootin and Startup Disk Creator

Cons:

• This method deletes all the data present on the USB drive
• The USB stick isn't persistent (though you can still use Unetbootin to do this)

Download da questa pagina.

Nuova versione stabile per il browser di Google, Chrome 17.0.963.78

The Chrome Stable channel has been updated to 17.0.963.78 on Windows, Mac Os X, Linux and Chrome Frame.  This release fixes issues with Flash games and videos, along with the security fix listed below.

Security fixes and rewards:

Congratulations again to community member Sergey Glazunov for the first submission to Pwnium!

- Critical CVE-2011-3046: UXSS and bad history navigation. Credit to Sergey Glazunov.

NVidia è entrata a far parte della Linux Foundation, organizzazione no-profit dedicata a promuovere la crescita di Linux. NVidia si va così ad aggiungere a Intel e AMD che sono soci da tempo della fondazione. Altri soci di rilievo della Linux Foundation sono IBM, Google, Oracle, Cisco, Adobe, Samsung, Siemens. Al momento non è ancora chiaro se questo comporterà delle modifiche nella politica di NVidia sui driver, NVidia ha finora rilasciato driver proprietari per le sue schede grafiche sotto Linux.

L'ultimo report rilasciato da Coverity, Coverity Scan Open Source Integrity Report, relativo al 2011 indica che la qualità del codice open source è pari o superiore alla qualità del software proprietario. Nello studio, frutto di una collaborazione tra Coverity e lo US Department of Homeland Security nata nel 2006, sono stati analizzati oltre 37 milioni di linee di codice open source e oltre 300 milioni di linee di codice dei software proprietari.

I 45 software open source analizzati hanno una media di 832.000 linee di codice, e la densità media di difetto (numero di difetti per 1000 righe di codice) è di 0.45. I 41 software proprietari analizzati hanno una media di 7.5 milioni di linee di codice, e una densità media di difetto di 0.64.

Linux 2.6, PHP 5.3, e PostgreSQL 9.1 sono stati riconosciuti come i progetti open source con una qualità del codice maggiore, rispettivamente con densità di difetto 0.62, 0.20, e 0.21.

"Open source code quality is on par with proprietary code quality, particularly in cases where codebases are of similar size. For instance, Linux 2.6, a project with nearly 7 million lines of code, has a defect density of 0.62 which is roughly identical to that of its proprietary codebase counterparts"

Annunciato il rilascio di MySQL 5.5.21, nuova versione del RDMBS (Relational Database Management System) open source

MySQL 5.5.21 is a new version of the 5.5 production release of the world's most popular open source database. MySQL 5.5.21 is recommended for use on production systems. MySQL 5.5 includes several high-impact enhancements to improve the performance and scalability of the MySQL Database, taking advantage of the latest multi-CPU and multi-core hardware and operating systems. In addition, with release 5.5, InnoDB is now the default storage engine for the MySQL Database, delivering ACID transactions, referential integrity and crash recovery by default.

Functionality Added or Changed

A new CMake option, MYSQL_PROJECT_NAME, can be set on Windows or Mac OS X to be used in the project name. (Bug #13551687)

Bugs Fixed

Performance: InnoDB Storage Engine: Memory allocation for InnoDB tables was reorganized to reduce the memory overhead for large numbers of tables or partitions, avoiding situations where the "resident set size" could grow regardless of FLUSH TABLES statements. The problem was most evident for tables with large row size. Some of the memory that was formerly allocated for every open table is now allocated only when the table is modified for the first time. (Bug #11764622, Bug #57480)

Incompatible Change: An earlier change (in MySQL 5.1.62 and 5.5.21) was found to modify date-handling behavior in General Availability-status series (MySQL 5.1 and 5.5). This change has been reverted.

The change was that several functions became more strict when passed a DATE() function value as their argument, thus they rejected incomplete dates with a day part of zero. These functions were affected: CONVERT_TZ(), DATE_ADD(), DATE_SUB(), DAYOFYEAR(), LAST_DAY(), TIMESTAMPDIFF(), TO_DAYS(), TO_SECONDS(), WEEK(), WEEKDAY(), WEEKOFYEAR(), YEARWEEK(). The previous behavior has been restored. (Bug #13458237)

InnoDB Storage Engine: A Valgrind error was fixed in the function os_aio_init(). (Bug #13612811)

InnoDB Storage Engine: The server could crash when creating an InnoDB temporary table under Linux, if the $TMPDIR setting points to a tmpfs filesystem and innodb_use_native_aio is enabled, as it is by default in MySQL 5.5.4 and higher. The entry in the error log looked like:

101123 2:10:59 InnoDB: Operating system error number 22 in a file operation.
InnoDB: Error number 22 means 'Invalid argument'.
The crash occurred because asynchronous I/O is not supported on tmpfs in some Linux kernel versions. The workaround was to turn off the innodb_use_native_aio setting or use a different temporary directory. The fix causes InnoDB to turn off the innodb_use_native_aio setting automatically if it detects that the temporary file directory does not support asynchronous I/O. (Bug #13593888, Bug #11765450, Bug #58421)

InnoDB Storage Engine: References to C preprocessor symbols and macros HAVE_purify, UNIV_INIT_MEM_TO_ZERO, and UNIV_SET_MEM_TO_ZERO were removed from the InnoDB source code. They were only used in debug builds instrumented for Valgrind. They are replaced by calls to the UNIV_MEM_INVALID() macro. (Bug #13418934)

InnoDB Storage Engine: The MySQL server could halt with an assertion error:

InnoDB: Failing assertion: page_get_n_recs(page) > 1
Subsequent restarts could fail with the same error. The error occurred during a purge operation involving the InnoDB change buffer. The workaround was to set the configuration option innodb_change_buffering=inserts. (Bug #13413535, Bug #61104)

InnoDB Storage Engine: With 1024 concurrent InnoDB transactions running concurrently and the innodb_file_per_table setting enabled, a CREATE TABLE operation for an InnoDB table could fail. The .ibd file from the failed CREATE TABLE was left behind, preventing the table from being created later, after the load had dropped.

The fix adds error handling to delete the erroneous .ibd file. This error was less likely to occur in MySQL 5.5 and 5.6, because raising the number of InnoDB undo slots increased the number of simultaneous transactions needed to trigger the bug, from 1K to 128K. (Bug #12400341)

Replication: Executing mysqlbinlog with the --start-position=N option, where N was equal either to 0 or to a value greater than the length of the dump file, caused it to crash.

This issue was introduced in MySQL 5.5.18 by the fix for Bug #32228 and Bug #11747416. (Bug #13593869, Bug #64035)

Replication: On Windows replication slave hosts, STOP SLAVE took an excessive length of time to complete when the master was down. (Bug #11752315, Bug #43460)

A query that used an index on a CHAR column referenced in a BETWEEN clause could return invalid results. (Bug #13463488, Bug #63437)

Expressions that compared a BIGINT column with any non-integer constant were performed using integers rather than decimal or float values, with the result that the constant could be truncated. This could lead to any such comparison that used <, >, <=, >=, =, !=/<>, IN, or BETWEEN yielding false positive or negative results. (Bug #13463415, Bug #11758543, Bug #63502, Bug #50756)

When the optimizer performed conversion of DECIMAL values while evaluating range conditions, it could produce incorrect results. (Bug #13453382)

When running mysqldump with both the --single-transaction and --flush-logs options, the flushing of the log performed an implicit COMMIT (see Section 12.3.3, "Statements That Cause an Implicit Commit"), causing more than one transaction to be used and thus breaking consistency. (Bug #12809202, Bug #61854)

It was possible in the event of successive failures for mysqld_safe to restart quickly enough to consume excessive amounts of CPU. Now, on systems that support the sleep and date system utilities, mysqld_safe checks to see whether it has restarted more than 5 times in the current second, and if so, waits 1 second before attempting another restart. (Bug #11761530, Bug #54035)

When used with the --xml option, mysqldump --routines failed to dump any stored routines, triggers, or events. (Bug #11760384, Bug #52792)

It was possible on replication slaves where FEDERATED tables were in use to get timeouts on long-running operations, such as Error 1160 Got an error writing communication packets. The FEDERATED tables did not need to be replicated for the issue to occur. (Bug #11758931, Bug #51196)

References: See also Bug #12896628, Bug #61790.

If an attempt to initiate a statement failed, the issue could not be reported to the client because it was not prepared to receive any error messages prior to the execution of any statement. Since the user could not execute any queries, they were simply disconnected without providing a clear error.

After the fix for this issue, the client is prepared for an error as soon as it attempts to initiate a statement, so that the error can be reported prior to disconnecting the user. (Bug #11755281, Bug #47032)

Using myisamchk with the sort recover method to repair a table having fixed-width row format could cause the row pointer size to be reduced, effectively resulting in a smaller maximum data file size. (Bug #48848, Bug #11756869)

On Windows, the server incorrectly constructed the full path name of the plugin binary for INSTALL PLUGIN and CREATE FUNCTION ... SONAME. (Bug #45549, Bug #11754014)

The stored routine cache was subject to a small memory leak that over time or with many routines being used could result in out-of-memory errors. (Bug #44585, Bug #11753187)

Il changelog completo è disponibile a questa pagina. Download a partire da questa pagina.