Monthly Archive:: January 2006

"As Power.org celebrates its first birthday, take a look at what happened in year one and what's ahead. MacLaren Harris interviews Marketing Programs Manager for Power.org Jesse Stein and discovers what is working and what needs work; how Power.org has grown and what has been achieved; and how individual developers can participate."

The NexentaOS project has released the 2nd alpha of their OpenSolaris distribution, which uses the Debian userland and tools. It includes a new installer (with auto-partitioning), the addition of KDE, WiFi drivers, full support from booting off of removable drives such as USB sticks, the complete Mono platform including Beagle, Java runtime environment, OpenSolaris build 30, and much more. You can visit the getting started page (screenshots included), read the changelog, and then proceed to the downloads.

It's official: Dell doesn't have an exclusive deal with Intel, and has an open mind on using AMD processors in its products. So said company chairman Michael Dell last week when cornered by a Reuters reporter at the World Economic Forum event in Davos, Switzerland. "Sure," he said when asked if the company might offer Opteron and/or Athlon-based machines. "We do not have an exclusive relationship with Intel."

Microsoft will omit anti-virus protection in Vista, the next version of Windows, which it plans to ship late this year. As with previous versions of Windows dating back to Windows 2000 at least, Redmond is promoting Vista as a landmark improvement in Windows security. Jim Allchin, co-president of Microsoft's platform products and services division, told reseller magazine CRN that safety and security, improved user experience, and mobility features will be key additions in Vista. But there will be no anti-virus software, the Windows development supremo said during a questions and answers session with CRN. For unspecified business (not technical) reasons, Microsoft will sell anti-virus protection to consumers through its OneCare online backup and security service.

Sun is keener than ever to port Linux to its new multicore T1 chip, even if it's not expected to happen for six to nine months. The company has made T1 servers available to Linux developers and is working with unnamed Linux distributors to develop the port. And while a port may be completed this year, it will be a while before Linux on T1 appears in production environments; application certification and support will be needed as well.

IBM is set to deliver a free version of its enterprise DB2 database software on Monday, following in the footsteps of competitors Oracle and Microsoft as they fend off the adoption of open source offerings MySQL and PostgreSQL. IBM DB2 Express-C only limits the hardware that the database can run on, but is otherwise identical to the full-fledged DB2 release. The software can be installed on machines with up to two AMD/Intel processors, and utilizes up to 4GB RAM. There is no limit to the size a database.

Not too long ago word came out that Sun was preparing the release of two new workstations, one Opteron and the other UltraSPARC, because it had published manuals and pricing. Now, the machines appear to be officially on sale, even though announcements have not been made yet. First of is the Sun Ultra 40, the bigger and badder brother of the Ultra 20. It can handle up to two dual-core Opteron processors, and 16GB of memory. Secondly, we have the Ultra 45, an UltraSPARC IIIi-based workhorse, holding two UltraSPARC IIIi processors at 1.6Ghz each, also capable of 16GB of RAM.

LinuxQuestions.org announced that voting for the 2005 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards is now open. The Members Choice Awards allow the Linux community to select their favorite products in a variety of categories. Awards will be given out in 20 categories, including Distribution of the Year, Browser of the Year, Office Suite of the Year, Desktop Environment of the Year and Database of the Year. The polls will close on March 16th and winners will have the option of receiving their award at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in Boston. Last year's winners include Firefox, OOo, and MySQL.

"A conceptual understanding of file systems, especially data structure and related terms, will help you become a successful system administrator. I have seen many new Linux system administrator without any clue about file systems. The conceptual knowledge can be applied to restore file systems in an emergency situation."

"If you have to travel, whether its out of your cubicle, out of your home, or out of the country, you should do your best to make your new surroundings as comfortable as possible. While so many things are out of your hands, one thing you can do to make your travels easier is to bring your favorite programs with you. To do this, all the things you will need are: a USB flash drive (practically any size) and a few minutes. When you get to your destination you will simply need a Windows computer, something which can be found in almost any library, office, hotel, or internet cafe anywhere in the world."

"Today's virtualization barely permits us to disregard what kind of resources we really have inside our servers. Companies like VMware, Microsoft, Xen, etc., are offering solutions to share (although still not in a dynamical way) CPU power, memory, storage and partially networking within a single server (or a cluster). Companies like Citrix, Microsoft, Sun, etc., are offering solutions to share applications within a single server (or a cluster). If you think these technologies could be just refined and nothing else, think again.

Tom Tromey (Red Hat) who wrote the GCJx as a extension to GCC to support Java 1.5 features among other changes has proposed a merge with ECJ, the Eclipse compiler from the Eclipse Foundation. The ramifications of this change are rather interesting.

Computer Guru has a theoretical solution to the Intel-Macs-Won't-Boot-Windows problem. All you need, according to him, is a set of Acronis applications, a clean install of Windows XP on another computer, Vista boot files, bcdedit, a Windows Vista DVD, and of course an Intel Mac. Please note that all of his ideas are pure theory, as he does not own a MacBook Pro or Intel iMac. Someone who does should try to verify this.

"On Wednesday morning, I met with Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin, the man most directly responsible for Windows Vista and Longhorn Server, the company's upcoming client and server operating system releases. Allchin is a soft-spoken, intelligent man with decades of industry experience, the last 15 years of which were spent at Microsoft. I've run into Mr. Allchin at various events throughout the years, but the last time I sat down with him for a one-on-one meeting was in August 2001, when we discussed the then-upcoming release of Windows XP. With Windows Vista on track for a late 2006 release, Allchin hit the road to meet with members of the technical press."