Open Recall: Netcraft survey, Edu Li-f-e 12.3-1 and KDE 4.10.3

Open Recall is a space on The H for those things that are too small to package as news but are worth covering. In this edition: the Netcraft Web Server Survey results for May, openSUSE Edu Li-f-e 12.3-1, KDE May updates, GNOME 3.10 development, password masking in Fedora 19, and the Open Source Geospatial Laboratory.

• Netcraft Web Server Survey for May – According to the latest Web Server Survey from Netcraft, Apache is increasing its lead over the rival web server products again, mostly buoyed by an increase in popularity of Apache Traffic Server, which is now used by 75 per cent of web sites hosted with US hosting heavyweight Go Daddy. Apache now has a total market share of 53.4 per cent with its closest open source rival NGINX now at 13.5 per cent and steadily gaining on both Apache and Microsoft's IIS. For the first time this month, NGINX was detected on more then 100 million web sites.

NGINX is steadily gaining on Apache and Microsoft's IIS
Source: Netcraft

• openSUSE Edu Li-f-e 12.3-1 – The openSUSE Education team has released version 12.3-1 of Li-f-e (Linux for Education). The latest version of the distribution is built on openSUSE 12.3 and uses packages from the openSUSE Education and the Packman repositories to provide a desktop that is ready to be used in schools and other educational institutions. KIWI-LTSP is pre-installed and allows administrators to connect diskless clients to an Li-f-e LTSP server.
  

• KDE May updates – The KDE developers have announced the latest monthly stabilisation update to the KDE 4.10 series. KDE 4.10.3 brings bug fixes and updated translations and the developers recommend that all users of the 4.10 series upgrade to this release, promising "a safe and pleasant update for everyone." This is due to the relatively low profile nature of changes, as is typical for KDE's monthly stabilisation releases.
  

• First development release of GNOME 3.10 – GNOME developer Matthias Clasen has announced the release of GNOME 3.9.1 and with it the official start of development work for the GNOME 3.10 release. The GNOME 3.9 development series will turn into the first GNOME 3.10 release upon completion of this work. Enterprising users can compile and test the new experimental version already, details of how to do this can be found in Clasen's announcement.
  

• Password masking in Fedora 19 – The Fedora developers have been debating whether to mask passwords in the installer for Fedora 19. The original proposal by the designers of the installer called for eschewing the traditional masking of passwords as they are entered for enhanced ease of use. This was quickly called into question as developers felt that it presented a reduction in the installer's security without providing a lot of benefit in return. As it stands, Fedora QA chief Adam Williamson has announced in the thread that, for now, Fedora 19 will go back to the tried-and-tested way of masking passwords on entry.

• The Open Source Geospatial Laboratory – The University of Southampton has opened the Open Source Geospatial Laboratory as part of a collaboration between the International Cartographic Association (ICA) and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). The new laboratory will use open source geospatial software in its research and plans to contribute to the upstream "development of tools, standards and data through research." The lab will also provide training in open source geospatial applications.
  

(fab)