Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

As expected, Red Hat has released its latest server business operating system: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.1. This is the first major update to the platform since RHEL 6 shipped in November 2010. RHEL 6.1 features optimized KVM virtualization, new hardware support, improved operational efficiency, and high availability (HA) improvements. It also includes improved development and monitoring tools such as an updated Eclipse development environment includes enhanced breakpoint and code generation for C/C++ and Java.

The latest Linux kernel offers drivers for AMD's current high-end graphics chips and ipsets that simplify firewall implementation and maintenance. The Ext4 file system and the block layer are now said to work faster and offer improved scalability. Hundreds of new or improved drivers enhance the kernel's hardware support.

Since Groklaw last visited Paul Allen's patent attack on Google and the World, the court has agreed to sever the omnibus complaint into eleven separate ones 229 [PDF]. There is really no great surprise here. The nature of the asserted infringements in the first amended complaint were so unrelated to each other that the court had little choice but to sever.

Commercial Linux distributor Red Hat has moved the 6.1 release of its Enterprise Linux from beta to prime time. RHEL 6.1 is an update to the flagship Linux operating system from Red Hat, which came out in its 6.0 version back in November 2010. The 6.0 version was a major upgrade to the company's Linux OS, with nearly twice as many packages in the stack riding atop of the Linux 2.6.32 kernel, at 2,058 programs; that 6.0 version also had 1,821 feature requests from partners and customers and more than 3,900 enhancements to the Linux kernel contributed by Red Hat software engineers.

I have just started using Kubuntu a week ago. Being a new user of the KDE desktop, I admit that I am have difficulty getting used to its terms. One of the thing I am always confuse is the difference between plasmoids and widgets. The two terms are used interchangeably and it took some googling to discover that plasmoids are actually widgets. That is only one part. The next issue is the installing of new plasmoids. I downloaded some plasmoids from kde-apps.org and I have completely no ideas how to install it (I am still a newbie in KDE). I double click on it. It doesn’t work. I drag it to the widget section. It doesn’t work either. Once again, I have to google for help.

With the very latest open-source Linux driver code for the AMD Fusion E-350, the support is finally stable and comparable to that of other recent Radeon HD graphics processors with the open-source driver stack.

Those of us who have been using Linux for a long time all know the joy of silly programs like xeyes. One of my favorites, however, is good old xsnow. Whether you love the cold weather or live in Florida and like to ski on occasion, xsnow will add some winter fun to your desktop. The xsnow program has been around forever and is surely available for your distribution.

Attachmate named Nils Brauckmann president of its new SUSE business unit -- and also affirmed its commitment to SUSE Linux, the OpenSUSE project, SUSE Studio, and SUSE Manager. Aside from shedding the Mono project, all SUSE projects will be continued, and there are no plans to change packing or pricing, says the company.

The Japan Prize, one of the highest honors awarded for outstanding contribution to science and technology, was awarded jointly this year to Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie for the creation of UNIX. The prize is normally given to the recipients at a lavish banquet in Tokyo attended by the emperor. However, due to the April earthquake and tsunami, the prizes this year were distributed at the honorees' place of work. I was able to attend the ceremony for Ken Thompson, held at Google headquarters, where he currently works. After the ceremony, he consented to this exclusive interview.

This morning I wrote about the troublesome experience of Intel Sandy Bridge graphics under Ubuntu 11.04 as the packages found in the Natty repository are outdated and contain only the initial "SNB" support. In the mainline upstream code, Sandy Bridge is supported much better, offers faster performance, and possesses other new features (e.g. VA-API encode), except in the past week the Intel SNB Linux code temporarily broke hard.

Last week marked the official release of Adobe Flash Player 10.3 for Linux and other supported operating systems. Sadly, however, the Linux release was limited to 32-bit and their x86_64 Flash binary remains living in the "Square" 10.2 land. There also is no Linux video acceleration support outside of NVIDIA's VDPAU interface. To the pleasure of many Linux users, this is changing.

Step aside, Google Docs, there's a new JavaScript tour de force in town. I'm talking about the latest project from programmer Fabrice Bellard, a JavaScript program that emulates an x86 processor fast enough to run Linux in a Web browser. The JavaScript PC Emulator can do the work of an Intel 486 chip from the 1990s, but doesn't have a built-in floating point unit for numeric processing, Bellard said. Happily, Linux itself can emulate that, and a version of the operating system's core--2.6.20--runs on the foundation.

Part 2 of this series details how pseudo's root emulation works by tracking the path of an intercepted call to the database and back. Get a detailed explanation of various mechanisms in pseudo; the basic IPC model, interactions with the database, and an analysis of what exactly happens when the client needs to talk to the server. If you want to replace open(2) with your own code, this is where you find out how.

Have you ever wondered how Google, Facebook and other Internet giants process their massive workloads? Billions of requests are served every day by the biggest players on the Internet, resulting in background processing involving datasets in the petabyte scale. Of course they rely on Linux and cloud computing for obtaining the necessary scalability and performance. The flexibility of Linux combined with the seamless scalability of cloud environments provide the perfect framework for processing huge datasets, while eliminating the need for expensive infrastructure and custom proprietary software. Nowadays, Hadoop is one of the best choices in open source cloud computing, offering a platform for large scale data crunching.

Google's Chromebook launch and Chrome OS event last week has received some tough questioning from analysts, with skeptics appearing to outnumber the believers. Meanwhile, an eWEEK hands-on test of the Samsung Chromebook Series 5 showed the cloud-oriented notebook really does boot in eight seconds.

Well, it's been another exciting week here in the Linux blogosphere, not least because of all the many seismic shifts emanating from the vicinity of Redmond. There was the end of the Justice Department's antitrust oversight of Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), of course, marking the end of a historic case and a memorable era in the IT industry. Then -- not coincidentally, given Redmond's new freedom -- there was also its wildly extravagant purchase of Skype, the implications of which still have observers reeling. It's been enough to set geeks' heads spinning, in other words, and that's just what could be observed throughout the hills and dales of the blogosphere.

The LibreOffice developers at the Document Foundation have, for the last time, published an announcement on their main mailing list of a new beta version of LibreOffice. In future, beta releases and release candidates will only be announced on developer mailing lists and the announcements mailing list will only carry news of final and stable versions.

I announced in April that as of today, I wouldn't be writing any more articles for Groklaw. I intended to finish the Comes v. Microsoft exhibits as text and perfect some of our other collections and then I would retire from Groklaw, knowing as I did that the research we have done together will remain useful no matter what happens in the future. I was immediately bombarded with messages asking me to keep the community going or to tell you where to assemble elsewhere. A lot of you asked me to at least keep News Picks going. Groklaw is all of us, not just me, and I have always taken your input as seriously as you would expect me to. So I thought about it, and I realized you are right.

It doesn't take any insight at all – or the analysts at Gartner – to figure out who is the largest operating system supplier in the world. It's Microsoft, of course. But who are numbers two, three, and four? And who is the fastest growing maker of operating systems? The answers might surprise you. Through the magic of the acquisition of Sun Microsystems last January, Oracle was able to grow its operating system revenues by 7,683 per cent, to $780m, making it the fastest grower. Of course, Oracle had only a tiny OS business, selling a clone of Red Hat's Enterprise Linux. Gartner said that year-on-year, Solaris revenues fell by 3.2 per cent between 2009 and 2010. That said, Oracle's Unbreakable Linux had almost 200 per cent growth in 2010, showing that having your own integrated stack can indeed pay off.

LXer Feature: 15-May-2011

The big news this week would have to be the acquisition of Skype by Microsoft for 8.5 Billion dollars, Acer and Samsung unveil Chrome OS laptops, and it must be the time of year again to ask ourselves just why is Linux so much more secure than Windows? Enjoy!