Annunciato il rilascio del Kernel Linux 3.4.

I just pushed out the 3.4 release.

Nothing really exciting happened since -rc7, although the workaround for a linker bug on x86 is larger than I'd have liked at this stage, and sticks out like a sore thumb in the diffstat. That said, it's not like even that patch was really all that scary. In fact, I think the 3.4 release cycle as a whole has been fairly calm. Sure, I always wish for the -rc's to calm down more quickly than they ever seem to do, but I think on the whole we didn't have any big disruptive events, which is just how I like it.

Let's hope the 3.5 merge window is a calm one too.

È possibile scaricare la nuova versione da questo indirizzo: linux-3.4.tar.bz2.

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.

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.

Presentata al CeBIT 2012 in corso ad Hannover dal suo creatore Klaus Knopper la nuova versione della distribuzione linux (LiveCD/LiveDVD) Knoppix, Knoppix 7.0.

New in version 7.0

• Version 7.0 of Knoppix is based on the usual picks from Debian stable (squeeze) and testing (wheezy), with newer package versions especially for desktop applications. It uses kernel 3.2.4 and xorg 7.6 (core 1.11.3.901) for supporting current computer
• experimental free  Nouveau graphics modules supporting NVidia cards, accelerated graphics via kernel mode settings (KMS),
• LibreOffice 3.4.5,
• Chromium 16.0.912.77 and Firefox/Iceweasel 10.0 Web Browser,
• Optional 64-bit Kernel via boot option "knoppix64", supporting systems with more than 4GB of RAM and chroot to 64-bit installations for system rescue tasks (DVD version only).
• Boot option "grub", for starting a bootloader shell in system rescue tasks.
• ADRIANE: Version 1.4 of the audio desktop framework, now using cuneiform as engine for text recognition of scanned texts, enhanced support for several cellphone models via gammu (SMS function).
• Viacam  for controlling the mouse cursor by movement of head or hand using the builtin webcam.

Download a partire da questa pagina.

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.

Rilasciato VMWare Player 4.0, software freeware con cui è possibile far eseguire immagini realizzate con VMWare. Come per VMWare Workstation 8.0 anche VMWare player 4.0 potrà girare solo su PC con processori a 64 bit. Note di rilascio a questa pagina

The hardware requirements to install this version of Workstation have changed. Workstation now requires a relatively modern 64-bit CPU.

This version of Workstation includes many hardware improvements. To try new hardware features, you must upgrade the hardware version of your virtual machine or create a new virtual machine that uses the latest virtual hardware version.

• The display technology has been changed to provide a better experience for Unity users and users who have multiple monitors. These changes also allow you to add a projector to your laptop without restarting your virtual machine.
• Virtual machines can now support up to 64GB of memory. The host system should have more than 64GB of memory to use this feature.
• An HD Audio device is available for Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 2008, and Windows 2008 R2 guests. The HD Audio device is compatible with the RealTek ALC888 7.1 Channel High Definition Audio Codec.
• USB 3.0 support is available for Linux guests running kernel version 2.6.35 or later (Ubuntu 10.10) through a new virtual xHCI USB controller. To enable this feature, add the following line to the .vmx file: usb_xhci.present = "true". Do not enable this feature for Windows guests. Because Windows does not currently have a generic xHCI driver, this feature will not work in Windows.
• Bluetooth devices on the host can now be shared with Windows guests. With the latest hardware version, Bluetooth devices that are paired to the host system radio are available to Windows guests and can be paired from within the guest. You should not pair Bluetooth audio devices, such as headphones, or Bluetooth input devices, such as keyboards and mice, to a guest.

Il download di VMWare Player è possibile da questa pagina (è necessario essere registrati).

Intel ha rilasciato il SDK 1.5 di OpenCL. Download del SDK per sistemi Windows e Linux a partire da questa pagina.

Performance Enhancements

• Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) code generation – full utilization of the Intel® 2nd generation Core™ Processors SIMD vector width.
• Improved barriers – performance improvement when using the built-in work-group barrier function.

OpenCL Runtime Features

• New Intel extension: cl_intel_immediate_execution – Immediate Command Execution is an extension which enables you to execute OpenCL commands in a single-threaded manner, using the calling thread to perform the actual execution.

OpenCL Development Tools

• Intel® OpenCL SDK Debugger (beta version) – The Intel® OpenCL SDK Debugger is a Microsoft* Visual Studio* 2008 plug-in, which enables you to set breakpoints inside OpenCL kernels, examine values of variables, memory and stack trace.
• Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers 4.2 (Intel® GPA) support of Intel® OpenCL SDK 1.5 provides full coverage of OpenCL on CPU profiling, including:
  distribution of the OpenCL commands and kernels, flow and dependencies between commands, duration of commands and kernels execution.
• New features in the Intel® OpenCL SDK Offline Compiler: Linux* OS support

Rilasciato VMWare Workstation 8.0, ultima versione del noto software di virtualizzazione. Sarà possibile utilizzare VMWare 8.0 solo su PC con processori a 64 bit, questa la novità principale per questa versione. Le Note di rilascio sono disponibili a questa pagina.

This version of Workstation includes many hardware improvements. To try new hardware features, you must upgrade the hardware version of your virtual machine or create a new virtual machine that uses the latest virtual hardware version.

• The display technology has been changed to provide a better experience for Unity users and users who have multiple monitors. These changes also allow you to add a projector to your laptop without restarting your virtual machine.
• Virtual machines can now support up to 64GB of memory. The host system should have more than 64GB of memory to use this feature.
• An HD Audio device is available for Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 2008, and Windows 2008 R2 guests. The HD Audio device is compatible with the RealTek ALC888 7.1 Channel High Definition Audio Codec.
• USB 3.0 support is available for Linux guests running kernel version 2.6.35 or later (Ubuntu 10.10) through a new virtual xHCI USB controller. To enable this feature, add the following line to the .vmx file: usb_xhci.present = "true". Do not enable this feature for Windows guests. Because Windows does not currently have a generic xHCI driver, this feature will not work in Windows.
• Bluetooth devices on the host can now be shared with Windows guests. With the latest hardware version, Bluetooth devices that are paired to the host system radio are available to Windows guests and can be paired from within the guest. You should not pair Bluetooth audio devices, such as headphones, or Bluetooth input devices, such as keyboards and mice, to a guest.
• You can now enable Virtual VT-X/EPT or AMD-V/RVI in the processor settings interface. With this feature, applications running in a guest can take advantage of these virtualization technologies. You can also run 64-bit guest operating systems inside of vSphere running inside Workstation.

HTC, produttore di dispositivi mobili (smartphone), ha annunciato il lancio di un nuovo portale dedicato agli sviluppatori. Il nuovo sito sostituisce il precedente developer center developer.htc.com. Sul nuovo sito, HTCDev, saranno a disposizione tra le altre cose il codice sorgente e i binari del kernel,  e il SDK HTC OpenSense.

Annunciato il rilascio di Gentoo Linux 11.2 LiveDVD. Download a partire da questa pagina per sistemi x86, da questa pagina per sistemi amd.

The LiveDVD features a superb list of packages, some of which are listed below.

• System packages include: Linux kernel 3.0 (with Gentoo patches), Accessibility Support with Speakup, Bash 4.2, GLIBC 2.13-r2, GCC 4.5.2, Binutils 2.21.1, Python 2.7.2 and 3.2, Perl 5.12.4, and more.
• Desktop environments and window managers include: KDE 4.7.0, GNOME 3.0.0, Xfce 4.8, Enlightenment 1.0.8, Openbox 3.5.0, Fluxbox 1.3.1, XBMC 10.1 Awesome 3.4.10, and LXDE-Meta 0.5.5.
• Office, graphics, and productivity applications include: LibreOffice 3.3.3, XEmacs 21.5.31 GVim 7.3.244, Abiword 2.8.6, Scribus 1.3.9, GIMP 2.6.11, Inkscape 0.48.2, Blender 2.57, XSane 0.998, and much more.
• Web browsers include: Mozilla Firefox 5.0, Chromium 13.0 Arora 0.11.0, Opera 11.50.1074, Epiphany 3.0.4, Seamonkey 2.2, and other favorites.
• Communication tools include: Pidgin 2.9.0, Quassel 0.7.2, Mozilla Thunderbird 5.0, Claws Mail 3.7.9, QTwitter 0.10.0, Irssi 0.8.15, and many more.
• Development applications include: KDevelop 4.2.3, KDESvn 1.5.5, Qt-creator 2.2.1, Bluefish 2.0.3, and many more.
• Multimedia applications include: Amarok 2.4.3, MPlayer 1.0_rc4, MPlayer2 2.0, DVDAuthor 0.6.14, LAME 3.98.4, FFmpeg 0.6.90, GNOME-MPlayer 1.0.4, SMPlayer 0.6.9, and several others.