The Torch is Passed: Talking with New Fedora Project Leader Robyn Bergeron

There's a new sheriff in Fedora-town. Earlier this week, the Fedora Project Leader torch was passed from Jared Smith to Robyn Bergeron. We talked to Bergeron about her previous involvement with Fedora, the challenges the project faces now, and what she wants to accomplish.

There's a new sheriff in Fedora-town. Earlier this week, the Fedora Project Leader torch was passed from Jared Smith to Robyn Bergeron. We talked to Bergeron about her previous involvement with Fedora, the challenges the project faces now, and what she wants to accomplish.

Bergeron has a long history with Fedora. She's been serving as the Fedora program manager for some time, and headed planning of the Tempe FUDCon in 2011. She's also been heavily active in Fedora marketing, and the Fedora Cloud SIG (special interest group).

Before Fedora, Bergeron had worked as sys admin for Motorola, an industry analyst, and a business analyst at Intel. After Intel, Bergeron says she "segued out" of the industry for about six years to focus on being a mother. "At some point in there, I became more interested in doing things with my spare time. One of the things I got into was editing papers for the Ottawa Linux Symposium. All of that was hosted on Fedora Hosted." From there, Bergeron discovered the Fedora Marketing group in late 2009 and became a more regular Fedora contributor and eventually full-time employee at Red Hat as the program manager.

History of FPL's

According to the job description on the Fedora Wiki, the FPL is "s ultimately accountable for everything that happens within Fedora and in particular is responsible for maintaining Red Hat's relationship with Fedora and vice versa. He/She is Fedora's President, CEO, Chairman, Fearless Leader, whatever-you-want-to-call-it. However the project leader is not a dictator, benevolent or otherwise. The FPL is employed by Red Hat and works with the Fedora Board.

Being FPL is sort of like landing the part of The Doctor in Doctor Who. Each FPL brings a different personality to the role, and each FPL has their own particular talents. Also, the job isn't held too long by any one person, as the FPL usually goes on to new adventures after a few years. (Red Hat says there's no set tenure for an FPL, but it's usually two or three years since Max Spevack held the job during the Fedora 5 through 9 releases.) Sadly, no sonic screwdrivers or time travel are involved.

Smith, the outgoing FPL, started his tenure with the Fedora 14 release. His tenure spanned four releases (partway through F14 and leaving partway through F17). In his announcement, Smith says he's worked hard on international outreach and to get more international representation on the Fedora Board. While Smith was FPL, Fedora also improved the translation system, managed to get Fedora EC2 images up on release days, and more.

Plans for Fedora

So what's Bergeron hoping to do now that she's taking on the FPL role? One big task that Bergeron says she wants to look into is look at community processes and see where they can be streamlined. For example, Bergeron says that she'd like to make it more simple to "on-ramp" new contributors to Fedora.

She also wants to focus on "cleaning up the statistics portion of what we're tracking" to better measure Fedora's progress.

Another goal? Here's where the TARDIS might come in handy, if only they were available. Bergeron says that she'd like to see Fedora 17 (otherwise known as "Beefy Miracle") out the door on time. "But we say that about every release." Nothing has slipped yet for F17, though, so miracles could happen.

The State of Fedora

Overall, how does Bergeron feel about the "state" of Fedora as she takes the FPL role? "I think in terms of community, we are as healthy as we've been in some time." She credited Smith for "good outreach" in Latin America and Asia-Pacific regions, and says she expects that "we'll be seeing more growth."

That's the project side. On the distribution side, Bergeron says that "it's an interesting time." Not just for Fedora, but for "most distros" which Bergeron says are at "an inflection point where we have a lot of new things coming into the marketplace. We have cloud stuff, devices are far more popular than they've ever been... there are a lot of avenues" that Fedora could go down. Where it will go, says Bergeron, will be "determined by the community." However, ARM and cloud technologies seem to loom large in Bergeron's priorities.

One of the big challenges for Fedora in the past year has been the reception of GNOME 3 by the community. Bergeron says that there's been "a little bit of pain there." However, she says that some of the features for GNOME 3.4 that will be in Fedora 17 should help a lot with GNOME 3.x acceptance. "For the most part, people seem a lot happier with it. They're getting over the 'oh my gosh, it's completely new' reaction." And, she says, Fedora still has KDE, Xfce, Lxde and Sugar desktops that "aren't going away, unless people decide they're not going to work on them anymore."

What's her choice of desktop? Right now, she says she's using KDE "and liking it just dandy." She also uses Thunderbird as her email client, and Firefox for Web browsing "though occasionally I will use Chrome as well." And, just in case you're curious, "vi, not Emacs."

Fedora 17 has more than 60 new features coming, and the alpha is due on February 28th. With the Fedora 17 release fast approaching, and Bergeron doing double duty as FPL and program manager during the transition, she'll have her hands full. Let's wish her luck, and here's hoping Beefy Miracle will live up to its name and arrive on time!

]]>

The Torch is Passed: Talking with New Fedora Project Leader Robyn Bergeron

There's a new sheriff in Fedora-town. Earlier this week, the Fedora Project Leader torch was passed from Jared Smith to Robyn Bergeron. We talked to Bergeron about her previous involvement with Fedora, the challenges the project faces now, and what she wants to accomplish.

Bergeron has a long history with Fedora. She's been serving as the Fedora program manager for some time, and headed planning of the Tempe FUDCon in 2011. She's also been heavily active in Fedora marketing, and the Fedora Cloud SIG (special interest group).

Before Fedora, Bergeron had worked as sys admin for Motorola, an industry analyst, and a business analyst at Intel. After Intel, Bergeron says she "segued out" of the industry for about six years to focus on being a mother. "At some point in there, I became more interested in doing things with my spare time. One of the things I got into was editing papers for the Ottawa Linux Symposium. All of that was hosted on Fedora Hosted." From there, Bergeron discovered the Fedora Marketing group in late 2009 and became a more regular Fedora contributor and eventually full-time employee at Red Hat as the program manager.

History of FPL's

According to the job description on the Fedora Wiki, the FPL is "s ultimately accountable for everything that happens within Fedora and in particular is responsible for maintaining Red Hat's relationship with Fedora and vice versa. He/She is Fedora's President, CEO, Chairman, Fearless Leader, whatever-you-want-to-call-it. However the project leader is not a dictator, benevolent or otherwise. The FPL is employed by Red Hat and works with the Fedora Board.

Being FPL is sort of like landing the part of The Doctor in Doctor Who. Each FPL brings a different personality to the role, and each FPL has their own particular talents. Also, the job isn't held too long by any one person, as the FPL usually goes on to new adventures after a few years. (Red Hat says there's no set tenure for an FPL, but it's usually two or three years since Max Spevack held the job during the Fedora 5 through 9 releases.) Sadly, no sonic screwdrivers or time travel are involved.

Smith, the outgoing FPL, started his tenure with the Fedora 14 release. His tenure spanned four releases (partway through F14 and leaving partway through F17). In his announcement, Smith says he's worked hard on international outreach and to get more international representation on the Fedora Board. While Smith was FPL, Fedora also improved the translation system, managed to get Fedora EC2 images up on release days, and more.

Plans for Fedora

So what's Bergeron hoping to do now that she's taking on the FPL role? One big task that Bergeron says she wants to look into is look at community processes and see where they can be streamlined. For example, Bergeron says that she'd like to make it more simple to "on-ramp" new contributors to Fedora.

She also wants to focus on "cleaning up the statistics portion of what we're tracking" to better measure Fedora's progress.

Another goal? Here's where the TARDIS might come in handy, if only they were available. Bergeron says that she'd like to see Fedora 17 (otherwise known as "Beefy Miracle") out the door on time. "But we say that about every release." Nothing has slipped yet for F17, though, so miracles could happen.

The State of Fedora

Overall, how does Bergeron feel about the "state" of Fedora as she takes the FPL role? "I think in terms of community, we are as healthy as we've been in some time." She credited Smith for "good outreach" in Latin America and Asia-Pacific regions, and says she expects that "we'll be seeing more growth."

That's the project side. On the distribution side, Bergeron says that "it's an interesting time." Not just for Fedora, but for "most distros" which Bergeron says are at "an inflection point where we have a lot of new things coming into the marketplace. We have cloud stuff, devices are far more popular than they've ever been... there are a lot of avenues" that Fedora could go down. Where it will go, says Bergeron, will be "determined by the community." However, ARM and cloud technologies seem to loom large in Bergeron's priorities.

One of the big challenges for Fedora in the past year has been the reception of GNOME 3 by the community. Bergeron says that there's been "a little bit of pain there." However, she says that some of the features for GNOME 3.4 that will be in Fedora 17 should help a lot with GNOME 3.x acceptance. "For the most part, people seem a lot happier with it. They're getting over the 'oh my gosh, it's completely new' reaction." And, she says, Fedora still has KDE, Xfce, Lxde and Sugar desktops that "aren't going away, unless people decide they're not going to work on them anymore."

What's her choice of desktop? Right now, she says she's using KDE "and liking it just dandy." She also uses Thunderbird as her email client, and Firefox for Web browsing "though occasionally I will use Chrome as well." And, just in case you're curious, "vi, not Emacs."

Fedora 17 has more than 60 new features coming, and the alpha is due on February 28th. With the Fedora 17 release fast approaching, and Bergeron doing double duty as FPL and program manager during the transition, she'll have her hands full. Let's wish her luck, and here's hoping Beefy Miracle will live up to its name and arrive on time!

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Unsung Heroes of Linux, Part One

Everyone knows and loves Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux. Mark Shuttleworth, the creator of Ubuntu Linux, is pretty famous. Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the GPL, is equal parts famous and infamous. But surely there is more to Linux and Free/Open Source software than these three. And indeed there are thousands upon thousands of people toiling away fueling the mighty FOSS engine; here is a small sampling of these important contributors who make the FOSS world go 'round.

Lady Ada, Adafruit Industries

Lady Ada is Limor Fried, electronics engineer and founder of Adafruit Industries. My fellow crusty old-timers remember way way back when Radio Shack was actually about do-it-yourself electronics hacking instead of the passive brain-decay of cell phones and big-screen TVs.

Adafruit Industries is a welcome replacement for us weirdos who like to take things apart and figure out how they work. Adafruit Industries sells Arduino boards, kits, and related parts and tools. Even more valuable is the wealth of well-illustrated tutorials. You can start from scratch, with no electronics knowledge, and get a solid fundamental education in a few days' of reading and hands-on hacking.

Dr. Tony Sales, Vinux

Linux and FOSS should be leading the way in pioneering accessibility for Linux users with disabilities, because good design for disabled people is good design for everyone. One of the best accessibility projects is the Vinux distribution, which aims for out-of-the-box accessibility for visually impaired Linux users, including installation. This is a lot harder than it sounds — try it for yourself.

If you are looking for a way to make a significant contribution to Linux and to tech, consider the field of accessibility. None of us are getting any younger or healthier.

Dick MacInnis, Dream Studio

Dick MacInnis is a musician, composer, and all-around nerd. He created and maintains Dream Studio, a sleek multi-media Ubuntu spinoff for musicians, photographers, movie makers, and all creative artists. It's a super-nice customization that stays out of your way and lets you get down to business.

Akkana Peck, Rennaissance Nerd

Akkana is one of my favorite people. She used to race cars and motorcyles, flies little radio-controlled airplanes, is into astronomy, mountain biking, kayaking, photography, and all kinds of fun stuff.

Akkana is a versatile and talented coder who has worked at cool-sounding places like Silicon Graphics and Netscape, and currently works for a startup doing embedded Linux and Android work. Akkana wrote the excellent Beginning GIMP book and a bunch of first-rate Linux howtos for Linux Planet. She also writes all kinds of amazing technical articles on her Shallow Sky blog. What earned Akkana a place on this list is her generosity in sharing knowledge and helping other Linux users. Learning, doing, and sharing – isn't that what it's all about?

John Linville, Linux Wireless

The Linux Wireless project is a model that more FOSS projects should emulate. Back around 2006 or so kernel developer John Linville and his team took on the task of overhauling the Linux wireless stack. It was a mess of multiple wireless subsystems (Wavelan, Orinoco, and MadWifi). Drivers were all over the map in what functions they handled, sometimes conflicting with the kernel.

In just a couple of years, without fanfare, it was all significantly streamlined and improved, with a common driver base (mac80211) and assistance for vendors and end users. There are still some odds and ends to be worked out, but it's at the stage where most wireless network interfaces have plug-and-play native Linux support.

Jean Tourillhes, Wireless Tools for Linux

Jean Tourillhes was the core maintainer and primary documenter of the old Linux WLAN drivers and userspace tools. If it were not for Mr. Tourillhes wi-fi on Linux would have been brutish and nasty. (WLAN and wireless-tools have been replaced by the new Linux Wireless project.)

JACK

JACK is not a person, but the JACK Audio Connection Kit for Linux. JACK is a professional-level audio server for connecting audio software and hardware, like a switchboard, and brings professional low-latency audio production to Linux. Paul Davis was JACK's original author, and Jack O'Quin, Stephane Letz, Taybin Rutkin, and many other contributors have all added essential features and supported JACK in multiple important ways.

Jon Kuniholm, The Open Prosthetics Project

Jon Kuniholm, an Iraq war veteran who lost part of his arm in the service, is also a biomechanical engineer devoting his talents and open source methods to improving prosthetic limbs, which have advanced far more in cost than in functionality. Decades-old technology shouldn't be priced like it's cutting edge; the project aims to improve functionality and appearance, and make advanced designs available to anyone who wants them.

Linux OEM Vendors

There are doubtless more than the few that I know about, so please feel free to plug your own favorite independent Linux vendor in the comments. System76 and ZaReason are my favorites because they are true independent mom-and-pop shops that sell desktop Linux PCs without drama or excuses, they offer first-rate customer service and customizations without whining, and don't need a year to retool for a new Linux release.

Some other notable Linux OEMs:

• Emperor Linux
• Pogo Linux
• Penguin Computing

Greg Kroah-Hartman, Linux Driver Project

Greg Kroah-Hartman launched the Linux Driver Project a few years ago to help vendors get drivers for their devices into the mainline kernel. The project has been a huge success, demonstrating yet again (as with Linux Wireless) that lending a friendly, helpful hand works better than yelling.

Denise Paolucci and Mark Smith, Dreamwidth

Dreamwidth Studios is a fork of LiveJournal by former LiveJournal staffers Denise Paolucci and Mark Smith. It is unusual for a FOSS project as it has a majority of women developers, and the whole community is known for being friendly and helpful to newcomers.

OpenTox, Cast of Thousands

The OpenTox project, led by coordinator Barry Hardy, is a global data-collection and analysis framework that aims to replace animal testing for chemical interactions and toxicity with predictive computer analysis.

Ken Starks, the Helios Initiative

Ken Starks does the kind of hard, hands-on advocacy that delivers the best results: rehabbing computers with Linux and giving them to children who can't afford to buy their own computers. Since the Helios Project moved into spiffy new quarters in Taylor, Texas they've expanded to building a computer lab and teaching classes.

Walter Bender, Sugar

Walter Bender was one of the chief designers of Sugar, the computer interface for young children that was originally created for the One Laptop per Child XO-1 netbook. When OLPC allowed as how they were maybe going to allow Windows XP on OLPC netbooks, Mr. Bender is credited by some for saving Sugar by leaving OLPC and founding Sugar Labs to continue its development independently. Sugar is included in a number of Linux distributions including Fedora, Debian, and Mint, and Sugar on a Stick is a complete bootable on a USB stick.

Yes, There is a Moral

There is a moral to this story, and that is that Linux is more than giant wealthy companies, or glamorous celebrity geeks, or an unruly rabble. (Three cheers for unruly rabble!). It is fundamental building blocks that anyone can learn to use to make the world a little bit better.

We know that there's more than a few unsung heroes and heroines of Linux and free software, though. Who do you consider a hero, and why? Stay tuned, we'll have more soon.

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The Best Cloud Music Options for the Linux Desktop

Not that long ago, desktop Linux users were left out of most of the online music services. But these days, as the industry has trended towards cloud-based music services — from online "jukebox"-style file lockers where you store your own tunes all the way to subscription services that offer on-demand access to every track you can think of. Unfortunately, they all seem to want to run in their own dedicated application, and every audio player has plug-ins for a different subset of the available options. What's a music nut to do? Find out in this break-down of the cloud music tuning options available to Linux users.

Not that long ago, desktop Linux users were left out of most of the online music services. But these days, as the industry has trended towards cloud-based music services — from online "jukebox"-style file lockers where you store your own tunes all the way to subscription services that offer on-demand access to every track you can think of. Unfortunately, they all seem to want to run in their own dedicated application, and every audio player has plug-ins for a different subset of the available options. What's a music nut to do? Find out in this break-down of the cloud music tuning options available to Linux users.

Standing Alone

Most of the cloud services offer web-based playback that generally works on Linux browsers — Last.fm, Slacker, MOG, 8tracks, Qriocity, etc. But generally does not mean always. Users have reported trouble with Rdio, for example, even when using the same version of Firefox that functions without incident on other OSes. Consequently, if there is a standalone desktop application available, your odds of getting uninterrupted playback are better.

A few of the streaming music services offer explicit support for desktop Linux as a platform. Among the most prominent is Spotify, whose Windows client can run on WINE under the hood, and who offers a "preview" edition of a native Linux application. There is also an independent, open source Spotify library called despotify, for which several client applications are available, including CLI and ncurses-based front ends.

Grooveshark and WiMP users are in for a bit more of a hassle; both services offer a desktop application built on top of the Adobe AIR runtime (rather than the far more common Adobe Flash). Grooveshark's app enjoys a decent enough reputation for usability on Linux, but WiMP's is problematic. It is installable on 32-bit systems, but can take a bit of elbow grease.

On the jukebox side of the equation, Google's Google Music service uses the file-locker-based approach, in which you upload your content to the cloud service — but it does offer a desktop Linux client for managing your collection. Streaming playback is available via the browser; the service puts more emphasis is on mobile clients, for which a variety of individual playback apps are provided.

In contrast, Canonical's Ubuntu One music service (which also offers file-locker storage) works by synchronizing your files between your individual PCs and devices; you can use the desktop Linux client to download your files wherever you happen to be, but you then play them through an installed audio player.

Tunes at Your Fingertips

Where things start to get interesting, however, is with the applications that merge more than one of the isolated cloud services into a seamless playback experience.

Here, the app at the forefront is Nuvola. Nuvola originated as an open source desktop music player for Google Music, but after it grew in popularity the team added support for several other cloud services. The current release is numbered 1.0.1, and supports Google Music, Grooveshark, 8tracks, and HypeMachine. The project releases builds only for Ubuntu at the moment, but there are installation instructions for Fedora and other distributions. The player relies on a fairly lengthy list of GNOME package dependencies, though, so if you primarily run KDE you may have to spend some time setting up the prerequisites.

Also worth checking out is Clementine. Clementine is based on Amarok (which makes it an excellent option for KDE users), but it adds support for several cloud music services that the upstream player does not have. You can access Spotify's "Premium" account content and Grooveshark's "Anywhere" plan. That's in addition to the plug-in based support for several services that Amarok already supports — meaning music stores and Internet "radio" stations where you do not get on-demand track selection.

A third option, open to Ubuntu users, is the Unity Music Lens. "Lenses" are special-purpose modules for the Unity environment that provide a searchable interface to a variety of data back-ends or "scopes." The Unity Music Lens provides rapid access to local media files by default, but you can also add scopes that hook directly into Grooveshark, Spotify, and other non-default audio players. There are numerous places from which you can get individual scopes, but a simple place to start is with the Scopes Packagers and One Hundred Scopes personal package archives (PPA).

There is not (yet) a similar service for those running the GNOME Shell interface, but you can add the GNOME Shell Mediaplayer extension. This extension adds a music applet to the top panel, and it supports all music players that adhere to the Media Player Remote Interfacing Specification (MPRIS) standard. MPRIS is a D-Bus interface to track metadata and playback controls, providing a shared API to a number of desktop environments. But because the aforementioned Clementine and Nuvola are both MPRIS apps, you will then be able to use the extension to access Spotify, Grooveshark, Google Music, and other online services.

Turn it Up

This list is comprised of a limited set of choices, to be sure. The fact is that most of the streaming services available today use Flash for their Web interface by design, in an effort to block users from accessing content in a manner that the company has not made it available. But if all you care about is on-demand access to a music library, the situation on the Linux desktop is far rosier today than it was a year or two ago. There are still some holdouts among the services, and geographically-based access restrictions mean there are different sets of options for almost every country in the world.

However, if the service you need is not yet supported by any of the options mentioned so far, the Nuvola player is the most likely candidate to add support for it. There is a well-defined JavaScript API and service plug-in framework, and because the project does not divide its attention between cloud services and other playback models, development is fast-paced. Sounds good, right?

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The Best Cloud Music Options for the Linux Desktop

Not that long ago, desktop Linux users were left out of most of the online music services. But these days, as the industry has trended towards cloud-based music services — from online "jukebox"-style file lockers where you store your own tunes all the way to subscription services that offer on-demand access to every track you can think of. Unfortunately, they all seem to want to run in their own dedicated application, and every audio player has plug-ins for a different subset of the available options. What's a music nut to do? Find out in this break-down of the cloud music tuning options available to Linux users.

Standing Alone

Most of the cloud services offer web-based playback that generally works on Linux browsers — Last.fm, Slacker, MOG, 8tracks, Qriocity, etc. But generally does not mean always. Users have reported trouble with Rdio, for example, even when using the same version of Firefox that functions without incident on other OSes. Consequently, if there is a standalone desktop application available, your odds of getting uninterrupted playback are better.

A few of the streaming music services offer explicit support for desktop Linux as a platform. Among the most prominent is Spotify, whose Windows client can run on WINE under the hood, and who offers a "preview" edition of a native Linux application. There is also an independent, open source Spotify library called despotify, for which several client applications are available, including CLI and ncurses-based front ends.

Grooveshark and WiMP users are in for a bit more of a hassle; both services offer a desktop application built on top of the Adobe AIR runtime (rather than the far more common Adobe Flash). Grooveshark's app enjoys a decent enough reputation for usability on Linux, but WiMP's is problematic. It is installable on 32-bit systems, but can take a bit of elbow grease.

On the jukebox side of the equation, Google's Google Music service uses the file-locker-based approach, in which you upload your content to the cloud service — but it does offer a desktop Linux client for managing your collection. Streaming playback is available via the browser; the service puts more emphasis is on mobile clients, for which a variety of individual playback apps are provided.

In contrast, Canonical's Ubuntu One music service (which also offers file-locker storage) works by synchronizing your files between your individual PCs and devices; you can use the desktop Linux client to download your files wherever you happen to be, but you then play them through an installed audio player.

Tunes at Your Fingertips

Where things start to get interesting, however, is with the applications that merge more than one of the isolated cloud services into a seamless playback experience.

Here, the app at the forefront is Nuvola. Nuvola originated as an open source desktop music player for Google Music, but after it grew in popularity the team added support for several other cloud services. The current release is numbered 1.0.1, and supports Google Music, Grooveshark, 8tracks, and HypeMachine. The project releases builds only for Ubuntu at the moment, but there are installation instructions for Fedora and other distributions. The player relies on a fairly lengthy list of GNOME package dependencies, though, so if you primarily run KDE you may have to spend some time setting up the prerequisites.

Also worth checking out is Clementine. Clementine is based on Amarok (which makes it an excellent option for KDE users), but it adds support for several cloud music services that the upstream player does not have. You can access Spotify's "Premium" account content and Grooveshark's "Anywhere" plan. That's in addition to the plug-in based support for several services that Amarok already supports — meaning music stores and Internet "radio" stations where you do not get on-demand track selection.

A third option, open to Ubuntu users, is the Unity Music Lens. "Lenses" are special-purpose modules for the Unity environment that provide a searchable interface to a variety of data back-ends or "scopes." The Unity Music Lens provides rapid access to local media files by default, but you can also add scopes that hook directly into Grooveshark, Spotify, and other non-default audio players. There are numerous places from which you can get individual scopes, but a simple place to start is with the Scopes Packagers and One Hundred Scopes personal package archives (PPA).

There is not (yet) a similar service for those running the GNOME Shell interface, but you can add the GNOME Shell Mediaplayer extension. This extension adds a music applet to the top panel, and it supports all music players that adhere to the Media Player Remote Interfacing Specification (MPRIS) standard. MPRIS is a D-Bus interface to track metadata and playback controls, providing a shared API to a number of desktop environments. But because the aforementioned Clementine and Nuvola are both MPRIS apps, you will then be able to use the extension to access Spotify, Grooveshark, Google Music, and other online services.

Turn it Up

This list is comprised of a limited set of choices, to be sure. The fact is that most of the streaming services available today use Flash for their Web interface by design, in an effort to block users from accessing content in a manner that the company has not made it available. But if all you care about is on-demand access to a music library, the situation on the Linux desktop is far rosier today than it was a year or two ago. There are still some holdouts among the services, and geographically-based access restrictions mean there are different sets of options for almost every country in the world.

However, if the service you need is not yet supported by any of the options mentioned so far, the Nuvola player is the most likely candidate to add support for it. There is a well-defined JavaScript API and service plug-in framework, and because the project does not divide its attention between cloud services and other playback models, development is fast-paced. Sounds good, right?

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The Embedded and Mobile Linux Trends Shaping 2012

We’re preparing for our weeklong extravaganza of mobile and embedded development next week. Android Builders Summit kicks off Monday and ELC follows on Wednesday, taking place February 15-17, 2012. For the really hard-core, we’ve even lined up some hands-on mobile and embedded Linux training courses over the weekend. I'm especially looking forward to the Yocto Project crash course.

This is a great way to kick off our annual events calendar for 2012, and it provides me a good excuse to share my take on the state of embedded Linux.

The face of embedded software development is changing fast. The power and functionality of mobile and embedded devices are reaching new levels of performance  previously found in general purpose systems, such as desktop and mobile computers. The classic definition of an embedded system being "a computer system designed for specific control functions within a larger system" may still hold true for control modules found in cars, machinery and other core embedded applications. However, the lines are becoming blurry when it comes to mobile devices, Smart TVs and other consumer electronics products. These devices now allow users to customize their look and feel and user experience, installing third-party software applications, downloading media, and more, which a few years ago was only possible with personal computers.

Following is a breakdown of the trends I see shaping the embedded Linux area and the ways that engineers write software for these systems in the year ahead.

Convergence of development and deployment platforms

If you are a veteran embedded engineer you very well know that the systems you once utilized to develop software were substantially different from the systems you were developing for. In the majority of cases, the target systems had a different processor architecture, different I/O functionality, substantially less processing power, different or no memory management, and many other diverging characteristics. System-on-Chips (SoC) integrating processor cores of general purpose CPUs with peripheral devices typically found in embedded systems into a single chip allows software developers to tap into a large software pool previously written for general purpose CPUs. The most prominent example is certainly the Linux kernel.

Before the advent of SoCs, Linux was not a good choice for embedded or mobile systems. General purpose CPUs required too many external peripheral devices to be economically used in an embedded system, and microcontrollers typically used in such systems did not fulfill the memory management requirements of the Linux kernel. A second hurdle for Linux in embedded system design was the need for a read/write file system. Not too long ago, file system meant the use of hard drives, which are not practical for embedded and/or mobile use. Memory Technology Devices (MTD) are now closing the gap. SoCs and MTDs are enabling the use of Linux in embedded and mobile devices.

The utilization of Linux for embedded devices is naturally bringing deployment and development platforms together. Now, developers can use the exact same software development tools they are familiar with on their Linux development system to write software for a Linux-based target. The same processor architecture on development system and target may even make the use of cross-development tools unnecessary. In some cases, developers are even given the possibility of directly developing software on the target itself. Many SoCs have integrated graphics and USB ports, making connecting a display, keyboard and mouse a breeze. Development boards available for most processor architectures provide all the necessary functionality in single board computer form factor to jumpstart embedded software development.

Emulation and simulation

In the past, embedded hardware and software development were mostly serialized. Software development did not start until the first prototype of the hardware was available for the software engineers. Emulators allow software engineers to test new features even before they are accessible in the form of hardware. For example, the QEMU open source machine emulator and virtualizer can easily be used to test new CPU instructions and compilers to create code for these instructions long before the first silicon gets in the hands of software developers. Simulation can be utilized to test new APIs for sensors and other hardware devices. GUI simulators facilitate rapid prototyping of user interfaces.

Virtualization

The original intent of the Java platform was to provide a hardware independent platform for interactive television. It was too advanced for the digital cable television industry at the time but its adoption by the Android mobile operating system as application development and deployment platform proved that the concept of virtualization for embedded and mobile systems is fundamentally correct. Virtualization provides several benefits for embedded and mobile systems: secure partitioning of applications, migration of legacy applications, platform-independent application ecosystems. Depending on the focus for the virtualization, different solutions are appropriate. Secure partitioning of native applications can be achieved with a hypervisor. A hypervisor may also be the solution for migrating existing and consolidating existing software on a new platform. Ecosystems for third-party applications are a major differentiator for mobile devices. While Java is Android's technology for building an application ecosystem, web browsers, WebKit, HTML5 and other web technologies provide the abstraction layers necessary to build application ecosystems that extend across many different device types and categories using a variety of hardware technologies, processor architectures and operating system.

HTML5

Ecosystems for third-party applications are a vital part of mobile device platforms and will undoubtedly influence purchasing decisions for other consumer electronics products such as Smart TVs, and potentially cars, in the near future. The more applications that are available for a particular platform, the more valuable it becomes in the perception of the consumer. If you trust the forecasts of market analysts, then the battle of the ecosystems has just begun.  And within the next couple of years, two to three prevailing software platforms (with their respective ecosystems) will evolve as the winners. The winners will bring on board the critical mass of application developers providing a steady stream of new applications to maintain the attractiveness of the platform to consumers. In my opinion, HTML5 will make the discussion about the winning mobile platform moot and end the predicted battle of the ecosystems.

A major headache for mobile application developers is the rapidly increasing number of variances in devices, form factor, screen resolution, operating system versions, etc. An application designed for a mobile phone with a 4" screen typically viewed in portrait orientation will most likely not provide the same user experience on a tablet with a 10" screen commonly viewed in landscape orientation. Current mobile software platforms and their respective application development environments do not provide an adequate solution. HTML through CSS, allows easy separation of presentation from business logic making it straight forward for developers to change the visual layout of their applications and have it automatically adapt to the form factor and orientation of the device. HTML and CSS also give developers more freedom to design their own look-and-feel. Current SDKs for mobile applications are rather limiting in how developers can create differentiating user experiences.

New markup tags introduced with HTML5 further close the gap between native and web applications. Web applications can now access sensors, cameras and other hardware devices found on mobile platforms, store application-specific information on the device and play media through standardized tags and objects.

With these features, HTML5 provides a unique opportunity to create an application ecosystem for embedded and mobile devices that is truly independent from the underlying hardware and software platform. This ecosystem will benefit all parties involved with the value chain: the device manufacturers, the application developers and the consumers. None of them will have to make the decision for a particular platform wondering if the investment will be voided by becoming obsolete before returning the expected value.

Security and privacy

A steady and rapidly increasing number of embedded devices are either directly or indirectly connected to the Internet. This poses new challenges for embedded system developers. Even if an embedded device is only connected to a private network, engineers now must keep security in mind since other devices on the private network could act as bridges, deliberately or involuntarily, providing outside access to those devices. For instance, an engine management module in a car connected to the vehicle's private network could potentially become exposed to the Internet through an infotainment head-unit connected to the same private network while also being connected to the Internet via data modem and cell phone network. Encrypted data communication on private networks and embedded firewalls to protect them will soon become standard for embedded systems.

The widespread proliferation of smartphones may enable botnets of entirely new dimensions. Access to platform sensors, such as GPS, makes it easy to physically locate the bots and aggregate the ones close in location for attacks in specific areas. For example, thousands of compromised smartphones in a Super Bowl stadium could be used to create a mass panic or do other harm. Embedded and mobile device designers must devise technologies to protect the platforms against viruses, Trojan horses and other malware.

As more and more users of smartphones use them for online banking, financial transactions at store checkouts and to unlock their cars, among other applications, the protection of the private data stored on these devices becomes mandatory. But not only the data that the user explicitly stores on the device is at risk. but also the data that the user indirectly creates while carrying and using the device: the places he visits, the stores she pays, the pictures of places and people he takes, the tunes she plays, etc. While each piece of data by itself may be meaningless the combination of it together with information found online through social media networks and personal websites may expose the person to identity theft and more. It is not a trivial task to enable user convenience and at the same time keep the user's personal information safe from unauthorized access.

Embedded and mobile system developers must learn to understand the threats, be aware of them and proactively design their software accordingly. There is no absolute security and privacy; however, a simple message during installation that an application accesses the user's contact list, the data network, the camera, etc., and asks the user whether to proceed or not is not merely a security concept but simply an excuse.

The Future Belongs to Embedded and Mobile Computing

The future of computing is in embedded and mobile. Orders of magnitude more of these systems will be deployed and used for a myriad of applications than have ever been for PCs or other computers. The possibilities and opportunities seem limitless but so seem the challenges. However, lessons learned from the personal computing era and the Internet still apply. As embedded and general purpose computing platforms converge, embedded and mobile developers must adapt to harvest the benefits and meet the challenges.

A Look at 3D Printing and Open Source

Arthur C. Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." And it's still magical when you understand how it works. 3D printers are here, they're cool, and there is a large and enthusiastic open source 3D printer movement.

Arthur C. Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." And it's still magical when you understand how it works. 3D printers are here, they're cool, and there is a large and enthusiastic open source 3D printer movement.

Like We Need More Plastic Doodads?

So what are these things for? Changing the world, literally, by disrupting manufacturing and distribution, and bringing the means of production of essential goods into everyone's hands.

3D printers produce physical objects from a computer file with a few mouse clicks. A cursory look at this technology might make it appear to be little more than yet another way to squeeze out more cheap plastic junk. But it is much more than cheap plastic junk; it's an amazingly fast way to prototype new products, and to customize small runs. Making customizations and small runs economical is going to be hugely disruptive because we won't have to produce runs of thousands to get the unit costs down, or charge giant markups for customizations. If anything it should reduce the tides of cheap plastic junk.

Industrial 3D printers have been around for about 30 years. The new wrinkle is bringing them into the reach of hobbyists and home users. The PBS show "This Old House" featured a high-end 3D Systems ZPrinter, which you can see for yourself in the Bedford: And the Work Begins episode.

Start watching at Chapter 3, Building a 3-D Printer Model. The homeowner works for 3D Systems and makes the architectural models for the project. He also demonstrates an intricate nest-of-gears mechanism that comes out of the printer fully functional, and some other intricate and colorful creations. The open source and lower-end printers can't do this, but then they don't cost upwards of $20,000 either.

3D printers do two things: make prototypes, and also finished products. In the olden days prototyping was a lot of labor-intensive skilled hand work that involved machining, models made from clay, wood, styrofoam, and other materials, welding, injection molding (very expensive, $10,000 and up per item), whatever it took to bring a concept to life. Any changes meant a lot more work, so experimentation was slow and expensive. With 3D printers all you do is change a few lines of code. Maybe someday, instead of making little architectural models, a giant unit will drive up to a building site and spit out a complete structure.

3D Scanners

3D scanners go hand-in-hand with 3D printers, and as far as I know there are no open source 3D scanners, or scanners that use open software, so this is an important missing piece. A 3D scanner digitizes physical objects and creates an editable computer file. Obviously, it is faster to start with a copy than to start a design from scratch. Obvious copyright issues aside, this has all kinds of wonderful practical uses like creating non-destructive copies of fossils and bones and valuable old artifacts and artworks, and creating replacement parts for machines and devices.

There are several different 3D scanner technologies. A contact scanner runs an articulated arm over an object. These are slow, and risk damaging fragile objects. Non-contact scanners are faster and non-destructive. 3D laser scanners are popular and come in all sizes and form factors, stationary and portable, and some can detect colors. These are expensive, in the thousands of dollars, and rely on expensive proprietary software. There are a number of open source 3D scanner projects that tell you how to build your own using inexpensive laser pointers.

Printing Materials

The term "printing" is a little misleading, at least for me, because it is firmly lodged in my brain as printing text and images on flat paper-like stuff. But this isn't totally off-the-wall because most 3D printers build objects a layer at a time, and you can see the edges of the layers in the finished item. An inkjet printing system lays down resin and binder layers, and prints in multiple colors. Other systems use gels, metals, waxes, liquid polymers, and plasters. There are even candy printers that create fancy edible goodies from sugar. The open source printers we're going to look at spin out a melted plastic filament that comes off spools, which gives the finished item a woven appearance (figure 1).

Figure 1: A green thingy printed by a RepRap printer. Image courtesy watdesign, Wikimedia Commons.

Open Source 3D Printers

Open source 3D printing is still in the hacker realm. There are no prefab personal open source 3D Printers; you have to build from kits or from scratch. Both are great exercises in learning how these work from the ground up. The open source 3D printers won't turn out completely-finished complex products like the ZPrinter. The simplest ones print one part at a time, and then you have to click the command to print another part, and then when you have all the parts you have to assemble them. There are higher-end printers that will print batch jobs. If you want color you can either use colored filaments, or paint the finished pieces.

Figure 2: RepRap Prusa 3D printer. Image courtesy JulianH72 and Wikimedia Commons.

The RepRap (replicating rapid prototyper) project has the ambitious goal of creating a self-replicating 3D printer. The plans and specs are free, and once you have one it can print the parts to create another one. It's not quite 100% self-replicating yet as it can print about half the needed parts, and you have to acquire the rest from other sources. Visit Makergear.com for a complete kit for a RepRap Prusa 3D Printer, which sells for about $900. The Prusa is called the Model T of RepRaps because it is fairly simple and sturdy. Makerbot sells parts and spools of filament in different colors.

The Makerbot Store carries a bigger inventory of all kinds of do-it-yourself electronic projects. The Thing-O-Matic kit builds a nice 3D printer that does batch jobs, so you can program it to print a whole bunch of parts and then go away and let it do its thing. This costs about $1100. The Makerbot Replicator prints larger objects, up to the size of a loaf of bread, and if you add a second extruder you can do two-color printing. With a second extruder it's about $2,000.

RepRap Central is another store that sells kits, parts, and supplies.

Software and Designs

How do you control these beasts? The most commonly-used software is ReplicatorG. Where do you get the digital models? Create your own with your favorite CAD software, or download from the many shared repositories like Thingiverse and Google 3D Warehouse.

To learn more visit the sites referenced in this article, and spend some quality time with Make Magazine, which has a lot of coverage of 3D printers.

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A Look at 3D Printing and Open Source

Arthur C. Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." And it's still magical when you understand how it works. 3D printers are here, they're cool, and there is a large and enthusiastic open source 3D printer movement.

Like We Need More Plastic Doodads?

So what are these things for? Changing the world, literally, by disrupting manufacturing and distribution, and bringing the means of production of essential goods into everyone's hands.

3D printers produce physical objects from a computer file with a few mouse clicks. A cursory look at this technology might make it appear to be little more than yet another way to squeeze out more cheap plastic junk. But it is much more than cheap plastic junk; it's an amazingly fast way to prototype new products, and to customize small runs. Making customizations and small runs economical is going to be hugely disruptive because we won't have to produce runs of thousands to get the unit costs down, or charge giant markups for customizations. If anything it should reduce the tides of cheap plastic junk.

Industrial 3D printers have been around for about 30 years. The new wrinkle is bringing them into the reach of hobbyists and home users. The PBS show "This Old House" featured a high-end 3D Systems ZPrinter, which you can see for yourself in the Bedford: And the Work Begins episode.

Start watching at Chapter 3, Building a 3-D Printer Model. The homeowner works for 3D Systems and makes the architectural models for the project. He also demonstrates an intricate nest-of-gears mechanism that comes out of the printer fully functional, and some other intricate and colorful creations. The open source and lower-end printers can't do this, but then they don't cost upwards of $20,000 either.

3D printers do two things: make prototypes, and also finished products. In the olden days prototyping was a lot of labor-intensive skilled hand work that involved machining, models made from clay, wood, styrofoam, and other materials, welding, injection molding (very expensive, $10,000 and up per item), whatever it took to bring a concept to life. Any changes meant a lot more work, so experimentation was slow and expensive. With 3D printers all you do is change a few lines of code. Maybe someday, instead of making little architectural models, a giant unit will drive up to a building site and spit out a complete structure.

3D Scanners

3D scanners go hand-in-hand with 3D printers, and as far as I know there are no open source 3D scanners, or scanners that use open software, so this is an important missing piece. A 3D scanner digitizes physical objects and creates an editable computer file. Obviously, it is faster to start with a copy than to start a design from scratch. Obvious copyright issues aside, this has all kinds of wonderful practical uses like creating non-destructive copies of fossils and bones and valuable old artifacts and artworks, and creating replacement parts for machines and devices.

There are several different 3D scanner technologies. A contact scanner runs an articulated arm over an object. These are slow, and risk damaging fragile objects. Non-contact scanners are faster and non-destructive. 3D laser scanners are popular and come in all sizes and form factors, stationary and portable, and some can detect colors. These are expensive, in the thousands of dollars, and rely on expensive proprietary software. There are a number of open source 3D scanner projects that tell you how to build your own using inexpensive laser pointers.

Printing Materials

The term "printing" is a little misleading, at least for me, because it is firmly lodged in my brain as printing text and images on flat paper-like stuff. But this isn't totally off-the-wall because most 3D printers build objects a layer at a time, and you can see the edges of the layers in the finished item. An inkjet printing system lays down resin and binder layers, and prints in multiple colors. Other systems use gels, metals, waxes, liquid polymers, and plasters. There are even candy printers that create fancy edible goodies from sugar. The open source printers we're going to look at spin out a melted plastic filament that comes off spools, which gives the finished item a woven appearance (figure 1).

Figure 1: A green thingy printed by a RepRap printer. Image courtesy watdesign, Wikimedia Commons.

Open Source 3D Printers

Open source 3D printing is still in the hacker realm. There are no prefab personal open source 3D Printers; you have to build from kits or from scratch. Both are great exercises in learning how these work from the ground up. The open source 3D printers won't turn out completely-finished complex products like the ZPrinter. The simplest ones print one part at a time, and then you have to click the command to print another part, and then when you have all the parts you have to assemble them. There are higher-end printers that will print batch jobs. If you want color you can either use colored filaments, or paint the finished pieces.

Figure 2: RepRap Prusa 3D printer. Image courtesy JulianH72 and Wikimedia Commons.

The RepRap (replicating rapid prototyper) project has the ambitious goal of creating a self-replicating 3D printer. The plans and specs are free, and once you have one it can print the parts to create another one. It's not quite 100% self-replicating yet as it can print about half the needed parts, and you have to acquire the rest from other sources. Visit Makergear.com for a complete kit for a RepRap Prusa 3D Printer, which sells for about $900. The Prusa is called the Model T of RepRaps because it is fairly simple and sturdy. Makerbot sells parts and spools of filament in different colors.

The Makerbot Store carries a bigger inventory of all kinds of do-it-yourself electronic projects. The Thing-O-Matic kit builds a nice 3D printer that does batch jobs, so you can program it to print a whole bunch of parts and then go away and let it do its thing. This costs about $1100. The Makerbot Replicator prints larger objects, up to the size of a loaf of bread, and if you add a second extruder you can do two-color printing. With a second extruder it's about $2,000.

RepRap Central is another store that sells kits, parts, and supplies.

Software and Designs

How do you control these beasts? The most commonly-used software is ReplicatorG. Where do you get the digital models? Create your own with your favorite CAD software, or download from the many shared repositories like Thingiverse and Google 3D Warehouse.

To learn more visit the sites referenced in this article, and spend some quality time with Make Magazine, which has a lot of coverage of 3D printers.

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Zuckerberg is Spot on with “Hacker Way” (but The Linux Community Already Knew That)

Facebook filed its IPO last week , which is big news in and of itself. However, what struck me most was the letter from Mark Zuckerberg to potential investors that puts an exclamation point on something that the Linux community has been practicing for years: first - don't do it for the money, second maintain the hacker way. And, the money follows.

Zuckerberg points out that Facebook wasn't started to become a company. It was a cause. It was an idea -- to connect people. Linus Torvalds had a similar idea 20 years ago when he started Linux as a way to collectively develop software. Linus kicked off the project “just for fun” and has repeatedly stated that his motivation behind Linux is solving interesting problems with code.

In the letter, Zuckerberg clearly demonstrates how he and his company have been inspired by the core principles that Linux and the open source software movement started twenty years ago.

Just take a look at these statements:

“People sharing more — even if just with their close friends or families — creates a more open culture and leads to a better understanding of the lives and perspectives of others.”

“Hacker culture is extremely open and meritocratic. Hackers believe that the best idea and implementation should always win — not the person who is best at lobbying for an idea or the person who manages the most people.”

“The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration. Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it — often in the face of people who say it’s impossible or are content with the status quo.”

“We think the world’s information infrastructure should resemble the social graph — a network built from the bottom up or peer-to-peer, rather than the monolithic, top-down structure that has existed to date. We also believe that giving people control over what they share is a fundamental principle of this rewiring.”

Sound familiar? Zuckerberg’s interpretation of the “hacker way” could be cut and pasted from the daily workings of Linux kernel development for the last two decades:

"Code wins arguments."

"Quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations."

"The best idea and implementation should always win."

Linux is the quintessential example of the hacker way. As an example, if you don't think that code wins arguments, post some bad code along with the best-crafted argument in the world to the Linux kernel mailing list and see how it goes.

Linux is the fastest moving collaborative software project in the history of computing; it releases every three months and in small iterations with literally thousands of code changes in every release.  In fact Linux is often a leading indicator of things to come.  Virtualization technology, high performance computing, and more are often developed in the open first in Linux and then productized by companies later.

Of course, Facebook wasn’t just inspired by the hacker ethos. It is built on hacker code itself: Linux and a wide variety of open source technology. In fact, the economics that come with having open source software at its base makes Facebook’s filing even that much more compelling. Without the cost and flexibility advantages of open source, Facebook would be tied into proprietary contracts that would impede its ability to add users without the need to generate significant revenue. Before open source it was simply too difficult to scale, and the risk of your costs rising without your control was just too great. Zuckerberg made a brilliant decision -- albeit inevitable -- when he built Facebook on Linux using open source components. Would this IPO even be happening had he written Facebook as a Windows application?

It is no coincidence that one of the greatest entrepreneurial success stories of the last decade is deeply rooted in one of the greatest technology innovations of the last two decades: Linux and open development. Facebook is a great example of code + ethos that is driving great things.

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