Red Hat To Showcase Open Source Enterprise Solutions At GITEX 2007

Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that it will be attending the 27th Gulf Information Technology Exhibition (GITEX). At the event, Red Hat will present its latest Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 operating system and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform to its Middle Eastern partners and to potential customers.

At GITEX, Red Hat will present a number of solutions that will enable customers to extract maximum value from their IT infrastructure. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, the company's new operating system, enables customers to greatly reduce the cost and complexity of purchasing, integrating and managing separate virtualization, storage management and high availability software. The JBoss Enterprise Application Platform offers an open, low-cost, high-value migration foundation for customers to modernize legacy application infrastructures to service-oriented architectures (SOA).
As part of the company’s continued business development and continued investment in the Middle East, Red Hat is attending GITEX for the second time to support its partner activities in the region. Red Hat has a number of partnerships with Middle Eastern distributors including Linux Plus, Daleelteq and OpenNET, that will also be present at Red Hat's GITEX booth.
"GITEX is the best platform in the region for us to present and demonstrate the benefits of the combined Red Hat and JBoss solutions to our Middle Eastern partners," said Francois Lucatelli, channel manager for the Middle East at Red Hat. “Regional Advanced Partners play a vital role in our global development and long-term business strategy and we are pleased to support them with joint activities at the show."
The GITEX exhibition takes place 8 – 12 September 2007 in the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre. The Red Hat booth will be located in Hall 6, stand A6-11.
For more information on GITEX, please visit www.gitex.com . For more information about Red Hat, please visit www.europe.redhat.com .
About Red Hat, Inc.
Red Hat, the world's leading open source solutions provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with over 50 satellite offices spanning the globe. CIOs have ranked Red Hat first for value in Enterprise Software for three consecutive years in the CIO Insight Magazine Vendor Value study. Red Hat provides high-quality, low-cost technology with its operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with applications, management and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions, including the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks related to the integration of acquisitions; the ability of the Company to effectively compete; the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to third party intellectual property; risks related to data and information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and control over, the Company's growth and international operations; adverse results in litigation; the dependence on key personnel as well as other factors contained in our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission's website at http://www.sec.gov), including those found therein under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations". In addition, the forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of the press release.
Source :http://www.albawaba.com

Xandros Acquires Linux Messaging Specialist Scalix

Linux distributor Xandros said it has acquired Scalix, a developer of e-mail and calendaring systems based on open source software.

Xandros said New York City-based Scalix will operate independently, as a wholly owned Xandros subsidiary. Financial terms of the deal -- disclosed Thursday -- were not announced.

Among other things, Scalix offers a Linux-based messaging system that it positions as an open source alternative to Microsoft's Exchange server. Customers include Specsavers Optical of the U.K., Sweden's Concordia Bus, and the city of Weymouth, Mass.

Xandros said the deal will not affect Scalix's existing support relationships with rival Linux operating system distributors, including Red Hat and Novell.

Xandros officials also said they do not plan to discontinue any of Scalix's offerings. "The Scalix product will continue to be developed on all platform families supported by Scalix today," said Xandros CEO Andreas Typaldos, in a statement.

Scalix officials said the deal should result in more new products for customers of both companies. "The expanded Xandros-Scalix engineering and support team will provide a truly integrated messaging and calendaring 'appliance-style' product," said Scalix CEO Glenn Winokur, in a statement.

Despite its acquisition of a developer of an Exchange alternative, Xandros also is working closely with Microsoft.

Xandros and Microsoft in June agreed to a broad set of joint technology and marketing initiatives. Among other things, the companies plan to develop software that will link Xandros' System Management tools with Microsoft's System Center -- with an eye to giving IT departments an easier way to manage heterogeneous environments.

Xandros also plans to license a set of Microsoft server communication protocols in order to make its Linux offerings more Windows-friendly.

Under the most controversial aspect of the deal, Microsoft will extend "patent covenants" to Xandros' Linux customers, waving its right to sue them for using what the company claims is Microsoft technology embedded in Linux.
Source : http://www.informationweek.com

Ubuntu Is Enterprise-Friendly

The first Ubuntu Live conference just kicked off here in Portland, Oregon with a keynote from Canonical founder and Mark Shuttleworth. His talk centered around how the free operating system his company funds and supports is capable of bringing the same values it brings to the desktop -- ease of use, performance and compatibility -- to the server.

Over the last two or three years, Ubuntu's popularity has exploded. Mark says Ubuntu is installed on between 6-12 million machines in over 200 countries (The exact number of installations is hard to determine since Ubuntu isn't sold, it's is given away and passed along between users). So now that the desktop has been conquered, Shuttleworth says the next key target is the enterprise market.

Linux is already driving into the enterprise environment through thin clients and specialized, dedicated systems. To become a stronger enterprise software player overall, Mark says Ubuntu needs to maintain its ability to perform well as a virtual machine, (the current Ubuntu release, Feisty Fawn, is already one of the best-performing Linux distros in VMWare Workstation 6, he says) as well as serve as a platform for better IT systems management and monitoring tools. To that end, Cononical is putting more resources behind Landscape, a web-based system management client for small to medium businesses. Mark announced that Landscape is available today. It's free for subscribers of Canonical's support services.

Shuttleworth concluded his keynote with "a call for discussion" in the Linux community. Mark thinks it would be much easier for Linux to compete in the enterprise market if all of the major distributions would set -- and stick to -- predictable release schedules. He says this would ease collaboration among kernel developers and afford better stability and support for software developers working on the platform. The idea for this strategy grew from discussions at the recent Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit.
Source :http://blog.wired.com

Linux Kernel 2.6.23 Gains Two New Virtualization Solutions

It was back in December of last year that I talked about the virtualization solution called Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) being added into Linux kernel 2.6.20. The Linux 2.6.21 kernel then improved on the support for paravirtualization with the full featured addition of Virtual Machine Interface (VMI).

Now, if that weren't enough, the upcoming 2.6.23 kernel release will feature two new virtualization frameworks. The 2.6.23 kernel will be merging in support for both Xen (the more popular of the two) and lguest.

Xen is described as a popular virtual machine monitor (VMM) for x86-compatible computers that can securely execute multiple virtual machines, each running its own OS, on a single physical system with close-to-native performance. The project was originally started as a research project at the University of Cambridge, and today is backed by commercial support from XenSource.

Simon Crosby, CTO of XenSource, said on his blog that "it has been a tremendous, collaborative effort to get the patches upstream by all of the kernel community. The effort for XenSource has been led by Jeremy Fitzhardinge, who has tirelessly tracked the developing kernel versions, while adding the Xen guest support for SMP guests, with fast paravirtualized block and network I/O. Next up is 64 bit support, according to Jeremy, who is also working on Dom0 support." Simon continued to say that this work will allow future Linux distro kernels to "automatically inherit Xen support, without needing to pull the Xen paravirtualization patches into their kernel as a separate effort."

And lguest is described as "a simple hypervisor for Linux on Linux. Unlike kvm it doesn't need VT/SVM hardware. Unlike Xen it's simply 'modprobe and go'. Unlike both, it's 5000 lines and self-contained." The lguest patches are written and maintained by Rusty Russell who says, "Lguest is designed to be a minimal hypervisor for the Linux kernel, for Linux developers and users to experiment with virtualization with the minimum of complexity. Nonetheless, it should have sufficient features to make it useful for specific tasks, and, of course, you are encouraged to fork and enhance it."
Source :http://weblog.infoworld.com

Windows developers begin slow defection to Linux

Two years ago, the number of developers writing applications for the Microsoft Windows platform fell, while the opposite was true for Linux -- this has now become a trend.

Instead of the Web stealing away Windows Users, as people have predicted for years, it's Linux and handheld devices.

According to analysts at the Evans Data Corporation research house, 64.8 percent of North American developers are writing software for Windows, down from 74 percent only a year ago.

The decline in popularity of the world's most prevalent operating systems appears to coincide with the rise of Linux, as the number of developers targeting the open-source environment has gone up by three percentage points from 8.8 percent to 11.8 percent in the same year. The research group expects the number to drop another 2 percent in the coming year.

John Andrews, president of Evans Data, said this week that a shift away from Windows began about two years ago. "The data shows that this migration is now accelerating. Linux has benefited, but we also see corresponding growth in niche operating systems for non-traditional client devices," he said, adding that the development landscape was changing.

The popular notion among tech industry followers is that a more capable Web browser, able to run sophisticated applications either online or offline, will make the desktop operating system less important, if not irrelevant.

Many companies -- even Microsoft -- are taking up the idea of building a "Web, or cloud, operating system" for which developers can write online.

Even with more online applications, though, the Evans Data study notes that Windows desktop application development remains steady.

The study also predicted that, although Javascript is by far the most widely used scripting language among North American developers, Ruby would see a 50 percent increase in popularity over the next year.

In other findings, it seems that a third of developers are currently working with virtualisation, with more than 40 percent set to join them in the next year.
Source :http://www.zdnet.com.au

Google's Desktop Search For Linux Is A Boon For Data Packrats

You know what the worst thing is about having incredibly cheap storage technology? You find endless excuses to be a digital packrat. I didn't need to have an excuse before; I've just saved everything anyway, compulsively. What I've always needed is some way to plow through it all -- a magnet for the needles in my haystack -- and now Google has once again come to the rescue with a version of their Desktop Search product for Linux.

I've been wildly curious about the Linux edition of Google Desktop Search for a lot of reasons. After setting up not just one but several different Linux machines (Ubuntu 7.04 here, Kubuntu 7.04 there, Damn Small Linux over yonder), I've been looking for ways to reproduce certain Windows behaviors. One was something I got badly spoiled on in Windows Vista -- the indexed search system -- and which I wanted to also have available on my Linux boxes. There are indexed search systems for Linux already available -- Beagle's the one I've had the most exposure to -- and I wanted to see how Google Desktop Search (GDS) stacked up against them and the Windows / Mac versions. The answer, from what I can tell so far: It stacks up pretty well.

First, the setup. When you visit http://desktop.google.com/linux, you'll see a download link that leads you to two possibilities: an .rpm package for Red Hat / Fedora / Suse / Mandriva users, or a .deb package for Debian / Ubuntu folks. It's also possible to install Desktop Search from a repository: graphical installers for Ubuntu, Debian and openSUSE are all supported, along with command-line installation for APT, YUM, urpmi, YaST2, and RPM. Finally, if you want to get the source code to the project itself, Google states you can browse the Subversion repository for the project, although when I tried to do that I found nothing but empty directories (I suspect that's because I'm not a project member).

After I snagged the .deb installer package and saved it to my desktop, getting it installed was equally painless; I just ran the package manager, and then logged out and back in again. That part's required to allow the desktop components to load up. Again, as with Windows, a Google Desktop Search icon sits in the system tray (which in Ubuntu is at the top by default); you can double-click it to launch a search interface in a web browser or tap the Ctrl key twice to bring up a quick search box.

As with the other versions of Google Desktop Search, you access the vast majority of the program's settings through a Web browser, and you can also run searches from there. There's a lot of other functions that I haven't even gotten my feet wet with yet -- the file versioning, the integration with Gmail, and how the indexer handles things like metadata as well as file contents -- but I'll dig into those in the weeks to come. I'm dying to see how this thing copes with my 100GB of (legit) music files.
Source :http://www.informationweek.com

Handheld maker’s timeframe for Linux is slow.

Palm’s Linux mobile phone won’t make its debut until 2008, and analysts on Tuesday agreed that the device maker’s slowness to launch is troubling.



“Products based on the new Linux-based platforms that we’re working on, that won’t be until sometime next year,” Palm CEO Ed Colligan said in a conference call on the company’s quarterly results last week.

Industries


Palm’s Linux Wait

Handheld maker’s timeframe for Linux is slow.
July 3, 2007

By Eydie Cubarrubia



Palm’s Linux mobile phone won’t make its debut until 2008, and analysts on Tuesday agreed that the device maker’s slowness to launch is troubling.



“Products based on the new Linux-based platforms that we’re working on, that won’t be until sometime next year,” Palm CEO Ed Colligan said in a conference call on the company’s quarterly results last week.



That’s troubling, since new products such as Linux phones are part of Palm’s strategy to deal with competition such as that from Apple’s new iPhone and Research In Motion’s ubiquitous Blackberry. The company reported revenue of $401 million for the quarter that ended in May, below Wall Street’s consensus estimate of $407 million—and further disappointed investors by offering revenue guidance of $355-$365 million for the next quarter, below the $393 consensus, and per share earnings guidance of $0.07 to $0.09, below the $0.14 consensus.

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Critics have said Palm’s own Garnet OS has failed to keep pace with mobile multimedia developments, and a low-cost Linux handset could help turn its fortunes.



“We know that Palm is working on several projects in its labs, and these could be potential hits,” Deutsche Bank analyst Jonathan Goldberg said in a research note summary Tuesday. “However … think the company lacks the sense of urgency they need in current market conditions.”



Other analyst agreed. “Palm’s recovery [is] increasingly dependent on its ‘Hail Mary play,’ depending on pending products—Foleo, Linux Treos—to drive its turnaround,” RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky said in a report after Palm’s earnings call.



The term “Foleo” refers to a screen-and-keyboard device for use with a smart phone. It’s Palm’s first product built on the Linux operating system, released in late May (see Palm Debuts Linux “Companion”). The so-called mobile companion came out a month after Palm executives said the company was developing a new platform based on the Linux operating system (see Is Linux Palm’s Savior?).



Linux could help Palm because the system could run on phones that cost just $60 to $70 to manufacture (see Linux Jumps Into Mobiles). Besides saving costs, Linux can help Palm create phones that support increasingly richer cellular services and multimedia capabilities. For example, it makes it possible for a single chip to take care of all tasks on a smart phone. “The older technologies don’t scale well,” said Jim Ready, chief technology officer of mobile Linux company MontaVista (see Linux ‘Mobilizing’ Against Windows).



Palm has already thrown its lot in with Microsoft. It started putting out Windows Mobile phones in 2006 in order to woo business users by giving them access to more applications (see Treo Features Microsoft OS). Mr. Colligan said Windows makes up “a little bit less than 50 percent” of all its smart phones.


But he emphasized Palm’s commitment to new products. While talking about the Linux-based Foleo, the CEO said, “Whenever you define and develop new categories, it takes some time to get those things off the ground.”

Critics have said Palm’s own Garnet OS has failed to keep pace with mobile multimedia developments, and a low-cost Linux handset could help turn its fortunes.



“We know that Palm is working on several projects in its labs, and these could be potential hits,” Deutsche Bank analyst Jonathan Goldberg said in a research note summary Tuesday. “However … think the company lacks the sense of urgency they need in current market conditions.”



Other analyst agreed. “Palm’s recovery [is] increasingly dependent on its ‘Hail Mary play,’ depending on pending products—Foleo, Linux Treos—to drive its turnaround,” RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky said in a report after Palm’s earnings call.



The term “Foleo” refers to a screen-and-keyboard device for use with a smart phone. It’s Palm’s first product built on the Linux operating system, released in late May (see Palm Debuts Linux “Companion”). The so-called mobile companion came out a month after Palm executives said the company was developing a new platform based on the Linux operating system (see Is Linux Palm’s Savior?).



Linux could help Palm because the system could run on phones that cost just $60 to $70 to manufacture (see Linux Jumps Into Mobiles). Besides saving costs, Linux can help Palm create phones that support increasingly richer cellular services and multimedia capabilities. For example, it makes it possible for a single chip to take care of all tasks on a smart phone. “The older technologies don’t scale well,” said Jim Ready, chief technology officer of mobile Linux company MontaVista (see Linux ‘Mobilizing’ Against Windows).



Palm has already thrown its lot in with Microsoft. It started putting out Windows Mobile phones in 2006 in order to woo business users by giving them access to more applications (see Treo Features Microsoft OS). Mr. Colligan said Windows makes up “a little bit less than 50 percent” of all its smart phones.


But he emphasized Palm’s commitment to new products. While talking about the Linux-based Foleo, the CEO said, “Whenever you define and develop new categories, it takes some time to get those things off the ground.”
Source :http://www.redherring.com/