Linux News Blog

Oracle loses another DTrace creator

2010-08-19T11:27:00.002-07:00

Adam Leventhal, another one of the three Sun engineers who developed DTrace, is leaving Oracle. Bryan Cantrill, another member of the team, left Oracle in July. This leaves only one of the original DTrace team – Mike Shapiro – still with Oracle. Shapiro is one of the signatories of the leaked memo which announced the closing of the OpenSolaris project.
Leventhal said, in a blog posting, that at Sun he had found himself "surrounded by superlative engineers" and that he felt lucky to have worked with Cantrill and Shapiro on DTrace. Most recently, Leventhal had been working on Fishworks, Sun's Solaris based storage system technology. Leventhal does not say what he will be doing next, only that he is "off to look for my next remarkable place and time beyond the walls of Oracle". It is possible he could follow in Cantrill's footsteps; within days of leaving, it was announced he had become Vice President of Engineering at Joyent, one of the companies involved in the OpenSolaris derivative Illumos which was launched at the beginning of August

The 2010 Linux Storage and Filesystem Summit, day 2

2010-08-19T11:27:00.001-07:00

The second day of the 2010 Linux Storage and Filesystem Summit was held on August 9 in Boston. Those who have not yet read the coverage from day 1 may want to start there. This day's topics were, in general, more detailed and technical and less amenable to summarization here. Nonetheless, your editor will try his best.

Writeback

The first session of the day was dedicated to the writeback issue. Writeback, of course, is the process of writing modified pages of files back to persistent store. There have been numerous complaints over recent years that writeback performance in Linux has regressed; the curious reader can refer to this article for some details, or this bugzilla entry for many, many details. The discussion was less focused on this specific problem, though; instead, the developers considered the problems with writeback as a whole.

Sorin Faibish started with a discussion of some research that he has done in this area. The challenges for writeback are familiar to those who have been watching the industry; the size of our systems - in terms of both memory and storage - has increased, but speed of those systems has not increased proportionally. As a result, writing back a given percentage of a system's pages takes longer than it once did. It is always easier for the writeback system to fail to keep up with processes which are dirtying pages, leading to poor performance.

His assertion is that the use of watermarks to control writeback is no longer appropriate for contemporary systems. Writeback should not wait until a certain percentage of memory is dirty; it should start sooner, and, crucially, be tied to the rate with which processes are dirtying pages. The system, he says, should work much more aggressively to ensure that the writeback rate matches the dirty rate.

From there, the discussion wandered through a number of specific issues. Linux writeback now works by flushing out pages belonging to a specific file (inode) at a time, with the hope that those pages will be located nearby on the disk. The memory management code will normally ask the filesystem to flush out up to 4MB of data for each inode. One poorly-kept secret of Linux memory management is that filesystems routinely ignore that request - they typically flush far more data than requested if there are that many dirty pages. It's only by generating much larger I/O requests that they can get the best performance.

What to Look for in Open Source Systems Management Products

2010-08-19T11:24:00.000-07:00

"You could call them the "Little 4," a play on the "Big 4" systems management companies: BMC, CA Technologies, HP, and IBM.

"The Little 4 may be smaller in terms of their bottom lines, but in terms of systems management capabilities, there's nothing little about the open source offerings from Zenoss, Hyperic, GroundWork Open Source, and The OpenNMS Group.

"This is a biosphere within the open source ecosystem that has seen a lot of flux in the past few years. In 2006, Zenoss was one of six vendors (the others being Ayamon, Emu Software, Qlusters, Symbiot, and Webmin) that launched the Open Management Consortium (OMC), "an effort to promote the adoption, development, and integration of systems and network management software based on open source and open standards technologies."

Hard Drive Caching with SSDs

2010-08-15T11:29:00.000-07:00

The hard drives we use today are very complex beasts. Cramming that much data onto a very small space while insuring that the data will be there when we need it, is not something easy or simple. The pace of data density increase in hard drives has been nothing short of amazing. At the same time, we all want faster and faster performance from our drives. To help improve hard drive performance, manufacturers introduced a small amount of RAM to the drive. It can be used to hold data for a period of time before writing it to disk, allowing the drive to tell the operating system that the data is actually on the disk, improving application performance. It can also be used to pre-fetch data for reading. In either case, a small amount of RAM can make a very large improvement in performance. If you don’t believe me, run some benchmarks with the disk cache turned on and then off and compare the two results.

Google Chrome OS tablet headed for Verizon?

2010-08-12T11:29:00.000-07:00

HTC is building a Chrome OS tablet for Google, set for a Verizon launch on Nov. 26, an industry report claims. Meanwhile, Pandigital released its second seven-inch Android-based e-reader tablet, with more memory than before plus a smaller, lighter design.

According to a report by DownloadSquad's Lee Mathews, Google's Chrome OS tablet will be as to tablets what the short-lived, HTC-manufactured Nexus One was to Android smartphones. This would suggest another foray into Google branding, as opposed to sharing the glory with HTC or Verizon. The story is based on an unnamed source, and no image of the device was supplied.
The tablet will likely incorporate an Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, which includes dual ARM Cortex-A9 cores clocked to 1GHz, says the story. The screen size was not listed, but Mathews says that the tablet will offer a 1280 x 720 multitouch display, which would suggest a device that is at least as large as the 9.7-inch Apple iPad.

The tablet is expected to offer 2GB of RAM, and 32GB of SSD storage at a minimum, with the possibility of a multi-card reader. Other "likely" features include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G, GPS, and a webcam, says DownloadSquad.

Lawsuit Raises Questions about Open Invention Network, Linux Foundation

2010-08-09T11:28:00.000-07:00

I agree with Brian that the LinuxFoundation per se can't be expected to act as a peace broker. That's not its mission statement, although peace among its members would be in its own best interest.

Concerning the OIN, the article describes only one of its three functions and doesn't mention the other two.

Brian correctly notes that the OIN is "a patent holding company that buys up patents and, once purchased, grants licensees royalty-free rights to use [them]".

Brian doesn't mention that mutually assured destruction is also part of the OIN's mission. It wants to be able to assert those patents against entities attacking Linux. The OIN doesn't say so on its website, but it has indicated this in press releases and everyone in the industry who talked to OIN member companies will have been told that it should serve as a deterrent.

Even more importantly, Brian completely omits the fact that the OIN doesn't have only a bunch of patents and six owner companies but around 150 licensee companies. The OIN License Agreement constitutes a non-aggression pact among all licensees (not only the six "members", i.e. owners).

It is the OIN's plurilateral cross-licensing agreement that has failed here because both Google and Oracle have accepted it. So theoretically, Google and Oracle are prohibited under that agreement from suing each other (or other licensees) with respect to what the OIN calls "the Linux System."

It's absolutely incorrect that OIN only has the patents it acquires. It also constitutes a cross-license deal among its 150 licensees and, therefore, also relates to the patents that those companies hold with respect to what the OIN calls "the Linux System."

Oracle OpenSolaris ditch draws developer ire

2010-08-07T11:28:00.000-07:00

Following its decision to end open distribution of source codes for its Solaris enterprise operating system, Oracle now faces backlash from the open source community which is likely to damage its relationship with developers in the long-run, industry watchers noted.

The software giant revealed in a leaked internal memo last week that it intended to end open source developers' daily access to builds of Solaris binaries--after version 2010.05--which it inherited from its Sun Microsystems acquisition, approved in January this year. Instead, the company is focusing its developer efforts on bringing to market its proprietary Solaris 11 platform and will only distribute an open source version of the OS after its official launch.

Commenting on Oracle's decision, senior Ovum analyst Laurent Lachal said emotions within the open source camp are "running very high" currently and the IT giant is likely to face backlash from people with strong open source convictions.

He noted in his e-mail that every large software company needs to have a "proactive open source strategy", and this includes nurturing the goodwill of various communities that make up the open source movement.

Lachal explained: "Based on Oracle's latest moves, regardless of its legal validity, it will be difficult for Oracle to get that goodwill, especially for the other open source projects it is in charge of such as MySQL and OpenOffice. There may come a time when Oracle will wish it had spent more efforts making friends in the open source community."

Unboxing Chumby - Another Linux powered Device That is Making Waves

2007-12-07T08:09:00.005-08:00

So what prompted me to show such a deep interest in a product after reading for only 5 minutes about it? It was the open nature of the product’s design philosophy on both hardware and the software front. It is hacker-friendly, easily customizable, *built on the Linux platform and hence guaranteed to attract a large user and developer community.*

read more | digg story

KDE4 Desktop Effects (KWin Composite) Video Tour

2007-12-07T08:09:00.003-08:00

The desktop effects are coming along nicely, with many plugins available. You will no longer need to run Compiz to get many standard and convenient composite features: they will be available right inside KDE 4. In many cases the plugins improve window management, provide a little eye-candy to the desktop or are just useful in various situations.

read more | digg story

Dead Easy: Create A Your Own Custom Ubuntu 7.10 Live-CD With Remastersys

2007-12-07T08:09:00.001-08:00

This guide shows how you can create a Live-CD from yourUbuntu Gutsy Gibbon or Linux Mint 4.0 system with a tool called remastersys. Remastersys is available in the Linux Mint romeo repository. You can customize your Ubuntu/Linux Mint system and then let remastersys create an iso image of it which you can then burn onto a CD/DVD.

read more | digg story

North, South Korea Unite Over Linux

2007-12-07T08:08:00.013-08:00

The bitter political foes will team with China on the project, tentatively named "Hana Linux"

read more | digg story

Flash Player 9 Update 3 for linux released!

2007-12-07T08:08:00.011-08:00

This version has support for the standard H.264 and AAC codecs and has hardware-accelerated fullscreen support. Also supports the new XEmbed browser protocol which should make it work in Opera.

read more | digg story

Asus predicts it will ship 3.8 million Eee PCs next year

2007-12-07T08:08:00.009-08:00

According to Engadget, "To put that in some perspective, HP (currently at the top of the laptop heap) shipped some 6.2 million laptops total in the last quarter, while Apple sold approximately 1.4 million in the same time period." In other words, this is a serious digital tipping point in favor of Free Open Source Software.

read more | digg story

Compiz Fusion news - lots of new plugins

2007-12-07T08:08:00.007-08:00

Loads of new plugins for Compiz Fusion again, with many new things to put inside the cube - snow, a snowman, sand, coral, even windows! Besides that there's Maximumize, Freescale and BasicBlur, plus some patches to Compiz Core, some bugs squashed and more.

read more | digg story

DELL: Updating system BIOS when running Ubuntu

2007-12-07T08:08:00.005-08:00

I've published firmware-tools deb packages, and the latest system BIOS images for 223 Dell system types, into a new repository on linux.dell.com. Please see the instructions for how to use them. In a nutshell, for Ubuntu systems with 7.04 Feisty, 7.10 Gutsy, or Hardy

read more | digg story

PayPal Switches to Linux on Mainframes

2007-12-07T08:08:00.003-08:00

A Linux grid is the power behind the payment system at PayPal, and it's converted a mainframe believer.

read more | digg story

All 235 low-cost webcams supported ... thanks to this man

2007-12-07T08:08:00.001-08:00

A LONE HOBBYIST programmer sitting at his home in France is responsible for adding 235 USB webcams to the list of those supported by Linux.

read more | digg story

XO laptop, now in final testing, is amazing, a total kid magnet!

2007-10-11T07:16:00.021-07:00

The truth is, the XO laptop, now in final testing, is absolutely amazing, and in my limited tests, a total kid magnet. Both the hardware and the software exhibit breakthrough after breakthrough — some of them not available on any other laptop, for $400 or $4,000.

read more | digg story

Ubuntu Gutsy Makes Automatix Obsolete

2007-10-11T07:16:00.019-07:00

According to the NY Times today, "To watch a movie, the Linux user must install necessary codecs, or decoders. One way to do that is to first download a program called Automatix from www.getautomatix.com.” Apparently, he was not running the Gutsy beta.

read more | digg story

Cedega to be packaged with Mandriva - Linux gaming moonwalks forward.

2007-10-11T07:16:00.017-07:00

Cedega is the world’s only commercial gaming solution for the Linux operating system. Cedega allows users to run PC games on their Linux operating system seamlessly, transparently, and with equivalent performance and game play. The ability to play games today ranks as the second highest usage of a desktop, after surfing the web.

read more | digg story

Skype for Linux 1.4 Gold, The Panacea

2007-10-11T07:16:00.015-07:00

Today we have released a new production release of Skype for Linux 1.4 with a codename Panacea. Skype for Linux 1.4 delivers a superior voice call quality in comparison with previous production release of Skype for Linux 1.3.

read more | digg story

Why Analysts Today Don't Get Linux on the Desktop

2007-10-11T07:16:00.013-07:00

"It's not that Linux isn't ready for 'joe user,' it's not ready for OS X and Windows users who want to run their proprietary technologies and services [i.e. iTunes, MS Office, Photoshop] on Linux. And that's fine by most Linux users. [...] that type of user wants something completely different than what he's been getting under Windows and Mac OS X.

read more | digg story

Seven Companies Decide Open Source Is the Future of Cellphone Technology

2007-10-11T07:16:00.011-07:00

"The idea is to address the rise in consumer demand for Internet access and advanced applications on cellphones. The seven companies are ARM, Samsung, Texas Instruments, Mozilla, Marvell, MontaVista, and Movial. The new standard chosen: a Linux-based open source platform to be designed for next-generation mobile applications."

read more | digg story

Installing Ubuntu Or Fedora From A Windows Or Linux System With UNetbootin

2007-10-11T07:16:00.009-07:00

UNetbootin is a tool that allows you to install various Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, OpenSuSE, Debian, ArchLinux) from a Windows or a Linux desktop over the internet (i.e., you don't need to burn any CDs). In the end, you have a dual-boot system (Linux/Windows or Linux/Linux).

read more | digg story

Fedora 8 Test 3 (7.92) released

2007-10-11T07:16:00.007-07:00

Today the Fedora Project released Fedora 8 Test 3, which is scheduled to be the last test release before the general availability of Fedora 8 on the 8th of November 2007. Community help is greatly appreciated to help us stomp out as many remaining bugs as possible during the next few weeks!

read more | digg story

Ultramobile Linux PC is coming

2007-10-11T07:16:00.005-07:00

Mozilla, ARM, MontaVista, Texas Instruments and other are all ganging together to create a Linux ultramobile PC platform -- I guess they want to create a reference that other companies can build off of? Coming in 2009...

read more | digg story

We don't do open source because my lawyer says there's no one to sue

2007-10-11T07:16:00.003-07:00

IT managers say they like a lot of open source security tools and applications but corporate policies prevent them from using them."We don't do open source because my lawyer says there's no one to sue," says Phil Maier, vice president of information security at Inovant, Visa's technology deployment division. "The lawyers had the final say."

read more | digg story

Announcing the KDE 4.0 Release Event at the Google headquarters

2007-10-11T07:16:00.001-07:00

On January 17-19, the KDE community will present KDE 4.0 with a Release Event at the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. The purpose is to celebrate the anticipated release of KDE's new desktop environment and development platform. In addition, representatives from businesses, press and other Free Software groups will attend.

read more | digg story

How to keep your old PC alive

2007-10-11T07:13:00.017-07:00

Windows and most of the proprietary software requires more and more computer power as it's version increases. This results to new hardware all the time for us. But what about our old abandoned PCs? Should we throw them away?Of course not! Linux gives us many opportunities to use our old hardware and keep it alive while saving money.

read more | digg story

The Open-Source iPhone Alternative, OpenMoko for Consumers

2007-10-11T07:13:00.015-07:00

Choosing to purchase an iPhone will not only cost you a premium on initial price (though now substantially less than on release) but also a $20 per month price increase on any given plan. AT&T and Apple’s decision to not only lock the phone but also actively discourage users from unlocking has led me to: The OpenMoko

read more | digg story

Awn 0.2 released, the best dock on linux just got stable [Pics & Vids]

2007-10-11T07:13:00.013-07:00

Well there you have it, Awn 0.2 has been released!With over six months since the last release, you'd think we were working on something as complicated as Gnome, but I think there are enough new features to show where the time has gone ;-).

read more | digg story

Novell to SCO: Pay up

2007-10-11T07:13:00.011-07:00

Novell wants SCO's bankruptcy stay lifted so federal trial can proceedNovell fired its first legal salvo against the bankrupt SCO Group when it sought to lift the Lindon company's bankruptcy protections so it can recover millions of dollars in licensing fees it claims SCO wrongfully "hijacked."

read more | digg story

The Perfect Desktop - OpenSUSE 10.3 (GNOME)

2007-10-11T07:13:00.009-07:00

This guide shows how you can set up an OpenSUSE 10.3 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, incl. Skype, Flash Player, Adobe Reader, multimedia codecs, and Google Earth. The benefits are: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best is: all software comes free of charge.

read more | digg story

Boot Linux 200% faster with an open BIOS

2007-10-11T07:13:00.007-07:00

Linux can boot faster if a PC's BIOS is replaced by an open BIOS. Among other benefits, open BIOSes can save the time wasted by proprietary BIOS legacy support for MS-DOS and other unnecessary functions.

read more | digg story

Booting Linux from Flash

2007-10-11T07:13:00.005-07:00

An article to show you how to boot linux from flash. Most motherboard BIOSes have the ability to boot from a Flash device, and there's no other medium which is easily available in the sizes required. So the choice was obvious: copy the operating system there.

read more | digg story

Whats new in Linux 2.6.23

2007-10-11T07:13:00.003-07:00

Linux 2.6.23 is about to be released. Here is a readable article explaining whats news. "fairer CFS process scheduler, a simpler read-ahead mechanism, the lguest 'Linux-on-Linux' paravirtualization hypervisor, XEN guest support, KVM smp guest support, variable process argument length, make SLUB the default slab allocator..."

read more | digg story

Shuttleworth on Ballmer

2007-10-11T07:13:00.001-07:00

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has once more claimed that Linux and open source violates Microsoft's intellectual property and patents. Canonical's CEO Mark Shuttleworth thinks Ballmer has it all wrong.

read more | digg story

French blow for Microsoft's Office Open XML

2007-09-10T09:00:00.001-07:00

"France has voted against the adoption of Microsoft's document format Office Open XML as an international standard, while Australia has decided to abstain."linux

read more | digg story

ENVY

2007-09-10T08:59:00.005-07:00

"Envy" is an application for Ubuntu Linux and Debian written in Python and PyGTK which will: detect the model of your graphic card (ATI and Nvidia cards are supported) & install the correct drivers.

read more | digg story

Motorola RAZR2 V8 Runs Linux.

2007-09-10T08:59:00.003-07:00

Specs wise there is a WMP11 codec, a USB 2.0 interface, a touchscreen customized for music, 512MB of integrated storage and up to 2GB of (microSD?) user storage

read more | digg story

UbuntuHQ - Ubuntu news for you

2007-09-10T08:59:00.001-07:00

UbuntuHQ's goal is to collect all Ubuntu related articles in one place. Here you can find recent news issues, application reviews, howto's and other stories. Every article has a 'Full Story' link to the original website. There's also an easy browseable archive of howto's. You can vote articles up or down and add comments.

read more | digg story

X.Org 7.3 New Release Date

2007-09-10T08:58:00.021-07:00

X.Org 7.3 has been announced delayed by release manager Eric Anholt. It seams there are 7 bugs that needs to be fixed before release so we must wait until September 5th for new X.Org to come.

read more | digg story

The Linux Vault, "The Linux Wikipedia"

2007-09-10T08:58:00.019-07:00

The Linux Vault is a new wiki project founded with the mission of creating a centralized GNU/Linux information website. It has been just created, so we are begging everybody to take part of it and make it the place for writing guides, HOW-TO's, configurations, administration tips, tricks, tweaks or whatever else related to the GNU/Linux system.

read more | digg story

Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Developers Answer Questions

2007-09-10T08:58:00.017-07:00

The Nouveau developers of the open-source 3D NVIDIA driver have answered some reader questions at Phoronix. The questions pertain to the status of the driver, supported hardware, Pure Video playback support, and even SLI.

read more | digg story

NZ rejects Microsoft OOXML, Sweden confused

2007-09-10T08:58:00.015-07:00

"New Zealand last week voted to reject Microsoft OOXML as an international standard while the Swedish Standards Institute invalidated its own vote after discovering irregularities."

read more | digg story

Linux is inappropriate on XBOX Live

2007-09-10T08:58:00.013-07:00

The word Linux is inappropriate according to XBOX Live. That's the message I got when I included the word "LINUX" in my motto on XBOX Live

read more | digg story

Brazil votes against Open XML

2007-09-10T08:58:00.011-07:00

"The Brazilian organization in charge of technical standards has decided to vote "no, with conditions" to Microsoft Corp.'s Office Open XML document format during an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) meeting on Sunday."

read more | digg story

Driving Me Nuts - Things You Never Should Do in the Kernel

2007-09-10T08:58:00.009-07:00

This is the first in an occasional series of articles that attempts to explain why it generally is not a good idea to do these kinds of things. Then, in order to make up for the chastising, we break all of the rules and show you exactly how to do them anyway.

read more | digg story

Productivity enhancers for Thunderbird

2007-09-10T08:58:00.007-07:00

As with Firefox, you can extend Thunderbird's functionality by installing extensions. Mozilla's official extension repository has quite a few nifty tools on offer, and which ones you choose to install depends entirely on your needs. There are, however, a few extensions that you might find indispensable no matter how you use Thunderbird.

read more | digg story

Monitor network traffic with ntop

2007-09-10T08:58:00.005-07:00

Like the command-line tool with a similar name, ntop is a monitoring agent. Instead of monitoring system resource usage like top, ntop monitors network usage and provides some very sophisticated and informative data.

read more | digg story

A first look at KDE 4 beta 2

2007-09-10T08:58:00.003-07:00

As part of Ars Technica's continuing coverage of the KDE 4.0 development cycle, I took the opportunity today to sit down with a fresh build of KDE 4 from KDE's publicly accessible source tree.

read more | digg story

ISO Rejects OOXML as a Standard!

2007-09-10T08:58:00.001-07:00

Microsoft Corp. has failed in its attempt to have its Office Open XML document format fast-tracked straight to the status of an international standard by the International Organization for Standardization.

read more | digg story

Windows vs Linux: Architecture, part I

2007-09-10T08:51:00.001-07:00

Linux is not a free version of Windows. The two systems differ not only visually, in the graphical user interface the user sees, but also functionally, as is frequently discussed, and legally to boot, which is constantly emphasized by the Free software community. The differences between them are very fundamental.

read more | digg story

ATI/AMD's New Open-Source Strategy Explained

2007-09-10T08:50:00.023-07:00

AMD will be providing NDA specifications, an open-source library, and there is a new open-source graphics driver as a result. AMD will continue producing a closed-source proprietary driver; however, they are opening the source-code to a critical library with accompanying GPU specifications for X.Org developers.

read more | digg story

Breakthrough: ATI/AMD Driver Has Just Become up to 10 Times Faster!

2007-09-10T08:50:00.021-07:00

This is HUGE. From the article: "Whether you are using a Radeon X300 purchased a few years ago or the Radeon X1950PRO, the 8.41 driver is noticeably faster. How much faster? In many cases it is about 50% faster while in some configurations it may go as high as 90% or more. In fact, in some benchmarks the Mobility Radeon X300 was over 10x faster!"

read more | digg story

Linux.com :: Nouveau project hacks away at free Nvidia drivers

2007-09-10T08:50:00.019-07:00

Currently, GNU/Linux users with Nvidia graphics cards have two choices: Either use the proprietary drivers and violate their free software principles, or use the free nv driver and do without 3-D acceleration. The Nouveau project is working to overcome this dilemma by producing its own set of fully functional free Nvidia drivers.

read more | digg story

Librarian makes the switch to Ubuntu (and reads digg)?

2007-09-10T08:50:00.017-07:00

It seems that a library in a nearby town recently made the switch to Ubuntu. Because Microsoft ended support for Windows 98, the librarian decided to switch to Ubuntu because of its "ease of use" and cost-efficiency. The librarian mentions that she discovered Ubuntu through Digg.

read more | digg story

ATI Open-Sourcing Their Linux Driver?

2007-09-10T08:50:00.015-07:00

"In the coming months AMD also plans to accelerate efforts to address the needs of the open source community as well." Does that mean they are opening up the source code to their Linux driver?

read more | digg story

Linux iptables Will Fix Comcast's BitTorrent Connection Killing

2007-09-10T08:50:00.013-07:00

If you are tired of Sandvine screwing with your BitTorrent and a user of GNU/Linux, then this is for you. I will tell you how to take your bandwidth back. If you are using a Red Hat Linux derivative, such as Fedora Core or CentOS, then you will want to edit /etc/sysconfig/iptables.

read more | digg story

Ubuntero: Ubuntu Social Network (Beta)

2007-09-10T08:50:00.011-07:00

Ubuntero.com is a one-of-a-kind social network designed by and for Ubuntu users, developers, and evangelists. Registration is finally open! Sign up today, shoot invites to your friends and family, spread the word!

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OOXML, the past. ODF, the future.

2007-09-10T08:50:00.009-07:00

There have been many lessons learned in the last few months. Let’s use that knowledge to improve how we make standards. Let’s innovate. Let’s write some great new code. Let’s give our users a superb choice of applications that can all share the same information, no matter who writes the software.

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Sadly, somethings are better left unsaid in a bug report ....

2007-09-10T08:50:00.007-07:00

Scroll through the top and to the bottom, towards the bottom of the bug report you may find the most enjoyment... Or maybe not.In the end, it's a small chuckle at what not to include in your bug reports.P.S. if you had a Category for stupidity, I would put it in that.

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X.org releases version 7.3, gets hotplugging support

2007-09-10T08:50:00.005-07:00

Today marked the mildly delayed new release of X.org version 7.3, which corresponds to server version 1.4. The so-called killer feature of this version of X is the new support for hotplugging of input devices (such as keyboard, mice, touchscreens) as well as output devices (monitors, projectors, and so forth).

read more | digg story

French education ministry completes migration to Red Hat Linux

2007-09-10T08:50:00.003-07:00

France’s ministry for education has migrated 2,500 servers across its 30 local education authorities to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The ministry said that in order to avoid the growing costs associated with proprietary licenses and forced upgrade cycles it was migrating to open standards-based software and hardware solutions.

read more | digg story

Linux Command Interface 101

2007-09-10T08:50:00.001-07:00

Bit-tech.net takes a long hard look at the complex world of the Linux CLI and creates an easy-to-read guide for Linux pros and n00bs alike. What commands are there? How do you set up networks in the CLI? What drivers are needed for WiFi cards? These and many more questions answered within!

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Linux Drivers Just Got Better!

2007-09-10T08:43:00.003-07:00

Printer Manufacturer Brother is now supporting Linux, and besides providing the drives on an RPM or Debian package, they also provide step by step instructions on how to get them working. It took me about 45 minutes to get a multi-function unit printing AND scanning over the network using openSUSE 10.2

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KDE 4.0 Beta 2 released

2007-09-10T08:43:00.001-07:00

The KDE Community proudly presents the second Beta release for KDE 4.0. This release marks the beginning of the feature freeze and the stabilization of the current codebase. Simultaneously the KOffice developers have released their third Alpha release, marking significant improvements in this innovative office suite. Both KDE and KOffice have benef

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BBC iPlayer - UK Government respond to online petition

2007-09-10T08:42:00.023-07:00

The UK Government have released a response to the online petition to prevent the BBC making the iPlayer Windows only. The government state that the "BBC Trust made it a condition of approval for the BBC's on-demand services that the iPlayer is available to users of a range of operating systems" and they will "measure the BBC's progress on this"

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Mark Shuttleworth Talks On ATI's New Linux Drivers

2007-09-10T08:42:00.021-07:00

Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth talks about the new ATI fglrx Linux driver and AMD's new open-source work. He is pleased by AMD moves and leadership. The new fglrx driver will be available as an update in Gutsy Gibbon but will be integrated with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.

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Libregamewiki - The Free Software Game Wiki

2007-09-10T08:42:00.019-07:00

Libregamewiki is the Wikipedia for free/open source games. No freeware. No crippleware. Just good old free as in speech games.

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Enable Sudo insults for some laughs!

2007-09-10T08:42:00.017-07:00

"I recently found a fun feature available within the sudo program that will insult you when you do the wrong thing such as enter your password incorrectly. I’ll tell you how you can activate the feature for a few laughs and also give a few examples of what insults you might get."

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Bradley Kuhn and Max Spevak to speak at Ohio Linux Fest

2007-09-10T08:42:00.015-07:00

After a rigorous selection process, the schedule for Ohio LinuxFest 2007 has been posted containing a full day of exciting and informative talks. The conference will feature Jon 'maddog' Hall, Mepis founder Warren Woodford, Puppet creator Luke Kanies, Neuros' Joe Born, PostgreSQL contributor Robert Treat, and many others.

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Is it time to standardize ISO?

2007-09-10T08:42:00.013-07:00

In light of the recent events relating to the standardization process of EOOXML, it seems appropriate to look into possible standardization of the process itself.

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Latest VirtualBox 1.5 runs Windows apps directly on your Linux desktop

2007-09-10T08:42:00.011-07:00

The new VirtualBox brings seamless virtualization to Linux. This puts Linux on par with the Mac - users can run their preferred native desktop but still launch the odd Windows-only program when they need to. The VirtualBox site doesn’t have much detail on the new feature, so here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly of VirtualBox 1.5.

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Lenovo Interested in Linux, Opens Poll for Distro

2007-09-10T08:42:00.009-07:00

Lenovo is clearing interested in distributing Linux. Which distro? You vote.That we’re spending way too much time on the enterprise market and not enough on the enthusiast market. Enterprises have been, and will continue to be, slow to adopt Linux for some of the reasons I outlined, b............

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Microsoft starts a "Get the Facts" campaign...against itself

2007-09-10T08:42:00.007-07:00

Imagine the kind of savings you could get if you just stopped using Windows altogether! Few to no security issues. Less administration. Etc.

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Fix a Frozen System with the Magic SysRq Keys

2007-09-10T08:42:00.005-07:00

You finally got your Linux environment to crash. Ctrl+Alt+Backspace does nothing, nor do the F-keys. So you reach for the power button. STOP! Using the power button to reboot usually causes more problems than it solves. The Linux kernel includes a secret method of restarting your PC should it ever stop doing it’s job.

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Ubuntu Linux Training Software that runs on Windows and Mac only

2007-09-10T08:42:00.003-07:00

You have got to appreciate the irony

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Oxygen and Plasma a power combination for KDE4.0

2007-09-10T08:42:00.001-07:00

Work done so far on the extensions for the plasma clock

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Optimize your battery settings in Energy Saver preferences

2007-08-25T02:37:00.000-07:00

From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences.
From the View menu, choose Energy Saver.
Click Show Details.
Choose Battery or Battery Power from the "Settings for" pop-up menu.
Choose Longest or Better Laptop Battery Life from the Optimize Energy Settings pop-up menu.

These settings will put the hard disk to sleep whenever possible and reduce the computer's microprocessor performance in order to maximize its battery life. If you are using processor-intensive applications, you may wish to change these settings so the microprocessor performance is no longer reduced.

Turn off unused features and technologies.

Just as you would turn off the lights in an unoccupied room, turning off unused features and technologies can help maximize your laptop notebook battery life, too. Here are a few suggestions:
Eject CDs and DVDs you're no longer using. Every so often, the optical drive spins up to read CDs or DVDs. This consumes a small amount of power.
Disconnect peripherals when you're not using them. Connected peripherals, such as printers and digital cameras, can draw power from your battery even when you're not using them.

If you're not in a location where you need to use AirPort or Bluetooth, you can turn them off to save power.

To turn off AirPort:
From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences.
From the View menu, choose Network.
From the Show selection, choose Network Port Configuration.
Uncheck Airport from the list.
Click Apply Now.

To turn off Bluetooth in Mac OS X 10.2 or later:
From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences.
From the View menu, choose Bluetooth.
Click the Settings tab.
Click Turn Bluetooth Off.

Set your screen brightness to the lowest comfortable level

Press the F1 (dimmer) and F2 (brighter) keys to dim the screen until the brightness is as low as possible and the screen is still comfortable to look at.

So You Want to Be a Linux Developer?

2007-08-06T09:32:00.035-07:00

Are you driving progress forward? Are you presenting papers educating your peers at open source events? Can you write papers explaining what you do and how to use your code? Do you participate in a wide variety of activities that enhance open source? Those things are all important to consider and something the Linux Foundation looks at closely,

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Ubuntu in a Marvel Comic (Picture)

2007-08-06T09:32:00.033-07:00

Ubuntu is featured in issue #4 of the Marvel Comic Mighty Avengers.You can see the boot manager GRUB and the list of Kernels to choose from, along with a movie-style “Access Denied” message.

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Ubuntu Easter Eggs!

2007-08-06T09:32:00.031-07:00

Now as we all know, Linux is fun to use. It’s also true that the programmers like to have a little fun of their own. While some of these are Ubuntu specific, some of them are also true for any distribution. Let’s explore, shall we?

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Why (almost) everyone should try Ubuntu

2007-08-06T09:32:00.029-07:00

If you've just started using Linux in the last year or two, chances are you're running Ubuntu. And if you're sitting on the fence contemplating trying Linux for the first time, you should definitely be considering Ubuntu. Here's why.

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Ubuntu laptop from Dell exactly $1,337

2007-08-06T09:32:00.027-07:00

This picture has NOT been photoshopped or gimped or anything else like that, build it yourself if you don't believe me... You can see the main sections on the screenshot, here's the rest;1Yr Ltd Warranty and Mail-In ServiceAdd CompleteCare Accidental Damage Service to 1Yr Lim Warranty

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Ubuntu creator claims more Linux-based Dells to emerge

2007-08-06T09:32:00.025-07:00

It's not like this one was too difficult to see coming, but it sounds like Dell just may have a few more machines ready to take the Linux dip in the not-too-distant future.

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Wine 0.9.42 Released

2007-08-06T09:32:00.023-07:00

What's new in this release: - Support for activation contexts and side-by-side assemblies. - Many more gdiplus functions. - More messaging support in crypt32.dll. - Many HTTP protocol handling fixes. - Lots of bug fixes.

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UbuntuForums.org: New Security Sticky -- Great Security Primer

2007-08-06T09:32:00.021-07:00

Over the last week or two, UbuntuForums staff members bodhi.zazen, me and others have been contributing towards a comprehensive security primer. We are proud to finally announce its public release, as a sticky in the Security subsection of UbuntuForums. I hope it will be a useful resource for everyone for months and maybe even years to come.

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Debunking Linux and its Current Relationship with Gaming - 17 Awesome Games

2007-08-06T09:32:00.019-07:00

I have a list here of 17 games that I think every Linux user should give a shot to prove that it is quite a very adept gaming platform. I restricted my self to games that do not run on WINE, can be open or closed source, and of course, run on Linux.

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What is the True Cost of Windows?

2007-08-06T09:32:00.017-07:00

Another memorable tale of the battle of Linux vs Windows and why switching to Linux can save you stress on the pocketbook and your sanity.

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GIMPs major UI revamp

2007-08-06T09:32:00.015-07:00

Despite all the noise made about improving the cross-platform image editing tool, people seem to have missed that GIMP's own developers are planning on UI improvements.

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OpenSUSE Home Page Update (Pretty)

2007-08-06T09:32:00.013-07:00

Open Suses' home page has been updated and added a new package building area for building packages for various Linux distributions.

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Not the Best of Ways to Set Up Your Web Server [PIC]

2007-08-06T09:32:00.011-07:00

The sign in this picture is priceless.

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Build WINE on OS X, and it WORKS!!!

2007-08-06T09:32:00.009-07:00

It takes a bit of fandangling, but i'll be darned if i'm not playing SkiFree right now!!! The guide is vague on a few steps, but if you know your way around Unix/Linux on a moderate level of understanding, it can easily be done!!

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Dissecting The ATI Linux Driver

2007-08-06T09:32:00.007-07:00

"The fglrx 8.40 series will likely repeat the 8.20 series when it comes to the number of features. This, of course, aligns with all of the information we have been reporting for months now that later this year should be the most interesting time yet for the ATI/AMD Linux driver as there should be an onslaught of new things to come."

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The inadvertent Linux user

2007-08-06T09:32:00.005-07:00

Embedded Linux is on the rise, and may be found anywhere from the vehicle management system in your car to the smartphone in your shirt pocket. Montavista Linux, for instance, powers not only smartphones from Motorola, NEC and Panasonic, but Sony TV and media devices, Linksys wireless routers and Yamaha musical instrument systems.

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Hotmail filtering Linux mailers:Emails marked as phishing scam

2007-08-06T09:32:00.003-07:00

How bad can this get.

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Linux Users Rejoice! -- Dell pushes for better Linux drivers

2007-08-06T09:32:00.001-07:00

Wireless, audio/video codecs and ATI graphics cards on the list. Dell wants to see better software drivers for Linux so that the firm can ship more notebooks and desktops running the operating system, according to one of its software engineers.

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Install Ubuntu from Windows in 3 Steps without Using a CD

2007-08-06T09:29:00.025-07:00

VERY FAST. it will download the appropriate version and all you have to do is select the size of the partition..It wont effect windows at all.. because its on a virtual drive.. and its completely uninstalable..

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Ubuntu: Brute Force Attacks

2007-08-06T09:29:00.023-07:00

How to Block Brute Force Attacks with only 2 iptables rules. Without it your server is a sitting duck waiting for a bot to guess the right combination and hit the jackpot.

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