Friday, November 21, 2014

Bitnami Open Source Leaders Interview Series: Frank Karlitschek from ownCloud

As part of our Open Source Leader podcast series, we interviewed Frank Karlitschek, founder of ownCloud, to learn how ownCloud helps you share your files with friends and co-workers. ownCloud gives you universal access to all your files, contacts, calendars and bookmarks across all of your devices for free!

The questions below are answered throughout the interview:

  • What is ownCloud? 
  • How technical does one have to be to use ownCloud?
  • How does ownCloud manage third-party extensions/plugins?
  • What is next for ownCloud version 8? 

After learning more about the project, you can launch ownCloud to the cloud or deploy it locally with free installers, virtual machines and cloud templates from Bitnami. Get started in the cloud for free with a $200 credit from Microsoft Azure.





Stuart Langridge:       These are the Bitnami Open Source Leaders Series of interviews.  I’m Stuart Langridge and I’m here talking to Frank Karlitschek of the ownCloud project.

Frank Karlitschek:     Hey, Stuart. Thanks for having me.

Stuart Langridge:       I think a lot of people may have heard of ownCloud generally, but can you give us a brief description of what ownCloud is and what it’s for?

Frank Karlitschek:     The mission of ownCloud is to provide functionality similar to Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive from Microsoft. The difference is that ownCloud is completely free software, open-source, and it’s actually designed to run wherever you want.
 
                                    There’s only one ownCloud like there is only one Dropbox, but you can download the ownCloud source code and install it wherever you want. You can run it on your repository at home, an old desktop computer, or on a server on the Internet. It can run at a university, your company, or wherever you want. You can even run it on a shared web space. For example, if you have web space on a university, you can just pick the ownCloud Zip file, put it in there and unzip it, and you have your own server.

Stuart Langridge:       What types of people are using ownCloud at the moment? Is it primarily individuals, organizations, companies, or university students? Of the people who aren’t using it yet, are there particular areas/demographics you’re targeting?

WordPress security release

The WordPress project has just released version 4.0.1. This version fixes a critical cross-site scripting vulnerability together with other security issues. The WordPress team strongly encourages their users to update their site to this version. For more details please check the official announcement.

Bitnami Wordpress 4.0.1 installers, virtual machines and cloud images are already available.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Gradle added to Bitnami Library + Jenkins Stack integration

We're happy to announce that Gradle is now available on the Bitnami Library, as well as its integration with our Jenkins Stack.


Gradle is a Java-based tool that helps you automate the building, testing, publishing and deployment of software packages and other types of projects, such as generated static websites and generated documentation.

The Bitnami Gradle Stack is the best way to run Gradle. We have packed it as a self-contained, pre-configured distribution that includes everything you need to run Gradle. You can get started by downloading our free, ready-to-run installers for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.


We have also integrated Gradle with the latest version of Jenkins in our Bitnami Jenkins Stack (by enabling and configuring the Gradle Plugin), so you can easily use Gradle for continuous integration of your projects.

If you want to quickly check out our latest Jenkins Stack with Gradle, you can launch a free cloud demo server. By clicking the button below, you will get your own Jenkins instance running, free of cost, for 1 hour!


You can also download our free, ready-to-run Jenkins Stack installersVirtual Machine images and Cloud Images for Amazon, Azure and Google Clouds.

Sunday, November 16, 2014

New Bitnami Ruby stacks released with Ruby 2.1.5, 2.0.0-p598 and 1.9.3-p551

We recently released new versions of Ruby stacks that fix several security issues. An additional fix for DoS vulnerability CVE-2014-8090 has been released for all Ruby versions.

We have released new versions of Bitnami Ruby Stack native installers for Linux and OS X, virtual machines and cloud images for Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine and Microsoft Azure.

- Ruby Stack 2.1.5: with Ruby 2.1.5 and Rails 4.1.7
- Ruby Stack 2.0.0-23: with Ruby 2.0.0-p598 and Rails 4.1.7
- Ruby Stack 1.9.3-27: with Ruby 1.9.3-p551 and Rails 3.2.20

We continue working on upgrading Ruby versions for Windows that will be released soon.

In case you are not familiar with Ruby Stack, in addition to the base Ruby runtime and libraries, the stack includes the most popular gems for building Rails applications: Passenger, Nokogiri, Rake, RMagick, Thin and more. It also includes the latest stable version of RVM, Rails, Apache, Nginx, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Git, Sphinx, PHP, phpMyAdmin and phpPgAdmin.


If you have any question about Bitnami RubyStack you can check our quick start guide or you can create a new post in our community forums.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Moodle 2.8.0 released

Moodle, the popular Open Source e-learning platform, released their version 2.8.0 a couple of days ago. We are glad to announce that this version is already available in Bitnami.

You can find the complete list of new features in the official release notes and you can also take a look at the screenshots.

Bitnami Moodle is available as native installers (available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS), virtual machines and cloud images for Amazon EC2, Azure and Google Cloud Platform.

Monday, November 10, 2014

Mahara added to Bitnami Library!

We are happy to announce that Mahara is now available on the Bitnami library.


Mahara is an open source ePortfolio and social networking web application created by the government of New Zealand. It provides users with tools to create and maintain a digital portfolio of their learning, and social networking features to allow users to interact with each other. 

Mahara is now ready to install in a few clicks with the Bitnami Mahara installers (available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X), Virtual Machine images(VMs), cloud images for the Amazon EC2 and Azure cloud platforms.

We also had the opportunity to interview Aaron Wells (Technical Lead) and Kristina Hoeppner (Community Facilitator) who were kind enough to answer some of our questions:

What is the goal of the Mahara application?

Mahara is an ePortfolio designed for use in education. It gives users an easy way to set up individual or group portfolios, allowing them to showcase and reflect on their learning and achievements. It can also be used to support assessment processes.

Functionally, Mahara is a lot like a multi-user content management system. It allows users to create mini web pages for their portfolios, and it includes some social network functionality to make it easier for users to share content with each other and the rest of the world.

Mahara is open source and has a lively user and developer community who contribute to improving Mahara continuously.


What are some of the features of Mahara?

Mahara can be used by one individual, but it unfolds its true power when used with others as it allows for collaboration and engagement of other users.
 
With Mahara you can for example:


  • Set up media-rich portfolios by uploading different files, embedding social media content from other websites, creating journals (blogs).
  • Create multiple portfolios for different purposes, e.g. one for your personal development, one for finding a job, one for course assessment.
  • Personalize your portfolio with built-in themes or create your own skins. You can also share your skins with other users on the site.
  • Have others leave comments on your portfolios and support you in your learning.
  • Export your portfolios as stand-alone HTML sites or for import into an ePortfolio system that supports the Leap2A standard. For example, you can start your portfolio on your school's Mahara site, import it into the university's Mahara site when you start your university career, refine it and change it there, and then move it to a different site after graduating university so you can continue your lifelong learning journey. As your portfolios are always portable and accessible to you, you will be able to make changes along the way, remove things, update others and add new content keeping your portfolios fresh.
  • Submit your portfolio for assessment directly within Mahara or to the popular learning management system Moodle for integration into coursework.
  • Collaborate with groups of users in forum discussions and create portfolios or group projects together.
  • Extend Mahara with a range of community-contributed plugins.

Which projects or organizations are using Mahara currently?  What kind of projects do they use it for?

Mahara is used around the world by schools, higher education institutions, associations and organizations with accreditation/certification requirements, and also by individuals who want to harness the power of keeping a portfolio for professional purposes.
 
Common use cases include:


  • Presenting project work
  • Showcasing a year's work on a particular subject matter
  • Outlining a learning journey with its ups and downs
  • Reflecting on professional development
  • Supporting a job application with actual evidence of previous work experiences
  • Submitting a professional development portfolio to an association for re-accreditation
  • Setting up an online community of practice
  • Submitting a project assignment for a class

For example, Pace University in New York uses Mahara with existing and incoming students to get started on their learning journey. The University of the Arts, London, uses Mahara with its design students to present their work and also submit assignments. Southampton Solent University in the UK uses Mahara for employ ability purposes where students can create an online job application. The university also uses Mahara with its sea-faring students to document their learning while at sea on their mobile devices, and then upload the content to their Mahara site when they are back on land. The University of Canberra employs Mahara in its teaching program for students to work on assignments. New Zealand nurses use Mahara to speed up their re-certification process by having taken it online. Schools in New Zealand and around the world use Mahara with their students for assignments, lifelong learning and also teacher portfolios.

What do you expect will be the main benefits of having Bitnami packages available for Mahara?

As an automated installer, Bitnami can be especially helpful for users and institutions who only have limited tech support available. Bitnami can help them get up and running with a standard Mahara install and stay up to date with the latest version of Mahara. For more advanced users, running Mahara in a virtual machine can also be helpful as a quick way to set up a "sandbox" site to test new updates, configuration options, and plugins.

You can follow the Mahara project on Twitter and participate in discussions on Mahara.org.  

Would you like your favorite app to be part of Bitnami? Be sure to suggest and vote for it in our monthly contest!

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

MyBB added to the Bitnami Library!


We are glad to announce that we have just added MyBB to the Bitnami Library. We have created native installers, Virtual Machines and cloud images for this application, available in the Bitnami Website.

MyBB is a solution that provides a complete set of features to create and manage your forums: users management, private messages, reputation system, quick moderation, languages, plugins, etc.

The Bitnami MyBB Stack is the easiest way to run MyBB. We have packed it as a self-contained, pre-configured distribution that includes everything you need to run MyBB, making it very easy to deploy. To get started with Bitnami MyBB, you can download free, ready-to-run installers for Linux or Mac OS X or our virtual machine images (VMs). Or, if you want to have a hosted MyBB, you can deploy Bitnami MyBB in the cloud via the Amazon and Google clouds.

Some of MyBB features include:
  • Easy to use, for both you and your visitors
  • A simple but powerful plugin system
  • Light and super fast theme system and template engine
  • Great performance
  • And more!
Do you want to quickly check out MyBB? You can launch a 1 hour demo server in the cloud for free. If you click the button below, you will have your own MyBB instance running for 1 hour.


Don't forget to visit our wiki to learn how to manage your installation.

Would you like your favorite app to be part of Bitnami? Be sure to suggest and vote for it in our monthly contest!

New Ruby stacks with latest Ruby and Rails versions

New versions of Ruby and Rails have been released recently that address several security issues:

- Rails: CVE-2014-7818
- Rails: CVE-2014-7819
- Ruby: CVE-2014-8080
- Ruby: Changed default settings of ext/openssl

If you are using Ruby stack for deploying your application, we strongly suggest to upgrade Rails to the latest version. We have released new versions of Ruby Stack native installers (all platforms), virtual machines and cloud images for the following platforms:

- Ruby Stack 2.0.0: with Ruby 2.0.0-p594 and Rails 4.1.7
- Ruby Stack 2.1.4: with Ruby 2.1.4 and Rails 4.1.7

We continue working on the new Ruby 1.9.3-p550 version with the latest Rails 3.2.20 that will be released soon.

In addition to the base Ruby runtime and libraries, the stack includes the most popular gems for building Rails applications: Passenger, Nokogiri, Rake, RMagick, Thin and more. It also includes the latest stable release of Ruby, RVM, Rails, Apache, Nginx, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Git, Sphinx, PHP, phpMyAdmin and phpPgAdmin.

If you have any question about Bitnami RubyStack you can check our quick start guide or you can create a new thread in our community forums.