Showing headlines posted by hkwint

LXer Feature: 03-May-2018

Maybe you run old and trusted Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, and wonder if it's easy to release a Bionic Beaver (18.04) in your PC. So did I! I could wait for the early spring-bugs to be squashed (do beavers eat bugs?), so wait for the point release 18.04.1. But I decided to act like a daring drake, and give the process a try anyway. Now, this could either go horribly wrong, like some Linux-updates I had in the past, it could be a breeze (badger?), or anything in between: Time to share my experience!

Cloud infrastructure is a hugely in-demand skill. And if you're looking for an open source solution for your cloud infrastructure needs, chances are OpenStack is in that mix. OpenStack is a huge collection of projects, providing solutions and integrations for nearly every part of the cloud stack. While this large scope makes it a powerful tool, it also means that it can be hard to keep up and learn about the full suite of projects, how to use them, how to customize them, and how to contribute code back to them.

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Possessing Linux skills is valuable in today's IT job market where demand for talent outstrips supply. Getting certified proves you have the chops to do the job, and two well worn paths to Linux certification are the Computing Technology Industry Association's CompTIA Linux+ and the Linux Professional Institute Certification (LPIC).

A Puppet module might only be some 500 lines of code and a bunch of tests, but that doesn't mean it's effortless to maintain. Puppet modules should run on a range of operating systems and support a range of Puppet versions (and hence, Ruby versions)—and that in and of itself makes it quite challenging. So while a single person could easily write a Puppet module, what happens when that person gets sick? Changes jobs? Or simply loses interest?

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LinuxSecurity.com: Developers with Canonical pushed out a handful of patches for the Linux-based operating system Ubuntu this week, including one that resolves a bug that could have let an attacker cause a denial of service or execute arbitrary code with a TCP payload.

Chances are, if you work at a big company, you have to work with the beloved Windows and - unlike home - you don't have sudo - er, I mean admin-permissions. If you are a vivid Linux-user at home, it may feel like you're lost without your favourite Linux tools.

However, there's a lot of Free Software / Open Source software for Windows to make you feel more at home. Below I will present a list of the tools I use from time to time. Remember, it's just a list of software I use which I hope you say "Nah, I never heard of that!", that's the goal of this article. It's not meant as a recommendation of any kind, or saying that it's better, or to start a discussion about an utopic world in which you are free to use any OS you like at work.

Few would deny that the rise of GitHub as a popular hosting service for software projects is one of the most significant developments to affect open source during the past five years. GitHub's extraordinary success is necessary context for understanding the criticism leveled at it during the past year from some within or close to the open source world. This criticism has focused on licensing, or rather the lack of it: it is claimed that GitHub hosts an enormous amount of code with no explicit software license. Some critics have suggested that this situation results from a combination of the ignorance of younger developers about legal matters and willful inaction by GitHub's management. In a followup article I will discuss the measures recently taken by GitHub to address these concerns; this article explores aspects of the complaint itself.

Linux 3.11 progresses as new versions of Sabayon and Elementary OS debut

LXer Feature: 13-August-2013

Given the recent Hand of Thief-news, in which RSA's Limor Kessem explains how a Linux malware-kit is sold on Russian websites, I have been contemplating about Linux security again.

Not only that, after I switched to Ubuntu, I also noticed how easy it is to add new repositories for some cool new programs not in the official repository yet. Sure, while doing so you think "Hmm, there could always be a virus in it, but I think those people are trustworthy. If there's malware in it, other people might already have noticed it in the source code". At least, that's what I usually hope.

Besides, the OS is becoming more and more "unimportant" for crackers; nowadays the browser is taking over lots of roles from the OS. These days, it's all about Javascript, Adobe's Flash and - to a lesser degree - Java, all of them full of potential security shoot-through holes. Linux users are quite lucky Adobe's PDF reader is no common tool on Linux, besides Flash and Java waning in importance. It saves minor headaches, but the main ones remaining.

Throw into the mix some easily exploitable Linux routers, and Googles lax behaviour with Android security to make me reach for the paracetamol again.

With the belief that the Radeon dynamic power management (DPM) support is in good shape, it's a great time to try out this feature of the open-source AMD Linux graphics driver. DPM has the capability of increasing the performance for some Radeon GPUs while for other GPUs it will lead to lower power consumption, extended battery life, and lower operating temperatures...

Hewlett-Packard has agreed that there is an undocumented administrative account in its StoreVirtual products, and is promising a patch by 17 July.

IBM continues to bet on Linux and open-source databases with its new PowerLinux 7R4 server.

Gnash, the Free Software Foundation project to have an open-source implementation of Adobe's Flash/SWF run-time, hasn't seen a release in almost exactly one and a half years. While it's been 18 months without a new release, development continues and there's been a number of features committed...

LXer Feature: 27-May-2013

In his article "Smartcars – dangerous or simply can’t make money out of the apps?" Ray Shaw wrote:

Quoting:“The motor industry is slow to adopt because it fears it would lose its control over the process and its profit. "No it is too dangerous to have smartphone/tablet control” say the motorcar companies “What if it failed and crashed?”. More FUD

In his article, he proves to be totally clueless about the automotive industry: All software companies would be bankrupt if they made cars. Besides, fear, uncertainty and doubt about customer safety in the car industry is less acceptable than in software companies who have been selling bug ridden defective products for years without problems. Please let me explain you the difference.

Welcome to The H Roundup, your rapid review of the week with the most read news on The H, the security alerts and open source releases, and the essential feature articles – all in one quick-to-scan news item. This week: Continuous database migration, Google chat drops Jabber compatibility, possible VP8/WebM patent licensing problems, development plans for Ubuntu 13.10, Debian GNU/Hurd 2013 and a ready-to-roll robotics kit from Arduino.

The Linux Foundation today is releasing its annual Enterprise End User Report. Because this is the third year we've surveyed the world's largest enterprises and The Linux Foundation's End User Council about Linux adoption, we're able to share some interesting trending data.

Tizen is a Linux-based operating system that’s backed by Samsung and which is expected to ship on Samsung smartphones this year. But the OS isn’t just for mobile devices like phones and tablets. The folks at Tizen Experts got a chance to check out an early demo of Tizen running on an ultrabook, and it looks like a pretty it offers a pretty decent desktop Linux-style user experience.

The most recent Linaro Connect (Linaro Connect Asia 2013 – LCA), held in Hong Kong the first week of March, really put a spotlight on the incredible momentum around ARM based technology and products moving into the Data Center. Yes – you read that correctly – the DATA CENTER!

This 2-month old article serves as a really good illustration as to how companies optimize the Linux-kernel together to run on the newest energy efficient ARM server-hardware, this 'cooperation' model instead of Intel's model who basically does all the heavy lifting alone - hkwint

After years of work near single-handedly by James Simmons, the independently-created DRM kernel mode-setting driver for many VIA Chrome IGPs is finally looking for inclusion into the mainline kernel...

Riku Voipio of Linaro, Andrew Wafaa of ARM, Olof Johannson of Google, Sonny Rao of Google and Marcin Juszkiewicz of Linaro talk about hacking and using the full performance of the ARM Powered Samsung Chromebook to run Ubuntu, Debian, Open Suse on this ARM Powered laptop, talking about how much the Mali-T604 is being used in this ARM Powered Chrome OS, which feature improvements the ARM Powered Chromebook may get to possibly improve battery life, and a bit about the possibility of running Chromium OS or Chrome OS on older/cheaper ARM Powered laptops such as ARM Cortex-A9 and previous.

Note: This is not an article, but a Youtube-blog - hkwint