Showing headlines posted by Sander_Marechal

Most of the ISO images and other software you grab off the Internet come with a message digest -- a cryptographic hash value that you can use to verify their integrity. While almost all Linux distributions come with utilities to read and generate digests using MD5 and SHA1 hash functions, the md5deep utilities can do that and more. md5deep computes MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, Tiger, and Whirlpool digests across Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, *BSD, Solaris, and other operating systems. It can recursively traverse directories, computing sums for files under subdirectories as well.

Linux mavens are usually pretty sure they'll never go back to (or start using) Windows. They may like Mac OS, but usually don't jump ship for that either. But how about the other open source Unix descendant, BSD? Dru Lavigne offers a basic primer on what's different in PC-BSD for a Linux user, and what's better. In this article, I'll compare Ubuntu 7.04 (Fiesty Fawn) with the (as of this writing) upcoming release of PC-BSD 1.4.

Ingres has rolled out its first software appliance using the Icebreaker open source chimera developed with start-up rPath. The database company has released the Icebreaker BI Appliance, integrating its Ingres 2006 database with rPath Linux and business intelligence tools from JasperSoft. The open source combo will, according to Ingres, reduce the cost and time in deploying data warehouses, in rolling out BI to new groups of users, and in managing and maintaining the open source middleware and application stack.

In 1993, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) gave us Mosaic, the first Web browser with a graphical user interface. Today, the NCSA is still innovating, creating a project that monitors how global climate change is affecting plants and wildlife, one that tracks oil spills, and another that predicts the possible effects of seismographic activity on bridges and other structures. To facilitate communication and collaboration between stations, NCSA is making use of the Web infrastructure it helped to launch almost 15 years ago, in a research program called the CyberCollaboratory. Not surprisingly, open source software is an integral part of the Web-based intiative.

Ingo Molnar has just released a version 20 of his controversial CFS scheduler (currently added to 2.6.23-rc* series) for many old kernel release: “By popular demand, here is release -v20 of the CFS scheduler. It is a full backport of the latest & greatest v2.6.23-rc3 CFS code to v2.6.22.5, v2.6.21.7 and v2.6.20.16. Also, the backported CFS scheduler enables people to test suspected scheduler regressions on older codebases too, to filter out the effects of other changes.

Citrix announced Aug. 15 that it is acquiring XenSource, supplier of the Xen open source hypervisor, for $500 million. In a follow-up interview with Wes Wasson, corporate VP of worldwide marketing at Citrix, and Peter Levine, CEO of XenSource, InformationWeek learned how Citrix will try to maintain the Xen open source community, while adding to its product line.

EtherBoot isn't an application you install on your Linux desktop, but if you run computers that boot over a network -- or would like to explore network booting for either fun or profit -- it is an essential free software project. These three casual videos will introduce you to some of the people behind the Etherboot/gPXE project and some of the people and principles behind GNU/Linux networking in general. If you are not familiar with the pace and style of free or open source software development and the people who make it happen, you are about to be amazed at the fact that these are not boringly serious individuals, but fun-loving folks whose rare F2F (Face to Face) meetings are full of laughter and camaraderie.

Construct a highly available Apache Web server cluster that spans multiple physical or virtual Linux® servers in 5 easy steps with Linux Virtual Server and Heartbeat v2. To get the most out of this article, you should be familiar with Linux and basic networking, and you should have Apache servers already configured. Our examples are based on standard SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (SLES10) installations, but savvy users of other distributions should be able to adapt the methods shown here.

Putting another hitch into a product release that has already been roundly booed by critics, Deutsche Bank analyst Jonathan Goldberg put out a note Wednesday saying that Palm's new Foleo has been delayed. Initially priced at $500, the Foleo is essentially a Linux-based, large-screen companion device to the Treo, allowing users to create e-mails and edit documents using a 10-inch display and a full-sized keyboard. The new device, which weighs a relatively hefty 2.5 pounds, synchs automatically with the user's Treo, and includes a battery with up to five hours of life.

You might remember, that a little over a year ago kde.nl graciously hosted the KDE multimedia meeting (or k3m for short). Whilst we were there, hacking away, the folks from Source21 joined us to do some interviews for their open source software vidcast. If you take some time to watch the video, you’ll hear from Martijn Klingens (KDE marketing, KDE.nl), Matthias Kretz (Phonon) and myself (Amarok) speaking about our respective areas of expertise.

The eponymous Zonbu is actually a low-energy miniature PC currently in "public beta" testing. There’s no fan, no hard disk, and no Microsoft Windows. A laptop hard disk can be installed using the internal IDE slot, as can a Bluetooth or WiFi card using the mini-PCI slot (a spot for an external WiFi LED is already marked on the aluminum case.) Also included are a massive internal heat sink, a 4GB Compact Flash card, six USB 2.0 ports, and Gentoo Linux.

From “developers, developers, developers” (produce software) to “advertisers, advertisers, advertisers” (market poor products) to “lobbyists, lobbyists, lobbyists” (start cheating). Yesterday we mentioned the use of large heaps of money in pursuit for standards domination. We also took a look at some of the latest ‘funny business’ around the world. There is a lot more coming at the moment, so let’s break it down into subheadings.

Linux training and laptop specialist LinuxCertified will offer a three-day class in embedded and real-time Linux development. As with all LinuxCertified courses, participants will receive the use of a Linux laptop that they then have the option to purchase. Set for Sept. 12-14 in Sunnyvale, Calif., LinuxCertified's embedded Linux course promises to examine, "why Linux, how to embed Linux, and how to measure and obtain real-time performance," the vendor said.

The desktop environment for many Linux users, Gnome, is fast, organized and very easy to learn. But Gnome is also very powerful and highly customizable. Today's top 10 lists the various ways you can tweak Nautilus and the Gnome desktop to turn Linux into a productivity powerhouse.

Two months have passed after the release of SPECviewperf 10, but the benchmark development group is not sleeping. The organisations behind this industry-standard benchmark are working hard on putting the SPECviewperf 10.1 out the door. The future of this benchmark is going multi-platform, since development group is pushing to release binaries for Linux and Mac OS X. If the people manage to pull this one off, there is no reason why SPECviewperf will not continue to dominate the professional graphics benchmark space for many years to come.

California-based IP gurus Palamida emailed me this week with some intriguing GPLv3 information that I thought I’d share with everyone this morning. Apparently all the GPLv3 haters can go to lunch, because the little license that could is seeing adoption rates of approximately 14% week-over-week. In the mailing, entitled “Get ready — it’s ramping up,” Palamida’s Melisa LaBancz-Bleasdale details the growth of the GPL’s third incarnation, which went live last month.

Hardware compatibility was a major issue with Linux some years ago, but it's quite safe to say that we have gone past that point. However, some hardware producers have done a better job at supporting Linux now. If you are absolutely sure that your next PC will run Linux, a brief moment of planning ahead can earn you a very powerful system that runs like a charm. So lets build a Perfect Custom Linux PC. These hardware specifications are for Linux which are fairly popular.

Microsoft will launch several projects around Linux and other open source technologies for allowing Indian customers the option to run its products on different operating systems and technologies. The initiative, to be rolled out in around a month’s time, is aimed at grabbing “more market share for the Windows platform by allowing interoperability with open source technologies such as Linux,” said Radhesh Balakrishnan, director, platform strategy, Microsoft India.

Fluffy Spider Technologies (FST) has ported Opera Software's Opera browser to its FancyPants embedded graphics stack. The companies say they will jointly market the combined stack, which initially supports Linux on ARM processors, to developers of smartphones, set-top boxes, POS (point-of-sales), electronic signs, in-car systems, and building automation equipment.

At the keynote for the recent UX Week conference in Washington DC, designers from the OLPC project and Pentagram Design gave a live demonstration of the laptop's Sugar user interface, including a "zoom" spacial navigation system and its extensive collaboration tools. Using a handheld video camera to relay the screens of four on-stage laptops to the audience, presenters showed Sugar running smoothly on actual XO hardware.