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.

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.

OpenOffice dovrebbe diventare un progetto di Apache Software Foundation. È questa la proposta annunciata da Oracle tramite il suo vice presidente Luke Kowalski

"With today's proposal to contribute the OpenOffice.org code to The Apache Software Foundation's Incubator, Oracle continues to demonstrate its commitment to the developer and open source communities. Donating OpenOffice.org to Apache gives this popular consumer software a mature, open, and well established infrastructure to continue well into the future. The Apache Software Foundation's model makes it possible for commercial and individual volunteer contributors to collaborate on open source product development."

Dovrebbero quindi cadere i timori di quanti prevedevano per OpenOffice un futuro non più open source ne' da software freeware. The Document Foundation in un comunicato auspica "la riunificazione dei progetti OpenOffice.org e LibreOffice in una sola comunità di eguali", ma conclude che vi sono comunque ancora delle differenze in materia di licenze e membership tra Apache software foundation e il progetto LibreOffice.

Annunciato il rilascio di Apache Lucene, API open source per il recupero di informazioni in formato elettronico scritta in Java, e Solr 3.1. Per Lucene changelog disponibile a questa pagina, note di rilascio disponibili a questa pagina, download a partire da questa pagina.

Mozilla ha annunciato il rilascio di Firefox 4, la versione finale arriva dopo il rilascio di 12 versioni beta e due release candidate.

Mozilla, a global, nonprofit organization dedicated to making the Web better, is proud to release Mozilla Firefox 4, the newest version of the popular, free and open source Web browser.

Secondo Mozilla la versione 4 è la versione più veloce di Firefox, Firefox 4 è da due a sei volte più veloce di Firefox 3.
Firefox 4 è dotato anche di un nuovo add-ons manager, supporto per HTML5, App Tabs. Il motore JavaScript incorpora il nuovo compilatore JägerMonkey JIT. Con Firefox 4 un eventuale problema con Adobe Flash, Apple QuickTime o Silverlight di Microsoft non causerà il blocco del browser. Se uno di questi plugin si dovesse bloccare non influenzerebbe il resto di Firefox, sarà sufficiente ricaricare la pagina per riavviare il plugin.
Firefox 4 è disponibile in oltre 80 lingue per sistemi Windows, Linux, Max OS X. Il download è possibile da questa pagina.

What’s New in Firefox 4:

Fastest Firefox Ever

• Performance: Firefox is up to six times faster than the previous release. With improved start-up and page load times, speedy Web app performance and hardware accelerated graphics, Firefox is optimized for rich, interactive websites.

Streamlined Interface

• App Tabs: give a permanent home to frequently visited sites like Web mail, Twitter, Pandora, Flickr.
• Switch to Tab: easily find and switch to any open tab from your Awesome Bar without opening duplicate tabs.
• Panorama: drag and drop tabs into manageable groups to save time while navigating many open tabs.

Private and Secure Synchronization

• Firefox Sync: access your Awesome Bar history, bookmarks, open tabs, passwords and form data across multiple computers and mobile devices.

Most Customizable

• New Add-ons Manager: easily discover and install more than 200,000 add-ons to customize the features, functionality and look of Firefox.

Private and Secure

• Do Not Track: Firefox is leading the Web towards a universal standard Do Not Track feature that allows users to opt-out of tracking used for behavioral advertising.
• Firefox puts privacy first, fixing flaws in some Web standards to prevent others from accessing your browser history.
• HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS): automatically establishes secure connections to stop "man in the middle" attacks and keep sensitive data safe from interception during the log-in process.
• Content Security Policy (CSP): prevent cross-scripting attacks by allowing sites to explicitly tell the browser which content is legitimate.

Cutting Edge Tools for Web Developers:

• The JavaScript engine incorporates the new JägerMonkey JIT compiler, along with enhancements to the existing TraceMonkey JIT and SpiderMonkey’s interpreter for faster page-load speed and better performance of Web apps and games.
• HTML5 support in Firefox includes hardware accelerated, high-definition video (WebM), 3D graphics, offline data storage, professional typography, touchscreen interfaces and the Mozilla Audio API to help create visual experiences for sound and more.
• Firefox 4 also improves existing tools like CSS, Canvas and SVG to enable developers to make exciting Web pages.
• Firefox provides uninterrupted browsing when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apple QuickTime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins. If one of these plugins crashes or freezes, it won’t affect the rest of Firefox. Simply reload the page to restart the plugin.

Rilasciata la versione 7.0 di Drupal, cms open source scritto in php. 

Drupal 7 is a truly revolutionary release that saw both the size and diversity of our contributor community grow exponentially. Through the formation of and strong coordination among the Usability, Accessibility, and Design teams, Drupal 7 addresses a number of our project’s longest-standing limitations and opens up access for more people to enjoy the strong web publishing framework we have all come to love.

• Vastly improved administrative user interface thanks to the D7UX movement
• Flexible content and custom fields
• Better visual presentation and theming with Render API
• Accessibility is greatly improved
• Image support is now included
• Automated code testing
• Improved database support
• Better distribution support
• Support for the Semantic Web through RDFa markup
• Over 850 Drupal 7 contributed modules have met their #d7cx pledges.

La documentazione relativa alle api è disponibile a questa pagina, il download è possibile da questa pagina o direttamente da questo link: drupal-7.0.zip, altre informazioni sono disponibili a questa pagina, note di rilascio disponibili a questa pagina.

Annunciato il rilascio di Sabayon Linux 5.4 "Gaming Edition". Download possibile dai mirror indicati a questa pagina, o direttamente da questi link
Sabayon_Linux_5.4_x86_Gaming.iso (4,245MB, torrent),
Sabayon_Linux_5.4_amd64_Gaming.iso (4,368MB, torrent).

Features list:

• Based on Sabayon Linux 5.4 GNOME (both amd64[64bit] and x86[32bit])
• Featuring the Linux Kernel 2.6.36 and all the bells and whistles that are in our repositories as of today
• Remastered thanks to the Sabayon's little helper called "molecule" (what an odd name for a dog)
• Filled with gazillions of games! The best Free Open Source (Free Software, yeah Mr. Stallman, who cares about names!) games of the Linux land

Games included: 0ad, Alien Arena 2011, Battle of Wesnoth, Foobillard, Freeciv, Frozen Bubble, GNOME Games, M.A.R.S. a ridiculous shooter, Micropolis, NeverBall, Nexuiz, OpenArena, Pingus, Pychess, Scorched 3D, Simutrans, Spring, Stepmania, Torcs, Tremulous, Warsow, Warzone 2100, Wormux.

Annunciato il rilascio di Drupal 6.20, CMS open source. Questa release è una release di manutenzione, che risolve alcuni problemi segnalati attraverso il sistema di bug tracking.

Highlights of changes in this release include settings form inheritance for subthemes, syslog identity configuration support, better update support from Drupal 5, support for the tel: protocol, several fixes to the node translation system, fixes for CSS aggregation with non UTF-8 characters, support for specifying database collation, more complete coverage of HTML entities in entity decoding and various documentation fixes and other smaller bugfixes.

L'elenco completo dei cambiamenti dalla versione 6.19 a questa versione 6.20 è disponibile a questa pagina.
Da segnalare che a partire dalla data di rilascio di Drupal 7 la vecchia versione Drupal 5 non verrà più supportata.
Il download è possibile da questa pagina o direttamente da questo link drupal-6.20.tar.gz.

Annunciato il rilascio di Android 2.3, nome in codice "Gingerbread", sistema operativo open source per dispositivi mobili. I cambiamenti introdotti in questa versione si focalizzano principalmente sullo sviluppo dei giochi (game development) con l'introduzione di un nuovo garbage collector, l'ottimizzazione della gestione degli eventi e un ampio set di nuove API native. Inoltre, gli sviluppatori hanno aggiunto il supporto per i formati video VP8 e WebM, come pure per la codifica AMR-wideband e AAC. Sono stati aggiunti anche effetti audio, tra cui riverbero, equalizzazione, virtualizzazione per cuffie e bassi.