All about Linux

Good OS Unveils Linux-Based Cloud Browser

2008-12-03T16:38:00.000-08:00

Good OS, the company that provides the operating system for Wal-Mart's low-cost Linux PCs, has introduced a new offering that allows users to access desktop and cloud-based apps from within a Web browser.

Good OS's Cloud system integrates a compressed version of the Linux operating system with the company's homegrown Web browser. From within the browser, users can launch desktop applications such as spreadsheets or games, or access lighter Web services -- like Google Apps or Yahoo mail.
The system also features a tab that will launch Microsoft's Windows XP operating system.

At the Netbook World Summit in Paris this week, Good OS showed off Cloud riding on its new Gigabyte Touch-Screen Netbook. "With Cloud, Gigabyte Netbooks will power on to the Internet in seconds while still supporting killer applications together with Windows XP," said a company spokesman.

Though new on the scene, Good OS captured some buzz earlier this year when its Ubuntu-based operating system debuted aboard a sub-$200 Everex brand PC sold through discount retailer Wal-Mart.

The most current version, the Everex TC2512 gPC, features a 1.5-GHz Via C7-D processor. There's no monitor included, but buyers get stereo speakers and a DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive. The gPC also comes with the free OpenOffice.org productivity suite.

The emergence of low-cost, Linux-based systems is having an impact on sales of Microsoft Windows.

Revenue from Microsoft's Client division, which derives mostly from Vista now that Windows XP has been formally retired, edged up just 2%, year over year, to $4.21 billion in Microsoft's fiscal first quarter, despite the fact that the overall PC market grew 10% to 12% during the same period.

Redmond's problem: An increasing number of computer buyers, mostly in high-growth, price-sensitive emerging markets, are realizing that they can get by with so-called netbooks for most of their online requirements. It's a fact that's leaving Windows Vista out in the cold in some of the world's fastest growing tech markets.

Source :

NEC shows off Linux mobile phones

2008-02-12T16:30:00.000-08:00

NEC has thrown its weight behind mobile Linux with the introduction of four handsets based on the LiMo specification.

LiMo is a the result of a push towards a shared, hardware-independent mobile phone operating system by several handset manufacturers including Motorola, LG Electronics and Panasonic.

NEC describes its handsets as the world's first LiMo-compliant mobile phones, even though several of its partners in the LiMo Foundation have already released details of compatible handsets, including Motorola and Panasonic.

"The breadth of the initial generation of LiMo handsets consolidates LiMo's role as the unifying force within mobile Linux and highlights the strong momentum established in the 12 months since LiMo was launched," said Morgan Gillis, executive director of the LiMo Foundation.

Among NEC's new phones is the N905i, a 3G/GSM phone with HSDPA for data connectivity, mobile TV reception, GPS and support for wireless payment services.

Source :http://www.vnunet.com

Azingo introduces new mobile Linux platform

2008-01-30T15:20:00.000-08:00

Another mobile Linux platform, this time from Azingo, hit the market on Wednesday, joining an increasingly crowded market of Linux phone software.

Formerly called Celunite, Azingo aims to differentiate itself from the crowd by offering phone makers an entire package, including kernel, middleware, applications, development tools, and integration services.

"Mobile Linux has failed because there's a big integration problem," said Michael Mclaughlin, marketing director at Azingo. "People come with piece parts."

For example, companies such as MontaVista and Wind River make mobile Linux kernels, while others such as Trolltech, purchased by Nokia just this week, make application development environments. Phone makers typically must buy the different components, then struggle to integrate them. That puts mobile Linux at a disadvantage against some other mobile platforms, such as Windows Mobile, which comes complete, he said.

Azingo is offering a complete suite of mobile Linux software but will also help customers integrate different pieces if they choose components from different vendors, said Mclaughlin.

The applications Azingo offers as part of the platform include Web widgets that can deliver information such as weather and traffic, entertainment applications such as video and audio players, and productivity software such as e-mail.

Azingo hasn't announced any deals with handset makers planning to use its software. Mclaughlin said the company has been working with some of the well-known vendors and expects handsets running its software to ship in the fourth quarter.

The company isn't the only one offering the market a complete suite of mobile Linux software. A La Mobile has a similar approach, using some of its own software and integrating components from other vendors, including Trolltech. GUPP Technologies, a Malaysian company, announced in 2006 that it would use A La Mobile's platform.

Azingo will also compete against Android, Google's high-profile Linux-based mobile phone operating platform, which includes an operating system, middleware, and applications. Android phones are expected to become available in the second half of this year.

Source : http://www.infoworld.com

IBM adds Linux apps support to Unix servers

2008-01-29T16:32:00.000-08:00

IBM has added a new capability to its virtualization platform that will allow Linux applications to run on IBM's Unix servers, the company announced Tuesday.

The "Lx86" capability, to be included in IBM's PowerVM virtualization software, allows x86-based Linux applications to run on IBM's System p and Power-based Unix systems without modification, according to IBM. The systems will automatically detect and run Linux-based binaries designed for x86 environments.

"Lx86 is a way to say, 'Whatever you have, it can run," said Scott Handy, vice president of marketing and strategy for IBM Power Systems.

The capability will simplify the consolidation of Unix and Linux server sprawls, Handy said. Running Linux applications in the Unix environment can reduce the cost of server consolidation and energy consumption and increase asset utilization, he argued.

Lx86 will be a useful tool for people looking to migrate from Linux systems to other IBM systems, IBM said. The company offers both Unix and Linux operating systems on its servers.

The capability will be included in all editions of IBM's PowerVM platform, which it also renamed Tuesday from the Advanced Power Virtualization platform.

The software now includes an Express edition targeted at SMBs. It allows customers to create up to three partitions on a server and control the use of processor cycles to get optimal performance. The Express edition will be shipped to customers soon, priced at $40 per core. PowerVM is also available in Standard and Enterprise editions.

IBM also announced that it will update its i5/OS operating system with support for Power6 processors. The update, called V6R1, includes improved performance, storage and security features, according to IBM.

The update supports IBM's Power6 EnergyScale technology for controlling energy use. The company also updated its Rational software tool set for the i5/OS, Handy said.

The i5/OS V6R1, for IBM's System i servers, will ship in March. It will also work with the company's new BladeCenter H server chassis, Handy said.
Source :http://www.infoworld.com

Nokia plays strong Linux hand withTrolltech buy

2008-01-29T16:25:00.000-08:00

Analysis Nokia may be strengthening its ties with major internet brands to boost its Ovi web services portal, but for a company of this scale, there must also be an agenda to set its own standards in the evolving mobile internet market on which it has staked its future. The Finnish giant's latest software acquisition, of Norwegian Linux player Trolltech, gives it a strong vehicle to launch its own bid to dominate mobile open source standards, an area where Google and Intel have already made aggressive moves. This sees the handset giant making its strongest commitment yet to Linux in its Series 60 smartphone market, and setting Trolltech's Qt platform against other would-be dominant mobile web systems like Google Android and Intel Mobilin.

Nokia is given to acquiring small, clever companies - especially as it builds up its software and web services capabilities - rather than going for the high profile, difficult merger, and Trolltech is no exception. The smaller company is mainly known for its Linux-based Qt (Qtopia) user interface and mobile software development framework, which has recently become closely associated with the OpenMoko Linux initiative and which is an alternative to the widely used Gnome GTK technology, a key technology for Motorola and Intel, but one in which Nokia may now become less interested.

Trolltech

The handset leader has got itself a bargain – NKr 843m (just $153.3m) for a mobile Linux platform that could give Nokia a viable position against Google Android and give it the chance to regain the initiative in mobile Linux and web interfaces, both vital technologies for companies looking to dominate the mobile internet agenda. The acquisition, which has been recommended by the board, is likely to close in the second quarter, and 66 per cent of the shareholders have already accepted the NKr16 per share offer (these include founder Haavard Nord; Vuonislahti Invest, controlled by fellow founder Eirik Chambe-Eng; Teknoinvest; and several funds managed by Index Ventures). Trolltech is publicly listed on the Oslo stock exchange.

Trolltech brings a well-respected software development framework geared to mobile devices, open source and web services. Tactically, its technologies could strengthen the competitiveness of Nokia's Series 60 and Series 40 development and user interface platforms, especially in the web services and Linux areas. The Finnish giant has been pushing its frameworks in these directions, and has open sourced part of S60, but is aware that these products come from a heritage of closed development environments and the Symbian OS operating system rather than Linux, and so could be presented as being less web-optimized than a system created from scratch for the open internet, like Android. Trolltech will help answer some of those criticisms and boost the capabilities of S60 on open platforms, as well as underpinning development of new services related to the Ovi mobile internet push. "Trolltech's deep understanding of open source software and its strong technology assets will enable both Nokia and others to innovate on our device platforms while reducing time to market. This acquisition will also further increase the competitiveness of S60 and Series 40," said Kai Oistamo, executive VP of devices at Nokia.

Source :http://www.theregister.co.uk

Nokia spends €105m on mobile Linux developer

2008-01-29T05:29:00.000-08:00

Finnish handset giant Nokia is buying mobile Linux developer Trolltech, in an all-cash deal valuing the company at about €105m.

Nokia is offering 16 Norwegian Kroner per share - about £1.47 - for the company. Trolltech shares were are up 56 per cent today at 15.6 Norwegian Kroner. Over 66 per cent of shareholders have already accepted the offer.

Trolltech's cross platform development software will help Nokia, and its partners, write applications which will run equally well on different mobile devices.

Kai Öistämö, Nokia's executive vice president of devices, said: “Trolltech’s deep understanding of open source software and its strong technology assets will enable both Nokia and others to innovate on our device platforms while reducing time-to-market. This acquisition will also further increase the competitiveness of S60 and Series 40."

Nokia said it would continue to develop Trolltech products and support new and existing customers.

Trolltech is based in Oslo in Norway, but also has offices in Beijing, China, Brisbane, Australia, Berlin and Munich in Germany and Redwood City in California. It floated on the Oslo Stock Exchange in 2006.

In the third quarter of 2007 Trolltech made revenues of 60.8m Norwegian Kroner(£5.6m) and Ebitda of 0.3m Norwegian Kroner (£27,000), driven mainly by development tools Qt and Qtopia.

The deal is subject to the usual regulatory and shareholder acceptance
Source :http://www.theregister.co.uk

IBM Turns To Linux In Desktop Campaign Against Microsoft

2008-01-25T21:37:00.000-08:00

IBM (NYSE: IBM) has increased support for Linux with the introduction of versions of its Lotus Notes collaboration suite and Symphony productivity tools built to run on the open source OS -- and it's hoping the effort will help unseat Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) as the king of desktop software.

The company this week said it plans to ship what it calls its "Open Collaboration Client," made up of Lotus Notes 8 and Symphony, for Canonical's popular Ubuntu Linux distribution.

Lotus Notes 8 includes e-mail, calendaring, and contact management modules, while Symphony -- available as a free download -- features word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications build on the open source OpenOffice.org standard.

IBM also said this week that it's working with Red Hat to develop a version of the Open Collaboration Client for small and midsize businesses, which are increasingly a focus for IBM.

Under the plan, Red Hat will offer to its customers a version of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform packaged with Lotus Notes, Symphony, and IBM's Domino messaging server.

Red Hat also will offer technical services to help resellers implement the package for customers.

IBM last year said it would offer versions of Lotus Notes and Symphony for Novell's SUSE Enterprise Linux distribution.

By porting key software to Linux, IBM is looking to give businesses one less reason to buy products from rival Microsoft -- which IBM said offers "a proprietary desktop model."

IBM's Linux efforts will "further address customer demands around choice," said Inna Kuznetsova, an IBM executive with responsibility for Linux, in a statement.
Source :http://www.informationweek.com

Linux Kernel Hits 2.6.24

2008-01-25T21:31:00.000-08:00

The first new Linux kernel of 2008 is now out, showcasing improvements that run the gambit of bug fixes to new performance and feature enhancements.

One addition found in the new 2.6.24 Linux kernel is the new ability for write-throttling code.

"This prevents one heavily-used block device from starving the other devices. so it's great for throughput enhancement," Joel Berman, director of marketing at Red Hat, told InternetNews.com.

Berman also said the new kernel's inclusion of what are known as kernel markers would prove very useful for developers. Kernel markers are used for deep tuning and debugging.

"This gets us closer to Dtrace, and makes SystemTap easier to use," Berman said. Dtrace is the Sun Solaris technology that uses dynamic probes to monitor system performance. SystemTap is a similar approach for Linux.

The Linux 2.6.24 kernel also improves kernel utilization by way of new group scheduling technology. Berman explained that new approach fairly allocates groups' CPU usage.

For example, if there are four active groups, each group gets 25 percent of the CPU. If one group is made up of 10 users, another group has 100 and the other two have one each, the 100 in one group share their 25 percent of the machine.

Berman also noted that i386 and x86-64 sources for the kernel have been merged into one pool. That effort will help in quality assurance and removing duplication in patching.

Linux 2.6.24 also makes improvements for embedded developers. Jim Ready, CTO of MontaVista Linux, told InternetNews.com that that the inclusion of high-resolution and tickless timers for processors such as ARM MIPS should bode well. Both features are key components of a real-time Linux kernel.

"This is important for consumer and mobile devices that cannot run on Intel architecture," Ready said.

While the 2.6.24 Linux kernel has some specific areas of interest for Red Hat and MontaVista, a number of other other interested parties also made contributions.

According to the Linux Foundation's Linux Weather Forecast, more than 10,000 individual changesets were included during the 2.6.24 development cycle. Those changesets resulted in almost 300,000 lines of code being added to the kernel.

While Linus Torvalds is officially responsible for releasing the 2.6.24 kernel, the Linux Foundation Forecast noted that the new version's contributions came from 950 developers representing over 130 companies.
Source :http://www.internetnews.com

Fewer in Asia seek Linux support

2008-01-24T03:07:00.000-08:00

A smaller proportion of Linux users in Asia sign up for enterprise support services, but that is "okay" by Novell global strategic partners' chief technologist Marcin Kurc.

According to Kurc, more organizations in Asia--compared to the West--adopt Linux for free and do not sign up for vendor support. However, this is rapidly changing as open source adoption matures to catch up with that in Europe and the United States.

Kurc said, in an interview with ZDNet Asia: "It's great that people are implementing Linux for free. I'm all for gaining mindshare." The Novell executive was in Singapore to speak at an event on Windows and Linux interoperability to employ server virtualization.

With time will come evolution, he said, and users will eventually develop a relationship with their open source vendor and partnered ISVs (independent software vendors).

"A smart CIO needs an agenda and strategy. With the fast-paced markets in Asia, you'll need to plan for bigger and better data centers. You need someone to call when something breaks," Kurc said.

And organizations in the region are fast catching up with peers in the West, as evidenced by the boom in China and India, he noted. "Asia's the fastest adopter because of the knowledge of other markets," he said.

Rival open source vendor Red Hat, recently went on a campaign promoting the use of virtualization in the region because it said the number of adopters is low.

Vijay Sarathy, Sun Microsystems' senior director of marketing for xVM, said in a statement Wednesday: "The virtualization market is still wide open. By many accounts, the number of servers that are virtualized is still in the single digits."

Kurc disagrees with this view. On the contrary, he said virtualization is so commonly deployed that "it is very hard to find someone who doesn't use it".

According to the Novell executive, with many companies already aware of virtualization's benefits, they now need to focus on the "big picture". Kurc explained that these organizations should fit the technology to their company's needs, as opposed to simply implementing it for technology's sake.

He raised the example of employing virtualization to prioritize critical systems over other functions, depending on the business' urgencies. "Using virtualization is all about stretching your resources," he explained.

Microsoft last year released its enterprise virtual server offering to compete with market leader, VMware. The release is supported by Novell Suse Linux Enterprise Server 10 and Sun Solaris 10.
Source :http://www.bangkokpost.com

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Wins SearchEnterpriseLinux.com 'Product of the Year' Gold in Linux Server Distributions Category

2008-01-22T15:59:00.000-08:00

Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 has been selected as Gold medalist winner in the SearchEnterpriseLinux.com 2007 'Products of the Year' awards, in the Linux Server Distributions category. This annual award is presented by the editors of TechTarget's Data Center Media Group.

The 'Products of the Year' awards were judged by the SearchEnterpriseLinux.com editorial staff, in conjunction with a team of users, industry experts, analysts and consultants. Judging was based on six criteria, including innovation, performance, ease of integration into existing environments, ease of use and manageability, functionality and value. Judges characterized Red Hat Enterprise Linux as "a solid choice for mainstream computing," and "a full-featured release that delivers on a range of roadmap commitments, especially for CPU support, drivers, virtualization and package updates and upgrades."

With solutions that span from the desktop to the data center, Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers compelling levels of performance, security and robustness, and is certified by leading enterprise hardware and software vendors. Enterprise Linux couples the innovation of open source and the stability of a true enterprise-class platform.

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 provides our customers with industry-leading virtualization capabilities, an impressive deployment ecosystem and world-record setting performance," said Scott Crenshaw, vice president, Enterprise Linux Business at Red Hat. "To be honored as one of SearchEnterpriseLinux's 'Products of the Year' is a testament to the validity of Red Hat solutions."

For more information about Red Hat, visit www.redhat.com. For more news, more often, visit www.press.redhat.com.
Source :http://www.centredaily.com/

Google Android trashing Linux’s good

2008-01-21T16:17:00.000-08:00

Google is one of the most ubiquitous brands alive today and typically partner organizations benefit from that star power. But Linux-based Google Android may be broadcasting the wrong message.

In 2005, “Google acquired Android Inc., a small startup company based in Palo Alto, CA . . . At the time, little was known about the functions of Android Inc. other than they made software for mobile phones. This began rumors that Google was planning to enter the mobile phone market, although it was unclear at the time what function they might perform in that market,” according to Wikipedia.

The Android team continued on at Google, developing the Linux-based mobile operating system.

Fast forward three years to 2008 and Google has just released an early development kit for Android to developers. But, the development kit does not include any source code, and that has developers frustrated, according to MercuryNews (registration required).

It has companies interested in Android wondering, what has Google been doing for the last three years? “For the first time, developers are griping about Google the way they used to complain about Bill Gates & Co. The search giant’s phone software is buggy, they say, and lacks key features.”

And, because Android is Linux-based, the penguin will be receiving lots of peripheral attention. If Android succeeds, consumer confidence in Linux will improve as callers begin to use it on a daily basis. If Android fails, Linux may receive negative attention and lose the support of the consumer masses.

Either way, the pressure is on for Google Android to deliver quickly because “Microsoft, which has been shipping its Windows Mobile operating system for five years, said programmers have created more than 18,000 applications to run on Windows Mobile devices - everything from astrology charts to business expense management tools.”

Source :http://tech.blorge.com

IGEL’s Latest Linux Firmware Delivers Smartcard Security and Convenience for Virtual Desktops

2008-01-21T16:09:00.000-08:00

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--IGEL Technology today announced its latest Linux firmware upgrade enhancing the broadest and most powerful range of thin clients on the market. The firmware delivers enhanced security through smartcard authentication of RDP sessions with the inclusion of the new Winconnect RDP client. When combined with the integrated Leostream client already included in IGEL’s Linux firmware, organizations can deploy virtual Windows PCs using secure two-factor authentication and single-sign-on security.

The upgrade also allows users to run multiple remote desktops in separate windows on the same screen. This function is ideal for programmers or financial traders who previously had to switch between remote desktops using hotkeys since each desktop filled a whole screen and could not be windowed. The upgrade gives users a far better overview in multi-desktop environments.

Additional features in the Linux firmware includes the FireFox 2 web browser with its improved tabbed browsing, integrated search, integrated Popup-Blocker and protection against Phishing. Users will also experience enhanced video performance and support for a broader range of media with the latest version of mplayer.

“The introduction of our latest Linux firmware allows RDP users needing access Terminal-Services or virtual PCs increased security using smartcard authentication while taking advantage of secure and time-saving features such as single sign-on. Once again IGEL has proven that its thin client range is the most user-friendly and comprehensive on the market,” said Stephen Yeo, worldwide strategic marketing director for IGEL Technology.

The IGEL Linux firmware is immediately available at www.MyIGEL.com.

About IGEL Technology

IGEL Technology is the world’s number three thin client vendor and the market leader in its home country of Germany (Q3 2007 IDC). The company produces the industry’s widest range of thin clients, based on Linux and Microsoft Windows, giving customers access to the richest set of digital services through the very powerful, IGEL designed, firmware. Form factors include traditional desktops, mobile tablets, integrated LCD units, quad screens and PC to thin client conversion cards. All IGEL thin clients come with the bundled, easy to use, IGEL Remote Management software, giving you maximum remote control with the minimum cost and hassle. IGEL supports the broadest set of digital services including terminal emulation, web, ICA, RDP, Virtual Desktops (VDI), Java and native SAP. All devices support smart cards for maximum security and this includes integration with Citrix Password Manager’s Hot Desktop allowing sub 10 second boot times for roaming workers.
Source :http://www.businesswire.com

Mandriva and Turbolinux Join Forces to Unite Linux

2008-01-18T20:19:00.000-08:00

Mandriva Linux and Turbolinux are collaborating to create a common base for their respective Linux distributions. The joint effort will be called Manbo-Labs and involves developers from France, Japan and Brazil.

While the Manbo-Labs effort is new, tying together multiple Linux distributions with a common base is not. In fact, Turbolinux and Conectiva Linux were part of the 2002 UnitedLinux effort to build a common Linux base. Conectiva has since merged with Mandrakesoft to form Mandriva.

Novell and SCO (with its Caldera Linux product) were also part of the effort. UnitedLinux completely fell apart by 2004 for a number reasons, including the fact that SCO turned against Linux.

According to Mandriva at least, the Manbo-Labs partnership is not a United Linux rehash.

"The point of Manbo-Labs is not to create a common distribution but a common set of very low-level components like kernel, gcc, glibc and Xorg," Ann Nicolas, director of engineering at Mandriva, told InternetNews.com.

"Putting together efforts, resources and experience is our common objective to make both distributions more competitive and efficient, as maintaining a complete base system needs quite a big amount of resources," she added.

GCCand glibc are key infrastructure elements of an operational Linux system providing code compilation and code libraries. Xorg is a key foundation element for providing a GUI in Linux distributions. The Manbo effort will not be jointly working on the GNOME or KDE desktop layer that sits on top of Xorg.

"Manbo-Labs work will benefit both on the desktop and the server side, as hardware support and management can be as tricky in server and desktop oriented distributions," Nicolas explained.

Nicolas noted that the Manbo partnership is not about shared revenues; it's about shared development. She explained that Manbo is a joint financial effort to fund engineering dedicated to base system development. As part of the effort, Turbolinux and Mandriva are sharing developers in labs working on development, quality assurance and independent hardware vendor partnerships to certify the base system.

"The main goal is to get concrete result as a set of common components that will improve quality and efficiency in Turbolinux and Mandriva," Nicholas said. "These components would have to be recognized by hardware manufacturers to help global certification and support."

Although Turbolinux and Mandriva will share a common base, the Linux vendors have different views when it comes to Microsoft. In October 2007 Turbolinux and Microsoft signed a deal for interoperability and patent protection; Mandriva has no such agreement with Microsoft.
Source :http://itmanagement.earthweb.com

Reiser4, btrfs, ext3 and ext4 Linux file systems news

2008-01-18T20:16:00.000-08:00

Several new developments around the Reiser4, btrfs, ext2, ext3 and ext4 file systems, which are mostly used under Linux, have been published in the last few days. It appears that Namesys, the company behind the development of Reiserfs and Reiser4 and founded by Hans Reiser, who has been accused of murder, is no longer in operation. The company web page had sporadically not been available for weeks; now, even the DNS entry for namesys.com has disappeared. Namesys employee Edward Shishkin confirmed in an interview with CNet news service that the company's "commercial activities" had ceased

and that there was a problem with the web page.

However, he and several other developers would continue to develop the Reiser4 file system. The file system's source code is now available for download as a patch for Linux versions 2.6.22 and 2.6.23 on a web page maintained by Shishkin. Reiser4 also continues to be part of Andrew Morton's mm developer kernels and received several updates in the recently released version 2.6.24-rc8-mm1. Whether the file system will be integrated into the "official" kernel maintained by Linus Torvalds remains unclear even years after the introduction of Reiser4. Without a company or Linux distributor to guarantee its long-term development, chances for its integration remain slim.

Based on ext3, the ext4 file system is actively being developed. Kernel version 2.6.24, which is expected for release during the coming weekend, offers additional new features. "Uninitialized Block Groups" are to speed up the process of creating and checking ext4 file systems, while "Flexible Block Groups" speed up the processing of large files on file systems with small block sizes. Ext4 will maintain its experimental status. Apart from the ext4 improvements, two patches (1, 2) designed to speed up the checking of ext3 file systems in various ways are also being discussed by developers on the kernel mailing list.

The developers of btrfs, which has been redeveloped from scratch, have released version 0.10. It allows the size of btrfs file systems to be changed in runtime environments. An add-on serves for converting ext3 file systems to btrfs. Like ext4, btrfs is still being developed and should not be used in productive environments. With its new ideas, btrfs has already caused quite a stir in the Linux world; however, considerable work remains to be done according to developers until the file system is complete.
Source :http://www.heise.de

Linspire Offers $199 Linux-Based Desktops Through Sears

2008-01-18T20:10:00.000-08:00

Linspire, the San Diego-based developer of the Linspire and Freespire community desktop Linux operating systems, announced a $199 Linux PC, after $100 mail-in rebate, through retailer Sears' Web site. The desktop is also the first Linux PC pre-installed with the beta CNR Client, a software delivery service.

"As the cracks in the adoption for desktop Linux continue to show, when these systems start coming out the channel starts to wake up," said Linspire CEO Larry Kettler. "As hardware comes down in price, the value price point is an opportunity for system builders of all sizes."

The configuration includes an Intel (NSDQ:INTC) Celeron 420 1.6GHz processor, 1GB of memory, 80GB of hard drive space, a keyboard, speakers and mouse. Also included are a 15-in-1 memory card reader, an optical drive, and Linspire's Freespire 2.0 operating system, built atop Ubuntu 7.10.

Kettler said that every year the channel has the opportunity to look at the Linux-based desktop market, and admits "the year of desktop Linux" is yet to arrive.

"The low-end, value-priced PC is an entry point to the desktop Linux marketplace," he said. "I think the combined efforts of everyone will continue to break the market open a little bit more for desktop Linux."
Source :http://www.crn.com

Sears sells latest sub-$200 Linux desktop PC

2008-01-17T14:45:00.000-08:00

For the second time since October, a sub-$200 fully equipped Linux desktop PC is available for sale to U.S. consumers.

Starting today, Sears.com is selling a Mirus Innovations Inc. desktop machine that runs Linux from Linspire Inc. for $299, minus a $100 mail-in rebate, Linspire said in a statement. Another $15 discount is available through this Saturday, for a final price of $184.99. Shipping is an additional $16.50.

The new Linspire/Mirus PC includes an Intel Celeron 420 1.6-GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, an 80GB hard drive, a 56Kbit/sec. modem, a CD-RW burner, a media card reader, a keyboard, speakers, a mouse and Linspire's Freespire 2.0 Linux operating system. The machine also comes with basic CNR Service, which gives users one-click online access to free Linux software. It does not include a monitor.

San Diego-based Linspire said it teamed with Walnut, Calif.-based Mirus to build a machine that would provide low-cost computing capabilities and open-source software for consumer and business customers.

"Our system builders have been forging new ground in the low-end Linux PC market for over five years now," Larry Kettler, president and CEO of Linspire, said in a statement. "This latest system from Mirus Innovations is the most robust hardware and software configuration, and offers the best value for under $200 to date."

The new PC offers improved out-of-the-box file format and multimedia support, including MP3, Windows Media, Real Networks, Java, Flash, ATI, nVidia, Wi-Fi and others, according to the companies. The Freespire 2.0 operating system also includes legally licensed proprietary drivers, codecs and applications in its core distribution. Freespire is a community-influenced, Ubuntu-based Linux distribution.

Last October, an Ubuntu Linux-equipped PC built by Fremont, Calif.-based Everex went on sale in selected Wal-Mart stores for $200.
Source :http://www.computerworld.com

Can Linux finally unite Korea?

2008-01-17T05:52:00.000-08:00

With just weeks to go before South Korea's presidential election at the end of last year, Seoul's newspapers were full of stories about historic North-South cooperation.

Among the pictures of the departing South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun walking across the border to clasp hands with North Korea's Kim Jong-il and freight trains crossing between the countries for the first time in 56 years, there was just enough room on a few of the front pages for reports of a technology deal struck between the two leaders.

Groundbreaking project

Under the banner of "Hana Linux" - literally "One" Linux - the two countries have agreed to work on a groundbreaking IT development project that might shatter the final Cold War boundary.

South Korea is one of Linux's biggest converts. Since discovering the free operating system in 2003, officials have unveiled plans to switch all government-run offices to Linux. Now under the terms of the agreement signed between the two states, South Korea will set up Linux training centres in North Korea.

Lee Yon-nim, 28, is a former IT consultant at Posco, a South Korean steel exporter. "Why Linux? Because it's free. Government offices don't have to buy licences for it, unlike Windows, which can end up costing an enormous amount. In theory, having a standardised version for the North and South will help matters enormously if the countries do unify in the future."

Moon Hwi-tak, chairman of Gongae Software, the South Korean company behind the development of Hana Linux, says: "Linux is widely used all over the world, and different countries, different companies have all added different functions and tools to suit their needs. If companies in Korea all use their own versions, it will waste time and money and cause confusion. A unified version will solve a lot of potential problems."

Moon adds: "Political cooperation is already under way, and this is going to benefit IT development in a big way for the North and the South. Sharing technological knowhow and manpower will help us become more competitive in the international IT market."

Sceptics believe they are being fed the dream that IT is going to magically lead to reunification. Optimists, meanwhile, are asking if technology is really about to produce light at the end of Asia's dark political tunnel.

Many believe there is another, deeper reason for Korea developing Hana Linux. Says Lee: "Korea wants this version of Linux in order to be different. People here have had to fight for their political freedom from Japan, China and other countries since the beginning of Korean history. So they like having their own special way of doing things. It makes them feel independent."

Indeed, when it comes to IT, South Koreans do things differently. Almost everyone in the country uses Korean search engine, Naver; Google is considered a poor man's substitute. MSN's Messenger plays second fiddle to the local Nate On service. Virtually the whole of South Korea snubs Windows Media Player for Gom Player. The list goes on.

Hong Young-jun, 27, a Ph.D student at KAIST, a South Korean University dedicated to IT, thinks North Korea is making a bold move. He says: "Until very recently, Pyongyang has only used IT for military purposes. Opening North Korean society up to the internet and mobile phones will make it difficult for the government to control freedom of expression in the way it has done since the 1950s."

Note of caution

However, Lee warns that IT collaboration may not be the golden ticket the South Korean government hopes it will be. "Hana Linux doesn't have a future," she says. "Trying to bind North Korea to one operating system will not work if the country opens up. Once they see other operating systems available, they will look elsewhere."

Hong agrees. "One thing we can be sure of is that the North has no intention of being bossed about by the South when it comes to IT - or anything else."
North Korea goes digital

2003: North Korea says it has set up its first internet connection. It also established the Korean Computer Centre, with branches in Europe and China, with the assistance of businessman Jan Holtermann, who says: "North Korea is the India of the future."

2004: Naenara, meaning "My Country", North Korea's first portal, is launched. It is banned by South Korea, which fears its use as a propaganda tool.

October 2007: Kim Jong-il declares to the South Korean press: "I am an internet expert."

End 2007: Pyongyang confirms that a South Korean-run industrial park in Kaesong, North Korea, will be allowed to use computers with internet access.

Recently: South Korea has produced an "IT Terminology Dictionary for Inter-Korean use" in an attempt to prevent two different sets of technological jargon appearing on the two sides of the border.

2008: The Pyongyang University of Science and Technology will enrol students for the first time this year. Officially a joint North and South Korean project, the institution was mainly funded by companies and groups from the South, as well as China and the US.
Source :http://www.guardian.co.uk

Mandriva, Turbolinux enter Linux alliance

2008-01-17T05:45:00.000-08:00

Forgive me if I sound skeptical, but during the nine years I've covered Linux, not once have I seen a favorable outcome to the partnership of the type Mandriva and Turbolinux announced Wednesday.

Tokyo-based Turbolinux and Paris-based Mandriva said they'll unify their products to use a common base system in an endeavor called Manbo-Labs. The first software to employ this base will be Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring, the companies said.

"By pooling together common engineering resources, Mandriva and Turbolinux will be able to invest more in technology and product quality," the companies said in a statement. This should help expand the list of compatible hardware and lead to stronger relationships with software and hardware companies, the Linux sellers predicted.

his sort of partnership makes sense in a world where much of the software that goes into a Linux distribution is already shared. But in the past, such alliances haven't amounted to much.

One prominent example is UnitedLinux in 2002, which pooled the resources of Suse Linux (before Novell acquired it four years ago), Turbolinux (which earlier had aspirations beyond just its current Japanese market focus), Conectiva (which merged with Mandrake to become Mandriva), and The SCO Group (which previously had been named Caldera before it switched from selling Linux to selling Unix and suing Linux advocates). But the effort to provide a collective counterbalance to Red Hat's dominance fell apart, and the UnitedLinux lights went out in 2004.

Then there was the Linux Core Consortium in 2004, which was essentially UnitedLinux reconstituted without Suse and with another company, Progeny Linux. It also didn't amount to much.

More recently, several allies whose products were based on the Debian Linux distribution also tried banding together as the Debian Common Core (DCC) Alliance. Other members of that group included now-defunct Progeny Linux, Knoppix, Xandros, Linspire, Mepis, Credativ, GnuLinEx, Sun Wah, and User Linux.
Source :http://www.news.com

Linux available on ThinkPad T61 and R61

2008-01-15T20:22:00.000-08:00

In August, Lenovo announced that Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 would be available on ThinkPads in the fourth quarter of 2007. Though that didn't happen, Lenovo finally released details Tuesday.

Novell SLED 10 will be available on the ThinkPad T61 and ThinkPad R61 with Intel Centrino processors. Operating system features include the Firefox Web browser, RealPlayer, Macromedia Flash Player, OpenOffice, and more.

Lenovo says it will provide customer support for the hardware and the operating system, while Novell will be responsible for updates. The lowest-end model will be $949, and both models are available beginning Tuesday.

Next month ThinkPads with Penryn chipsets from Intel will start shipping with Linux as well.

Linux has chiefly been popular on servers and more recently has made inroads in embedded computing devices such as phones, but it's never made much headway on desktop and laptop PCs. Nevertheless, Suse has long championed Linux on PCs, and Novell took up the mantle when it acquired the Linux seller four years ago.
Source :http://www.news.com

Hard cash, cold logic: Linux

2008-01-14T05:22:00.000-08:00

On May 26, 2006, Elcot (Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu) let in its first penguin. Things would never be the same again.

That day, Elcot's managing director, C. Umashankar, walked into his office in Chennai, Tamil Nadu and was handed a brand new laptop. He recalls promptly giving it back to his PA. "I asked him to load Suse Linux on it. I guess he was surprised. But when the installation -- complete with drivers and wireless networking -- only took 45 minutes and very little external effort, there was a new confidence in my PA." That confidence spread quickly. And with it came more penguins. Within weeks, the Rs 750-crore Elcot was undergoing a enterprise-wide migration to Suse Linux. A year later, Umashankar and his team had moved 30,000 computers and 1,880 severs belonging to some of the state's schools to Linux -- creating possibly the largest Linux rollout in India.

March of the Penguins

The decision to move to Linux could not have been anything if not daunting. As the nodal agency for information and communication technology of a state with the population of the UK, Elcot has enormous responsibilities -- current projects include creating an electoral database and photo identity cards, computerizing land records and driving licenses, producing eight million farmers cards and 18 million family cards (used by families below the poverty line to draw monthly rations from the PDS), among others.

In short, there are a million ways they can blow it.

And with no vendor support, the odds were against them.

Meanwhile, in his office, Umashankar had other problems. Like many pioneers, his vision held good only where his voice reached. Leading his secretariat to his vision of the Linux-enabled enterprise was one thing, convincing other government agencies that Elcot shifted gears with, was another.

But Umashankar knew what needed to be done. He was convinced that it was only a matter of time before the price of staying proprietary became crushing. With every technology refresh, with every piece of additional hardware, with every new school that his department provided for, with every new service they wanted to offer various government bodies and with every new PC Elcot bought, staying proprietary came at a significant price.

By the first week of June 2006, Umashankar started moving Elcot's desktops to Suse Linux OS. The entire organization followed in phases, and slowly at first. The migration of over 200 desktops at Elcot's HQ took just over eight months.

"During the migration although there were no issues, like all new things, it faced resistance. But once people started using it, they saw benefits and became fond of it. We won't go back, this is an irreversible process," says P.R.Krishnamoorthy, senior business development manager at Elcot.

As users caught on with Umashankar's infectious enthusiasm, they started getting more familiar with the features of their new OS. Soon a cycle of interest developed and users found new ways of switching mail clients to work on Suse Linux.

"First they migrated from Outlook Express to Mozilla Thunderbird for Windows. From there they took the mail folder and put it into the Suse Linux system, and started operating Thunderbird over Suse Linux system. Novel, isn't it?" Umashankar asks proudly.

This interest helped his campaign to migrate completely to Suse Linux, from a 100 percent Windows environment.
Source :http://www.linuxworld.com.au

Lenovo releases Linux Thinkpads

2008-01-14T05:18:00.000-08:00

LENOVO has said that it will release a SUSE Linux version of its ThinkPad range in the middle of January.

The PC vendor has been promising the Linux versions of the machines since before Dr Spinola was born, but for some reason they had not tipped up.

According to Desktop Linux a Linux version will appear on its Intel Centrino-powered ThinkPad T61 and R61 14-inch-wide notebooks.

Lenovo said it will place it on Penryn-based ThinkPads by February.

The spec of the T61 is interesting but the graphics card, an Intel GMA X3100 GM965 on the motherboard, limits it a bit. It will hit the streets for $949 which is only $20 less than the same laptop with Vista on board.

On the whole it is hard to see the point. Desktop Linux points out that it does mean that Lenovo will finally join Dell as one of the first top-tier PC vendors to offer pre-installed Linux desktops to its customers. But if these products are not significantly better or cheaper than Windows versions it is hard to see how in the long term it could be good for Linux.
Source :http://www.theinquirer.net

Torvalds: Linux ‘built on trusted relationships’

2008-01-14T05:04:00.000-08:00

"I have a policy that he who does the code gets to decide," said Torvalds, the Linux project coordinator who has written approximately 2% of the Linux code since creating the operating system in 1990.

Torvalds made his comments during the first of a two-part interview with Jim Zemlin, chief executive at the Linux Foundation. Torvalds is a Fellow at the foundation, which funds his work. He can be heard in his own words via podcast on the Linux Foundation website.

Torvalds also said GPLv2 remained his open source licence of choice for the Linux kernel and that he would be pragmatic on future decisions, but that stance would not blind him to investigating the General Public Licence version 3 under specific circumstances. He said trust is the fuel that is energising the Linux development process and commercial vendors can only establish that trust via actions not words.

The mythical "Linux community" did not refer to one big happy open source family, he said, but the development process was made up of many groups, some with different ideals and goals.

He said companies and individuals have to build trust. "What happens is people know. They've seen other people do work over the last months or years, in some cases decades, and they know that, 'OK, I can trust this person. When he sends me a patch, it's probably the right thing to do even if I don't understand quite why' and you kind of build up this network."

In terms of licensing, which has been a hot topic since the GPLv3 was introduced last year, Torvalds said he would remain pragmatic. GPLv3 and GPLv2 pointed to the philosophical differences between open source and Linux on one side and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) on the other.

"One of the few reasons I see why Version 3 might be useful is simply there ends up being tons of external code that we feel is really important and worthwhile that is under the Version 3 licence," Torvalds said.

Torvalds said Linux participation remained largely in western Europe and the US, and the only factors excluding others from participation were connectivity, language and cultural barriers.

He expected embedded and mobile devices to have the greatest impact on Linux in the near future, and the issue with mobile devices was the limited keypad and screen size. He also said the popularity around Linux was changing attitudes around device drivers, but that Linux still did not have the kind of support he wishes it had.

"It used to be that very few hardware manufacturers really actively tried to help Linux people write drivers. And now, at least, I'm personally getting the feeling that the companies that don't try to help, at least with documentation and sometimes even with writing drivers themselves, are starting to even be a minority."
Source :http://www.computerworlduk.com

Xandros 4: The best desktop Linux for Windows users

2007-09-25T09:11:00.002-07:00

What's the best desktop Linux? For me, it's SimplyMEPIS 6.5, soon to be replaced by 7.0. But this is both a dumb question and a dumb answer. The real question is: What's the best desktop operating system for you?

If I told you the best 2007 car is a Mazda MX-5 Miata, I'd also be right, according to Consumer Reports. But what's right for me, a middle-aged gent with a lovely wife and no kids at home, is not what's right for a family of four. For them, a Honda Accord or a Toyota Sienna makes more sense.

It's the exact same thing with desktop operating systems. With that idea firmly in mind, I've started looking at Linux desktops not for me but for particular groups of users.

For my tests, I'm going to use my Insignia 300a, an older, Best Buy house-brand desktop PC with a 2.8GHz Pentium IV CPU, a GB of RAM and an Ultra ATA/100 60GB hard drive. In short, it's a decent, but in no way, shape or form, cutting-edge system.

I'm going to be starting my "best Linux desktop" series with a review of the best Linux for a Windows user who's willing to install his or her own distribution. Don't get me wrong. My pick for this user, Xandros' Xandros Desktop Professional 4.1, could be installed by anyone who's ever used a computer, but, and it's a big but, some people get twitchy at the very idea of touching an operating system. For those users, there's another story, but that's a tale for another day.

Let's start with the basics. Why is Xandros a good Linux for Windows users? Well, for starters, you can use it as a drop-in replacement for most Windows XP uses.

It works in both Linux- and Windows-based office networks. I've used Xandros Pro 4 on NT domains, AD (Active Directory) forests and Linux/Unix NIS (Network Information Service)-based LANs with no trouble at all. It just works. Frankly, it's a lot easier to integrate Xandros into a Windows network than it is Vista.

Xandros 4 is designed for seamless integration into existing Windows-centric networks. It doesn't just support the basics of domain and AD authentication. It also supports logon scripts and group policy profiles.

If you use the pre-installed Evolution 2.6.3 for your e-mail client and organizer, which I highly recommend, you'll also find it integrates very smoothly with Microsoft Exchange e-mail and groupware. Since I consider Outlook as a security hole that pretends to be an e-mail client, I vastly prefer Evolution for use with Exchange or any other mail server, including Xandros recently acquired Scalix, a well-regarded open-source mail server. In addition, Microsoft recently licensed its Exchange protocols to Xandros for use in Scalix. This, in turn, means we can expect even better Exchange compatibility in Xandros Pro.

OK, so let's say you're not a Windows business user. What's in Xandros for you? For starters, this distribution enables to both read and write to Microsoft's NTFS (New Technology File System) partitions with Paragon Software Group's NTFS for Linux 5.0. With it, you can read and write to your hard drive's Windows NTFS partitions. Other Linuxes will let you read from NTFS, but Xandros makes it easy to get full use out of a dual Windows/Linux boot PC's hard disk.

In addition, Xandros Professional deploys a customized KDE 3.4.2 desktop interface that looks and acts a great deal like the Windows XP interface. Trick the desktop out with Windows applications and an XP user could probably use Xandros for several days before figuring out that it really wasn't XP.

Oh, yes, I did say Windows applications. Xandros includes CodeWeavers's CrossOver Office 5.9.1. While not the newest version of this program that enables users to run many of the most popular Windows applications on Linux (that honor goes to CrossOver 6.1), it will give many Windows users all the applications they need. I've successfully run Office 2000 and 2003 suites, Quicken 2005, Windows Media Player 6.4 and iTunes 5.01 on it.

If you can live without Microsoft Office, the distribution also includes OpenOffice.org 2.0.6. It also includes a selection of some of the latest open-source software that appears on both Linux and Windows, such as Firefox and Thunderbird.

Xandros also includes the Xandros Network Connection System. I have to say it, combined with the file manager, makes accessing wired, wireless, mobile and VPN network-connected file and print servers easier than on any other system I've ever used. Hooking it up to any network is mindlessly easy. Want to use a printer on a Samba server? An NTFS drive hanging off an AD server? An NFS (Network File System) RAID running on Solaris? Click it, put in your user ID and password and you're in business.

Underneath all this Windows-friendly goodness beats a heart based on Debian 3.1 Sarge. The Linux kernel, however, has been upgraded to version 2.6.18, with additional updates to proprietary ATI and NVIDIA graphics drivers. This is certainly no bleeding-edge distribution. On the other hand, even by Linux's high standards, Xandros is remarkably stable. Short of a power outage, I haven't found anything that will take it down.

The distribution is also LSB (Linux Standards Base) 3.1 compliant. It is also one of the first commercial distributions to integrate the Portland 1.0 tools. Developers can use these tools to create applications that can easily integrate into a Linux desktop regardless of whether the desktop is GNOME or KDE based.

That's all well and good, but here's the important part. This really is a Linux distribution that a Windows user can use without tears. To quote Kim Brebach, from his recent overview of Linux desktops, "Xandros did exactly what it claimed: open an easy passage for Windows users through the mountains of Linux."

Exactly. That's why, for me, Xandros is the Linux for Windows users who have grown sick and tired of Windows' endless security holes and the occasional crash. Xandros just works, and it works enough like Windows XP that even the most Linux-phobic user will be able to appreciate it.

Xandros Desktop Professional pricing starts at $99.99 per desktop. There is also a free version of Xandros 4.1, this Open Circulation edition, but for some reason Xandros makes it difficult to find. A BitTorrent link to it can be found on an otherwise idle Xandros fan site. You can also download a 30-day trial version for free.
Source :http://www.desktoplinux.com

Bhutan Deploys Linux

2007-09-25T09:11:00.001-07:00

The Bhutan government liked its first taste of Linux so much that it has come back for seconds, releasing an updated version of its Debian-based operating system that it launched last year.

Launched at the start of this month, Dzongkha Debian Linux is a Debian-based Linux operating system built in and for the national language, Dzongkha. It can be easily installed on any PC or used as a Live CD.

The updated version will fully support Dzongkha computing on standard programs and applications like word processing, spreadsheets, power point presentations, Web browsing and chatting.

Department of information and technology officials said this version also has the provision to use Dzongkha in graphics software like Adobe Photoshop, and multimedia applications.

Head developer of the Dzongkha Debian Linux project, Pema Geley said in a press statement that the first version of Dzongkha Linux was not compatible with most computers, so the operating system has now been updated and made stable.

Developed over a period of 13 months and at about US$80,000, the upgraded version has also dual booting system. It can coexist with both Mac and Windows operating systems.

Plans are apparently also underway to develop software like Text to Speech, Speech Recognition, and Optical Character Recognition on Dzongkha Debian Linux in the second phase.

The Live CDs are available for free from the Department of Information and Technology.

The Debian installer supports 58 languages in total. Several languages even have all texts translated in the installer. KDE and GNOME are also available in many languages.
Source :http://www.pcworld.com

Linux Startup Moves Desktop Windows to the Data Center

2007-09-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

Qumranet, the company behind one of the hottest Linux kernel features, is scheduled to announce its first product, a new desktop virtualization system, offering today at the DEMOfall conference in San Diego. Qumranet's Solid ICE product moves desktop users' Linux or Microsoft Windows installs onto virtual machines in the data center, allowing the users to run their applications and OS of choice from thin clients or from Windows or Linux PC clients. Unlike VMWare's ESX server, the Solid ICE server runs on a host with a standard Linux distribution from Red Hat, Novell, or Canonical.

The company already has five Fortune 1000 customers participating in an early adopter program, says John-Marc Clark, the company's VP of Marketing.

Qumranet offers a physical to virtual (P2V) tool for converting a customer's physical OS images to virtual machine templates, says Rami Tamir, the company's President, VP of R&D, and co-founder. The company offers a remote desktop protocol it calls SPICE, which Tamir says is suitable for use over a LAN and supports high-bandwidth uses such as bidirectional audio and video. Solid ICE also supports RDP for lower-bandwidth links, but Tamir recommends "remote presence" --moving a running guest machine from its original server to one closer to the user. Solid ICE does not have support for offline use independent of the server.

The number of users per server is limited by available memory, Tamir says. "we are typically quoting from 5 to 10 users per core," he says, but the number could go up or down depending on applications. Solid ICE "oversubscribes" the server's memory by 40 percent, so a server with 10GB of RAM could accomodate 14GB of guests. Qumranet's management interface allows for guest systems to migrate transparently from host to host to balance the load.

In the Solid ICE client interface, users can browse a selection of virtual machines and start the ones with the applications they need. Client systems may be Linux or Microsoft Windows PCs, thin clients, or, for customers who want to convert old PCs to lightweight systems, Linux machines running Qumranet's "miniOS." miniOS is just enough to get the Solid ICE session started and let the user launch his or her virtual system.

Based on the results of the early access program, Clark says he anticipates that a common use of Qumranet's technology will be to faciliate upgrades and migrations. Companies will be able to keep old OS and application installs around if needed in a transition. And the virtual machine images are stored in a compressed format that encourages users to keep several, Tamir says. "Keeping an old desktop costs you nothing -- you just keep a diff from a template," he says.

The user interface simulates the controls of a desktop PC, so a user can power off a virtual machine or leave it running. A helpdesk worker can "clone" a problem system to test a fix while the user continues to work on the original, or view or take over a user's session.

Solid ICE supports Microsoft's Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows Server 2003 as guests, along with Linux.

Stealth product, but open source fanfare

Although KVM entered the mainstream Linux kernel with version 2.6.20 in February, Qumranet has backported KVM to run on the earlier kernels on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Besides those two Linux distributions, Qumranet also supports Canonical Ltd.'s Ubuntu Linux as a server platform.

KVM requires Intel VT or AMD-V virtualization support in the hardware on the host system, but Qumranet's co-founder and VP of R&D says he doesn't see that as a problem. "Going forward all new servers are going to be VT," he says. However, IBM researchers are working on a version of KVM that will not require hardware virtualization support, he adds.

In the months before the product announcement, KVM built a fan base among kernel developers, getting into the kernel.org kernel before the older and better-known Xen.

Kernel developer and author Jonathan Corbet wrote, "The speed with which the KVM developers have been able to add relatively advanced features is impressive; equally impressive is just how simple the code which implements live migration is."

At LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in San Francisco, kernel maintainer Andrew Morton also had a good word for KVM. "It looked like the guys had been working in kernel land for years," he said in a conference kickoff talk on kernel development.
Source :http://www.pcworld.com

SCO Blames Linux For Bankruptcy Filing

2007-09-17T17:27:00.000-07:00

SCO Group CEO Darl McBride says competition from the open source Linux operating system was a major reason why the company was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Friday.

In a court filing in support of SCO's bankruptcy petition, McBride noted that SCO's sales of Unix-based products "have been declining over the past several years."

The slump, McBride said, "has been primarily attributable to significant competition from alternative operating systems, including Linux." McBride listedIBM ( IBM), Red Hat, Microsoft (MSFT), and Sun Microsystems (SUNW) as distributors of Linux or other software that is "aggressively taking market share away from Unix."

SCO claims it owns all copyrights over Unix and that Linux infringes on those copyrights. In what were widely seen as bet-the-company moves, SCO, beginning in 2003, launched a series of lawsuits against rivals and customers claiming their use of Linux was violating the copyrights. The campaign was dealt a crushing blow on Aug. 10 when federal court Judge Dale Kimball ruled that Novell (NOVL), and not SCO, owns the copyrights to Unix.

As a result, Kimball said that SCO must remit to Novell a portion of the fees it has collected from selling Unix licenses -- mostly to Sun and Microsoft. That could amount to as much as $25 million. The total is to be decided at a trial that's set to start today. The case is scheduled to proceed as a bench trial, meaning that Kimball -- not a jury -- will decide the outcome.

As of April 2007, the latest date for which financial numbers were available, SCO had just $7.8 million in cash or equivalents and total assets of only $20 million, SEC records show. That's not enough to cover the penalties SCO may be forced to pay Novell.

In a statement issued Friday, SCO said its board of directors "unanimously determined that Chapter 11 reorganization is in the best long-term interest of SCO and its subsidiaries, as well as its customers, shareholders and employees."

SCO has also filed a petition for reorganization in addition to the Chapter 11 filing. SCO said the filings will help ensure that it "will not have any interruption in maintaining and honoring all of its commitments to its customers" and will allow it to pay its vendors.
Source :http://www.informationweek.com

Damn Small Linux V4.0 RC3 released

2007-09-04T15:38:00.000-07:00

The latest version, V4.0 RC3, of Damn Small Linux was released today and it is really very small indeed. Described as a 50Mb mini-desktop oriented Linux OS, DSL is actually small enough to fit and boot from a business card CD as a live Linux distribution.

Originally developed as something of an experiment in order to try and find out just how many perfectly usable desktop applications can fit inside such a small live CD, DSL has grown from a personal toy to a fully fledged community project. A community project which has seen hundreds of hours of development time resulting in an accomplished automatic remote and local application installation system, versatile backup and restore system and the ability to boot from within a host operating system. Yes, DSL can run inside Windows if the user so wishes. Perhaps most interestingly of all, it will transform into a Debian OS with a traditional hard drive install.

Using a JWM window manager, DSL loads four usable desktops with applications including a swathe of web browsers (Firefox, Dillo and Netrik), MP3, CD and MPEG players (XMMS), email (Sylpheed), word processor (TED), graphics editor (Xpaint) PDF viewer (Xpdf) file manager (emelFM), a web server, FTP client, and even a selection of games.

Sure, there are going to be some compromises with a distribution this size, but there aren't many desktop operating systems that will fit on a business card, now are there? If you need any more convincing of the innovation that DSL has brought with it, how about this list of firsts:

* First liveCD desktop offering backup/restore capability
* First Live CD which used download scripts to add additionally software to ramdisk.
* First complete Linux distribution to also deploy extendable modules which may be used either from a Live CD or on a partitioned hard drive.
* And, of course, the first desktop oriented Live CD small enough to fit on a business card CD…
Source :http://www.daniweb.com

Belkin Wireless G Desktop Card offers Plug and Play Linux support

2007-09-03T16:44:00.000-07:00

Having grown up with Windows as my primary operating system, I’ve taken for granted how easy it is to find compatible hardware. Recently, I learned that life isn’t as user-friendly for Linux users. After migrating one of my computers to Linux, I noticed that the operating system wouldn’t detect the machine’s Microsoft PCI Wi-Fi card. After scouring the Internet, I found instructions for making wireless cards work with NDIS Wrapper and similar applications, but no references to a card with Plug and Play Linux support. It took hours of effort and several trips to local hardware retailers, but eventually I found a Linux distribution and Wi-Fi card combination that worked-SUSE 10 and a specific version of the Belkin Wireless G Desktop card.

I performed a fresh install of SUSE 10 on my machine and went off to find a compatible PCI 802.11g card. I went first to Best Buy and browsed their wireless cards. A salesperson approached me and offered their assistance. I explained that I wanted a PCI card that would work with Linux “out-of-the-box”. Unfortunately, the salesperson had no clue which card would work. After researching several cards that Best Buy had in-stock, I decided to try the Linksys 54g PCI card. I took that card home, but had no luck. I tried five different card brands from Best Buy, but none offered Plug and Play support for Linux.

Finding the Belkin F5D7000 Wireless G Desktop card

After more Internet research, I found several people also searching for a Plug and Play Linux solution, but no answers. It was during this search that I also realized I had yet tried a Belkin wireless card. I went off to Walmart and purchased a Belkin wireless G card for $29.95, see Figure A.

I took the card home, installed it and turned on the computer. To my surprise, when SUSE 10 a wireless dialog box appeared with a list of three detected SSIDs. I selected my router’s SSID, typed in my encryption code, opened Firefox and accessed the Internet. My search was over.

Since my first glorious moment of wireless connectivity, I have changed Linux distributions several times. The Belkin wireless G card worked with almost every Linux flavor, but only SUSE 10 and Ubuntu worked right out of the box.

It’s all about the Atheros chipset

The Belkin Wireless G Desktop Card isn’t the only Wi-Fi card that works with Linux. The Wireless G Desktop Card’s Linux compatibility lies within the card’s Atheros chipset. According to the company’s Web site, Atheros Communications has offered “open source Linux and FreeBSD software drivers for 802.11b/g and universal 802.11a/b/g products” since July, 2003. Mandy laptops with integrated Wi-Fi support use the Atheros chipset. This is a reason many laptops will automatically connect to the Internet after you install Linux.

Unfortunately, manufacturers, including Belkin, sometimes vary the chipset on the same model Wi-Fi card. Since discovering the Belkin card, I have visited three different Walmart stores and found three different versions. Version 5100 contains the Atheros chipset. The version number is printed on a white sticker located to the right of the barcode, see Figure B. I have tried other versions of the Belkin Wireless G Desktop, but all have failed. If your local Walmart doesn’t carry this specific version, I have also found the card at Staples.
Source :http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com

Linux isn't the only platform this would-be senator is standing on

2007-09-03T16:35:00.000-07:00

James Purser, a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) supporter, committee member for Linux Australia, and ICT consultant, is running for the Senate in the next federal election as an independent for New South Wales. With limited resources, Purser's campaign is fueled by the power of Linux and the Internet, which he is using to build networks and communicate with the public. Purser spends most of his time promoting Open Source Software, but his senate campaign is bigger and broader than technology.

Although he will be pushing for use of open standards in government, and debating ISP level content filtering and broadband availability, he will also be making noises about water management, power generation and Indigenous affairs. Purser is definitely not short of issues to care about, and was happy to tell Computerworld all about it:

You say you want to run for the Senate because the major parties do not represent you and that issues such as climate change, industrial relations and foreign policy are being led by short sighted, short term focused people. Why and how will you be any different?

For a long time now, we have been conditioned by our electoral process to expect even major reforms to be completed by the end of the three year political term. This has encouraged our political leaders to play the short term game, so we get policies and programs which fit neatly into the electoral cycle, rather than those that take a more responsible, long term view.

I believe we should take a new approach. We need a vision for this nation, one that isn't limited by three or five-year plans. Instead we need to look twenty or thirty years in the future. Where is the country going to be, and where should it be? I recognise that for many people looking that far ahead may be unrealistic, however, I believe that if we don't, then we, and our children are going to pay the price.

How will you use technology, Linux and the Internet in your election campaign?

For an unknown potential candidate with limited resources, there is a surprising amount of technology available to help me get my message out. The key is learning how to use that technology to achieve your aims.

The central technology, is of course the Internet. At the most basic level you can setup a Web site and start sharing out links hoping to build a network of supporters online who can then start a word of mouth campaign. However, there are a range of other avenues to take as well. The opportunities that the Internet offers for building true community/government interaction are almost endless. So-called "web2.0" sites such as Facebook, YouTube and MySpace allow you to quickly build up that network.

Personally I have a website (http://jamespurser.com.au) and in addition to that I have set up an account under Facebook, and I have an account under YouTube. I have also setup a VOIP account so that people can call me from Sydney for the price of a local call. If I could get a VOIP number for major towns in NSW I would.

I use Linux in my everyday life, and develop my policies on my laptop running Linux, design election material such as pamphlets and posters using Linux and other Open Source tools such as Inkscape and the Gimp.

Is there a unique way that you plan to utilise technology in your campaign?

I plan on doing a lot of campaigning via the Internet. One method I'm putting the finishing touches on is "Virtual Townhalls". With the spread of video telephony via packages such as Skype and the various IM clients, it would be quite possible to organise meetings with different groups in geographically diverse locations. The way I have envisaged the Virtual Townhall meetings is quite simple. I can set up with a webcam and a microphone on one end and on the other end the same setup can be used for a living room, meeting hall or shed out the back. The people on the other end can then ask me questions or tell me about their concerns and I can talk directly to them. The call itself is free and it means that instead of being restricted by geography, I can talk to people all over the state.

This is what technology can offer us. A senator by definition has the largest "seat" to represent, an entire state. If he or she hopes to claim to truly know what his or her constituents wishes are and what the issues are, the technology is now available to allow the senator to touch bases with constituents in all locations in a cost effective manner. This is just one way that we can tap into the potential of the internet to draw people into the process of government and give them more real input into what the Government does.
Source :http://www.computerworld.com.au

open source Silverlight design tool for Linux

2007-09-03T16:34:00.000-07:00

Alan McGovern, the creator of MonoTorrent, has spent the past 12 weeks developing a visual design tool for XAML that runs on Mono. Although McGovern had no previous experience with either Silverlight or XAML when he started working on his XAML designer, he has successfully created an impressive working prototype.

McGovern's XAML tool—which he calls Lunar Eclipse—was designed to work with Moonlight, Novell's open source implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight rich-media application development framework. Novell's developers produced their Moonlight prototype during a 20 day hackathon in June, during which McGovern started working on Lunar Eclipse.

McGovern's current Lunar Eclipse prototype supports basic animation as well as creating, moving, resizing, and changing the properties of basic shapes. "The basics are there for recording animations. Not everything can be animated as of yet. The supporting infrastructure is all there. It's just currently it can only animate properties which take doubles as their value," writes McGovern in a blog entry. "You can do cool stuff like record several keyframes, then move them around to make the time longer, or shorter, or you can completely rearrange the keyframes so things happen in a different order. You can also seek along the storyboard and see the positions of the elements at different times in the animation."

Although the user interface of Lunar Eclipse is still extremely primitive, the underlying functionality is shaping up nicely. According to McGovern, the eventual goal is to make it possible for Lunar Eclipse to be integrated into MonoDevelop. There are also plans to make a XAML-based interface for Lunar Eclipse so that it can be used in a web browser.

According to lead Mono developer Miguel de Icaza, most of the components required for the open source Silverlight development stack are working, and will be part of Mono 1.2.6, which is scheduled for release in October or November.
Source :http://arstechnica.com

Sun Courts Developers

2007-09-03T16:33:00.000-07:00

Sun Microsystems Inc. has ambitious plans for the commercial and open-source versions of its Solaris operating system, hoping to achieve for Solaris the kind of ubiquity already enjoyed by Java. To come close to reaching that goal, Sun needs to reach out more to developers and endeavor to overcome some long-held prejudices against the OS.

Sun's Java programming language, which debuted in 1995, is present in most of today's PCs, mobile devices and embedded systems. The vendor is now seeking that same kind of omnipresence for Solaris, its flavor of Unix. Sun intends to take the operating system into markets where it hasn't traditionally been a force, such as desktop and embedded systems, according to Marc Hamilton, vice president of Solaris marketing at Sun. The vendor is also keen to position OpenSolaris as a real alternative to Linux.

"There's an enormous momentum building behind Solaris," said Ian Murdock, chief operating platforms officer at Sun. He joined Sun in March after serving as the chief technology officer of the Linux Foundation. Murdock's also the creator of the Debian Linux distribution and is keen to take the lessons he's learned in the Linux community and apply them to Solaris.

Sun is preparing to release OpenSolaris binaries early next year in a distribution code-named "Project Indiana" that will be similar to Linux distributions. The work, which is getting under way in the OpenSolaris community, is aimed at creating a single CD installation of the basic OS and desktop environment, giving developers the option to install additional software from network repositories. Developers also will be able to create limited releases of the distribution targeted at attendees of a particular event.

The whole idea behind Indiana is to build more of a developer community around Solaris, Murdock said. "How can we lower the barriers to programmers and run OpenSolaris as an ideal open-source operating system not originating from Sun?" he asked. Indiana will also enable faster release cycles, with a new version appearing every six months.

With Indiana in place, Sun will adopt a two-tier development model, Murdock said, establishing a clear path from Indiana and OpenSolaris -- for developers and early adopters -- to Solaris, which will be largely used by more conservative enterprise users. The challenge will be delivering what's effectively a single Solaris platform to two very different communities, he added.

Sun has already managed various versions of Java, including mobile, standard and enterprise editions of the software. But whereas with Java, the challenge was getting developers interested in a new technology, with Solaris, Sun needs to appeal to people who may have had previous negative experiences with the OS.

Founded in 2004, online messaging security provider DigiTar begun life as an all-Linux shop, using Suse Linux, according to Jason Williams, chief technology officer and chief operating officer of the Boise, Idaho, company.

"We had a very anti-Sun bias," he said, dating back to the frustration he and a colleague experienced in college trying to use Solaris 8, which they quickly abandoned in favor of Suse. However, DigiTar ran into problems with the way Linux handled a storage subsystem in 2005. With OpenSolaris freely available, they tried out the OS and it worked well. "Solaris has resolved a lot of issues that Linux is just getting hit by," Williams said.

Over time, DigiTar has made use of new Solaris features such as DTrace and ZFS (Zettabyte File System), which have helped the company quickly pin down the locations of performance bottlenecks and better optimize the system. "Our experience with Solaris has been very evolutionary," Williams said. "We came for one thing, then other benefits emerged."

"We very much want to move to Indiana," Williams said, since it will fix two immediate issues DigiTar has with OpenSolaris: ease of use and ease of installation.

The company's keen to migrate all its software to Solaris, but compiling applications on Solaris has always been a little different from compiling on a GNU Linux distribution. Today, about 60 percent of its software runs on Gentoo Linux, versus 40 percent on OpenSolaris. Indiana will support GNU userland, the part of an application that requests system activities from the operating system kernel, making it easier to move Linux applications to Solaris. The other feature Indiana offers over previous versions of OpenSolaris is its packaging, so it can be more easily installed.

Williams is impressed by the community that's already grown up around OpenSolaris. "It's the most productive community I've ever been a part of," he said, with a posted query drawing 4 to 5 informed responses within an hour from both third parties and Sun engineers. Sun's approach to open source is "very mature and adult," Williams added, largely because Sun engineers are used to fielding customers' questions and know it's important to respond rapidly.

In order to win other converts, Williams recommends that Sun go back to school. "The key thing they need to do is get back into the colleges," he said. "That's where we formed our opinion of Sun." Making Solaris easy to use and highlighting useful tools such as DTrace could go a long way toward wooing developers, Williams added.

Sun is encouraging more use of OpenSolaris in universities, with plans to add 500 more Campus Ambassadors around the world to the several hundred that were already in academia, Hamilton said. The Ambassadors are students who receive free training and support from Sun and then establish open-source developer communities in their colleges and evangelize OpenSolaris and Java to their peers and teachers.

Williams also recommends letting Indiana "splinter" so that developers can freely create their own distributions and further spread the Solaris technology. Sun hopes that if it establishes Indiana as a reference platform for OpenSolaris, people are less likely to seek out or develop other distributions, Hamilton said.

"With Linux, what happened was there was a void and people filled it," Murdock said, referring to the large number of Linux distributions in the market. "Everything we do here is to allow for flexibility, so there is the possibility of multiple distributions."

Going after developers is only one of several strategies Sun is pursuing to raise the profile of Solaris. The vendor's also keen to increase the number of hardware platforms on which the OS is available on. Earlier this month, in a deal that would have been unthinkable a few years back, IBM Corp., one of Sun's main hardware rivals, agreed to redistribute Solaris OS and Solaris Subscriptions for some of its System x and BladeCenter servers.

From IBM's perspective, the move is in line with its pledge to offer users a range of operating systems and also will enable the vendor to make money on support calls involving Solaris running on IBM hardware. Hamilton said Sun's in discussions with about 40 original equipment manufacturers to make the OS available on their hardware. The companies include smaller hardware vendors that operate in particular geographies, but he's also interested in having IBM-like relationships with HP and Dell Inc.
Source :http://www.pcworld.com/

Hewlett-Packard Brings Linux To Select Desktops

2007-09-03T16:30:00.000-07:00

Tatey writes "Hewlett-Packard, one of the world's largest PC manufacturers, has announced it will start selling Linux-based PCs aimed at the consumer market ... in Australia. For the time being it appears the HP Linux models will only be available down under, with prices starting at $AU600 (just under $500 USD). 'This PC is a low-end business PC. It comes powered by any of a variety of AMD processors. These range from the 1.60 GHz AMD Sempron 3000+ processor to the speedy 2.8 GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 5600+ processor. The dx2250 can hold up to 2GB of RAM. For storage, it maxes out with a 250 GB hard drive. It comes with a variety of optical drive options, ranging from ordinary CDs to a DVD+/-RW LightScribe, Double Layer/Dual Format drive. At this time, it is not clear exactly what options HP will be offering with the RHEL-based system. Previously, HP had offered this desktop computer with a choice of Vista Business, XP, and FreeDOS. In the latter case, this was almost always replaced by users with a Linux distribution.'"

Source :http://linux.slashdot.org

Linux Predicted To Be Fastest Growing Smartphone OS

2007-08-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

Over the next five years, Linux use in smartphones worldwide will grow at a faster rate than Microsoft(MSFT) Windows Mobile, Symbian, and other operating systems, a research firm predicted Tuesday.

Adoption of the open-source operating system will rise at a compound annual growth rate of more than 75% through 2012, when it will account for nearly 31% of all advanced mobile phones in the market, according to the ABI Research forecast. In terms of numbers, 331 million phones will ship with Linux in 2012.

Helping to drive adoption are initiatives from companies such as chipmaker Intel and mobile Linux provider Access, ABI analyst Stuart Carlaw said. In addition, wireless carriers have identified Linux as one of the few operating systems that they intend to support in their long-term plans. "Linux is benefiting from growing support in the handset OEM community, most notably Motorola, but also Nokia with less traditional types of devices aimed at mobile broadband applications," Carlaw said in a statement.

Motorola is focusing on Java applications running on Linux as the underpinning of its smartphone services. Motorola and other handset makers are building an increasing number of devices that can download and play video and music, as well as offer messaging, Web browsing, and other capabilities.

ABI said fragmentation continues to be a concern with mobile Linux, given the many distributions. In an attempt to address the problem, some vendors have formed a collaborative project called the LiMo Foundation to develop a Linux platform with broad industry support. The alliance, founded by Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics, and Vodafone Group, expects handsets using its platform to appear on the market next year.

Other issues with Linux include Microsoft's claim that Linux in its generic form infringes on 235 of its patents, ABI said. While some pundits dismiss the claims, others are less certain.

Source :http://www.informationweek.com

HP launches Linux desktop in Australia

2007-08-30T08:57:00.000-07:00

The dx2250 HP desktop ships with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Desktop pre-loaded, which includes Firefox, OpenOffice and the Evolution email client. Red Hat will handle technical support for the system.

Pricing starts at AU$600 (£243) with HP citing the rising cost of proprietary solutions as a reason to collaborate with Red Hat.

This is the latest in a series of pro-open-source announcements by HP. In July, the company started supporting the DSpace foundation.

HP also trumps Dell, which has yet to announce plans for a pre-installed desktop Linux in Australia, which would achieve product parity with the US, parts of Europe and Asia.

Red Hat is expected to beef up its desktop offering in the coming weeks with the release of Global Desktop.
Source :http://news.zdnet.co.uk

Hewlett-Packard Brings Linux To Select Desktops

2007-08-30T08:56:00.000-07:00

The world's largest PC manufacturer, Hewlett-Packard, has reportedly announced it will start selling Linux-based PCs aimed at the consumer market. For the time being it appears the HP Linux models will only be available in Australia, with prices starting at $AU600 (just under $500 USD).

The new machines will use AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processors and come equipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Desktop, which features OpenOffice, Firefox and Evolution (e-mail) pre-installed.

Max McLaren, General Manager at Red Hat in Australia, tells APC Mag, who broke the news, that “with the cost of proprietary systems continuing to rise, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Desktop minimizes acquisition and ongoing deployment costs, leaving more money and resources for other high-value projects and tasks.” Which is corporate-speak for “Linux is cheaper than Vista.”

The tech support will come from Red Hat’s end in a variety of options, though HP hasn’t said whether additional support for the included free software will be part of the package.

With Dell already on the Linux bandwagon, by popular customer demand (Ubuntu Linux in that case), Linux seems to finally be making in-roads on the desktop, not just with the nerds, but everyday consumers as well.

[via Desktop Linux, photo from APC Mag]

Source :http://blog.wired.com

VMware ESX Server Support for the System i Is Imminent

2007-08-27T15:03:00.000-07:00

A month ago, I told you that IBM had initiated a Redbook Residency program to solicit volunteers to help Big Blue write up documentation on forthcoming support for VMware's popular ESX Server virtual machine hypervisor on System x and BladeCenter servers configured as a hybrid combination with System i servers. As it turns out, IBM sort of announced this capability on July 24, and will be delivering it on September 14, the same date that the new Power6-based System i 570 and the i5/OS V5R4M5 patched operating system for that box is also available.

The announcement that IBM would allow externally attached System x and BladeCenter servers to support the ESX Server hypervisor was not actually part of the official announcement letters, but were rather one slide in a slide deck that most of us outside of IBM never saw.

I said back in July that IBM rushed these announcements to try to provide some news cover for the Power Systems and Business Systems reorganization, which split the System i division in two and knocked Mark Shearer, formerly the general manager of that division, down a rung on the Big Blue corporate ladder in favor of two other general managers who run the new divisions. There's no question in my mind that IBM was planning announcements in September or October once it decided to not wait until October 2008 for a Power6 launch, then date bopped around a bit, and then the company decided in the middle of the bopping to split the System i division after yet another quarter of declining sales for the System i platform and the realization that the System i customer set has two unique components. It bears reminding that the AIX, Windows, and Linux bases have different customer sets with their own requirements, too, and that the mainframe has lost anything that can really be called an entry customer and has few midrange customers left. Maybe IBM should have called it the Enterprise Systems division, throwing in any box with more than four sockets, and tossed everything with four or fewer sockets into the Business Systems division. That, of course, would be too logically consistent and probably politically impossible for any large IT corporation. But cleaving a weakened System i division in two to suit whatever needs some IBMers feel have to be met is relatively easy. Obviously. But I digress.

In any event, one of the things that got lost in the July 24 shuffle and the subsequent July 31 announcement letters was the support for VMware ESX Server, and it is only because of the announcement that IBM was looking for volunteers to help on the Redbook relating to this product that we had any inkling that something was in the works.

The important thing is that IBM is bringing support for ESX Server to hybrid System i-X64 server setups. The one page that IBM has posted describing this is here. It doesn't really tell you what is going on, however.

"Our largest customers have 70 to 80 servers attached to their System i machine," explains Kyle Wurgler, product manager for integrated servers for the System i product line. "And as we talked to customers in 2005 and 2006, the majority of them asked us about our plans for supporting VMware hypervisors."

According to Wurgler, IBM has been looking for ways to support Integrated xSeries Servers and outboard System x and BladeCenter servers running ESX Server and using the System i as a disk array for that software for the past two and a half years. It would have been possible to add such support with VMware's ESX Server 2.5 product line, which was launched in December 2004. But to do so would have required VMware to do all of the work providing an internal drive in the hypervisor that would allow ESX Server to talk to disk arrays on iSeries and System i boxes. But with ESX Server 3, VMware has embedded an iSCSI disk array link compliments of drivers from QLogic, and in September IBM will deliver support for iSCSI links between outboard servers and under-the-skin System i disk arrays. So now, IBM and VMware do not have to do anything too hard for ESX Server to see the System i as a disk array.

IBM has had the iSCSI links supporting ESX Server in a technical preview since February and did a beta program starting in May, according to Wurgler. The iSCSI support became generally available in May 2006, replacing the Integrated xSeries Adapter, a special variant of the iSeries and System i's High Speed Loop interconnect, which I suspect is a variant of Fibre Channel but which IBM will not confirm. (Just like I think the new 12X interconnect is a variant of InfiniBand, but IBM says it is not. I simply do not believe it, because IBM would not be foolish enough to try to create new networking protocols but it would be smart enough to take industry standards and tweak them for its own ends.) By the end of the year, IBM probably had close to 1,000 customers using these links, by my estimate. It could have a lot more by now.

Starting September 14, shops running i5/OS V5R4 and wanting to run ESX Server on their outboard X64 servers will be able to apply PTF patches to i5/OS and then load ESX Server 3.0.1 on to their X64 boxes. Thanks to the patches, any iSeries or System i box with the 5XX designation and running i5/OS V5R4 with the appropriate PTF patches will be seen as ESX Server as a certified iSCSI storage array capable of supporting ESX Server during its bare-metal setup. The current ESX Server supports Windows, Linux, NetWare, and Solaris on X86 and X64 platforms; it allows for a single hypervisor to host as many as eight processor cores and then dice and slice it into virtual machines, each supporting its own operating system.

While most of the ESX Server 3 features will be supported with the initial release by IBM on September 14, the one cool feature that makes ESX Server interesting--the VMotion live workload migration facility--will not be supported initially. Wurgler says that IBM has it working in the labs, but given the fact that VMotion moves workloads around, IBM wants to test this feature a little bit more. As I explained a month ago, with VMotion, the machine running the applications and the one that will be running those applications after the VMotion teleportation have to be linked by a storage area network. What ESX Server is really doing is capturing the state of main memory in the X86 or X64 server running in the VM, moving it to a new machine, and flipping the link to the SAN from one VM on the first server to another VM on the second server. If you don't have common, shared storage, you can't do the VMotion, since actually moving the data across a network would be very time consuming.

The plan now is to have VMotion support for ESX Server instances riding on top of iSCSI-linked System i storage available with i5/OS V6R1. This operating system is expected in the next six months or so, maybe in January, February, or March, depending on who you ask. All IBM is saying officially is that V6R1 will be available sometime in the first half of 2008.

All of the Infrastructure 3 tools that are sold with ESX Server 3, including the VirtualCenter management tool, work with the System i acting as a storage array. Only tools dependent on VMotion have been disabled.

What isn't clear is whether or not IBM will officially support the freebie version of VMware's hypervisor, which is now called VMware Server and which used to be called GSX Server, on the Systems i platform. But, given the architecture of VMware Server, there is little IBM can do to stop customers from using the product. With GSX Server and VMware Server, the hypervisor that supports multiple virtual machines that in turn run different operating systems actually runs inside a Windows or Linux operating system. Both Windows and Linux are supported with iSCSI links back into iSeries and System i disk arrays, and as far as these servers are concerned, the virtual machines inside those Windows and Linux operating systems are just plain old (if not somewhat large) files. The disk arrays inside the iSeries and System i machines are none the wiser.

One last thing. IBM is not trying to get ESX Server to run on Power-based systems, and VMware is not porting ESX Server to Power platforms, either. (When IBM says it is supporting ESX Server on the System i, people can get confused about what that means.) It would be very interesting to provide Infrastructure 3 tools the ability to manage Virtualization Engine hypervisors on Power-based servers, and it would not be unreasonable for such a thing to happen over time. VMware has to do something to make money, and if hypervisors are really going to be commodities, then it has to manage all of them--including its main competition on X64 platforms, the open source Xen hypervisor.
Source :http://www.itjungle.com

Red Hat To Showcase Open Source Enterprise Solutions At GITEX 2007

2007-07-22T18:24:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-22T18:22:00.002-07:00

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

2007-07-22T18:22:00.001-07:00

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

2007-07-22T18:03:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-03T19:07:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-03T19:04:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-07-03T19:01:00.000-07:00

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/

Linux Gains Windows Muscle

2007-06-30T21:28:00.000-07:00

Of all the accusations Microsoft has levelled over the years against open source, perhaps the least contentious is that it lacks the tight integration offered by Microsoft's own products. As Nick McGrath, director of platform strategy for Microsoft in the United Kingdom, puts it: "One of the problems I've seen with open source software is it doesn't take on board some of the issues that customers have around interoperability and integration. Open source projects tend to offer a very specific point solution."

That may have been largely true in the past, but one of the most important recent developments in the open source world is the rise of integrated open source enterprise stacks. Many run on Windows, too, so they offer the Microsoft IT community a range of interesting -- and free -- alternatives to traditional solutions.

Microsoft understood earlier than most the power of offering stacks as defining elements of a wider software ecosystem. McGrath says that it was "largely a standardization on a common platform that's really helped to build the ecosystem over time." Network effects mean that a single, large ecosystem is much richer than a collection of many smaller ones, as was the case in the 1980s and early 1990s when the main enterprise operating system, namely Unix, was fragmented into numerous, slightly incompatible flavors.

The rise of the GNU/Linux (the term insisted upon by the Free Software Foundation, as the Linux kernel itself layers a number of GNU tools on top of it) operating system in the mid-1990s potentially created another major ecosystem, but one of free software's greatest strengths proved to be something of a weakness too. "One of the key things about open source software is it enables individuals the freedom to develop their application in any direction that they choose," McGrath notes. "They don't necessarily have to think about the specific requirements of an individual customer or indeed a whole host of customers. A lot of open source projects are produced by people who just wanted to solve a problem that they themselves had, or collectively had with another group of people."

The result of this unfettered creativity was a rich patchwork of software that sometimes covered business's real-world needs inconsistently or only partially.

Bob Young, co-founder of one of the first and most successful open source companies, Red Hat Inc., worried about this as far back as the late 1990s. "The success of operating system platforms has relatively little to do with the guys selling the operating system, and a great deal to do with the success in building out an ecosystem around that operating system," he explained in 2000. "Microsoft might be the most profitable supplier in the Windows marketplace, but they earn a small share of the total revenue of that industry. The reason you can get almost anything done with a Windows-based computer is because there's some vendor out there who can help you do it." As a result, he said, "What we recognized was that we had to build out this ecosystem."

LAMP Illuminates a Solution
Red Hat's efforts at the time concentrated mostly on persuading leading companies like IBM Corp. and Oracle Corp. to take GNU/Linux seriously-work that eventually paid off with ports of major proprietary enterprise products to that platform. The first purely open source ecosystem, albeit on a small scale, coalesced around what became known as the LAMP stack, whose name derives from its four components: the GNU/Linux operating system, the Apache Web server (still the most widely used on the public Web, even today), the MySQL database and a scripting language (PHP, Python or Perl).

Together, they formed the first integrated open source stack that offered a business solution in the same way that Microsoft's software bundles did. The power of that combination can be judged from the fact that almost a decade after the acronym was coined in 1998, the LAMP stack remains widely used for building sophisticated Web sites quickly and cheaply. As MySQL's Executive Vice President of Products Zack Urlocker notes: "Among Web 2.0 companies, start-ups and SaaS [Software as a Service] companies, it's probably 90 percent LAMP." Big names running the stack include Wikipedia, Flickr, Digg.com and Technorati Inc.

While LAMP offered an example of how successfully integrated open source solutions could be, others were tackling the issue of how to tame free software's tendency to create multiple, uncoordinated solutions to a problem by helping to define a common platform and hence promote the creation of a larger, richer open source ecosystem.

For example, the Linux Foundation, which is the organization that pays Linus Torvalds for his work on the Linux kernel, has been working for some years on a major project called the Linux Standard Base (LSB). Unlike Microsoft's controlled releases of the Windows stack, there are no official versions of GNU/Linux; instead, the free operating system appears as part of "distributions," variegated collections of software that can be put together by anyone. This freedom has led to a great diversity -- there are currently hundreds of specialized "distros" available, with more appearing each week -- but also subtle incompatibilities that are the bane of application development.

Dan Kohn, COO of the Linux Foundation, explains how his organization solves this problem: "The Linux Standard Base is about finding the common subset that all of the major distributions are making available and standardizing that, so that applications providers can rely on it. The idea is that any [LSB-]certified Linux application will run correctly on any [LSB-]certified Linux distribution."

Vendors Band Together
Just as the Linux Foundation seeks to recapitulate Microsoft's success in spawning an ecosystem centered on the operating system, the Eclipse Foundation aims to do the same for the development platform. Mike Milinkovich, the executive director of Eclipse, sketches in the background. "Eclipse first came upon the public scene in November 2001, when IBM contributed what was estimated to be $40 million of code to the open source community. The goal that IBM had in creating Eclipse.org was to create for Java a tool and an ecosystem [that] could compete in terms of size and scope and gravity with what Microsoft had done with Visual Studio," he says.

The main architect of the ecosystem idea, Skip McGaughey, currently director of ecosystem at Eclipse, explains its origins. "Our customers were telling us that they were tired of trying to integrate the tools themselves. This led us to the idea of nurturing and promoting an ecosystem at the same time as creating the technology," since interoperability is a defining feature of such an approach.

IBM soon realized that its stewardship of Eclipse was a barrier to its competitors joining: They "perceived it as an IBM-led, IBM-controlled project, even though it was available under an open source license," Milinkovich explains. IBM then decided to take the next step, and the Eclipse Foundation was created as a separate legal entity, he says.

Independence brought with it a big advantage.

"Microsoft has built up around Visual Studio and .NET a very vibrant and powerful ecosystem," Milinkovich says. "The difference is that our motivations truly are pure. My job, and the job of people at the Eclipse Foundation, is not to make money for our shareholders the way that any for-profit company has to act. We're here to help grow the ecosystem in a vendor-neutral, even-keeled kind of way."

Consequently, Eclipse has blossomed. Milinkovich points out that when the foundation was first created it had 50 members, and now it's up to 155 member organizations. Similarly, the number of projects has grown from approximately a dozen to around 70.

As successful as both the Linux and Eclipse Foundations have been, neither addresses a pressing concern for enterprises: the lack of easy interoperability among open source applications. The first attempts to deal with this issue came from companies that put together integrated open source bundles that solved particular business problems. The pioneer here was SpikeSource Inc., which has crafted pre-built collections of "SpikeIgnited" open source stacks that provide complete business intelligence, enterprise content management, collaboration, e-mail, CRM and Web content-management solutions, and has done so in a form that's easy to install, manage and update.

As Tom Callway, marketing director at Sirius Corp., one of the leading European proponents of the approach, puts it: The application stack "allows us to get away from the idea that open source projects are a disparate, disorganized rabble with little to offer the enterprise." Moreover, Sirius's CEO, Mark Taylor, points out that the existence of stacks is having a positive effect on the way enterprise open source is being written: "We're now seeing most of the enterprise-class open source world become conscious of the stack idea, and ensure that their project plays nicely with its neighbors in the stack."

Perhaps the best proof of this new sense of collective responsibility is the formation in February 2007 of the Open Solutions Alliance (OSA). As Dominic Sartorio, president of the OSA, explains: "There's been a lot of commercial open source companies that have focused on business applications emerging over the last two or three years. I think it's a natural evolution of open source: It started with the operating system and developer tools, and has gradually been moving up the stack. All of us [at the OSA] emerged basically as vendors of point solutions. What all of us have independently found is that our target customers want not just point solutions -- they need to combine them in some way or they may need to integrate [them] into some existing infrastructure."

The OSA is a non-profit organization, like Eclipse in that it too does not resell any company's products, Sartorio emphasises. "We're a trade association where we focus on solving common issues." The organization's focus on vendor-neutral solutions designed to create a level playing field and lower barriers to entry brings important benefits. "If the ecosystem makes it easy to start a company, easy to start selling a solution, easy to start finding customers, we're going to have a very competitive market," observes Brian Behlendorf, co-founder of the Apache Web Server Project.

Two early OSA projects include creating a common customer view and providing single sign-on facilities across compliant applications. Sartorio notes: "We fully expect some of the interoperability challenges we have will take into account having legacy software. Single sign-on is one of those we're looking at, where we're contemplating [that the user] may have some proprietary bits but [they'll] still want single sign-on to work across it." This isn't the only place where the two ecosystems of Microsoft and open source are starting to overlap.

Part of the Stack
Already, open source applications are widely used running on top of Windows. Alongside the LAMP stack, there's also Windows+AMP (WAMP). Although over 40 percent of MySQL's downloads are for GNU/Linux, around 30 percent are for the Windows platform. As Urlocker explains: "People often develop on Windows and deploy on Linux." The popularity of Eclipse among Windows users is even greater: "[We've found that] 87 percent of our downloads are for Windows, and Linux is 9 percent," Milinkovich says. Eclipse is "very much part of the broader Windows ecosystem," he emphasizes.

Now, the open source enterprise stacks are starting to appear on Windows. In May of this year, SpikeSource announced that it plans to work together with Microsoft to certify all of SpikeSource's SpikeIgnited solutions on the Microsoft Windows platform. Bill Hilf, general manager of platform strategy at Microsoft, probably had this collaboration in mind when he wrote on his blog the day before the SpikeSource announcement: "We want to grow the software ecosystem, including open source software, as it relates to Microsoft software." Clearly, this is an area where Microsoft and the open source world have a common interest. As Eclipse's McGaughey notes: "In a healthy ecosystem, everyone gains."

Source :http://redmondmag.com/

Troubleshooting Linux Audio, Part 1

2007-06-30T21:27:00.000-07:00

I have a friend who has had nothing but nightmares result from his attempts at setting up the fabled low-latency high-performance Linux audio system. In sympathy with his plight I present here a primer in three parts for troubleshooting common and uncommon problems with the Linux sound system. Parts 1 & 2 will present programs used to analyze and configure your audio setup. Part 3 will list the most frequently encountered problems along with their suggested solutions.

This week, Part 1 introduces some useful system analysis tools and utilities with graphic user interfaces.

First Steps

The Linux audio system is a complex beast, and ALSA is its beating heart. Well, it's supposed to be, but what do you do when it's not beating ?

First, consider the critical parts of a typical computer sound system. Three main stages exist for possible malfunction :

1. Connections between soundcard and external equipment.
2. The soundcard and its configuration.
3. Your system software configuration.

Stage 1 should be checked for proper connections, power status, cable integrity, and other hardware aspects. Consumer-grade sound devices usually provide poor-quality connectors, though some cards from Creative include more durable connection points on their "Live Drive" control panels. If your external equipment includes an amplifier or powered speakers, be sure the power is turned on (and double-check those flimsy connectors between speakers). Cords and cables can be damaged easily, causing static-like noise and other discontinuities in the sound, and their connectors should be solidly attached. You don't need to buy cables with gold-plated hardware, but you should avoid cheap cords with molded plastic connectors. Remember, your audio system is a chain of parts, and like any chain it's only as strong as its links. Avoid weak links.

The soundcard itself may cause audio problems if it is not seated completely in its slot. It may also be a noise source if placed next to certain video or network cards. I'll discuss card and system configuration details later in this article, but first I have some advice to help you avoid some predictable problems.

Doing It Right The First Time

I can't over-emphasize the need to do your homework before purchasing hardware for audio with Linux. If you're coming from Windows into the Linux audio world you must not assume that your equipment will be supported. For that information your first stop should be the new & improved ALSA Soundcard Matrix, and if you can't find what you need there you should proceed to the LAU mail-list and its archives. These steps are increasingly necessary as Linux itself broadens support for USB, Firewire, and other i/o devices and protocols. For the most up-to-date information on recommended (and not-so-recommended) hardware, search the LAU archives and ask on the mail-list.

Typical recommendations for professional-quality audio work include the RME Hammerfall and the M-Audio Delta systems. However, potential buyers are well-advised to ask on the LAU list before purchasing any hardware, even the recommended items. Sensitive points include firmware versions, preamp requirements, available sample rates, and so forth.

ALSA supports a greater variety of consumer-grade cards, so recommendations are easier to make. Most cards from Creative Labs are well-supported, though again I also advise checking the ALSA Soundcard Matrix and the LAU mail-lists for current reports on your potential purchase.

USB audio devices are generally supported if they are truly standards-compliant. The LAU mail-list archive contains some valuable threads regarding USB devices and their performance under Linux, it won't hurt to consult the archive before buying a USB sound device. Firewire support has only recently come to the Linux audio world, thanks primarily to the work of the FFADO (formerly FreeBOB) project. Consult the FFADO Web site and the LAU list for current usability reports.

On-board desktop and laptop chipsets are generally not recommended for serious recording, at least not for multitrack/multichannel CD-quality digital audio I/O. They may be desirable for audio features for CD/DVD playback, but they are not sufficiently robust for serious audio production. The hda_intel chipsets are especially prone to difficulties; see the LAU archive for details regarding that and other fractious laptop & notebook audio chipsets.

Tools & Utilities: GUI

The Windows Control Panel has been a mixed blessing for users, but it does succeed at putting a lot of information about your system into one handy utility. Linux per se does not provide such a utility, but many Linux distributions and desktop environments now supply some kind of GUI for investigating and configuring your system and its various devices. For example, openSUSE includes yast ("yet another system tool"), an excellent utility that reports a wealth of detail regarding your machine and its operating system.

The screenshots in Figures 1 through 4 indicate the breadth and depth of information and control available from yast. Figure 1 shows off the yast (yast2, actually) GUI. The left-hand panel lists the general categories, and each category displays its own set of available devices and services. Figure 2 displays the results from selecting the Hardware category and then clicking on the Hardware Information icon. Figure 3 shows the same panel with the sound device information fully revealed.

More... http://www.linuxjournal.com
Source : http://www.linuxjournal.com

Microsoft Trumpets Virtues of Office Business Apps

2007-06-29T21:57:00.000-07:00

Microsoft is gearing up to show its partners how Office Business Applications (OBAs) can help organizations squeeze extra productivity out of their line-of-business apps.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant Friday published three reference application packs (RAPs), which include whitepapers and Virtual PC images that illustrate how OBAs can be used to boost efficiencies health care, manufacturing and the public sector.

Microsoft is positioning OBAs as a way to bridge Office front ends with backend CRM and ERP applications, allowing organizations to give access to these traditionally underused apps to a broader range of employees, said Daz Wilkin, program manager for Microsoft's Platform Strategy group.

Microsoft is using OBAs as the prime example of its Software + Services strategy and plans to barrage its partners with information on OBAs next month at its worldwide partner conference in Denver.

ISVs and enterprises are expected to be the key drivers for innovation around deployment of OBAs on the Office platform.

Microsoft and SAP last year teamed up to develop Duet, an OBA that links Office apps with SAP's back end ERP apps. Duet makes it possible to peer into an SAP application, take an invoice and analyze it, and reinsert it into the SAP workflow, all without impacting performance.

In manufacturing, OBAs can be used to organize mountains of business intelligence (BI) data emanating from plant floor operations and deliver it to a foreman's mobile device or a CEO's PC screen. "Usually BI is aimed at senior executives and sales, but OBAs allow this data to be used in different scenarios," said Wilkin.

In health care, companies could set up a Sharepoint portal for employees to navigate corporate medical programs and get information on quitting smoking or joining a gym, with OBAs triggering backend workflows, Wilkin said.

OBAs can be sophisticated data warehousing and workflow management tools within the walls of Microsoft products, but companies that don't have all Microsoft infrastructure may not find them as useful, says David White, vice president of client strategy and enablement at Beacon Technologies, Madison, Wis.

"Microsoft is notorious for not wanting its products to be called out through APIs, so they are building a complete cosmos of their own systems," said White.
Source :http://www.crn.com

Leading Analyst Joins Media & Entertainment Group at Microsoft

2007-06-29T21:56:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Corp. today announced that Katherine Styponias will join the Media & Entertainment Group as general manager, where she will lead the business development team working with major content suppliers. Styponias joins Microsoft from Prudential Equity Group LLC, where she served as senior vice president and the senior cable, entertainment and satellite equity analyst. She has relocated from New York to Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Wash.

Styponias is widely recognized as an expert in analyzing media industry trends and companies. She was named in The Wall Street Journal's "Best on the Street" poll for earnings-estimate accuracy and stock picking in the entertainment category. She was also recognized in Institutional Investor magazine's All-America Research Team poll and was named the No. 1 earnings estimator for the media sector in the Forbes.com/StarMine Analysts Awards for 2004.

"I've known Kathy for more than 10 years and have the highest regard for her," said Blair Westlake, corporate vice president of the Media & Entertainment Group at Microsoft. "Kathy brings to our team an unparalleled depth of knowledge and understanding about the entertainment industry that will help expand business opportunities for both Microsoft and its partners."

"After 12 years covering developments in entertainment, I'm looking forward to turning my knowledge and relationships into opportunity for the industry," Styponias said. "This is a time of tremendous change in the way entertainment is being delivered, and Microsoft is a great place to influence the game."

Styponias joined Prudential in July 1995, writing and conducting research on publicly traded media companies. Before joining Prudential, she worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1988 from Queens College, City University of New York, and received her MBA from Columbia Business School at Columbia University.

Styponias is fluent in Greek, enjoys traveling and is an admitted TV junkie and nascent gamer.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
Source :http://money.cnn.com

Microsoft pays $200M for two Savvis data centers

2007-06-29T21:55:00.000-07:00

Savvis Inc. said Friday that it sold assets in two adjacent data centers in Santa Clara, Calif., to Microsoft for $200 million. As a result of the sale, Savvis also reduced its 2007 outlook.

Seattle-based Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MFST) was the sole customer in both data centers, under the terms of a Savvis colocation contract that was to expire at the end of 2010, Savvis said in a release. As part of the sale, the service contract for the two facilities terminates as of the end of June 2007.

The total sale price includes $190 million in cash and forgiveness of about $10 million in previously-advanced revenue, as well as reflects early termination of the service contracts related to the data centers.

Phil Koen, Savvis chief executive said in a statement that the transaction is "great" for both Savvis and its continuing customer Microsoft. "Microsoft gets full control of two data centers they already occupy. Savvis can redeploy the proceeds into investments in higher-margin, higher-growth assets."

Jeff Von Deylen, Savvis chief financial officer, said in a statement that the contract with Microsoft had provided Savvis with only modest growth from contractual price escalators, and proceeds from the asset sale will fund expansion that's expected to produce higher growth. "Over the next twelve months we expect to reinvest the proceeds in initiatives including selected data center expansions and potential network enhancements. As a result of these investments, we would expect to exceed the lost annualized adjusted EBITDA from this transaction within 24 months."

Von Deylen said the company will announce the initiatives as plans are finalized "over the next few quarters."

Savvis said that as a result of the asset sale to Microsoft, its management's current expectations for 2007 include total revenue in a range of $805 million to $820 million, compared to the previously anticipated $820 million to $835 million; and adjusted EBITDA in a range of $155 million to $165 million, compared to $160 million to $170 million previously anticipated.

St. Louis-based Savvis Inc. (Nasdaq: SVVS) provides hosting, networking and application IT services.
Source :http://stlouis.bizjournals.com

Microsoft Solves iPhone E-Mail Flaw

2007-06-29T21:51:00.000-07:00

An update to Exchange 2007 released by Microsoft should solve problems that may have prevented e-mail from Exchange Server 2007 from being received by Apple's iPhone.

Thursday the software maker released Rollup 3, the third update to the Exchange Server 2007. The update, which should address issues some have with Apple Mac Mail, came just ahead of Friday's U.S. release of the iPhone.

It will hopefully resolve some of the issues users have encountered, including certain Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) clients being unable to open e-mail messages accessing mailboxes on a Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 server.

The update will be available via Microsoft Update and at the Microsoft Download Center.
Source :http://www.pcworld.com

Microsoft Windows Live Web-based storage gets limited beta nod

2007-06-29T21:07:00.000-07:00

Aiming to catch up to rivals that provide users with free online storage to handle the growing amounts of videos, photo albums, documents and music files quickly filling up storage space on their PCs, Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday released its Windows Live Folders service as part of a tightly controlled software beta test phase.

Windows Live Folders, which features up to 500MB of free Web-based storage in its current iteration, will initially be offered to about 5,000 preselected U.S. users as part of a "managed" beta test release rolled out this week, according to Microsoft officials.

The new storage service is designed to enable users to back up data and share and access their files online with ease. However, there is a caveat: Anyone who receives an invitation to access files from a shared folder must first register for -- or already have -- a Windows Live ID for proper authentication.

Users hoping to kick the tires of Windows Live Folders as part of a larger beta release shouldn't expect to get their hands on the software for at least a few more months.

Despite the company's attempts to stand toe-to-toe with the likes of Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and AOL LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., in the online file access storage arena, Windows Live Folders' capacity limits puts Microsoft behind similar offerings from competitors.

For example, AOL's Xdrive offering provides 5GB of free Web-based storage. Google's Gmail service features nearly 3GB of free storage for its e-mail subscribers, while Yahoo recently rolled out unlimited storage capacity for its e-mail platform.
Source :http://www.computerworld.com

India's Kerala state goes open source

2007-06-29T20:44:00.000-07:00

According to a statement, the Kerala government has identified free and open-source software as a major strategic component in its efforts to build an inclusive information society.

"Kerala has always been a leader in literacy, and now we want to make Kerala a leader in e-literacy," said Kerala Chief Minister V. S. Achutanandan. "We believe that free and open-source software is an essential component in our drive to democratize information technology and bring its benefits to all sections of society."

The Indian state, located on the country's southwest coast, is partnering with Red Hat to train the technical staff of various government organizations and school teachers on desktop Linux and other open-source applications. The Linux vendor will also work with the state government to promote Kerala as a global destination for developing open-source software.

Commenting on Kerala's move toward open source, Nandkumar Pradhan, president and managing director of Red Hat India, said: "The freedom, flexibility and cost-effectiveness of open source helps governments maximize their IT budgets."

Kerala is the latest Indian state to widely support the use of open-source software in schools and government departments.

Tamil Nadu, which embarked on a plan in January to put Linux in government offices, schools and villages, is making progress. Tamil Nadu is located on India's southeast coast.

According to C. Umashankar, managing director of the Electronics Corp. of Tamil Nadu (Elcot), the new operating system has gone down well with its computer users.

"We have switched over to 100 percent Linux in our office, which has more than 200 desktops and laptops. We have also been dispatching desktops with only Suse Linux," he told ZDNet Asia in an e-mail interview.

Although there was initial resistance to change, Umashankar noted, people warmed up to the software after an hour's orientation.

Elcot has opened a Suse Linux training center in its corporate office, and the first batch of 84 officials from the Department of Industries was trained in June. Trainers also conduct on-site training at various government offices.

"The current indications are that government users will fully accept the Linux OS in the days to come," Umashankar said.

More than 3,000 Suse Linux desktops have been dispatched to government offices in Tamil Nadu, and Windows is not offered unless there is an absolute necessity.

"The government offices have to justify the procurement of Windows by indicating the existing client/server software, if any," Umashankar said. "If a desktop system is required only for office application, then we will only supply desktop systems with Suse Linux."
Source :http://news.zdnet.com

KDE developers receive Mandriva Flash Linux keys at aKademy 2007

2007-06-29T20:42:00.000-07:00

Mandriva today announces its sponsorship of the 2007 aKademy KDE conference, which is taking place in Glasgow from June 30th to July 7th.

Mandriva today announces its sponsorship of the 2007 aKademy KDE conference, which is taking place in Glasgow from June 30th to July 7th. As well as sponsoring the conference, Mandriva is arranging to provide special edition Mandriva Flash USB keys to developers attending the conference as a token of appreciation for their work.

"We are very happy to welcome Mandriva as a silver sponsor for Akademy 2007," said Jonathan Riddell of the aKademy Team. "As a long term supporter and distributor of KDE the summit organising team is looking forward to giving our developers, contributors and industry partners at the conference a special present from Mandriva."

aKademy is the official annual meeting of the KDE community, where KDE developers and users come together for presentations, talks, and workshop sessions. Mandriva is proud to help in supporting this vital and significant event. Mandriva's involvement in aKademy will run far beyond sponsorship: as well as hosting a booth, Mandriva staff will be taking advantage of the event to support the Nepomuk social desktop project, a collaboration between researchers, developers and users to bring new and innovative social features to existing desktops, particularly KDE. Some of the products of the Nepomuk project will feature prominently in the upcoming KDE 4, and Mandriva is one of the major participants in Nepomuk.

Helio Chissini de Castro, a leading member of the Mandriva KDE team, will be presenting on the topic of OEM deployment, drawing on his years of experience of large KDE deployments with Conectiva and Mandriva.

Mandriva Flash, the Linux key, is a complete Mandriva Linux desktop on a bootable USB key. Mandriva Flash is designed to allow the user to take their desktop and all their vital documents with them wherever they go. The Mandriva Flash provided to aKademy participants will be a special edition based on Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring and including the very latest version of KDE, 3.5.7, along with some unique special features.

"We are very proud to be in a position to support this important event and to give something back to the KDE community," said David Barth, Mandriva Vice-President of Engineering. "Our staff and contributors are looking forward both to spreading the word about Mandriva and being involved in important work on the future of KDE."
Source :http://www.linuxpr.com/

Is a Linux Civil War in the Making?

2007-06-29T20:36:00.000-07:00

Microsoft's partnership with Novell got a lot of people in the open-source community fired up. Since then, Microsoft's Linux deals with Linspire and Xandros have just thrown gasoline on the fire. Now, it appears that Red Hat, the leading Linux company and the most vocal opponent to Microsoft wheeling and dealing, tried to make its own deal with Microsoft before the Novell one was released.

So, what's going on here? As Kevin Carmony, Linspire's CEO and president, rhetorically asks in his latest public column, "Is Linux Splitting into Two Factions?"

Carmony says: "Saying that Linux is going to be torn in two makes for good press and lively debates, but this is certainly nothing new for Linux. There are far more material splits today in the Linux world, such as Debian vs. RPM, KDE vs. GNOME, Distro A vs. Distro B, and so on. These divisions are quite material, and dilute significant energy and efforts across competing standards. However, we accept this as the price we pay for freedom of choice."

I see the current uproar between those who partner with Microsoft--Novell, Linspire and Xandros--and those that swear off Microsoft partnerships—Ubuntu and Mandriva—as being just another variation on the theme of open-source pragmatism versus free software idealism.

On the one side, you have those who believe in open source as the best possible way of writing code. For them, open source is just the most practical way to create the best programs. If hardware companies—like graphic card vendors ATI and NVIDIA refusing to open up their devices enough to create true open-source drivers--won't cooperate, you find other ways to make their hardware work. Companies that buy into this approach are far more likely to play "Let's Make a Deal" with Microsoft.

Linux & Open Source Header

Vaughan-Nichols
Is a Linux Civil War in the Making?
By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
June 28, 2007

Opinion: Is Microsoft just selling the ammo? Or, is Microsoft fighting the wrong war with the wrong weapons?

2 comments posted
Add your opinion

Microsoft's partnership with Novell got a lot of people in the open-source community fired up. Since then, Microsoft's Linux deals with Linspire and Xandros have just thrown gasoline on the fire. Now, it appears that Red Hat, the leading Linux company and the most vocal opponent to Microsoft wheeling and dealing, tried to make its own deal with Microsoft before the Novell one was released.
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So, what's going on here? As Kevin Carmony, Linspire's CEO and president, rhetorically asks in his latest public column, "Is Linux Splitting into Two Factions?"

Carmony says: "Saying that Linux is going to be torn in two makes for good press and lively debates, but this is certainly nothing new for Linux. There are far more material splits today in the Linux world, such as Debian vs. RPM, KDE vs. GNOME, Distro A vs. Distro B, and so on. These divisions are quite material, and dilute significant energy and efforts across competing standards. However, we accept this as the price we pay for freedom of choice."

I see the current uproar between those who partner with Microsoft--Novell, Linspire and Xandros--and those that swear off Microsoft partnerships—Ubuntu and Mandriva—as being just another variation on the theme of open-source pragmatism versus free software idealism.

On the one side, you have those who believe in open source as the best possible way of writing code. For them, open source is just the most practical way to create the best programs. If hardware companies—like graphic card vendors ATI and NVIDIA refusing to open up their devices enough to create true open-source drivers--won't cooperate, you find other ways to make their hardware work. Companies that buy into this approach are far more likely to play "Let's Make a Deal" with Microsoft.

eWEEK.com Special Report: Enterprise Wars: Linux vs. Windows

On the other side, you have those that believe that for free software to really work in the long run there must be no compromises with the forces of proprietary software and hardware. For them, working with a Microsoft is out of the question. The perfect example of a group on this side is the Free Software Foundation with the GPLv3 license, which will be released on June 29.

The real world though isn't black and white. Open source versus free software, Microsoft Linux partners vs. non-Microsoft Linux partners, is a spectrum, not an either/or choice.

Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, for example, has stated that he's not about to make a patent deal with Microsoft. He hasn't, however, ruled out making other kinds of partnerships with Microsoft. Novell, on the other hand, Microsoft patent deal and all, has said time and again that it doesn't agree with Microsoft's nonsense that having a patent agreement means agreeing that Microsoft patents have anything to do with Linux.
Source : http://www.eweek.com

Jim Lacey, CEO, Linux Professional Institute

2007-06-29T20:30:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of the Linux revolution, Linux entered many enterprises through the back door with experienced users just managing it on their own. As Linux has matured, so too have the demands of the enterprise and the demands on IT professionals that manage Linux systems.

How does an enterprise ensure that its staff has the skills necessary for Linux? One answer is skills certification. That's where the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) comes in. LPI, founded in 1999, is a non-profit entity that runs a core Linux certification program called the LPIC (Linux Professional Institute Certification), which is offered around the globe.

Internetnews.com recently talked with LPI President and CEO Jim Lacey about the challenges of Linux professional certification and whether it's necessary.

Q: I've been running Linux for 10 years. What do I need certification for? Is there something that LPI adds?

That's the big question that comes up. It's a bit market-dependent. As you travel around the globe, certification means different things. In Japan certification is very strong and they believe in why they need it to get a job. In Latin America certification is really starting to take hold.

In the U.S., the problem is that people lost the value proposition around certification through the last 10 years. There are a lot of promises made in the past that certification could help people to make money.

The bottom line is that many of those promises didn't ring true, and people spent a lot of money to find that out.

The value of certification in the U.S. took a nosedive. That, coupled with the flooding in of a bunch of paper cert, sooner or later the CIO and CEO were saying, "You've got the certification, but you're not proving that you can do the job." So the value dropped off.

I think it's starting to come back now because people have been more research-oriented on what certifications really prove and what they are worth. People aren't saying certification overall is valuable, they are picking and choosing.

On the LPI side, I think our value is that we are creating the global bar of Linux certification. We are creating the mindset that this is where you should start.

Our biggest value for you the candidate that has been working with Linux for 10 years: the answer to that is does your employers see value in it? Does the employer look for the certification and do they understand that it is a bar? We're working hard at the top to make sure people believe in what we are doing.

Q: What are the biggest myths or misconceptions about what LPI does today?

First and most critical for us is brand awareness. We had a lot of people engaged at the beginning of LPI, but they didn't have a great presence in the market itself.

First question we normally get is. "Tell me about LPI." Even though we've been here for seven years, it's still a big push in a brand-awareness campaign. We've solved that in the last 18 months by creating area operations positions where we've hired people that have built large channels before in large geographies.

Second is the misconception about computer-based testing versus hands-on operating with the server itself. The answer is that, as long as the exam itself is based on a job-task analysis, then in certification terms it's a performance-based test just like a practicum.

Our other issue is accessibility; it's very hard to set up 7,000 exam centers around the world, so in order to keep our costs market ready, the computer-based model really is the best.

Q: Red Hat offers its own certification programs that some would argue compete with LPI. Are you competing against Red Hat's certification or is LPI complementary?

LPI sees itself as the Switzerland of the certification space. We are very open and willing to participate with anyone and create programs that build on one another.

I've had some good discussions with Red Hat and extended to them the offer of working together when the timing is right.

We're never going to speak down about any other program. LPIC 1, as we position it today, is really the entry-level professional-level certification for Linux, and everyone should start there. Where they go after that is up to them. If they want to move to a propriety certification program that's fine.

With Novell they respect our LPIC 1 and accept it as part of their CLE [Certified Linux Engineer]. They don't require it but they accept it. Ubuntu is another example; it sits on top of LPIC 1.

I think Red Hat has its own mindset of how they want to approach the market, and, hey if you're going to be a strictly Red Hat shop, RHCE [Red Hat Certified Engineer] is a good cert for you. But as Linux becomes more of a commodity you're going to need the generalist skills.

Where we think LPI brings value is the vendor-independent side where you can go work on any distribution regardless, so long as it Linux our skills our viable and relevant.

Q: Is there a large roadmap about where LPI and LPIC is going in the coming years?

We do. We recognize that to be the entry-level place for everyone, we have to look hard at how we create that future base. Other people are entering into the market. With the Novell-Microsoft deal, we have a lot of Windows administrators coming into the market now, and we want to make sure when we provide a skill base that it applies to everyone.

We want to move away from people thinking of us as strictly a systems-administration exam. Largely we've made a good move to reposition LPI as a professional exam. Whether you are a systems admin, a security specialist or a developer you should come under our wing.
Source :http://www.internetnews.com

GPLv3 Emerges After Long Debate, Opposition Muted

2007-06-29T20:27:00.000-07:00

Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation launched GPL Version 3 on Friday from its Boston headquarters, with an eye toward restricting patent actions against free software. GPL 3's impact will only slowly be felt as it is adopted as the license of choice on various open source projects. But its adoption is practically assured as developers close ranks in the face of Microsoft charges that Linux and other open source code projects violate 235 of its patents.

The GPL 2 and its predecessors have been the license of choice on the majority of open source code projects. The GPL revolutionized the way software is written and distributed. Instead of setting fees and license limitations, the GPL granted developers a broad writ to use code freely and modify it, but it required those modifications to be given back to the developer community.

One of the early adopters of GPL 3 will be the Samba Server project, which supplies file translation code between Linux and Windows. Jeremy Allison, leader of the project, said Version 3 "a necessary update to deal with the new threats to free software that have emerged since version 2 of the GPL."

Allison left Novell in protest and moved to a job at Google shortly after the Microsoft-Novell deal was announced last November. That agreement supplied protection to Novell SuSE Linux customers but Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in follow up statements said no such protections were offered to other Linux users.

In an e-mail exchange with InformationWeek, he said the Samba team "will be discussing a move to GPLv3 now that the license is available" but he couldn't predict how soon it will be adopted. Allison said the provisions of GPLv3 "will provide greater protection for the freedoms of individual contributors. In the long term, it will provide greater incentive for them to contribute code."

The GPLv3 bans digital rights management in GPL licensed code as well as requiring a particular version of GPL code on a hardware device, such as a TiVo set-top box. Stallman refers to such a requirement as "the tivoization" of software. He believes the device user should be able to modify the software on the device, if he chooses.

In addition, GPLv3 "forecloses any kind of deal like [the Microsoft/Novell agreement] going forward," said Andrew Updegrove, specialist in software licensing and partner in the Boston law firm of Gesmer Updegrove in an interview.

Stallman, the originator of the free Gnu software tools and the free software movement, views the GPL license as the front line of defense against those who want to restrict users' rights to software. Stallman and Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Center wrote GPLv3, and revised it four times over 18 months as comments flowed in on its restrictive provisions.

Rod Spring, lead developers of the Spring Framework for Java developers, said Spring will remain under the Apache Software License.

"I am concerned at the more ideological parts of the GPL3, including the restrictions that may impact digital rights management. However, it's good to see that this appears to be have been softened in recent drafts."

He welcomed the effort to make code licensed under GPLv3 and Apache more compatible when the licenses are used together. "I expect that GPL 3.0 will gain widespread adoption, but I think it will take years," he wrote in an e-mail message.

In the past, Linus Torvalds, lead developer of the Linux kernel and owner of the Linux trademark, has expressed reservations about the GPLv3. But the previous pronounced opposition of other Linux kernel developers appeared to soften palpably at the May 16 Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, held on Google's Mountain View campus.

"What has emerged is much better than what the Free Software Foundation offered a year ago," said kernel developer Ted T'so at the Linux Foundation Summit June 13. He expressed a concern that issuing Linux under GPLv3 would mean six months of additional work for the kernel developers. But he added, "They did listen, they did change some of the features."

"The Free Software Foundation listened to people outside its normal support base. The GPL 3 is better than the GPL 2," said Mark Radcliffe, an intellectual property attorney with DLA Piper's Silicon Valley office, during the Linux Foundation Summit.

GPL 3 "clarifies language that was unclear in GPLv2 and addresses many issues that did not exist when GPLv2 was written more than 15 years ago," noted Sun Microsystems Simon Phipps, chief open source officer. Sun offers Java Standard Edition under the GPLv2 license.
Source :http://www.informationweek.com

Mobile Linux Stakes Its Claim At LinuxWorld Conference & Expo

2007-06-28T18:28:00.000-07:00

IDG World Expo, the leading producer of world-class tradeshows and events around the globe has announced a series of conference programming and sponsored Developer Days dedicated to Mobile Linux at this year’s LinuxWorld Conference & Expo®. Leading mobile phone and embedded systems players including ACCESS, Motorola and Palm are showing their commitment to further the adoption of mobile Linux with strong presences at LinuxWorld®. LinuxWorld, the largest and most comprehensive event that focuses exclusively Linux and open source, is scheduled to take place August 6-9, 2007 at the Moscone Center.

As the mobile market continues to grow, mobile manufacturers are increasingly turning to Linux as a strategic platform to deliver more capable devices with increased flexibility and lower costs. Research firm Ovum reports that worldwide mobile phone sales grew 31 percent in 2004 alone and that more than 2.8 billion phones are expected to be in use by 2009. According to research by Gartner, in 2005, the percentage of smart phones with Linux jumped to 26% compared to just 6% the year before, further confirming a growing and vibrant market.

LinuxWorld Conference & Expo will be the place to be for attendees to learn about the latest on user interfaces, new applications for enhancing the user experience, and more through rich conference content and a series of 1-day programs dedicated to writing applications for mobile Linux education.

“The explosive growth of Linux as a key platform for the mobile industry opens up new opportunities for the Linux community," said Didier Diaz, senior vice president, product strategy management, ACCESS CO., LTD. “ACCESS is committed to working with Linux developers to help them build and commercialize innovative applications for mobile Linux that capitalize on this market momentum.”

The ACCESS Developer Day features six hands-on sessions in which attendees will learn how to build applications for the ACCESS Linux Platform™. The day will kick off with a special, interactive, go-to-market session on “Developing Mobile Linux Applications and Bringing Them to Market." It will also include a series of technical discussions that allow developers to leverage their Linux expertise and the open source tools already familiar to them, like Eclipse IDE and Glade UI designer, to develop innovative mobile applications for the ACCESS Linux Platform.

Motorola’s Fast Track with MOTODEV offers attendees the opportunity to meet the MOTODEV team and guide them to world–class business development, marketing, and go-to-market programs that can fast track development and maximize market success. Attendees will also discover tools and documentation resources, as well as get tips directly from on-site developer support engineers.

"In an industry predicted to ship over 1 billion handsets in the coming year, Linux is one of the fastest growing operating systems in mobile and clearly represents a significant developer opportunity," said Christy Wyatt, vice president, ecosystem and market development, Motorola. "As a leader in mobile Linux, Motorola is proud to return to LinuxWorld as a Platinum sponsor to help developers mobilize their innovation."

Wind River is also sponsoring a Developer Day where attendees will learn more about embedded Linux platforms, embedded technology, development tools, and solutions. They will also learn why developers have rapidly embraced Linux as the platform of choice for embedded device development and find out about new and emerging technologies that are key for critical application enablement.

For a detailed schedule of Mobile Linux sessions and programs, please visit www.linuxworldexpo.com.

Attendees can register for a free exhibit hall pass to LinuxWorld Conference & Expo on or before August 5, 2007 at www.linuxworldexpo.com/register. Exhibit hall passes are $50 thereafter. The pass provides attendees with access to the keynote addresses, feature presentations, birds-of-a-feather meetings and the exhibit hall floor.

About LinuxWorld Conference & Expo

LinuxWorld Conference & Expo is the premier event exclusively focused on Linux and open source solutions. As the world’s most comprehensive marketplace for open source products and services, LinuxWorld provides business decision-makers with information and resources to implement Linux and open source solutions into business infrastructure and enterprise networks. For more information or to register for the event, visit the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo Web site at www.linuxworldexpo.com, or call (800) 657-1474. For exhibiting opportunities, please contact Amy Bonner at (508) 424-4892 or amy_bonner@idg.com or Christian Montminy at (508) 424-4852 or christian_montminy@idg.com.

About IDG World Expo

IDG World Expo (www.idgworldexpo.com) produces tradeshows and events for professionals seeking world-class education, peer-to-peer networking and one-stop comparison shopping. IDG World Expo's portfolio of conferences and events includes Entertainment For All™ (E For All™), E3 Media & Business Summit, GreenXchange Xpo™, LinuxWorld Conference & Expo®, Macworld Conference & Expo® and Next Generation Data Center™ (NGDC™). IDG World Expo is a business unit of IDG, the world's leading technology media, research and event company.

About International Data Group (IDG)

International Data Group (IDG) is the world's leading technology media, events, and research company. IDG’s online network includes more than 450 web sites spanning business technology, consumer technology, digital entertainment and video games worldwide. IDG publishes more than 300 magazines and newspapers in 85 countries including CIO, CSO, Computerworld, GamePro, InfoWorld, Macworld, Network World, and PC World. IDG’s lead-generation service, IDG Connect, matches technology companies with an audience of engaged, high-quality IT professionals, influencers, and decision makers.

IDG is a leading producer of more than 750 technology-related events including Macworld Conference & Expo, LinuxWorld Conference & Expo, Entertainment for All Expo (E for All), DEMO, and IDC Directions. IDC, a subsidiary of IDG, is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events. Over 900 IDC analysts in more than 90 countries provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends.
Source :http://home.businesswire.com

Is Linux heading for civil war?

2007-06-28T18:25:00.000-07:00

Is a Linux Civil War in the Making?

2007-06-28T18:23:00.000-07:00

Red Hat profit rises on demand for Linux software

2007-06-28T18:21:00.000-07:00

Red Hat Inc. (RHT.N: Quote, Profile , Research) reported an 18 percent jump in net income on Wednesday, but shares in the maker of business software declined as its quarterly cash flow fell short of Wall Street expectations.

The developer of Linux software, used to run business computers and corporate data centers, also said it was on target to meet full-year earnings forecasts it released three months ago.

It posted fiscal first-quarter profit of 16 cents a share, excluding items, just ahead of analysts' average forecast of 15 cents, according to Reuters Estimates.

But cash flow fell short of some forecasts for the period, which ended May 31, due to higher-than-expected spending.

Chief Financial Officer Charlie Peters told investors the extra costs were the result of some one-time items, including spending on the release of a new version of its flagship product and a users conference, along with negative foreign currency impact.

The company reported $52.25 million in non-GAAP cash-flow from operations. Jefferies & Co. analyst Katherine Egbert said that fell short of her forecast of about $55.5 million.
Source :http://investing.reuters.co.uk

Google Desktop Arrives on Linux

2007-06-28T18:20:00.000-07:00

Google has finally released a long-awaited native Linux application: Google Desktop for Linux. As with the already shipping OS X and Windows versions, Google Desktop enables Linux users to search for text inside documents, local e-mail messages, their Web history and their Gmail accounts.

This first beta version doesn't offer the sidebar and gadgets, which are found in other versions of the application. Those will come later, according to a Google representative, who stated, "We focused most of our efforts on desktop search. Gadgets and sidebar are not supported, but will probably be added in the future."

The first version supports many popular versions of Linux. It comes in the form of both RPM and a DEB distribution packages. The RPM can be installed on Red Hat, Fedora, SUSE, and Mandriva distributions. The DEB will install on Debian and Ubuntu systems. The program works with both KDE and GNOME.

Officially, Google Desktop is supported on Debian 4.0, Fedora Core 6, Ubuntu 6.10, SUSE 10.1, and Red Flag 5. It should work, however, on any modern Linux that has glibc 2.3.2+ and gtk+ 2.2.0+ installed. For example, it also worked on MEPIS 6.5, even though Google doesn't mention compatibility with that distribution. At this time, it only supports PCs with 32-bit x86 compatible processors.
Source :http://www.eweek.com

Technalign release Pioneer Basic CD - Release 2.1

2007-06-24T21:53:00.000-07:00

Technalign, Inc. has released Pioneer Basic CD Release 2.1 of it's base Linux Operating System. Pioneer Basic Release 2.1 on CD has been released due to the demand of the community as well as our Partner network. Release 2.1 on CD is limited due to the space on CD but easily upgradable by installing the missing applications and utilities. Notabily missing from the CD release, that is included on the DVD, is Automatix, Gimp, Guarddog Firewall, and KlamAV Anti-Virus. Each of these can be easily installable either from Synaptic or from Automatix once installed.

"We had to release on CD since many of our users and Partners have requested Pioneer on CD versus only being avaliable on DVD," claims Technalign CEO Dianne Ursini. "Pioneer Basic CD Release 2.1 is Technalign Trailblazer ready and when released will be a simple upgrade."

Pioneer Basic CD Release 2.1 represents the most user-friendly version Technalign has released since its beginnings in 2002. Users can now make the transition from Windows easily and be up and running in no time. Those consumer users who have little or no experience running Linux can visit one of over 1,400 Technalign Partners who will perform a Windows to Pioneer conversion as well as walk-throughs and training.

The Pioneer Knowledge Base provides information on installing Automatix, which allows users to install the most requested applications by users moving to Linux.

Pioneer can be downloaded from the Pioneer download pages. Technalign's Pioneer Linux products are free to Consumers, Educational Insitutions, and Nonprofit organizations. Commercial and those requiring support from a Partner, or Technalign directly must purchase a boxed set.
Source :http://www.linuxpr.com/

Linux makes bigger push with servers

2007-06-24T21:50:00.000-07:00

Linux has had a great run. But to keep the growth, the upstart operating system needs to please more people like Jim Walsh.
Walsh, chief information officer for the Tyco International Ltd. unit Earth Tech, wanted to do more than the simple chores that are most often handled by Linux. He decided to shift one of the company's most crucial pieces of software - an Oracle Corp. enterprise resource planning system - off Sun Microsystems Inc. servers and its Solaris operating system.

Earth Tech, an engineering and consulting company specializing in environmental cleanup and transportation, opted to run the software on Dell Inc. servers running Linux. Walsh estimated that lower hardware and maintenance costs reduced the cost to run his systems by half.
''I have run Solaris for years. I like Sun,'' Walsh says. ''Linux is significantly more cost-efficient.''
Such moves are still the exception. Since the 1990s, Linux, which comes in free versions and is also sold by companies such as Red Hat Inc. and Novell Inc. (which has operations in Utah), has been an important force in holding down computing costs. One reason is that the software runs on inexpensive servers that use chip technology that evolved from personal computers.
Those x86 machines have continued to deliver improvements in price and performance. The combination of those systems and Linux are particularly suited for jobs such as serving up Web pages and running e-mail systems.

But other kinds of servers and operating systems - particularly the Unix system offered by many computer makers - have advantages in handling some big computing jobs such as running databases. Many hardware and software companies are trying to change that picture, but it won't be easy.
Linux needs to ''become more of a central component of the overall data-center strategy,'' says Matt Eastwood, an analyst at the market-research firm IDC.
For one thing, Microsoft is determined to push its Windows operating system into the same fields. Though Linux-based servers account for 12.7 percent of server revenue - up from just 6.4 percent in 2003 - Windows-based servers account for three times the revenue of Linux servers.
Other big server makers such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard are pushing Linux aggressively by offering the operating system on high-end hardware, as well as x86 servers. That is also a focus of Intel, which is working with HP and others to popularize its Itanium chip line for running heavy-duty computing jobs along with Linux.
Source : http://www.sltrib.com/

Podcast delves deeper into Linux boot speedups

2007-06-22T22:17:00.000-07:00

TimeSys has published a second podcast on achieving rapid boots on Linux devices. "Fast boots -- the sequel" discusses the relationship of footprint and boot time, post-2.6.15 kernels' CONFIG_EMBEDDED option, application pre-linking and profiling, filesystem selection, execute-in-place (XIP), and initramfs, among other interesting techniques.

The new podcast follows a similar podcast published two weeks ago. The original attracted considerable passionate feedback, according to moderaters Gene Sally and Maciej Halasz.

The two intrepid podcasters start out with a discussion of Matt Mackall's "Tiny-Linux" patchset, aimed at helping prune non-essential kernel functionalities. The patchset can be a "good starting point" when building fast-booting or small-footprint systems, according to Halasz. It was merged into the mainline kernel during the 2.6.15 release as the CONFIG_EMBEDDED option, shortly after Mackall was hired as principal developer by the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF).

Next, the podcast looks at optimizing application start-up time and performance, through pre-linking and application profiling.

Pre-linking, which is done at compile time, reduces application start-up times up to 30 percent, according to Halasz. Sally notes, "[A device is] not like a traditional desktop system: things are not going to shift around. You can safely [pre-link] applications, and still get some of the benefits of a shared library."

Profiling, meanwhile, can work as a "second pair of eyes" to help developers understand where their applications are using time and CPU cycles. Profiling is also great for helping developers understand code that they did not write themselves -- for example, helping them use APIs (application programming interfaces) more efficiently.

The pair next discuss various approaches to flash storage, including XIP (execute-in-place), an interesting technique in which kernel and applications are run in-situ from NOR flash, saving time that would otherwise be required to copy them into memory. Halasz cautions, "If your application is called very frequently, and links with other dynamic libraries, it may be better to keep it in RAM;" however, XIP is "one of the options definitely worth considering," according to Sally.

These are only a sample of topics broached in the full 39-minute podcast. The podcast, along with several reference URLs, can be found here.

In other news, TimeSys recently published a brief guide about how to use its toolchains to build and rebuild Linux kernels.
Source :http://www.linuxdevices.com

Linux Professional Institute Announces New Training Partners around the World

2007-06-22T22:16:00.000-07:00

The Linux Professional Institute announced new LPI Approved Training Partners (LPI-ATP) in Africa, Europe and Latin America.

(Guangzhou, China: June 22, 2007) The Linux Professional Institute (LPI), the premier Linux certification organization worldwide (http://www.lpi.org), announced new LPI Approved Training Partners (LPI-ATP) in Africa, Europe and Latin America. This includes the first LPI training partners in France, Greece, the Ivory Coast, Peru, and Tanzania.

Jim Lacey, President and CEO of the Linux Professional Institute credited the efforts of regionally-based Area Operations Managers for these milestones: "LPI's global business strategy of empowering locally-based regional players to drive the adoption of Open Source Software has proven to be an effective model. We continue to recruit high quality training partners and affiliates who know and understand the importance of a professional Linux certification." Mr. Lacey congratulated Jose Carlos Gouveia, Area Operations Manager for Latin America and John Meaney, Area Operations Manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) on these recent accomplishments and noted that both had been instrumental in renewing LPI's training partner program. Mr. Lacey made the announcement of new LPI training partners while participating in the China OSS Promotion Union's (http://www.oss.org.cn) Open Source Movement & Chinese Information Industry Development Summit in Guangzhou, China.

Alain Abreo of Net Security Solutions in Colombia emphasized the importance of LPI certification as part of an overall training strategy: "Open Source and Linux are of increasing importance within the corporate sector in Colombia and there is a real necessity for these companies to have trained professionals. Our alliance with LPI is an important opportunity as it will demonstrate that Colombians have skills and knowledge in Linux which meets world-wide standards." Net Security Solutions specializes in providing Linux technology solutions and training programs (see http://www.netsecuritysolutionsltda.com).

Mr. Lacey noted that since LPI renewed its training partner program in November (http://www.lpi.org/newtraining) the organization has added many new training partners. The LPI Approved Training Partner program (LPI-ATP) has over 140 participating training organizations in 35 countries. New LPI training partners in the last month include:

* Clube do Hacker, Brazil (http://www.clubedohacker.com.br)
* Fuctura Informatica Ltda, Brazil (http://www.fuctura.com.br)
* Mathesis - Capacitacao Tecnologica e Profissional, Brazil (http://www.mathesis-ma.com.br)
* Ponto de Ensino, Brazil (http://www.pontodeensino.com.br)
* T&A Informatica, Brazil (http://www.teatecnologia.com.br)
* Linagora, Toulouse, France (http://www.linagora.com)
* Deutsche Angestellten Akademie (DAA), Halle, Germany (http://www.daa-halle.de)
* Control Data Training GmbH, Nürnberg, Germany (http://www.cdt-nue.de)
* SoftEd Systems GmbH, Dresden, Germany (http://www.softed.de)
- TCP 4 IT GmbH, Kiel, Germany (http://www.tcp4it.de)
* Informacy SA, Thessaloniki, Greece (http://www.newhorizons.gr)
* Penguin IT, Israel (http://www.penguinit.co.il)
* Scuola Lavoro Marche, Italy (http://www.cslmarche.it)
* Optima Consulting, Ivory Coast (http://www.optima.consulting-ci.com)
* Ictivity, Eindhoven/Amsterdam, Netherlands (http://www.ictivity.nl)
* Universidad Continental de Ciencias e Engenieria S.A.C, Huancayo, Peru (http://internacional.universia.net/latinoamerica)
* Universidad de San Martin de Porres, Lima, Peru (http:/www.usmp.edu.pe)
* Sybase, Portugal (http://www.sybase.pt)
* Proyecto Universidad Empresa SL, Spain (http://www.pue.es)
* Avante Formacion SLL, Spain (http://www.avante.es)
* Klubschulen Migros, Zurich, Switzerland (http://www.klubschule.ch/)
* University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (http://www.udsm.ac.tz)
* CFT Tunis, Tunis, Tunisia (http://www.cfttunis.com.tn)
* MeWe, Surrey, United Kingdom (http://www.mewe.org.uk)

LPI's Approved Training Partner (LPI-ATP) program is designed to recognize publishers, schools and training centers who have met LPI criteria. The LPI-ATP program is open to all qualified participants: those using LPI approved courseware (LPI-ATM) delivered by qualified instructors and upholding a common code of ethics. These recognized partners promote their affiliation with the Linux Professional Institute as an indication of their commitment to educational quality and the advancement of Linux certification. Additional information on the LPI-ATP program can be found at: http://www.lpi.org/LPI_ATP. For more information on the benefits of becoming an LPI-ATP please contact your local LPI Master Affiliate or Area Operations Manager (see http://www.lpi.org/REI for contact information).

The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) is globally supported by the IT industry, enterprise and professionals and within government and the educational community. LPI's certification program is delivered worldwide in multiple languages at over 7,000 testing locations and is supported by an affiliate network spanning five continents. Since the programs inception, LPI has delivered over 145,000+ exams and 45,000+ LPIC certifications around the world.
Source :http://www.linuxpr.com/

Novell announces real-time Linux enhancements and partnerships

2007-06-22T22:15:00.000-07:00

Novell announced enhancements to SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time and unveiled partnerships that expand the ecosystem around Novell's low latency Linux solution.

Novell will ship a maintenance update for SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time in July 2007. This maintenance update delivers new performance enhancements to the real-time operating system. It inherits the improvements and enhancements associated with the recently launched Service Pack 1 for SUSE Linux Enterprise, including high availability storage and processor support.

In support of its real time offerings, Novell also announced partnerships with several players in the real-time arena. These included Concurrent Computer Corporation and Voltaire.

The maintenance update for SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time will be available in July. The next generation release of SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time is currently in development. As with all SUSE Linux Enterprise products, customers with a current subscription can upgrade to any released version without additional charge.

Solutionwright simplifies repetitive math tasks

Solutionwright Software has released NumberMate v. 2.0, an arithmetic and scientific calculator for Windows. NumberMate simplifies desktop tape calculator, plus the ability to record complex sets of interrelated calculations that can be edited, saved and reused.

The program performs time calculations, expression evaluations, and unit conversions. All of the work is stored on multiple tapes which can be edited and annotated. You can also reload it later, make revisions, and recalculate earlier results.

You can insert, delete, change numbers and operators, anywhere on a tape. The program lets you use up to 20 tapes at a time, allowing you to organize and work simultaneously with separate calculations. NumberMate takes a lot of the work out of performing financial projections and "what if" calculations.

The program includes a rich set of scientific functions. You can raise numbers to any power, or find any roots. You have a complete set of trigonometric, logarithmic, and hyperbolic functions. There is a mod operator and a div operator. Choose between rounding and truncation. Unit conversions are built in, along with descriptive statistical functions. Numbers are stored with up to 18 significant digits.

NumberMate v. 2.0 runs under Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP/Vista, costs US$25 for a single-user licence, and may be purchased securely online at http://www.numbermate.com/. Multi-user discounts are available. You can download a free 60-day trial version from the same Web address.

Security

HP unveils security offering and acquires SPI Dynamics

The HP Secure Advantage portfolio was unveiled offering a number of solutions to protect data and resources. The offering validates regulatory compliance across the IT infrastructure-from the desktop to the data center.

HP signed a definitive agreement to acquire SPI Dynamics, Inc. SPI Dynamics technology enables customers to assess and identify security vulnerabilities along the entire lifecycle of Web applications – from development, quality assurance and deployment.
Source :http://www.itbusiness.ca

Vista more secure than Linux and Mac OS X?

2007-06-22T22:14:00.002-07:00

Security Strategy Director in Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing group Jeff Jones, on Thursday published a report claiming that in the first six months of the Vista life cycle fewer serious security vulnerabilities have been found in Microsoft’s newest OS, compared not only to Windows XP, but also all major enterprise Linux distributions and Apple's MacOS X.

According to Jones, Microsoft has patched 12 out of 27 disclosed Vista vulnerabilities in the first six months since its public release. In comparison, Microsoft's security team patched 36 out of 39 known bugs for Windows XP in its first six months, while Ubuntu 6.06 LTS and Apple’s Mac OS X had 63 out of 74 and 60 out of 76 bugs fixed respectively also in their first six months. The report cites other popular Linux distros as well.

Of course, you should know better than blindly believe Microsoft’s claims regarding its OS security. According to some, this method of counting and comparing vulnerabilities between Windows to Linux and Mac OS X is not the best metric:

"This is an apples-to-oranges comparison," said HD Moore, one of the hackers behind the popular Metasploit penetration testing toolkit. "If you want a more accurate view, try comparing the number of flaws between Microsoft-developed software and vendor-X-developed software. Most Linux vendors don't actually write the majority of the packages they include," he said via e-mail.

"Alternatively, force Microsoft to include all vulnerabilities in common third-party software," he added. "For example, the thousands of exploitable ActiveX controls that... vendors include with a Windows system."
Microsoft might have stepped up its security practices with its software development methodology, called the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL). However, it should be interesting to look at vulnerability statistics again once Vista becomes more widely adopted and the target of hackers worldwide.
Source :http://www.techspot.com

Mandriva Rejects Microsoft Linux Deal

2007-06-22T22:14:00.001-07:00

In rejecting the possibility of a cross-licensing pact with Microsoft, Mandriva CEO Francois Bancilhon wrote that there has been "absolutely no hard evidence" that Linux and other open-source applications are in breach of any patents. "So we don't believe it is necessary for us to get protection from Microsoft to do our job."

Microsoft Relevant Products/Services's collection of patent-protection deals with Linux providers lost another potential addition this week, when Mandriva announced that it will not sign such a pact.

The statement, by CEO Francois Bancilhon, has the international company joining with Linux providers Red Hat and Canonical, which have refused to sign cross-licensing deals with Microsoft.

Formerly called Mandrakesoft, Mandriva publishes the Mandriva GNU/Linux operating system for enterprise Relevant Products/Services, government, and educational customers. The company has offices in the U.S., France, and Brazil. Its products are available through its online store as well as through dedicated channels in more than 140 countries.

Innocent 'Unless Proven Guilty'

On the company's blog, Bancilhon wrote on Tuesday that there has been "absolutely no hard evidence" that Linux and other open-source applications are in breach of any patents. In any democracy, he wrote, "people are innocent unless proven guilty and we can continue working in good faith. So we don't believe it is necessary for us to get protection from Microsoft to do our job or to pay protection money to anyone."

He added that interoperability between Microsoft and Linux is a "good thing," and that the best way to accomplish that is with open standards.

Mandriva's position is similar to the one taken this week by Canonical, the company responsible for a popular GNU/Linux distribution called Ubuntu. Canonical's CEO, Mark Shuttleworth, wrote in his personal blog that "the deals announced so far strike me as 'trinkets in exchange for air kisses.'"

"A promise by Microsoft not to sue for infringement of unspecified patents has no value at all and is not worth paying for," he added. "It does not protect users from the real risk of a patent suit."

Fallout from Novell Deal

One by one, Microsoft has been steadily stacking up cross-licensing agreements with several Linux-related companies. The deals have included a provision that protects the signatory's customers from liability due to Microsoft patent infringements. Microsoft has said that Linux and other open-source software infringe on some 235 of its patents, a declaration that is adamantly opposed by members of the open-source community.

In recent months, the Redmond, Washington-based company has announced cross-licensing deals with LG Electronics, Xandros, Samsung, Linspire, and others.

The most notable such deal, and probably most controversial so far, was the arrangement in November of last year between Microsoft and Novell. In a subsequent and widely cited "Open Letter to the Community," Novell said the deal included a promise that each of the parties would not sue the other's customers for patent infringement.

But Novell also said that it disagreed with Microsoft's claim to patents affecting Linux. "Importantly," Novell said in the Open Letter, "our agreement with Microsoft is in no way an acknowledgement that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property. When we entered the patent cooperation agreement with Microsoft, Novell did not agree or admit that Linux or any other Novell offering violates Microsoft patents."
Source :http://www.newsfactor.com

Red Hat Joins the SCOPE Alliance With Global Leaders to Optimize Linux for Telecommunications

2007-06-20T01:05:00.002-07:00

Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, announced yesterday that it has joined the SCOPE Alliance. The SCOPE Alliance, formed in January 2006 by Alcatel, Ericsson, Motorola, NEC, Nokia and Siemens, was founded to drive the adoption of open source software and commodity hardware in carrier-grade environments as an alternative to proprietary Unix platforms. SCOPE works with leading network equipment providers (NEPs) and carriers worldwide to define hardware and software requirements for open platforms in mission-critical telecommunications environments. SCOPE is currently developing requirements profiles for various hardware and software components. Current versions of these profiles are available at www.scope-alliance.org.

Source :http://www.business-traveler.eu

Shuttleworth scuttles Microsoft-Ubuntu Linux deal rumors

2007-06-20T01:05:00.001-07:00

The CEO of Ubuntu distributor Canonical, Mark Shuttleworth (pictured), has categorically denied that his company is planning to do a "deal" with Microsoft.

Microsoft has accused the Linux open source community of violating 235 of its patents. These accusations have been flatly rejected by the Linux community, with Linux guru Linus Torvalds telling Microsoft that it's more likely that Windows violates patents, and that if Microsoft is going to accuse Linux of violating patents, it should put or shut up.

However, that hasn't stopped Linux distributors Linspire, Novell and Xandros from entering into technical and legal partnerships with Microsoft, which in addition to helping Microsoft make Windows more interoperable with Linux, protect the Linux distributors from being taken to court for patent infringement.

Rumors has been circulating on the blogosphere that Ubuntu was in discussions with Microsoft about doing a similar deal.

"We have declined to discuss any agreement with Microsoft under the threat of unspecified patent infringements," Shuttleworth wrote on his personal blog.

"Allegations of 'infringement of unspecified patents' carry no weight whatsoever. We don’t think they have any legal merit, and they are no incentive for us to work with Microsoft on any of the wonderful things we could do together.

"A promise by Microsoft not to sue for infringement of unspecified patents has no value at all and is not worth paying for."

While Shuttleworth was adamant that he would not be seeking legal safeguards, he didn't rule out working with Microsoft in the future.

"I have no objections to working with Microsoft in ways that further the cause of free software, and I don’t rule out any collaboration with them, in the event that they adopt a position of constructive engagement with the free software community," he wrote.

However he added that he didn't think the current agreements being made were "supportive of free software".

Linux distributors seem to be falling into two camps — those who have been shaken by Microsoft's patent posturing, and those who are willing to defy the software giant.

Shuttleworth's defiance is admirable, and in fact is vital if Linux is to maintain its independence. After all, if all Linux distributors effectively become Microsoft approved, wouldn't that defeat the whole point of Linux?
Source :http://tech.blorge.com

Novell offers Linux service pack

2007-06-18T23:48:00.000-07:00

Looking to bolster Linux in enterprise environments, Novell is offering its first service pack for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, with capabilities for new quad-core processors. The company also announced Monday commercial availability plans for SUSE Linux Enterprise Virtual Machine Driver Pack.

Service Pack 1 supports quad-core processors in the Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron product lines. Also featured are improvements in interoperability and system management, Novell said.

"What we further improved was the interoperability with Active Directory for both the server and the desktop," said Holger Dyroff, Novell vice president of SUSE Linux Enterprise product management.

High-availability storage infrastructure has been updated in the service pack and the platform's audit subsystem has been enriched, Novell said. The storage infrastructure features new versions of the open source Heartbeat high availability software and Oracle Cluster File System. The audit subsystem, which tracks transactions, now is complete.

Support for Novell Open Enterprise Server 2, which merges NetWare and Linux, also is featured.

Other improvements announced by Novell include:

* Expanded OpenOffice.org support, with capabilities for Microsoft Office macros

* An updated desktop user experience

* A preview of desktop virtualization technology based on the Xen hypervisor

* Advances in enterprise integration

* Improved security

Novell also detailed SUSE Linux Enterprise Virtual Machine Driver Pack. This package includes drivers to allow unmodified Windows and Linux guest operating systems to run with near-native performance in virtual environments created with Xen in SUSE Linux.

Featured in Virtual Machine Driver Pack are drivers for Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows 2003. Virtual Machine Driver Pack is due for general availability in July. Drivers for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5 will be released later this summer.

A one-year subscription to Driver Pack costs US$299 per physical server for as many as four virtual machines, or $699 per physical server for an unlimited number of virtual machines.

Xen drivers for Suse Linux Enterprise Server are available now as part of SUSE Linux Enterprise distribution.
Source :http://www.computerworld.com

Interview With Fred Miller - GNU/Linux Evangelist

2007-06-18T23:47:00.000-07:00

Background
I would like to introduce you to Fred Miller, whom I have known over the past few years as a long-time FOSS community member and activist. Fred is a prolific news poster - I read somewhere the SUSE-OT list was started because of his posting of news stories on the 'English' (SLE) list. And, while I sometimes wish he would just join the editorial team here, he's actually quite the busy guy.

Fred is best known in the SUSE and OpenSUSE communities, and is pretty darned helpful, if you ever get stuck on something. To me, though, the interesting thing about Fred is the businesses he has helped convert to SUSE Linux. And yes, I mean the sheer numbers. I have converted less than 10 people - that I know of - while he seemingly converts them in his sleep. I thought it would be interesting to find out what Fred could share with us from his experience. So please meet one of the community's most prolific evangelists, Fred Miller

The Interview

Tell me, how and when did you get into computing, and GNU/Linux in particular?

In 1981, I needed a tool that would give me claims data along with personal client information quickly for my insurance business. I was running out of room for file cabinets and it took too long to gather information that a client needed. Personal computers were in their infancy then, but a company named Kaypro had produced a model II that worked off of 2 51/4" floppies that looked promising. I purchased one, and went to work learning all I could about my new "filing system" as quickly as possible. As some others found, I soon really enjoyed my new "tool". It used the CP/M operating system and shipped with the very good word processor WordStar and business suite called "Perfect." There was Perfect Writer, Perfect Calc, and Perfect Filer.

Now, this will blow the minds of younger readers who are "new" to computing, but the Kaypro only had 64k of RAM. Perfect Filer allowed a large number of fields to be defined and a lot of data could be entered into those fields. Editing the hex code, I was able to get the software to do a few things that the developers didn't know it would do, and "won" an article for my messing around with it in a magazine called Profiles. Simply, I was able to maintain a large database on my clients that I could access quickly for my clients. I was the first computerized Field Underwriter in the company.

Later on, I learned to use QNX, Coherent Unix, various flavors of Windows (only when necessary), OS/2, and of course, Linux. Obviously, I'm only one of many "junk yard dogs" who learned a great deal the hard way, and earned our "degrees" in the school of hard knocks. :)

If I remember, you run a small business focusing on GNU/Linux. Tell me a little bit about that. Where are you located (city and state) and when did you start? What is your business name?

I retired from my Insurance business, took some time off, and then took a position at Cornell Univ. as a Systems Admin. During that time, and to the present, I kept getting requests to solve computer problems - the vast majority are Windows users. Word of mouth is the best advertising. "I live in Lansing, NY, which is in Central NY.

I believe you don't do Windows - how do you manage to keep your business afloat?

First, working on computers has never been my only avocation, which has given me a great deal more freedom than I'd have otherwise.

I did coin the nickname years ago, during the days of FidoNet, of "MickySoft." I think the first time I used it was after IBM had purchased OS/2 from Microsoft, had rewritten all of the code, and released it's first version of Warp. A shill who worked for Microsoft (never did know his real name) used the handle of Steve Barkdoll. Some of the "old timers" will undoubtedly remember that name. I used the nickname of "MickySoft" then, which of course did produce the desired responses. :)

I will assist someone with their Windows problems, but more often than not, I end up replacing it with openSUSE or recently if it's a laptop, PCLinuxOS. At this time in my life, I'm very near retirement and a great deal of what I do now are freebies. I can't say "no" to people who simply don't have the money to pay someone to permanently end their problems that are caused by the bad designs and bad code from Microsoft. But, as you know, this is the attitude among most seasoned users of Linux. We are community based and Linux has grown using the old principle of "get one, teach one." ;)

Can you tell me how many Windows-to-Linux migrations you have done (either by yourself or with others, business and personal)? How many of those are business migrations?

I honestly can't tell you how many. I think a fair percentage of business system would be 40%, and most of these are fewer than 10 desktops.

How would you break down the difference between desktop and server migrations? What percentage of migrations has been mainly desktop-based?

Most have been desktop migrations, if for no other reason that many of the businesses are small with no need for a server.

What size businesses do you work with primarily?

I preferred small businesses, because their interest is in long term cost reduction and service. Most small businesses want to keep their hardware longer than 3 years, which is most often the maximum time big business keeps theirs. If hardware is properly maintained, it will function properly for 5 or more years. One of the biggest operational costs big business has is a continual write off of hardware - buy new systems and write them off over 3 years, and then buy new again. There is of course, the "Evil Empire" that is Microsoft, continually convincing the bean counters of Academia and big business that they must upgrade to the latest and greatest from Redmond. This often forces the purchase of new hardware. This is one of the biggest impediments to reducing TCO for medium to big businesses and has been the ignorance prevalent in upper management, along with not hiring IT personnel who know Linux (often the "good guys" are the ones with no degrees but sure know what they're doing), and not hiring enough IT personnel.

What, in your experience, is the most common objection to migrating to GNU/Linux?

I think it's the same thing that has always plagued all of us. People by nature don't like change. If you suggest Linux, they immediately have visions of massive changes in they way they interact with software. My approach has been get users to understand that a GUI (graphical user interface), is a GUI, is a GUI. Once a user has learned to use any computer with a GUI, they can quickly learn to use a different system. It's simply a mindset. Most I've taught to use Linux, are comfortable with it in as little as a half hour, and no more than a couple of hours.

Applications like OpenOffice are so well coded, compared to Microsoft's Office, it doesn't crash and burn loosing the ability to load a backup copy. I've literally had grad students at Cornell Univ. call me with a request to salvage their thesis because they can't recover after Microsoft Office crashed. I've yet not been able to import a backup copy created by MS Office into OpenOffice.

Once a migration is approved and announced, where do you see the biggest resistance to a new system?

To be honest, most resistance has been from those who are the least productive employees. Those who understand that their employer owns the hardware, not them, and that they are there to do a job and not "play" are happier with Linux than Windows because it's most often faster, it's stable, it's much more secure, and applications are more usable.

You once shared on a mailing list how you had to inform an employee that if she did not make the transition to the new Linux system, her boss would replace her. Is that pretty rare?

Yes, and in this case he frankly was tired of hearing her complaining about everything and anything. ;)

What is the biggest objection to a migration from the employees?

As I said, they don't like change. There's also the fact that some don't like the fact that they loose "administrative" control over their desktops and laptops. Microsoft has been so lax in the security for so many years, that most users have been able to get buy with just about anything. I've seen job sites where management didn't want users having IM installed and certainly not used. Yeah......right.

Once these users get the "word" that there will be an administrator, security will be tight, and no......"you're not going to any software you want on the 'puter that belongs to your employer," then any enthusiasm they may have had for Linux dissipates. Users in the US have far too long had the erroneous idea that they computer they use is theirs. Management has for far too long let them get away with it.

This is a very strong selling point for Linux, where you have management that finally has their heads on straight and understands that solid security, stability, and reliable software auditing is only obtainable with Linux - not Microsoft. If I'm right, there will be a lot of medium to big businesses who will finally "get it" and opt for not just the huge TCO savings by migrating all systems to Linux, but because they can stop all the workplace abuses of the past and be a lot more productive.

How long, on average does it take to train users on the new GNU/Linux system?

As I said, with SUSE Linux, most average Microsoft users are able to find their way around a system after a half hour or so. I have preferred SUSE over other distributions for a number of reasons, which include the great installation and administrative utilities, and that it's the most complete distribution available.

One of the mistakes I think a lot of instructors make, is in the way they approach a class. They most often reinforce users fear my using terms like, "you'll have to learn to........" Or, "OpenOffice doesn't look like Microsoft Office and creates a different format........" This is ignorance! Users know it's different before they even look at it. Why reinforce any fear or negativism? We can make a conversion to Linux a lot smother, if we get users to understand (once again) that ALL GUI's basically work the same way. If you know one well, you can work with another just as easily. Trainers need to spend time showing users the really slick things Linux and applications for it can do, and never mind how something was done in Windows.

How much time, on average, do you spend providing post-migration support?

Not much anymore. I'm looking forward to retirement. I haven't quite figured out what that will mean, however. Linux has become a passion for me. It represents freedom. Freedom from a company that is immoral and evil that is Microsoft. Even better is the fact that it's far superior in every category to anything Microsoft has ever or will ever slap together with it's form of "bubble gun and bailing wire".

Yes, retirement looks good - unless a good company needs a "junk yard dog" to really improve their IT department, then I just might not be able to resist the challenge. :)
Source :http://lxer.com

Red Hat Linux Gets Top Government Security Rating

2007-06-18T23:42:00.000-07:00

Red Hat Linux has received a new level of security certification that should make the software more appealing to some government agencies.

Last week IBM Corp. was able to achieve EAL4 Augmented with ALC_FLR.3 certification for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, putting it on a par with Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Trusted Solaris operating system, said Dan Frye, vice president of open systems with IBM.

"This is the highest level of security function that anybody has," Frye said. "We have delivered LSPP functionality in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and we have certified that at the EAL4 level of assurance."

This rating is awarded by the government-funded National Information Assurance Partnership's (NIAP) Common Criteria Evaluation and Validation Scheme for IT Security program, which evaluates the security of commercial technology products.

Red Hat Linux has been certified EAL4 Augmented with ALC_FLR.3 on IBM's mainframe, System x, System p5 and eServer systems.

This level of security certification is not usually required for enterprise contracts, but it is mandatory for some programs within government agencies such as the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. National Security Agency, Frye said.

Linux had already been certified at the EAL4 level, but this is the first time that the operating system has received the Labeled Security Protection Profile (LSPP) certification, which relates to its access-control features.

Linux developers have been working to add these "SE Linux" access control features into the operating system for several years now. SE Linux shipped as part of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, and now it has been certified for government use, Frye said. "You now have a level of fine-grained control for everybody," he added. "You can set security based on groups or based on individuals."

In addition to LSPP, Red Hat Linux has also been certified with Role Based Access Control Protection (RBAC), and that too is noteworthy, said Red Hat.

"Historically, OS vendors have required you buy a separate branched OS to get something that is LSPP and RBAC certified," the company said in a statement. "This is something completely unique for commercial operating systems because the support for multilevel security is native to the OS."

According to Frye, the certification is "big news for the Linux industry" because it shows that open-source software can be used for sensitive computing tasks. "If anyone had any doubts that you could do this with an open-source operating system, we've proved them wrong."

Source : http://www.cio.in/

Sun's Schwartz to Linux's Linus Torvalds

2007-06-18T23:41:00.000-07:00

Linux creator Linux Torvalds was fairly harsh in his criticism of Sun Microsystems in a recent response to a question about GPL2 and 3 at LKML.org.

Part of what he had to say:

"(Don't make) the fundamental mistake of thinking that Sun is in this to actually further some open-source agenda. Here's a cynical prediction (but backed up by past behaviour of Sun):

- first off: they may be talking a lot more than they are or ever will be doing. How many announcements about Sun and Linux have you seen over the years? And how much of that has actually happened?

- They may like open source, but Linux has hurt them in the marketplace. A lot."

Torvalds (pictured left) also observed that, "(Sun) not only drools after our drivers, they drool after all the _people_ who write drivers. They'd love to get kernel developers from Linux, they see that we have a huge amount of really talented people. So they want to talk things up, and the more "open source" they can position themselves, the better.

Furthermore, he wrote, "They may release the uninteresting parts under some fine license. See the OpenSolaris stuff - instead of being blinded by the code they did release under an open source license, ask yourself what they did *not* end up releasing. Ask yourself why the open source parts are not ready to bootstrap a competitive system, or why they are released under licenses that Sun can make sure they control. So the last thing they want to do is to release the interesting stuff under GPLv2 (quite frankly, I think the only really interesting thing they have is ZFS, and even there, I suspect we'd be better off talking to NetApp, and seeing if they are interested in releasing WAFL for Linux)."

Schwartz responded in his blog with an open letter to Linus, noting that "I'm glad you give credit to Sun for the contributions we've made to the open source world, and Linux specifically - we take the commitment seriously. It's why we freed OpenOffice, elements of Gnome, Mozilla, delivered Java, and a long list of other contributions that show up in almost every distro. Individuals will always define communities, but Sun as a company has done its part to grow the market - for others as much as ourselves."

Schwartz (pictured left) said he draws a sharp distinction between the Linux community and companies that leverage Linux in the marketplace, with the succinct observation that "companies compete, communities simply fracture."

He then had some comments regarding the issues that Linus raises, to wit:

"Now despite what you suggest, we love where the FSF's GPL3 is headed. For a variety of mechanical reasons, GPL2 is harder for us with OpenSolaris - but not impossible, or even out of the question. This has nothing to do with being afraid of the community (if it was, we wouldn't be so interested in seeing ZFS everywhere, including Linux, with full patent indemnity). Why does open sourcing take so long? Because we're starting from products that exist, in which a diversity of contributors and licensors/licensees have rights we have to negotiate. Indulge me when I say It's different than starting from scratch. I would love to go faster, and we are all doing everything under our control to accelerate progress. (Remember, we can't even pick GPL3 yet - it doesn't officially exist.) It's also a delicate dance to manage this transition while growing a corporation."

Schwartz concludes by inviting Linus for a "mashup" or sorts, ie, dinner at Jonathan's house: "I'll cook, you bring the wine." A nice Oregon Pinot Noir, perhaps?
Source :http://jdj.sys-con.com/

Novell Ships Service Pack 1 for SUSE Linux 10

2007-06-18T23:40:00.001-07:00

Back at the end of March, at its BrainShare 2007 user and partner conference, commercial Linux distributor Novell previewed some of the capabilities of its Service Pack 1 (SP1) update to its SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 Linux variants. And this week, Novell delivered SP1 and, as it turns out, it includes some extra goodies that might have made it worth the extra wait time.

After SLES 10 and SLED 10 were launched last July, Novell had been expecting to put together an SP1 update to the code by the end of 2006, which would include updates to the integrated Xen hypervisor and Novell virtualization management tools as well as tweaks that would allow Open Enterprise Server, the company's hybrid NetWare-Linux platform, to support virtualization for the first time. But in December, as the company was previewing the OES 2 kicker, code-named "Cypress," it said that it would have to push out the SLES SP1 update into 2007. Novell did not say when it would get SLES SP1 out the door, or why it was delayed, but the scuttlebutt is that getting the Xen hypervisor hardened and supporting not just SUSE Linux instances, but also instances of Red Hat Linux, NetWare 6.5, and Microsoft Windows has turned out to be a little bit more tricky than XenSource, the creator of the open source Xen server and desktop virtualization hypervisor, and its partners had hoped.

In any event, whatever the hold up, as of this week, SLES SP1 is here, and according to Holger Dyroff, vice president of SUSE Linux product management, who I spoke to through email, that puts the Cypress OE2 release on track for its re-scheduled appearance in the third quarter.

SLES SP1 has support for Intel's quad-core "Clovertown" Xeon 5300 and "Kentsfield" Core 2 Quad processors as well as for the forthcoming "Barcelona" quad-core Opteron processors from Advanced Micro Devices.

The patches for SLES also include something called the Virtual Machine Driver Pack, which is a collection of network, bus, and block device drivers for supporting paravirtualized hypervisors, including Xen and VMware's ESX Server. Paravirtual support in these hypervisors allows operating systems such as Linux and Windows to run without having their source code changed to account for hypervisors. (Paravirtualization usually does not mean making use of the hardware-assisted virtualization that is enabled by the Intel VT and AMD-V electronics in the latest X64 chips, and this virtualization pack is really a hybrid of full virtualization and paravirtualization to take the benefits of both approaches.) Bus and block device drivers for Windows 2000 (32-bit), Windows XP (32-bit and 64-bit), and Windows Server 2003 (32-bit and 64-bit) are in this pack. Paravirtualized drivers for RHEL 4 and RHEL 5 are due in the second half of 2007 and will be delivered electronically, just like the Windows drivers are. The Windows drivers are closed source, while the RHEL drivers will be open source.

The SP1 patch also has updated storage software, including tweaks to the cluster file system, volume manager, and cluster resource manager that is bundled with SLES 10. Novell's AppArmor 2.0 security framework is integrated into SLES 10 and SLED 10 and now has a profile out of the box (er, out of the bits?) for the Apache Tomcat Web application server.

On the SLED 10 front, SP1 sports a redesigned default menu, control center, and logout, and also has an international clock and disk usage applet added to the utilities section. SLED 10 has desktop lockdown tools and allows end users to create secure disk partitions for sensitive data as well, and has the latest OpenOffice 2.1 suite, which has the OpenXML-OpenDocument Format conversion tool that allows OpenOffice to exchange documents with Office 2007. Novell has also added some more support for Visual Basic macros to the mix in SLED 10 with SP1, and has put a product preview of the Xen hypervisor into the package.

Customers who want SP1 can use Yast Online Update to get the patches to the operating system, or they can order media directly from Novell. All of the patches except the Virtual Machine Driver Pack are available free to customers using SLES 10 or SLED 10. The virtualization software is only available as a fee-based product, however. It costs $299 for a one-year subscription on a machine with a limit of four virtual machines per physical server; an unlimited VM license is available for $699 per year.
Source :http://www.itjungle.com

Linux Supporters: Microsoft's Threats Baseless

2007-06-18T23:39:00.001-07:00

The Linux faithful might be staring down the barrel of another round of Microsoft's legal taunts, but at last week's Linux Foundation Summit, the reaction was more ho-hum than oh-no.

"The reality is that they are not going to sue a single customer," says Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. "It would not be in their business interest. Microsoft is not going to sue their customers."

Zemlin says one fact alone -- that most corporate Linux users have a mixed environment with Microsoft software -- will protect users from the software giant going after them based on patent infringement.

The patent issue has risen to near the top of the Linux Foundation's list with the signing last year of a cross-licensing patent deal between Novell and Microsoft, in which Microsoft promised not to sue Novell Suse Linux users for patent infringement. Several similar deals have followed since with Linux vendors Xandros and Linspire.

As part of its charter, the Linux Foundation offers legal-protection services for developers to safeguard the future of Linux.

Microsoft claims that Linux violates 235 of its patents, although it has yet to detail what those patents are. Critics contend the issue is meant to create uncertainty among potential corporate Linux adopters.

But Zemlin says the contracts are hurting Linux "only in the fact that Microsoft uses them to create a perception of risk that in reality is not there."

Many others at the foundation's first-ever summit -- a collection of some of the most influential Linux kernel designers, software developers and user companies -- took that same position.

"Open source is safe for us to use: That is the message that I want to get out there," said Chris DiBona, Google's open-source program manager.

"I would be shocked if Microsoft didn't have patents that read on Linux," said Mark Radcliffe, a partner at law firm DLA Piper US who advises companies on intellectual property issues. "Will they enforce them is the question. Companies using Linux don't have to fear patent suits."

Radcliffe thinks Microsoft is in a difficult position because it probably couldn't avoid spearing its own customers with any legal action.

"I think the Microsoft [Novell] deal was a misfire," he says. "I think what Microsoft's actions recognize is that Linux is here to stay. And any competitor will use tools to try and slow it down."

Others say that patents have become a real problem for the computer industry.

"They are sold to the public as being about supporting innovation, but their impact on industry is a nightmare," says Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu Linux. "They don't help IBM, they don't help Sun, and they don't help Microsoft. But the free software guys are worried about this."

So worried, that the Free Software Foundation added to its near-final GNU General Public License (GPL) 3.0 specific language that addresses patent deals that could erode the unique open-source qualities of the Linux operating system.

The hype has reached such proportions that Dan Frye, vice president of Linux and open technology at IBM and head of its Linux Technology Center, said during a panel session at last week's summit, "everybody, just chill when v3 comes out."

GNU GPL 3.0 is slated for final release on June 29.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds, who is employed by the Linux Foundation, wrote on the Linux kernel mailing list last week that the Linux kernel may stay under Version 2, which he said is a better license, but that Sun's choice of licensing for open-sourcing Solaris could influence the decision.

The Linux kernel is made up of a number of components, developed by various individuals under a number of different open-source licenses, which means all those stakeholders would have to agree to switch to Version 3.

"People are looking to Linus for that kind of leadership," says Google's DiBona. "I think v3 will be evolutionary, which is what it is supposed to be."

Others say the issue of GPL 3.0 license adoption goes much deeper than just patent concerns.

"Even if v3 is better than v2, it has to be significantly better to undertake all the pain to change the kernel code [licensing]," said James Bottomley, a kernel developer and CTO of SteelEye Technology, which makes high-availability software for Linux systems. "We are not gong to waste six months to change the kernel. This is a pragmatic argument, not a legal one."
Source :http://www.cio.in/

Green Linux to attack power consumption

2007-06-18T23:38:00.001-07:00

The Linux Foundation has formed a "Green Linux" initiative that will focus on reducing the open source operating system's power consumption.

The group is meeting next week in Ottowa, Canada where it is expected to set development priorities. The initiative was formed last week at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit that took place at Google's Silicon Valley campus. The event attracted 230 individual open source developers and employees for companies backing the Foundation including Novell, Red Hat and IBM.

The Linux Foundation promotes the standardization and technology collaboration that furthers the open source operating system. The group is backed by a group of commercial companies and is the official employer of Linus Torvalds.

Power consumption is a growing concern for mobile devices that seek to optimize battery life, but the group will also address the desktop and server spaces.

Although hardware is an obvious area for developers to cut power consumption, large gains can also be made with software.

Intel for instance has released a tool called PowerTOP that allows laptop users to monitor the power consumption of their Linux system. It tracks which applications wake up the processor from its low power sleep mode, allowing users to stop using certain power hungry applications or tweak them.

Early results have yielded a 1 hour increase in battery life on some notebook computers, but the technology can also benefit desktop systems and servers.

The Collaboration Summit furthermore highlighted efforts to improve the accessibility for disabled users and its work on the iAccessible2 standard. Delegates furthermore discussed efforts to build hardware drivers, for which the Foundation has recently formed the Linux Driver Project.
Source :http://www.vnunet.com

Linux inner circle disregards Microsoft's patent play

2007-06-18T23:36:00.000-07:00

The Linux faithful might be staring down the barrel of another round of Microsoft's legal taunts, but at last week's Linux Foundation Summit, the reaction was more ho-hum than oh-no.

"The reality is that they are not going to sue a single customer," says Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. "It would not be in their business interest. Microsoft is not going to sue their customers."

Zemlin says one fact alone – that most corporate Linux users have a mixed environment with Microsoft software – will protect users from the software giant going after them based on patent infringement.

The patent issue has risen to near the top of the Linux Foundation's list with the signing last year of a cross-licensing patent deal between Novell and Microsoft, in which Microsoft promised not to sue Novell Suse Linux users for patent infringement. Several similar deals have followed since with Linux vendors Xandros and Linspire.

As part of its charter, the Linux Foundation offers legal-protection services for developers to safeguard the future of Linux.

Microsoft claims that Linux violates 235 of its patents, although it has yet to detail what those patents are. Critics contend the issue is meant to create uncertainty among potential corporate Linux adopters.

But Zemlin says the contracts are hurting Linux "only in the fact that Microsoft uses them to create a perception of risk that in reality is not there."

Many others at the foundation's first-ever summit -- a collection of some of the most influential Linux kernel designers, software developers, and user companies -- took that same position.

"Open source is safe for us to use: That is the message that I want to get out there," said Chris DiBona, Google's open source program manager.

"I would be shocked if Microsoft didn't have patents that read on Linux," said Mark Radcliffe, a partner at law firm DLA Piper US who advises companies on intellectual property issues. "Will they enforce them is the question. Companies using Linux don't have to fear patent suits."

Radcliffe thinks Microsoft is in a difficult position because it probably couldn't avoid spearing its own customers with any legal action.

"I think the Microsoft [Novell] deal was a misfire," he says. "I think what Microsoft's actions recognize is that Linux is here to stay. And any competitor will use tools to try and slow it down."

Others say that patents have become a real problem for the computer industry.

"They are sold to the public as being about supporting innovation, but their impact on industry is a nightmare," says Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu Linux. "They don't help IBM, they don't help Sun, and they don't help Microsoft. But the free software guys are worried about this."

So worried, that the Free Software Foundation added to its near-final GNU General Public License (GPL) 3.0 specific language that addresses patent deals that could erode the unique open source qualities of the Linux operating system.

The hype has reached such proportions that Dan Frye, vice president of Linux and open technology at IBM and head of its Linux Technology Center, said during a panel session at last week's summit, "everybody, just chill when v3 comes out."

GNU GPL 3.0 is slated for final release on June 29.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds, who is employed by the Linux Foundation, wrote on the Linux kernel mailing list last week that the Linux kernel may stay under Version 2, which he said is a better license, but that Sun's choice of licensing for open-sourcing Solaris could influence the decision.

The Linux kernel is made up of a number of components, developed by various individuals under a number of different open source licenses, which means all those stakeholders would have to agree to switch to Version 3.

"People are looking to Linus for that kind of leadership," says Google's DiBona. "I think v3 will be evolutionary, which is what it is supposed to be."

Others say the issue of GPL 3.0 license adoption goes much deeper than just patent concerns.

"Even if v3 is better than v2, it has to be significantly better to undertake all the pain to change the kernel code [licensing]," said James Bottomley, a kernel developer and CTO of SteelEye Technology, which makes high-availability software for Linux systems. "We are not going to waste six months to change the kernel. This is a pragmatic argument, not a legal one."

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Source :http://computerworld.com.sg

What the Microsoft/Xandros Deal Means for Linux

2007-06-12T19:07:00.001-07:00

Microsoft and Linux distributor Xandros on June 4 signed a broad set of collaboration and patent agreements that reminded many of the November 2006 Microsoft/Novell partnership.

What do analysts and other Linux vendors think this new deal means for Linux?

While the FSF (Free Software Foundation) has tried to block such patent deals with the latest version of the GPLv3, Microsoft and Xandros didn't let that legal objective stop them.

Now that the deal is in place, the question is, "What to make of it?"

We do know that the partnership has not drawn even a tenth of the criticism that the Novell/Microsoft patent partnership drew. Nonetheless, some other Linux vendors have little good to say about the new Xandros partnership.

Leading that side of the debate is Warren Woodford, president and founder of MEPIS, a well-regarded Ubuntu-based desktop Linux distribution. Woodford launched his attack on the deal quietly, "I believe that Xandros can do an excellent job of representing Microsoft's interests in the Linux market. And I'm sure that the Xandros VCs are happy with the deal they made with Microsoft."

Warming up to his theme, Woodford continued, "So far Microsoft hasn't revealed any legitimate claims of intellectual property infringement. Their strategy appears to be to coerce weak players in the open source space to fold. This is reminiscent of the play made by SCO a few years ago, which some say was financed by Microsoft. Maybe that was just their trial run."

Then, he launches his main assault on the partnership, "I'm reminded of Neville Chamberlain waiving his agreement with Hitler in the air and declaring peace in his time. Linux vendors should be reminded that, if you give your lunch money to a bully, the bully does not go away. Who will have the cojones to just say no? The Linux community may not like the answer, but the only name that comes to mind is—Larry Ellison."
Source :http://www.eweek.com/

MIMO-enabled enterprise access point runs Linux

2007-06-12T18:57:00.000-07:00

Bluesocket used Linux in what it claims to be the first enterprise-class wireless access point based on MIMO (multiple-input, multiple output) technology. The BSAP-1700 runs the Network Equipment version of Wind River Linux, and works with Bluesocket's "BlueSecure" controller devices, also based on Wind River Linux.

MIMO is the key technology behind 802.11n, a recently approved IEEE standard designed to increase the throughput and range of wireless networking devices. Wireless devices based on MIMO have multiple radio transceivers and antennas, enabling them to multiplex traffic across available frequencies, increasing spectrum utilization and routing around interference.

The BSAP-1700 is an indoor access point with six internal 802.11a and 802.11b/g antennas. It is based on a 400MHz Broadcom (formerly SiByte) BCM1122, which features a MIPS64 core, along with a DDR memory controller, high-speed packet interface, and on-chip PCI and ZBbus buses.

Bluesocket said the BSAP-1700 monitors the RF spectrum for noise, interference, and coverage holes, dynamically adjusting power and channel settings to maintain maximum availability. The device also balances clients across available access points, detects rogue access points, and provides fast roaming based on 802.11i key caching, according to the company.

The BSAP-1700 supports a long list of enterprise authentication and security protocols, including WPAv2 (802.11i) with hardware-accelerated AES cryptography, SSID-to-VLAN mapping (up to 16), MAC ACL list (local and via RADIUS), peer-to-peer client blocking, and 802.1x support for EAP MD5, TLS, TTLS, FAST, and PEAP. Other advanced features include support for PoE and WMM (WiFi Multimedia, or 802.11e), a quality-of-service scheme aimed at improving the quality of voice-over-WiFi connections.

The BSAP-1700 is designed to work in conjunction with Bluesocket's "BlueSecure" family of wireless network controllers (pictured at right). The BlueSecure systems are 1U and 2U rackmount server appliances that are also based on Wind River's network equipment-oriented Linux distribution; they are available in models claimed to support between eight and 300 access points, and 64 to 8,000 users.

As their name suggests, the BlueSecure devices authenticate users, either via username/password combinations, or digital certificates. Certificates may be stored in a local database, RADIUS server, NT Domain server, or Windows Active Directory server.

Interestingly, the lower-end BlueSecure devices are also based on the MIPS64 architecture -- specifically, on Broadcom BCM1250 processors clocked at 800MHz, according to Jim Finucane, VP of engineering. This architectural similarity apparently enabled Bluesocket to leverage economies of scale in its development process.

Wind River claims that Bluesocket shipped the BSAP-1700 and upgraded the Linux-based OS used in BlueSecure products less than a year after licensing its Wind River Platform for Network Equipment, Linux Edition (PNE-LE). Bluesocket also used Wind River's Eclipse-based Workbench On-Chip Debugging Edition 2.6.1, Wind River said.

Finucane commented, "Linux plus open source with the [Wind River] toolchain is a rocketship."

"Wind River solutions have given us the opportunity to focus our efforts on product innovation and value-add tools, without having to spend significant time debugging the hardware. That, paired with Wind River's support services, has allowed us to [reduce] overall costs," added Finucane.

Availability

The BSAP-1700 is available now, at street prices ranging from $600 to $1,000. BlueSecure access controllers are also available, at a range of price points.

Another available component of Bluesocket's wireless infrastructure product family is a "BlueView" server component, aimed at providing centralized configuration, monitoring, policy enforcement, and maintenance.
Source :http://www.linuxdevices.com

Torvalds: Solaris could nudge Linux to GPL 3

2007-06-12T18:56:00.000-07:00

"If Sun really is going to release OpenSolaris under GPL 3, that may be a good reason" to move Linux to the new license, Torvalds said in a posting to the Linux kernel mailing list on Sunday. "I don't think the GPL 3 is as good a license as (GPL) 2, but on the other hand, I'm pragmatic, and if we can avoid having two kernels with two different licenses and the friction that causes, I at least see the reason for GPLv3."

As leader of the highest-profile open-source project, Torvalds plays a key role in the protracted arrival of the GPL 3. The kernel at the heart of Linux is currently covered by GPL 2, and Torvalds and fellow kernel programmers have expressed serious reservations about new provisions in GPL 3 drafts. Torvalds moderated some of his objections with the most recent draft, though he still thinks GPL 2 is "simply the better license."

At stake in this particular element of the license debate is whether Linux and Solaris software may intermingle in a single pool of source code or whether they must remain separate, as is the case today. Commonly cited advantages for intermingling include adding Solaris' ZFS (Zettabyte File System) storage software or DTrace probing utility to Linux or adding Linux's broader hardware support to Solaris--though technical challenges still are an issue even if legal barriers are removed.

In February, members of the OpenSolaris community bristled at the possibility of releasing Solaris under the GPL. But Sun Microsystems holds the software copyright, and Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz said in May he hopes the GPL 3 could let Sun "converge on a uniform license."

But Torvalds had plenty of cautionary disclaimers to throw cold water on those eagerly anticipating an era of Linux-Solaris cross-pollination. For one thing, he's not optimistic about Sun's declarations.

"They'll not be releasing ZFS and the other things that people are drooling about in a way that lets Linux use them on an equal footing," he offered in a "cynical prediction" posted later. "To Sun, a GPLv3-only release would actually let them look good, and still keep Linux from taking their interesting parts, and would allow them to take at least parts of Linux without giving anything back."

He admitted he could be wrong, pointing to Sun's release of Java under the GPL as an example of Sun defying his own predictions--and preferences.

"The good news is that Jonathan Schwartz actually does seem to have made a difference, and I hope to God he is really as serious about open-sourcing things as he says he is," Torvalds said. "And don't get me wrong: I think a truly open-source GPL 3 Solaris would be a really, really good thing, even if it does end up being a one-way street as far as code is concerned!"
Source :http://news.zdnet.com

LiPs For Mobile Linux

2007-06-12T18:54:00.000-07:00

Mobile Linux growth is accelerating, but mobile Linux standards have not kept pace until now. The Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum is finally ready to announce its 1.0 specification, or at least part of it.

The first version of LiPS 1.0 includes the LiPS Reference Model, Address Book and Voice Call Enabler, and User Interface Services (which is made up of widget sets, key navigation and text input method APIs). The second part of LiPS 1.0 is set for the end of 2007 and will include additional telephony, messaging, calendar, IM, and API specifications.

"There has been an interesting dynamic in the last 18 months where Linux has surged forward as a leading OS for mobile phones," Bill Weinberg, general manager of LiPS told internetnews.com.

"There has been a lot of debate about which framework, APIs and which interfaces should be there. So while Linux has gained ground as the underlying kernel and the basic framework for building applications there has been no consensus and in fact there has been a trend toward fragmentation."

The LiPS 1.0 specification release in part is an effort to help prevent fragmentation by providing standards. Weinberg explained that the first set of specifications included in LiPS 1.0 are focused on the most widely applicable parts of mobile phone development, the core enablers for building applications and core functionality that applies to the greatest set of phones.

LiPS got started in November 2005 as a consortium of operators, device makers, chipmakers and software specialists including PalmSource, France Telecom/Orange, FSM Labs, Huawei, Jaluna, ARM, Cellon, Esmertec, MIZI Research, MontaVista Software, Open-Plug and Trolltech.

Weinberg noted that, until recently, LiPS had few, if any, full-time employees and was worked on as a part-time operation for the companies involved.

Though Trolltech, the creator of the Qt open source GUI framework, is a member of LiPS, Qt is not part of the core LiPS 1.0 specification for the user interface. Instead, LiPS has gone the GNOME based GTK (GNOME Tool Kit) for its user interface specification. Trolltech's Qtopia, a mobile version of Qt, is being used by Motorola and others in their Linux-powered mobile phones.

Haavard Nord, co-founder of Trolltech, disagrees.

According to Nord, the GTK user interface profile that LiPS includes in its spec is a small piece of the overall mobile stack. Nord also noted that Trolltech's focus isn't on specifications but is rather on real product development.

"For us what we really focus on is the portability of device type and different OSes. We've seen a lot of specifications that have never resulted in any products; we'll see how LiPS goes in the end," Nord told internetnews.com.

Weinberg said there is a prevailing view that, while Qt is powerful and widely deployed, the licensing makes it unsuitable for certain people's view of how to build an open device.

Qt is dual-licensed under the GPL and a commercial Trolltech license for commercial use. Weinberg argued that Trolltech joined LiPS early on but they actually have not invested the time or energy to do the lobbying that they should be doing.

In the mobile OS battleground overall, the real fight appears to be a three-way battle between Microsoft, Linux and Symbian. Nokia, which uses Symbian extensively, has recently launched a program to help enable open source Linux applications to run on Symbian.

"Symbian is trying to find a way to deal with open source," Weinberg said. "They are the most inconvenient position of the three main horses in the mobile OS race and they have the least options for going end to end.

"So it would certainly behoove them to find way to interoperate more with open source because they can't leverage the enterprise ecosystem that Linux can or that Microsoft can."
Source :http://www.smartphonetoday.com

DreamWorks Animation "Shrek the Third": Linux Feeds an Ogre

2007-06-05T20:39:00.000-07:00

All the big film studios primarily use Linux for animation and visual effects. Perhaps no commercial Linux installation is larger than DreamWorks Animation, with more than 1,000 Linux desktops and more than 3,000 server CPUs.

"For Shrek 3, we will consume close to 20 million CPU render hours for the making of the film", says DreamWorks Animation CTO Ed Leonard. "Each of our films continues to push the edge of what's possible, requiring more and more compute power." Everyone knows Moore's Law predicts that compute power will double every one and a half years. A little known corollary is that feature cartoon animation CPU render hours will double every three years. In 2001, the original Shrek movie used about 5 million CPU render hours. In 2004, Shrek 2 used more than 10 million CPU render hours. And in 2007, Shrek 3 is using 20 million CPU render hours.

"At any given time, we are working on more than a dozen films", says Leonard. "Each of those films has its own creative ambition to push the limits of CG filmmaking." DreamWorks Animation employs about 1,200 people, with about two-thirds in their Glendale studio and the rest in their PDI studio in Redwood City linked by a 2Gb network. (Note that DreamWorks Animation, a publicly traded company led by Jeffrey Katzenberg, isn't Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks live-action that merged with Paramount recently.)

"There were many specific technical advancements on the movie, including advancements in hair, clothing, costuming and crowds as well as bringing the secondary character animation [crowds] to a whole new level of performance", says Leonard. About 350 people are working on Shrek 3, with about 300 at PDI and 50 in Glendale.

Source :http://www.linuxjournal.com

Columbitech Taps SUSE Linux Enterprise From Novell to Help Retailers Reach PCI Compliance and Safeguard Customer Data

2007-06-05T20:31:00.000-07:00

Columbitech Inc., a leading mobile VPN security software provider, today announced an end-to-end security solution for mobile clients and wireless infrastructure for the retail market. This offering will give retailers PCI compliance by securing all wireless devices and providing secure wireless access to the back-end systems.

The offering includes Columbitech’s Mobile VPN for retail running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell. It ensures end-to-end privacy, integrity and client authentication, when communicating over wireless networks from any type of wireless device used in retail.

“The protection of customer data and credit card information is a large concern for the retail industry,” said Justin Steinman, Director of Marketing for Linux and Open Platform Solutions at Novell. “Columbitech's offering, taking advantage of the strengths of SUSE Linux Enterprise, provides PCI compliance to customers who choose to run open source and commercial software based on open standards.”

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server easily plugs into existing infrastructure and comes with an integrated and pre-configured stateful firewall. A server can be pre-configured with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and MobileVPN server to ensure faster set-up at considerably lower implementation costs for the customer. MobileVPN provides strong 256- AES cryptography and two-factor authentication for the highest level of security.

“We are delighted to work with an industry leader like Novell,” said Tobias Englund, VP of Sales at Columbitech. “With this pre-configured solution, PCI compliance is only a click away and customers will be able to reach PCI compliance faster and at a lower cost.”

The solution is software based and can easily be enhanced to support new standards for e.g. WAN connections, and is not limited to today's Wi-Fi security initiative. It supports all devices, operating systems and networks, and can be used together with leading device management systems.

About Columbitech

Columbitech, a leading mobile VPN security software provider, offers end-to-end security, convenient always-on connectivity, and optimized performance for any mobile device on any wireless network. With a strong footprint in the Retail and Service Provider Industry, key customers include three of top ten US retailers and major European service providers. The embedded solution is OEM licensed by leading companies, including Symbol Technologies, Toshiba TEC, Hewlett Packard and Ericsson. Columbitech solution holds a FIPS 140-2 certification. The company is privately held with offices in Stockholm, Sweden, and New York, USA. For more information, please visit www.columbitech.com.

The Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard

The Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard was created by major credit card companies to safeguard customer information. Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and other credit card associations mandate that merchants and service providers meet certain minimum standards of security when they store, process and transmit cardholder data.
Contacts

Columbitech Inc.
Asa Holmstrom, 212-946-2799
asa.holmstrom@columbitech.com
or
Pr@vantage
Fran Bosecker, 845-536-1416
fbosecker@pr-vantage.com

Source :http://home.businesswire.com

Novell's legal challenge spoiled lucrative licensing scheme

2007-06-05T20:26:00.000-07:00

SCO was projecting that revenues of its SCOsource licenses for Linux would generate billions of dollars in revenues for the company, chief executive Darl McBride testified in a deposition on 27 March 2007.

The company did "a lot of work" to create models projecting potential revenues.

"It's just a ridiculously big number," McBride said according to a court transcript (PDF) that was posted on the Groklaw legal website.

"I guess we could get finite on whether the number is $5 billion or $1 billion or $6 billion. The point is that it was a lot of money for the company, and the size of company that we were."

The projected sales far outstripped the value that investors attributed to the business. At the peak of SCO's legal offensive, the company's stock was valued at roughly $400m. The current market capitalization stands at about $28m.

SCO claims to own key elements of the intellectual property used in the Unix operating system, and alleges that its code has ended up illegally in Linux distributions.

The company filed a lawsuit against IBM in 2003 in which it alleged that Big Blue illegally contributed SCO source code to Linux. At the time it also started selling licenses for its alleged intellectual property under the SCOsource banner.

The offensive sparked a legal challenge by Novell, which claimed that it was the legal owner the code to which SCO claimed to own. McBride's deposition was part of the discovery process in the Novell case.

SCO initially had its salesforce make sales pitches for its Linux licenses to multiple companies. The company sold several million dollars in licenses to companies including Computer Associates, Sun Microsystems. But the majority of the potential customers declined.

HP has negotiated a deal that would protect its customers against legal claims, but it fell through in September 2003. HP instead decided to simply indemnify its customers rather than purchase a license. McBride blamed the failed deal in part on the Novell case for creating uncertainty about SCO's property claims.

A potential Google deal too failed because of the Novell claims. McBride estimated that search engine could ended up paying "hundreds of millions of dollars". For the estimated 250,000 to 500,000 servers that it runs.

"The Novell claims were what eventually got us to just shutter up the SCOsource lincesing division for a number of years," McBride said.

In related news, SCO on Tuesday issued its earnings release over the second quarter of its fiscal year 2007. Although revenues decreased to $6m, relative from $7.1m year-over-year, the software maker succeeded in narrowing its net losses to $1.1m from last year's $4.7m loss.
Source :http://www.vnunet.com

Microsoft strikes deal with Linux distributor

2007-06-05T20:16:00.000-07:00

Microsoft says it will share technology with Linux distributor Xandros, the latest in a string of deals meant to help the patent-protected Windows operating system work more smoothly with open-source programs.

Under the terms of the agreement, New York-based Xandros, which makes and distributes open-source desktop and server software, will license server code from Microsoft and develop software tools that work with Microsoft's systems.

The companies also will work on technology to translate between two types of documents, Microsoft-developed OpenXML format and the Open Document Format. That could improve interoperability between Microsoft's Office software and open-source rivals.

Microsoft also said in a statement it will endorse Xandros Server and Desktop programs as a preferred Linux distribution.

Key to the agreement is a clause that protects Xandros customers from running afoul of Microsoft's legal machine for patent infringement. A growing number of companies and government agencies rely on elements of both Microsoft's Windows and various versions of Linux to run their office networks, but fear being sued by the software maker, which claims open-source software infringes on hundreds of its patents.

Financial terms of the arrangement weren't disclosed.

The Linux server software segment is dominated by Red Hat and Novell, Xandros' share of that worldwide market is so small that research group IDC doesn't track it.

Xandros captured less than 1 percent of the desktop Linux operating system market in 2006, according to IDC, far behind big players like Red Flag Software Co., based in China, and Turbolinux Inc. in Japan.

The deal with Xandros is similar to one Microsoft struck with Novell last November. It sparked considerable outcry from some open-source programmers, who make all of their code - and any software that includes their code - available without charge to users and other developers.

Free software proponents argued that under the public license governing Novell's code, Microsoft must give up patent claims on its software if it makes exceptions for some customers.

In a May filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Novell noted that Microsoft could conceivably back out of the deal to avoid extending its patent covenants to a broader range of recipients.
Source :http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au

The Truth About ATI/AMD & Linux

2007-06-02T20:40:00.001-07:00

Michael Larabel writes "Last year when AMD announced their acquisition of ATI it led many to wonder how this would impact the quality of their Linux support and driver. Some had even speculated that AMD would be opening the code to at least a subset of their graphics drivers, and while this issue has come up again more recently, we will cover this particular topic in a different article. In this article we will be exposing what truly consists of the ATI/AMD driver development cycle and ultimately what they are really doing to improve their image in the Linux community. We have been granted unprecedented access to share with you their once unknown driver development model."

Source :

Linux-based XtreemOS Goes Up Against Globus Toolkit for Grids

2007-06-02T20:37:00.001-07:00

The EU 6th Framework Program project XtreemOS is using Linux to compete against US-based Globus Toolkit for the de facto standard spot in the next generation of Grid technologies, said the Community Research & Development Information Service (Cordis). “The XtreemOS system will offer an alternative to the Globus Toolkit, which is currently the most widespread middleware system for managing computational grids despite its complexity,” said project coordinator, Christine Morin. Grid connects distributed IT hardware into a virtual machine. The XtreemOS system is eyeing Asia’s market too.

Source :

Cat 7.5 released: F@H, Linux & OGL

2007-06-02T20:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday ATI released its latest Catalyst drivers, version 7.5. The update includes a much needed performance boost for OpenGL with last generation X1-50 series products, in good time for Quake Wars: Enemy Territory;

"OpenGL performance in Windows Vista improves on the Radeon X1950 XTX at high resolutions (1920x1200 or greater) with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled. Doom 3 and Quake 4 improves as much as 13-18% .and Prey improves at least 15.6%. The Radeon X1950 Pro and Radeon X1650 XT also see improvements in Doom 3 and Quake 4 up to 14.1% at higher resolutions with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled."

We can't see a rush to invest in the previous generation of graphics cards, but still, existing owners should be pleased.

In addition, HD 2900 XT owners also get full DirectX 10 support in both single and CrossFire configurations in Vista;

"This release of Catalyst™ introduces the ATI DirectX 10 driver for the Radeon HD 2900 XT, for both single cards and CrossFire configurations (AMD DirectX 10 CrossFire support is currently only available under Windows Vista 32-bit). The ATI DirectX 10 driver used in combination with the Radeon HD 2900 XT (and an application designed to take advantage of the power of the DirectX 10 API) delivers incredible graphics effects never seen before on the PC."

Now that the first DirectX 10 patch has been released for Company of Heros (v1.7), this is an very timely update, however CrossFire is still limited to the 32bit version of Vista. Further DX10 games should be right around the corner, so for those who jumped on the HD 2900 XT/Vista bandwagon early, these drivers are a must install.

The Penguin also gets some love with, Catalyst Control Center: Linux Edition Version 1.0

"This release of the Catalyst Linux graphics driver introduces the Catalyst™ Control Center Linux Edition version 1.0. The Catalyst Control Center Linux Edition now includes 3D settings which can enable/disable various 3D features in graphic-design applications, CAD applications, and games. The Catalyst Control Center Linux Edition also supports display settings, colour settings, and information about the current graphics hardware/software configurations."

In addition it also solves the issue of "logging out of a session to the graphical login manager no longer crashes the Xserver."

We can't say that anyone in the office runs Linux regularly, but we do have quite a few users on the forums, so let us know what it's like!

Having been at the press conference in Tunis, and having talked a bit about GPGPU here at bit-tech, you can also take part of Folding@Home on your GPU with the Catalyst 7.5 drivers too. You'll need an X1600 or faster to take part though.

For those not in the know, Folding@Home is a scientific program simulating protein folding. The guys and gals at Standford University are using it to help cure all kinds of diseases, so the more computing power thrown into the project, the better. Folding on a GPU is far more powerful than a CPU, so download the supplementary GPU application here and join the bit-tech team (number 33346)!

Source :http://www.bit-tech.net

Microsoft's Halo Only Stretches So Far

2007-06-02T20:34:00.000-07:00

Now that its long but ultimately uneventful backdating investigation is finally over and it's filed all its missing statements, Novell has returned to making conventional SEC submissions and posting its results. On Wednesday it posted its April quarter.

OK, so let's cut right to what everybody wants to know.

In the two quarters since its hackles-raising deal with Microsoft was signed in November, some 49,000 SUSE certificates have been activated. They are worth $91 million. That's 38% of the five-year $240 million agreement, which has no cap. Microsoft could buy more.

Unless of course the GPLv3 intervenes and the tentative grandfather clause currently protecting the deal gets dropped.

Novell wouldn't answer any questions during its conference call with Wall Street about the worst the GPL can do to its precious and profitable Microsoft arrangement, continuing to hold out until the Free Software Foundation's last draft, still apparently in negotiation, is locked and loaded.

As previously reported, any termination arrangements the two might have were redacted out of the copy of their contract that Novell made public last Friday night and Novell's only public show of fear was in its shiny new 10-K where companies always list any risk factors and let their worst nightmares run riot.

Novell's nightmare is: "If the final version of GPLv3 contains terms that interfere with our agreement with Microsoft or our ability to distribute GPLv3 code, Microsoft may cease to distribute SUSE Linux coupons in order to avoid the extension of its patent covenants to a broader range of GPLv3 software recipients, we may need to modify our relationship with Microsoft under less advantageous terms than our current agreement, or we may be restricted in our ability to include GPLv3 code in our products, any of which could adversely affect our business and our operating results. In such a case, we would likely explore alternatives to remedy the conflict, but there is no assurance that we would be successful in these efforts."

That, one assumes, everybody knew.

Anyway, the bulk of that $91 million, or $73 million, was done in Novell's first quarter when the pair picked off the low-hanging fruit in the US. They subsequently expanded into Europe and are now pushing into Asia, Novell said.

That means they only brought in $18 million in the April quarter. One of the Wall Street boys did some calculations and figured Microsoft's contribution was down 75% sequentially and Novell's was down 39%.

CEO Ron Hovsepian blew if off and called the first quarter as "exceptional."

He prefers the invoicing numbers, offering $29 million in Linux POs - which is $18 million Microsoft and $11 million Novell, a number Wall Street thought was down "significantly" on the Novell side. Well, whoever brought it in $29 million in invoicing is 114% better than last year.

Novell's total deferred revenue at the end of April stood at $700 million, up $354 million, or 102%, year-over-year.

This is last report of certificate numbers we're going to get, Novell Hovsepian said. We're supposed to understand that Novell and Microsoft are working so closely together that it's hard to tell them apart and give credit where credit is due. With Dell in the picture it will only get "muddier," he said.

For all of Microsoft's contributions, Novell still lost money in Q2, $2.19 million to be precise, down from the $3.18 million it earned this time last year and its cash flow was a negative $29 million, worse than last year's negative $24 million. But on a non-GAAP basis, the company cleared $15.9 million, or five cents a share, against $6.7 million, or two cents a share, a year ago.

Revenue was up a tad from $233 million last year, before Microsoft was helping, to $239 million, better than expected.

Broken down, Novell reported $19 million in revenue from Linux Platform Products, up 83% year-over-year. Revenue from identity and access management was $23 million, up 5% year-over-year. Revenue from systems and resource management was $32 million, down 4% year-over-year. And revenue from its legacy workgroup business unit declined 4% year-over-year to $84 million, not as bad as the double-digit declines it's been experiencing.

According to Hovsepian's canned appraisal, "We were pleased with the overall results this quarter. We saw continued strength in our Linux business, improvement in our identity business and better-than-expected results in workgroup. Additionally, we benefited from the impact of cost control measures. While there remains a lot of work ahead of us, our business is moving in the right direction and we believe we are on track to achieve our fiscal 2007 exit rate operating margin target."

That exit rate operating margin would happen to be between 5% and 7%, a number Novell expects to be between 12% and 15% at the end of fiscal '08.

For the current fiscal year Novell is projecting net revenues of between $925 million and $955 million, adjusted for the sale of its Salmon consulting operation in the UK in fiscal Q2, and down from December projections of between $945 million and $975 million. Last year Novell did $967.3 million.

On a non-GAAP basis, income from operations is supposed to be somewhere between breakeven and $10 million, excluding stock-based compensation and restructuring expenses which are supposed to run $35 million-$40 million through the end of the year.

Novell had $1.8 billion in the bank on April 30, a lot of money, and with the accounting review over, well, it's expected to buy back shares and make acquisitions.

Hovsepian dismissed the fact that the Microsoft-Novell indemnification and patent protection may not be as some out there. He mumbled something about "different components of an overall value proposition," or something like that.

He also dismissed the fact that his new buddy Dell is bundling Ubuntu on a few of its PCs. It's for the Linux zealot, he said, an audience he estimated at three million-four million and more a competitor of Novell's OpenSUSE project rather than its SUSE Linux Desktop.

Credit Suisse begs to differ with Hovsepian's sanguine appraisal. Analyst Jason Maynard said the numbers gave him "little reason to change our bearish opinion about the stock. There were no signs of meaningful progress, the upcoming release of GPLv3 creates a near-team risk to Novell's most important business (Linux) and we continue to think that Red Hat is a better investment idea for exposure to Linux and open source software."

Maynard also think the chances of Novell getting picked up by a private equity investors are "relatively low given the lack of sustainable cash flow."
Source :http://dotnet.sys-con.com

Lina runs Linux apps on Windows, Mac OS X

2007-06-01T22:52:00.000-07:00

An open source start-up has given the first preview of a project designed to significantly blur the boundaries between Linux and other operating systems, by allowing Linux programs to run on Windows and Mac OS X.

The project, called Lina, was given its first public showing at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco last week and is due to be released late in June under both the GPL and a commercial license.

Developers compared it to Java, with its write-once, run-anywhere ethos. Lina supports languages including C/C++, Perl and Python.

It takes the form of an application written for the host system, which virtualizes the underlying x86 hardware. This runs a modified Linux kernel, currently version 2.6.19, along with a standard Linux file system and libraries, mapped to the equivalent resources on the host platform.

The package is currently a 15MB download, expanding to 40MB.

The software includes resources allowing Linux applications to match the look and feel of the host operating system, Windows or Mac OS X, something that has been difficult in previous cross-platform efforts.

Applications must be compiled for Lina, something the company compared to compiling for any other Linux distribution.

"Developers get the users they want (while) Windows and Mac users get to run an incredible number of open source programs without having to learn a new operating system," said Lina chief executive James McGreen in a statement.

While there are some Linux-specific applications, such as scientific tools, that Windows and Mac users might want access to, part of the company's plan is to make Lina attractive in its own right as a cross-platform development tool.

The argument goes that developers would be able to market to users of all three operating systems with a single executable. By using open-source tools, developers would also gain access to a large body of existing, reusable open source components.

The programs they create, meanwhile, would become instantly accessible to any Linux user.

The company made it clear that after four years of development Lina is still at an early stage of development, with support currently limited to web applications and command-line tools. The idea behind next month's initial release is to get the open-source community interested, and to gather momentum around the project.

"We want the critical feedback of the open source community, particularly in regard to our interfaces and APIs, so we've made it a priority over the past few months to prepare for an open source release," the company said in release notes on its website.

Source :http://www.computerworld.com

ARE LINUX SUPPORTERS ARROGANT? YOU JUDGE

2007-06-01T22:51:00.000-07:00

This anguish over Linux/Dell/Ubuntu being "too hard" is the classic liberal arts anguish over "Gosh, that's too hard" whenever it comes to doing anything other than reading poetry, munching on cucumber sandwiches, and drinking Bud Light. If you aren't willing to exert yourself just a little bit, then you don't deserve to run Linux. --Andy Lavarre

Oh, gosh, that was so hard. Who has time to learn something so complicated? I had to type actual words, and some had more than four letters. Why isn't there a big flashing button to push? It's unfair that I should have to know anything about a computer to use a computer. --Dave R.

The article is really negative. Bad Dell for not mentioning that Ubuntu doesn't run all of your Windows software? What about bad Dell for not telling their Windows customers about all of the great Ubuntu features that you don't get with Windows? Oh, I forgot, there are no good features beyond what Windows has. --Phil

Talk about fanboys, Linux has the worst because the reality is that going to a Linux operating system is like taking a step backward in technology. No thanks, I'd rather be able to use the latest cards with the latest drivers that can do more than just be a workaround. And I'd rather not have to learn geek-speak to converse on how to make things work on an OS. --Linux stinks

I'm typing this from Kubuntu Feisty on a dual-boot laptop, and I must say I'm ashamed of some of the comments made by Linux fanboys here. Linux is a big OS now, and it doesn't need a squad of angry people parachuting in. Even if the author isn't correct on the details, his point is still valid: Linux is a lot easier than what I've heard it once was, but it's still not as easy to use as Windows is. --Thomas

The only problem I have with Linux is how every user I encounter believes that if you don't know how to code or don't like the process of working on your operating system, you're inferior to them, which in a way is true. I hate coding with a passion. But on the other side, oh mighty Linux users, do you people have cars? Do you know how to fix and upgrade your vehicles and their in-depth workings, or do you occasionally need help? And not the help that starts off with, "God, what's wrong with you? You're so dumb. Go back to Windows if it's too hard for you."

I tried to get along with Ubuntu for a while, and I had a few helpful people work with me on it. I also had a lot of far-from-helpful people discourage me from joining the little community. --Darren

Source :http://www.informationweek.com

TurboLinux to Sell Wizpy Media Player Worldwide

2007-06-01T22:48:00.002-07:00

MsManhattan writes "TurboLinux will attempt to lure Windows users over to the Linux operating system in baby steps this June when it starts selling its Wizpy media player worldwide. The pocket-sized device, which plays audio and video files, is really a Linux carrot of sorts, in that it also allows users to store a complete Linux desktop in its memory.

You can plug the Wizpy into a PC's USB port and boot up the Linux system with all its user settings, passwords, bookmarks, etc. It originally launched in Japan, where TurboLinux marketed it to 'early adopters who are curious about using Linux but either don't want to or can't install the operating system.' The company will now target the same crowd around the globe, starting in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, India and Singapore."

Source :http://linux.slashdot.org

123-reg Offers Linux with Ubuntu

2007-06-01T22:48:00.001-07:00

UK domain name registrar and Web hosting provider 123-reg (123-reg.co.uk), a subsidiary of Pipex, announced on Thursday that it is offering the Ubuntu (ubuntu.com) distribution system on its Linux dedicated servers.

123-reg says it is the UK's first major Web host to make the operating system available for free, providing customers with an easy way of setting up and maintaining their own server. Customers will be able to access Ubuntu for five years on servers with no requirement to purchase subscriptions per deployment and no restrictions on usage, says the company.

Ubuntu, a complete Linux-based operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux, was selected due to its reputation for stability, usability and ease of installation, says 123-reg.

"We're pleased to be one of the first Web hosts to offer Ubuntu as its Linux operating system of choice," says Mark Beyer, sales and marketing director of Pipex. "We spoke to our customers about which operating system they wanted on our dedicated servers and Ubuntu was a name that kept coming up. It's robust and easy to use, which fits closely into our values of providing good value, yet high performance, Web hosting."

123-reg also recently began offering a year's free hosting worth £57 for all customers that transfer their domain name to its services.
Source :http://www.thewhir.com

Novell fears closing of GPL loophole

2007-06-01T22:47:00.000-07:00

Novell has warned that the forthcoming General Public Licence (GPL) v3 might spell the end of its partnership with Microsoft.

"We may need to modify our relationship with Microsoft under less advantageous terms than our current agreement," Novell said in a section of its annual report that lists potential 'risk factors'.

"Or we may be restricted in our ability to include GPLv3 code in our products, any of which could adversely affect our business and our operating results.

"In such a case, we would explore alternatives to remedy the conflict, but there is no assurance that we would be successful in these efforts."

Novell and Microsoft unveiled a marketing, distribution and intellectual property partnership in October.

The most controversial part of the agreement involves a pledge in which Microsoft promises not to enforce its patent portfolio against users of Novell's SuSE Linux distribution. The pledge does not apply to other Linux users.

Microsoft has also started distributing SuSE Linux by purchasing a set of coupons that entitled users to a copy of the operating system.

The distribution and intellectual property agreements are structured in such a way that they work around patent clauses in the current version 2.0 of the GPL.

These terms have prompted the authors of the forthcoming GPLv3 to make changes designed to block the Microsoft-Novell deal.

The GPL governs the Linux kernel as well as many components and applications bundled with the operating system, including SuSE Linux.

GPLv3 is in its final draft stage and is scheduled for release by July. It will be up to developers to decide whether their applications will migrate to the new licence, but it is generally expected that at least some GPLv2 applications will move over.

The licence automatically extends a patent grant to one user of GPLv3 software to all users of that application or component.

This would essentially force Microsoft to provide developers and users with a blanket patent licence, whereas the current deal is exclusive to Novell customers.

The usage terms discourage companies from entering into patent arrangements similar to the Novell-Microsoft deal by denying them the right to ship any GPLv3 software.

Novell has stated previously that it is committed to shipping its SuSE Linux operating as well as continuing its partnership with Microsoft.

A spokesperson for Novell declined to comment.
Source :http://www.vnunet.com/

Palm's Foleo Fails To Wow

2007-06-01T22:42:00.002-07:00

That was the general response to Palm's unveiling of the Foleo last week at the D conference, hosted by Wall Street Journal personal technology reviewer Walt Mossberg. Hyped by Palm as "a new category of mobile device," Foleo is clearly an attempt by the Treo maker to re-create buzz around its handheld devices and overcome impressions that the Treo has an outdated operating system and a clunky design compared with flashy new products from Nokia, Research In Motion, and Samsung.

Priced at $500, Foleo is a Linux-based, large-screen companion device to the Treo that lets users create e-mails and edit documents using a 10-inch display and a full-sized keyboard. It weighs a relatively hefty 2.5 pounds, syncs automatically with the Treo, and has a battery life of up to five hours.

The Foleo, Palm founder Jeff Hawkins says, is the first in a line of devices aimed at redefining how people work while away from their desks. Hawkins expects that Foleo would work with BlackBerry devices from RIM and with Apple's upcoming iPhone, but he says it would be up to RIM and Apple to make that happen.

Not everyone is buying the hype. "The Foleo has taken the lead in the 2007 race for most disappointing product announcement of the year," says Gartner analyst Todd Kort. "All the secrecy tinged with hype and then this is all we get?"

But there's a whole class of mobile e-mail users turned off by the thumb-typing experience who may find Foleo more amenable, says Carmi Levy, an analyst at Info-Tech Research Group. Another plus: The Foleo comes with a Wi-Fi connection, making it, in combination with the Treo, a dual-mode device of the sort many have been waiting for.

What the new device doesn't do is address Palm's most glaring weaknesses: "Despite all the hype surrounding the new hardware," says Levy, "the key to success remains the operating system, developer support, and carrier support."

Palm has promised a new Linux-based operating system for the Treo by year's end, with devices based on the new system available in early 2008. That's a long way off in the fiercely competitive smartphone market.

"One of the missions we have at Palm is to design breakout products," Hawkins told Business 2.0 magazine last year. "It's hard, really hard, to do." The Foleo proves, again, just how hard it really is.
Source :http://www.informationweek.com

Red Hat’s Fedora Project Releases Version 7.0

2007-06-01T22:42:00.001-07:00

The Red Hat-sponsored Fedora Project Thursday made available Fedora 7, which features tools that let users build customized distributions of the open-source Linux operating system. Red Hat also has opened up all the packages related to the operating system to anyone in the Fedora community. Previously, Fedora Core packages were maintained only by Red Hat employees. The company says removing those barriers gives the Fedora community more influence over the development of the operating system. Fedora 7 opens up the system to build distributions and makes it freely available, which is what lets users create their own operating-system builds based on the Fedora code.

The company believes those custom programs will be popular for use on devices that don't need a full-blown operating system, and in the appliance market as vendors create custom operating systems for their hardware. The company believes the corporate angle on those custom builds is that users can create a focused distribution for devices or appliances. "If you want an OS that is nothing but a database and the things required to support that database, then you don't have to add support for Firefox or for games," says Greg Dekoenigsberg, community development manager at Red Hat.

The build feature aligns with a Fedora project called Revisor, which is a GUI wizard that walks a user through the creation of a Linux build. The Revisor application, formerly called PirutSpin, is built on top of current tools for creating installation media (CD, DVD) called pungi, live cd creator and yum. It is one of the community projects that will be available as part of Fedora 7.

"The goal of Fedora 7 was to build a single repository of Fedora packages that are not separated by 'Red Hat maintained' and 'community maintained,'" Dekoenigsberg says. "The thing that made that possible is that we now have a set of completely open-source build tools to build Fedora or any derivative of Fedora."

The new version of Fedora comes at a time when the operating system is weathering criticism and as Ubuntu Linux is gaining favor in the Linux community. In February, Eric Raymond, an influential developer and co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, blasted the Fedora Project, saying it had squandered its technical prowess and prestige. He cited technical issues, such as the way repositories are maintained, the submission process and the "stagnant" development of Red Hat's RPM packaging technology; governance problems; the failure to reach effectively for desktop market share; and the failure to include proprietary media formats, as well as a more general sense that Fedora is becoming irrelevant.

"I don't know what he was talking about," Dekoenigsberg says. "My impression is that he simply did not like the way we did things, but there are plenty of people talking about the Fedora Project. It has not prevented us from having a very active and broad base of participation."

Fedora came about in 2003 when Red Hat spun its Linux product into a community-developed project. It is still linked closely to the company's commercial versions, serving as a testing ground for technologies that eventually will go into Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

In terms of competition with Ubuntu, Dekoenigsberg says Fedora has a different focus. "Our goals are to some degree different. The aim of the Ubuntu Project seems to be to provide a high degree of polish to the typical Windows, non-savvy end user. They do a good job of that but they are willing to make sacrifices to that end that we are not willing to make." Dekoenigsberg says that includes Ubuntu's adding drivers that are not open source. "It is hard to support non-free drivers and non-free code."

The Fedora Project is hoping Version 7.0 will foster many Linux derivatives built on the Fedora code, much as Ubuntu is a derivative of the Debian distribution.

Fedora 7 has Kernel-based Virtual Machine and Qemu virtualization technologies in addition to Xen virtualization capabilities. Fedora's graphical virtualization manager can be used to manage the virtualization technologies.
Source :http://www.cio.com/

Fedora 7 Download: Linux operating system open source software

2007-06-01T22:41:00.001-07:00

The popular Linux-based operating system has just been given a nice new update in the form of a Fedora 7 Download, what’s cool about this open source software is the fact that you can freely distribute, modify and use the operating system software.

The community work together around the world to build the Fedora Project and anyone can join in its development.

You now can get the Fedora 7 Download by following the link at the bottom of this post and get the open software and content.

Fedora 7 is the first version in which they are dropping the “Core” label, and now just labeling it Fedora 7.
There are many software updates (again view link at bottom for more information on these), including GNOME 2.18, KDE 3.5.6, Xorg 7.3, NetworkManager utility, a newer version of Python, performance boosts and Fast user switching support.

Source : http://www.product-reviews.net/

Palm Unveils Linux-Based 'Mobile Companion'

2007-06-01T05:57:00.000-07:00

Palm has used Linux to build what it's calling a "new class" of mobile device. The Foleo is designed to expand the e-mail, Internet and productivity application capabilities of mobile phones such as the Palm Treo by adding a full-size keyboard and a larger screen.

Very few details about the Foleo are known at this point. Opera, which supplied its Opera 9 browser for the device, has confirmed the Foleo will be based on Linux. For its part, Palm has published a few photos and brief videos of the device, while promising to release more details May 31.

In one video, Palm founder Jeff Hawkins said Palm plans to ship a complete line of Foleo devices supporting a wide variety of mobile phones. He predicts that the Foleo will be more successful than Palm's original Palm Pilot, which he designed, and more successful than its current Treo smart phones, which he helped design.

Hawkins emphasized that initial Foleo models will be focused on expanding the e-mail capabilities of Palm's Treo smart phones. A physical button on the device opens an e-mail client that keeps itself synchronized with the e-mail client on the user's smart phone. Similar capabilities for office documents are also planned.

Hawkins also proudly touted the Foleo's instant-on and -off capabilities, saying, "Press a button, it's on. Press it again, it's off. There are no other modes."

Given its advanced power management and use of Opera's Opera 9 for Devices browser, the Foleo is likely based on a low-powered embedded processor, rather than by anything in the x86 family. One possibility is Intel's ARM-based Xscale processors, which Palm uses in its Treo smart phones. Another possibility is TI's ARM11-based i.MX31, which recently gained an Opera 9 port.

The Foleo weighs 2.4 pounds, according to reports, and sports a "full-size" keyboard. Navigation is done via a TrackPoint nub in the keyboard, while a roller wheel below the keyboard offers fast scrolling.

Source : http://www.channelinsider.com/

7 post-install tips for Ubuntu 7.04

2007-05-27T21:21:00.000-07:00

nce you have installed the current favorite flavor of Linux (Ubuntu 7.04), you may want to read these 7 tips to save yourself a lot of headaches and get you enjoying your new operating system sooner rather than later.

Summery of 7 post-install tips for Ubuntu 7.04:

1. Fix your right Alt key
2. Fix your screen resolution
3. Install Automatix
4. Make sure all your media files play
5. Give Desktop Effects a shot
6. Try Beryl for unbeatable eye candy
7. Make friends with the package managers

We found these tips on Linux world and found them really informative and wish to let all Ubuntu 7.04 users know about them to save them a lot of trouble.

Source : http://www.product-reviews.net

Can Google and Linux Topple Microsoft?

2007-05-27T20:58:00.000-07:00

The story had a certain flair. In early March, the chief information officer of the Federal Aviation Administration Latest News about Federal Aviation Administration, David Bowen, was reportedly considering forsaking Microsoft Windows and Office in favor of the Linux Linux hosting solutions with 24x7x365 support – Visit HostMySite.com operating system and the Web-based Google Apps Premium office suite.

Could this be true? Might an office suite upstart topple the giant of giants? Does a Web-based suite of applications Get the facts on wireless solutions suited to your industry. have enough punch to do the job?

Perhaps. Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Latest News about Google Apps Premium does offer a strong set of collaborative word-processing and spreadsheet tools, in addition to e-mail Email Marketing Software - Free Demo and calendar capabilities. "We built the [applications] from the ground up to focus on collaboration," said Mike Bradshaw, who leads Google's federal enterprise division. "They're providing a new type of functionality to the space that people have been looking for."

Appropriate Functionality

However, Bradshaw concedes that Google Apps doesn't offer the full set of tools delivered with Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Latest News about Microsoft Office, although he stresses that not everyone needs all the tools.

"Google Apps does provide a solution that will benefit the bulk of the end users," Bradshaw said. "Just like in any community, you're going to have power users who are going to need a little deeper functionality. But if you really look at Google Docs, Google Spreadsheet, our mail capability, calendar capability -- yes, we provide functionality there that is very appropriate and actually provides more capability in some ways for government customers. I think the real benefit is that the products have been built to focus on collaboration."
Outside the Box

For some agencies and departments, however, solutions such as Google Apps have a fatal flaw: Using a Web-based thin client means an organization's data resides on a third-party server Manage remotely with one interface -- the HP ProLiant DL360 G5 server.. Many agencies and departments don't like that idea for security Barracuda Spam Firewall Free Eval Unit - Click Here reasons.

Without addressing the specific issue of remote storage of data directly, Bradshaw argued that those views could be changing. "More and more, people are looking to outsource some of the applications or solutions that are taking their focus off their mission," said Bradshaw. "I do see that interest in the federal government."

Steve Gillmer, Microsoft's business manager of collaborative technologies, disagreed. "The feedback that we're getting from our [federal] customers is that they do want some control" over the location of their data, Gillmer said.
Money Isn't Everything

The two major reasons Bowen cited for considering a move from Office to Google Apps were cost and compatibility. He cited conflicts between FAA's Lotus Notes system and Microsoft Vista. Gillmer said neither issue is a solid reason to move away from Windows and Office.

"Certainly our customers are looking at ways to drop their costs," Gillmer said. "But there are a lot of ways to address that, and software in the big picture is a small portion of the different costs." He said training and support incur larger costs in most organizations than the cost of the software does. He added that Microsoft is not talking, at least publicly, about moving to a Software as a Service model that allows users to select specific tools on an individual basis.

Concerning compatibility, Gillmer said compatibility issues always exist with any new release of an operating system. He added that Microsoft works with software developers to reduce incompatibilities and with customers to manage the movement to new operating systems.

Bowen met with Microsoft officials in late March to discuss his impending software choice. "The feedback I've gotten is that it was an informative and very good meeting," Gillmer said. "At the end of the day, I think they're still up in the air in terms of what they're going to do."

An FAA spokesperson said the agency has not reached any conclusions about its choice of software.

Source : http://www.technewsworld.com/