Save time on downloads with delta RPMs in Fedora 11

Fedora 11 introduced a great new feature: delta RPM updates. This feature creates delta RPM packages (.drpm) that are binary “patches” to the existing RPM packages. Instead of downloading all files, regardless of whether they have changed or not, a delta RPM will only download the files that have changed compared to the previous RPM package.

Once the delta RPM is downloaded by the Presto plugin for yum, it will try to reconstruct a full RPM based on the contents of the previous RPM, plus the newly changed files from the delta RPM. The newly-created RPM will then be installed by yum.

Using Presto has its benefits and drawbacks. If you have a fast Internet connection or are using a local mirror, using Presto doesn’t make sense. It would be faster to download the full RPM package instead of downloading the changed parts and consuming CPU time to reconstruct the RPM to install.

If, however, you have a slow Internet connection or you pay-per-byte for your Internet connection, then using Presto makes sense: it will download smaller files which will save time and money.

The savings from Presto will depend largely on the update. If it is an update that introduces a single patch that affects one or two files out of a multi-megabyte package, using Presto will make the download really fast. If it’s an upgraded version being provided, most files would likely change meaning that most files will have been changed, and thus downloaded. In a recent update of 27 packages that weighed in at 21MB, using Presto reduced the download size to 14MB, a savings of 7MB or one-third of what the download would have otherwise been.

Using Presto couldn’t be easier. All you need to do is install the yum-presto package, which contains the plugin for Presto:

# yum install yum-presto

Once this is done, any subsequent call to yum will use Presto as described above, transparently, and with no further configuration on your part. If you no longer want to use it, you can simply remove the yum-presto package:

# rpm -e yum-presto

Afterwards, the next invocation of yum will act as normal. Presto is not the default in Fedora 11, but my suspicion is that it will be the default in Fedora 12.

Source: TechRepublic.com

ZCS 6.0 Goes GA!

Everyone has been on the edge of their seats with anticipation, so without further ado: The Zimbra Collaboration Suite version 6.0 is now generally available!

With several thousand changes, there are far to many to list in this announcement; so here are a few places that provide overviews on the staggering number of cutting-edge enhancements:
» Beta 1 Blog
» Beta 2 Announcement
» RC 1 & GA Feature List PDF
 » Product Tracking Portal

Before upgrading, kick-off a backup while you read the information-packed release notes.

6.0.0 Network Edition: Release Notes & Downloads
6.0.0 Open Source Edition: Release Notes & Downloads

From all of us here at Zimbra, we would like to extend our deepest thanks to the numerous organizations, developers, and testers who vetted the betas. Your feedback is invaluable. To those early adopters who will rush to deploy it on their systems: Your vote of confidence is the best encouragement our community can get. Thanks to all for helping to shape the next evolution of modern messaging software.

Subscribe to the blog for news on the latest innovations, and enjoy this GA release!
-The Zimbra Team

Fedora 12 Alpha Announcement

Fedora 12 “Constantine” Alpha release is available! What’s next for the free operating system that shows off the best new technology of tomorrow? You can see the future now at:

http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease

What’s an Alpha release? The Alpha release contains all the features of Fedora 12 in a form that anyone can help test. This testing, guided by the Fedora QA team, helps us target and identify bugs. When these bugs are fixed, we make a Beta release available. A Beta release is code-complete, and bears a very strong resemblance to the third and final release. The final release of Fedora 12 is due in November.

We need your help to make Fedora 12 the best release yet, so please take a moment of your time to download and try out the Alpha and make sure the things that are important to you are working. If you find a bug, please report it – every bug you uncover is a chance to improve the experience for millions of Fedora users worldwide. Together, we can make Fedora a rock-solid distribution.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com

Among the top features for end users, we have:

  • Better webcam support – Out of the box support for a lot of new webcams has been extended further than ever.
  • Empathy as default IM client – Empathy is an instant messenger client replacing Pidgin, featuring better integration with the GNOME Desktop.
  • GNOME 2.27.90 beta and KDE 4.3 – The latest code from the two main desktop environments and their many bundled supporting applications are part of this release. GNOME 2.27.90 is the latest GNOME version as of the Alpha release; GNOME 2.28 is planned for the final release.
  • Network Manager Mobile Broadband – By providing a database of preconfigured mobile broadband providers, supporting more hardware and permit to scan GSM networks, NetworkManager makes the use of mobile broadband much easier.
  • Better Free Video Codec – The latest technology is found in the improved, free Ogg Theora video encoder, codenamed “Thusnelda.” Encoded video at very high definition now can meet or exceed the expectations of the most demanding viewer and material.
  • PackageKit improvements – PackageKit now has plugins to install applications from a web browser, and from the command line if a user tries a command from a package not yet installed.
  • PulseAudio improvements – The PulseAudio volume control applet has been extended to support profiles, input switching and easy speaker setup.
  • Better power management – This release offers better power management features regarding CPU, disk and network I/O.

For developers there are all sorts of additional goodies:

  • NetBeans 6.7 – NetBeans 6.7 is the most recent version of Sun’s IDE.
  • PHP 5.3 – PHP 5.3 has been integrated as the popular web language.
  • Eclipse 3.5.0 – The latest release of the popular, open, and extensible development platform is included.
  • SystemTap – Updates to this debugging capability include better documentation, tools, and examples; support for kernel tracepoint and modern gcc debuginfo (“dwarf”) output; and Eclipse support for launching traces and graphing results.

Peek under the hood and there is still more:

  • Better IPv6 in NetworkManager – NetworkManager has been extended to fully support IPv6 configurations through the GUI.
  • Automatic Bug Reporting Tool – This release provides ABRT, a service that automatically reports application crashed to Fedora, without requiring the end user to have any special knowledge on error reporting.
  • RPM XZ payload – All the software packages in Fedora have been switched from Gzip to the more efficient XZ (LZMA) compression method, to save space on mirrors and reduce download times.
  • x86 optimized for Atom – The 32 bit version of this release will be compiled for i686 with a specific optimization for Intel Atom processors used in many netbooks.
  • GRUB ext4 support – Fedora 11 included Ext4 by default, however GRUB in that version did not support Ext4 and hence required a separate boot partition formatted as Ext3 or Ext2. This release includes an updated version of GRUB with Ext4 support.
  • Bluetooth Service On Demand – In order to support Bluetooth devices, the Bluetooth background service was started by default in previous versions of Fedora. In this release, the Bluetooth service is started on demand when needed, and automatically stops 30 seconds after last device use, reducing initial startup time and resources.
  • KVM improvements – Many improvements in KVM virtualization are found in this release: reduced memory consumption and improved performance, NIC hotplug, better disk I/O, modern PXE booting, support for flexible network configurations, and much more.

And that is only the beginning. A more complete list and details of each new cited feature is available here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/12/FeatureList

For more information including common and known bugs, tips on how to report bugs, and the official release schedule, please refer to the release notes:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_12_Alpha_release_notes

Thank you, and we hope to see you in the Fedora project!

See: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_12_Alpha_Announcement

Fedora 11 installation process

This process is used for all iWay desktops and laptops:

  1. Install Fedora 11 from LiveCD
  2. Disable SELinux

    3. setenforce 0
    Change file: /etc/selinux/config

  3. Setup local repository: /etc/yum.repos.d/local.repo (includes: local, virror and atrpms):

    4. # Base packages on Virror
    [base-local]
    name=Fedora $releasever – $basearch – Base local
    baseurl=http://virror.hanoilug.org/fedora/releases/$releasever/Everything/$basearch/os/
    enabled=1
    gpgcheck=0

    # Update packages inside iWay LAN
    [updates-local]
    name=Fedora $releasever – $basearch – Updates local
    baseurl=http://mirror.iwayvietnam.com:9090/yum/updates/$releasever/$basearch/
    enabled=1
    gpgcheck=0

    # Additional packages at ATRPMS.net
    [atrpms]
    name=Fedora Core $releasever – $basearch – ATrpms
    baseurl=http://dl.atrpms.net/f$releasever-$basearch/atrpms/stable
    gpgkey=http://ATrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY.atrpms
    gpgcheck=1
    enabled=1

  4. Rename/disable default repos.
  5. Update all latest sofwtares, patches:

    6. yum -y update

  6. Install msttcorefonts

    7. mkdir /mnt/pub
    mount z:/data/pub /mnt/pub
    yum -y localinstall /mnt/pub/OpenSource/utilities/msttcorefonts-2.0-1.noarch.rpm –nogpgcheck

  7. Install scim-xunikey

    8. yum remove scim-lang\*
    yum -y localinstall /mnt/pub/OpenSource/utilities/scim-unikey-0.2.0~20090313-1.fc10.i386.rpm –nogpgcheck

  8. Install OpenOffice

    9. yum -y install openoffice.org-presenter-screen openoffice.org-math openoffice.org-brand openoffice.org-impress openoffice.org-writer2xhtml openoffice.org-ure openoffice.org-calc-core openoffice.org-pyuno openoffice.org-calc openoffice.org-draw-core openoffice.org-xsltfilter openoffice.org-impress-core openoffice.org-math-core openoffice.org-writer-core openoffice.org-pdfimport openoffice.org-graphicfilter openoffice.org-presentation-minimizer openoffice.org-voikko openoffice.org-core openoffice.org-writer openoffice.org-draw

  9. Install samba-client

    10. yum -y install samba-client

  10. Install vlc

    11. yum -y install vlc vlc-plugin

  11. Install wine

    12. yum -y install wine

  12. Install other tools: vim, mc, lynx

    13. yum -y install vim-common vim-enhanced mc lynx

  13. Install developement tools (optional, for developers only)

Note: For upgrading from Fedora 10, you should firstly do a backup (/home/<your-user-name>, and some other folders, if any); then follow above process to install newly fresh Fedora 11; and finally, create an user with the same name and restore the backup data into the same home folder.

SugarCRM 5.5 Expands Open Source CRM

Web Services, Mobility and multi-user management added to the mix as vendor takes on proprietary challenges.

Open source CRM vendor SugarCRM is ramping up its application with the upcoming version 5.5 release, officially announced on Thursday. SugarCRM 5.5 is a major release including new Web Services and mobility features that expand the functionality and extensibility of the platform.

The new SugarCRM release comes as the open source company deals with a change in leadership and repositions itself as a cloud vendor taking on proprietary offerings from Salesforce.com and Oracle.

“This is an interesting release from what it can do to and how it can enable people,” Martin Schneider, director of marketing for SugarCRM told InternetNews.com.

From an enablement point of view, SugarCRM 5.5 now has full support for REST (define) Web Services as well as support for SOAP (define).

“We’re really trying to support Web-based architectures, to make it easy to connect to third-party cloud based Web services like Amazon,” Schneider said. “We’re also letting people with REST, to connect to their own online catalogs and information repositories that they have.”

Schneider added that the items that people are connecting SugarCRM are more Web-based than ever before, and as such there is a real need for the broader REST support that version 5.5 will implement.

Mobility

SugarCRM is also extending its platform to mobile users the new Mobile Studio feature. Schneider explained that previous versions of SugarCRM had limited mobility options that are now being expanded.

With version 5.5, users can view their SugarCRM data on mobile Web browsers on RIM Blackberrys, Apple iPhones and Palm smartphones. The SugarCRM administrators can now actually customize and edit the layout view that the mobile users receive. User log in by way of the same URL they would log into for wired access and are automatically delivered the mobile view that is appropriate for their device.

“The idea is to streamline the mobile view so when on mobile web browsers and allow them to get workflows that are simplified,” Schneider said.

Team capabilities

While CRM can sometimes be an application that has the most practical utility for an individual, it also has a great deal of utility for groups as well. To that end, SugarCRM 5.5 adds new dynamic team capabilities that lets multiple users handle and view records.

“Now that we this feature you have to ask why has it taken us this long to add this features, it’s something that just makes sense,” Schneider said. “CRM is often looked at from an account centric point of view, and assigned to a sales rep or a master owner. But we realize that in the world today, collaborative selling is key and multiple people need to see the same data and access the same records.”

Offline storage

SugarCRM has an on-demand cloud offering that it expanded earlier this year as well as an Express version that is a hosted, supported version.

For cloud versions of SugarCRM, one issue that SugarCRM 5.5 will not address is the issue of offline access. Without a network connection (wired or wireless), users do no have access to their data. Offline storage is something that Google Gears provides and offline access is also part of the emerging HTML5 specification.

“We’ve talked about offline storage and the big question is how do we make it easy to support it,” Schneider said. “Google has one thing, Safari has another the problem is how quickly will all the major browser support it?”

By Sean Michael Kerner

Source: InternetNews.com

Bộ Chính trị vận động người Việt dùng hàng Việt

Một tin vui nữa đến với cộng đồng nguồn mở và các nhà cung cấp dịch vụ hỗ trợ ứng dụng phần mềm tự do nguồn mở:

—–

Ủy viên Bộ Chính trị, thường trực Ban Bí thư Trương Tấn Sang vừa ký ban hành văn bản thông báo kết luận của Bộ Chính trị về tổ chức cuộc vận động “Người Việt Nam ưu tiên dùng hàng Việt Nam”.

Trong đó nêu rõ, trước yêu cầu đưa nền kinh tế vượt qua khó khăn, thách thức, phát triển nhanh, bền vững, giải quyết tốt an sinh xã hội, Bộ Chính trị đồng ý chủ trương tổ chức cuộc vận động “Người Việt Nam ưu tiên dùng hàng Việt Nam”.

Mục đích của cuộc vận động là phát huy lòng yêu nước, ý chí tự lực, tự cường, tự tôn dân tộc, xây dựng văn hóa tiêu dùng của người Việt Nam và sản xuất nhiều hàng Việt Nam có chất lượng, sức cạnh tranh cao, đáp ứng nhu cầu tiêu dùng trong nước và xuất khẩu.

Cuộc vận động sẽ đẩy mạnh thông tin, tuyên truyền, vận động, làm người tiêu dùng trong nước và ngoài nước nhận thức đúng khả năng sản xuất, kinh doanh của doanh nghiệp Việt Nam, chất lượng của sản phẩm, hàng hóa, dịch vụ Việt Nam. Vận động người tiêu dùng Việt Nam sử dụng hàng Việt Nam khi tiêu dùng cá nhân, coi đó là thể hiện lòng yêu nước, nét đẹp trong văn hóa tiêu dùng của người Việt Nam.

Các cơ quan, đơn vị và tổ chức chính trị – xã hội sử dụng hàng hóa nội địa khi thực hiện mua sắm công; các doanh nghiệp, người sản xuất, kinh doanh trong nước khi triển khai thực hiện các dự án, công trình sử dụng các trang thiết bị, nguyên vật liệu nội địa và dịch vụ có chất lượng tương đương hàng ngoại nhập để sản xuất và kinh doanh.

Rà soát, ban hành bổ sung luật pháp, cơ chế, chính sách bảo vệ thị trường người tiêu dùng trong nước, sản xuất trong nước không trái với các quy định của WTO… Hỗ trợ các doanh nghiệp trong một số hoạt động và tiếp tục đổi mới công tác quản lý, chấn chỉnh các hoạt động quản lý thị trường, hải quan, thuế.

Thành lập ban chỉ đạo cuộc vận động ở hai cấp: cấp trung ương; cấp tỉnh, thành phố và tương đương. Tổ chức phát động cuộc vận động vào tháng 8/2009. Định kỳ hằng năm tiến hành sơ kết; từ 3-5 năm tiến hành tổng kết cuộc vận động.

—–

Lời bình:

Có thể nói rằng đây là một tin rất vui với các nhà cung cấp dịch vụ hỗ trợ ứng dụng phần mềm tự do nguồn mở bởi lẽ nếu so sánh với việc mua bản quyền phần mềm (thực chất là nhập khẩu phần mềm của nước ngoài về dùng), việc ứng dụng phần mềm tự do nguồn mở kèm theo mua dịch vụ hỗ trợ là một hành động rất thiết thực của các tổ chức, doanh nghiệp cả nước hưởng ứng cuộc vận động này. Tiền thực tế, thay vì chuyển cho nhà sản xuất phần mềm nước ngoài, được sử dụng để chi trả cho các dịch vụ hỗ trợ của nhà cung cấp trong nước.

Hy vọng rằng đây sẽ là một động lực đưa Việt Nam ta tiến những bước dài trên con đường khẳng định tiềm năng, giá trị thực của con người, đất nước Việt Nam trong kỷ nguyên mới, kỷ nguyên của khoa học – công nghệ.

Một số hướng dẫn của WHO về đại dịch cúm H1N1

Dịch cúm A (H1N1) đang lan rộng và có nguy cơ trở thành đại dịch trên toàn cầu. Đứng trước tình hình đó, tổ chức Y tế thế giới đã đưa ra một số hướng dẫn để mọi người tham khảo nhằm giảm thiểu khả năng lây nhiễm loại virus cúm nguy hiểm này.

Mọi người nên tham khảo và chú ý phòng vệ cho bản thân để tránh lây nhiễm cúm A(H1N1)!

influenza-ah1n1-english-poster_translated-vn

Contacts Organizer Zimlet: 5 ways to organize your contacts

Power Zimlet #3

If you have 100s or even 1000s of contacts and perhaps also using multiple address books and want to organize them, this one is for you. With lot of contacts also comes organization or maintenance, syncing and other issues.  For example, say you want to move all your company’s contacts into one address book so you can share company’s address book to someone,  or,  say file all of them by “(Company) First Name Last Name” format so its easy to sort them and differentiate them,  you will immediately see there is no easy way to do that.

And that’s where this Zimlet come in. Its  a very powerful and flexible Zimlet and provides 5 different ways (& several combination) to help organize your contacts. It also organizes across multiple Address books (simply use ctrl -key or Shift-key to select multiple folders).

1. Move or Cleanup:
– Move all contacts with xyz domain  in ALL address book folders into xyz Addressbook.

For example,  say  you want to move all gmail contacts to folder called ‘gmail friends’.  Assuming you already have an addessbook folder by name ‘gmail friends’,  here is how you would do that:

STEPS:

  1. Select “Contact’s email contains” menu,
  2. Enter “gmail.com” in the next field
  3. Select all the folders using Shift key or ctrl key  from “in folder(s): ” menu
  4. Select ‘Move Contacts to:’ Radio button
  5. Select the folder ‘gmail friends’
  6. Press Organize

Other use cases:
–  Move some Contacts in ALL  Address Book to Trash

–  Move ALL  Contacts in Some Address Book to Trash

–  Move ALL  Contacts in ALL Address Book to Trash

2. Merge:

– Move all contacts  in multiple Address-books(say AB2, AB3 & AB4)  to a single address book(AB1)

3. “Sort and Store” aka “file-As”:

– Zimbra by default sorts contacts by last name but lot of people want to sort by Company and one of the way you can achieve this is by filing them as “(Company) Firstname Lastname” or “Company Lastname, FirstName” or “Company”

– You can use File-as Action to simply file all your contacts in a specific format for consistent appearance.

4. Tag:

– Tag all contacts that contains some domain(say zimbra.com) with some tag(say: zimbra folks)

5. Contacts with Phone number(for mobile sync): This is one of the special actions I added to help mobile users to move all the contacts that has phone number to one folder. Which in-turn makes it easier to make phone calls.
e.g. move all contacts with phone numbers to “has phone number” Address book. Now, sync it to mobile phone and you can be sure to know that the contacts in that folder has some phone number.

Contacts Organizer

PS:
1. For more details and to download: Visit Gallery
2. Please make sure to to take backup of all your Address books before using this (from Preferences > Address Book > Export)

Fedora 9 End Of Life (EOL)

With the release of Fedora 11 now past us, it’s come time to remind
folks that per the release policy, maintenance for the N-2 Fedora
release ends one month after the Fedora N comes out.

In this case, since Fedora 11 just came out, that means that the end
of life for Fedora 9 will be 2009-07-10. After this point, no new
updates, including security updates, will be available for Fedora 9.
We strongly urge folks to upgrade to Fedora 11 in order to experience
the best and latest that Fedora has to offer.

So without delay, go get your copy of Leonidas today from
http://get.fedoraproject.org and enjoy the latest version of Fedora!