Linux Archive

Winners and Losers in the New Linux World

Submitted by anonymous 2006-11-16 Linux 94 Comments

"Would you have believed at the end of last summer that Microsoft and Novell would partner over Linux, or that Oracle would create its own brand of Linux? Yeah, I wouldn't have believed it either, but here we are. So, what does it all mean? Rather than make a snap judgement I decided to sit, wait and watch before trying to make sense of it all. Now, I'm ready to give you my two-cents on who are the winners and losers in this post-deal Linux world."

Monitor your Linux Computer with Machine-Generated Music

Submitted by BlueVoodoo 2006-11-15 Linux 10 Comments

"Use Perl and FluidSynth to create a real-time musical composition of your system status. Learn how to integrate various system monitoring data into a harmony-producing, MIDI-controlled audio synthesis. Explore audible information methodsconfigurations monitor and manage your computer."

Give the Gift of Pre-Installed Linux this Year

Submitted by D.C. Parris 2006-11-13 Linux 86 Comments

"A few months back, LXer reader, cyber_rigger, began compiling a list of vendors who offer GNU/Linux pre-installed. The list quickly grew, even drawing attention from other news outlets. Meanwhile, the LXer team went to work to produce a usable database that anyone can browse and search. We still have one or two features to implement, but users can quickly and easily browse the Pre-Installed Linux Vendor Database of 106 vendors. All vendors in the list offer reasonably-priced desktops and/or notebooks for home and office users, and either offer Linux only, or as an installation option on the system configuration page of their sites."

Submitted by Rahul 2006-11-10 Linux 4 Comments

The One Laptop Per Child project has decided to utilize a Linux 2.6.19 OLPC kernel with a Red Hat Fedora Core 6 'run-time environment' for the first build of its giveaway portable notebook computer, the project's president for software and content said Sunday. OLPC executive Walter Bender announced the decision via his weekly progress report.

Server or Desktop: Can Linux Companies Make it Work?

Submitted by Jonathan Coachman 2006-11-08 Linux 9 Comments

"Lately, I've found myself troubled with the changes taking place with Xandros. As many of you probably know by now, Xandros has gone through a reorganization that meant that they had to layoff roughly five employees. What's even more disturbing is that they are looking at letting go of their support for the desktop market and focusing on the server realm instead. Granted they'll still support their open circulation desktop to some extent, but the fact remains that I'm seeing a possible trend brewing within the Linux Desktop market that has me a little shaken up."

FSF Recruiting ‘Freedom Verifiers’ for Free Ubuntu Derivative

Submitted by anonymous 2006-11-04 Linux 67 Comments

The FSF recently announced the release of gNewSense 1.0 in a press release. gNewSense is a free software GNU/Linux distribution created by two Irish free software advocates, Brian Brazil and Paul O'Malley, and is based on the Ubuntu and Debian distributions.

‘The World Just Isn’t Ready for Linux’

Thom Holwerda 2006-11-03 Linux 91 Comments

"Windows Vista brings with it a new era of DRM and restrictive license agreements that aren't going to sit well with even your basic power user and some are looking for an escape route. These changes are making some users question their commitment to Microsoft. The obvious step is to make the leap to Linux. But what's holding people back from escaping Microsoft's shackles and moving to a free, easy platform? My guess is that the platform isn't everything. In fact, it's only a small part of the equation."

Linux on More Dell Client Systems?

Submitted by Scott 2006-11-02 Linux 28 Comments

Dell's Linux Software Architect blogs on behind-the-scenes moves towards Linux support on Dell client systems and announces a new public mailing list for related discussions. "We put a lot of effort into our Linux offerings on our workstations and servers. On the client side, our efforts are much more behind-the-scenes. We recognize the chicken-and-egg problem though: it has to work before many people will want to buy it; and it won't work unless effort is put into it before people start buying it. So we're cracking the egg, not quite making omlettes."

Picture Your Disk Space with 3D Filesystem Browsers

Thom Holwerda 2006-10-31 Linux 23 Comments

"You don't need a Ph.D. in scientific visualization to have some fun with three-dimensional data. Whether you're searching for an unused nook in a cramped disk partition, or trying to find the bloated temp/ folder that's crashing your system, sometimes the flat folder view of a traditional GUI file browser is little help. Luckily, Linux offers a variety of 3-D filesystems that can make your disk usage statistics come alive."

Submitted by nstanosheck 2006-10-31 Linux 66 Comments

"With our operating system, the Playstation could very easily be your home CD player, DVD player, MP3 player and home computer, as well as a great game box,” said Terra Soft CEO Kai Staats of the PS3, “This is not an application-limited appliance, this is a full-blown computer. There is no issue of ‘can it do this or that?’ It can do everything." More here.

A Call to Distros: Give Users What They Want

Eugenia Loli 2006-10-25 Linux 178 Comments

A few months ago we ran a poll about the most important non-free Linux apps. We had over 8,000 votes in that poll and we consider the results pretty interesting. Interesting enough to push Linux's market share if a distro capitalized on them?

ESR: Linux Should Go More Proprietary

Submitted by Stuart Langridge 2006-10-23 Linux 68 Comments

In the latest episode of LugRadio, Eric S. Raymond suggests that the Linux community need to start integrating more proprietary software in order to get market share. ESR points to proprietary multimedia codecs as an example of somewhere where Linux distributions should step away from free-software rhetoric in order to get more users, with the aim of bringing those users back to open source later on and to gain more influence with manufacturers and music/movie/media distributors to make Linux a properly supported platform.

‘Critical Linux Security API is Still a Kludge’

Thom Holwerda 2006-10-22 Linux 165 Comments

"The talk lately has centred about Vista's security APIs, but Linux certainly needs improvements in this area, because AV vendors still rely on an external kernel module to implement 'real time' file scanning." The Inq also reviews AVG antivirus for Linux, and concludes it is a must-have

Submitted by Temcat 2006-10-19 Linux 9 Comments

A new version of the Autopackage cross-distribution packaging system for Linux has been released. The most important enhancement in the new 1.2 version is the improved C++ support, making it possible to create a package that will install on systems with different C++ ABI versions (gcc 3.2 or gcc 3.4). Also, first steps to integrate Autopackage with native package managers have been done: now it is possible to uninstall an RPM package conflicting with the autopackage that is being installed. There are also many other GUI and backend improvements.

Submitted by michuk 2006-10-18 Linux 5 Comments

"Frugalware is an independent GNU/Linux distribution similar to Slackware, aiming at simplicity, speed and multimedia support. It features a wide software repository, managed by Pacman from Archlinux, which resolves dependencies and makes system updates easy. I'm going to walk you through the process of installing and configuring the latest version (0.5) of this outstanding OS."

The Future of ReiserFS

Submitted by anonymous 2006-10-16 Linux 38 Comments

With Namesys founder Hans Reiser recently arrested as the prime suspect in the disappearance of his estranged wife, a brief thread on the lkml discussed the future of ReiserFS.According to a report at Linux.com, employees at Namesys are circling their wagons and plan to continue working on the project 'in the short term.' One employee admits, "we are rather shaken and stressed at the moment, although I cannot say we didn't see it coming."

Review: Xen Live CD

Submitted by anonymous 2006-10-16 Linux 5 Comments

"Linux had always lacked a Open Source virtualisation technology in the same league as Solaris containers or commercial product like Vmware. That was until Xen came into the picture. Xen is an opensource virtual machine monitor for x86 that supports execution of multiple guest operating systems. Recently, I downloaded the Xen Live CD ISO image from their website and burned it on to a CD in order to give it a trial run. What follows below are my experiences in trying out this very promising virtualisation technology."

Linux Kernel Gains New Real-Time Support

Submitted by Corey Northcutt 2006-10-15 Linux 12 Comments

"Additional real-time technology will be incorporated into the mainline Linux kernel starting with version 2.6.18, TimeSys reports. The real-time support, which previously had to be installed as kernel patches, was developed in part by TimeSys senior open source developer Thomas Gleixner, the company says. Gleixner was the main author of Linux's hrtimer (high-resolution timer) subsystem, and has been a major contributor to Ingo Molnar's real-time preemption patch. The changelog for the 2.6.18 kernel reflects the addition of 136 patches authored by Gleixner, along with 143 from Molnar, who works for Red Hat."

Enhanced Linux Filesystem Nears Production Kernel

Submitted by anonymous 2006-10-12 Linux 41 Comments

Ext3 has become one of the most popular Linux filesystems. However, with hard drives sneaking up on a terabyte, concerns exist that ext3 won't be able to handle 21st-century storage requirements. With this in mind, the Linux kernel developers have just released the first real-world test version of ext4.

Submitted by JCooper 2006-10-11 Linux 18 Comments

The Open Source Development Labs and Freedesktop.org announced the 1.0 release of the Portland common desktop interfaces today, less than a year after work started on the project. Portland was conceived last year at the first Desktop Architects Meeting in Portland, as a way of making it easier for ISVs to write applications for Linux.