Linux Archive

ext4 File System: Introduction and Benchmarks

Submitted by linuxmag 2009-03-30 Linux 1 Comment

"If you have spent enough time around Linux it's almost certain you know about the file systems ext2 and ext3, and have probably heard of ext4. Get ready to hear some more. On October 11, 2008, the 'experimental' label for ext4 was removed. While this doesn't necessarily mean that you should change all of your file systems over to ext4 immediately, it does mean that you should consider using ext4 moving forward. With the 'experimental' label gone and openSUSE (among others) considering it for the default file system in a late-2009 release, it's a good time to review ext4 so you have a solid working knowledge of what it is and what features it brings to the table."

Red Hat CEO Questions Relevance of Desktop Linux

Submitted by snydeq 2009-03-25 Linux 47 Comments

Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst questioned the relevance of Linux on the desktop, citing several financial and interoperability hurdles to business adoption at a panel on end-users and Linux last night at the OSBC.

Linux Kernel 2.6.29 Released

Submitted by diegocg 2009-03-24 Linux 17 Comments

Linus Torvalds has released Linux 2.6.29. The new features include the inclusion of kernel graphics modesetting, WiMAX and AP wifi support, inclusion of squashfs and a preliminary version of btrfs, a more scalable version of RCU, ecryptfs filename encryption, ext4 no journal mode, support for filesystem freeze and other improvements. Here's a full list of changes.

TomTom Joins Open Invention Network

Guest post by Rahul 2009-03-23 Linux 4 Comments

TomTom has become a licensee of the Open Invention Network. The OIN was initially formed by Red Hat, IBM and others to protect Linux by being a clearing house for over 275 patents and patent applications. These are available, on a royalty free basis, to any member licensee. Members must agree not to use their own patent portfolio against Linux. Companies can also contribute their patents to the OIN to make them generally available. OIN is also one of the backers of Linux Defenders. It appears the recent Microsoft patent agitation against Tom Tom is the reason behind this move.

New Firewall for the Linux Kernel

Submitted by diegocg 2009-03-20 Linux 38 Comments

The Netfilter development team's Patrick McHardy has released an alpha version of nftables, a new firewall implementation for the Linux kernel, with a user space tool for controlling the firewall. nftables introduces a fundamental distinction between the user space defined rules and network objects in the kernel: the kernel component works with generic data such as IP addresses, ports and protocols and provides some generic operations for comparing the values of a packet with constants or for discarding a packet.

Wind River Linux Reaches 3.0

weildish 2009-03-19 Linux 2 Comments

Wind River, a device software optimization company, just announced Wind River Linux 3.0, based off of Linux kernel 2.6.27 and GCC 4.3, and reportedly it is the most feature-rich OS offering from the company thus far. It includes more than 500 packages, which is about 250 more than in previous versions. Wind River Linux is designed for specific industries including aerospace and defense, consumer, industrial, networking, and medical, and was previously segmented in different packages for different features and hardware support for each industry, but has now been consolidated into one standard system.

Linux Up in Servers, Down in Netbooks; Android to the Rescue?

weildish 2009-03-18 Linux 36 Comments

According to a Novel-sponsored IDC survey, Linux seems to be gaining popularity among businesses implementing servers, and it has a bright outlook for both server and desktop installations in the coming future. On the other hand, netbooks have seen less and less default OEM installations of Linux. Windows now has over 90 percent of netbook sales, quashing any hopes of an open source revolution in the form of netbooks. Android, however, may be able to change things.

Why glxgears Is Slower with Kernel Mode Setting, Why It Doesn’t Matter

Guest post by Rahul 2009-03-14 Linux 25 Comments

Fedora Project has been on the forefont of development and adoption of kernel mode setting to enhance the desktop linux experience by making fairly invasive infrastructure improvements that affect the interaction between Xorg and the Linux kernel. In the past, one of the common way to test Xorg performance has been to use glxgears. While that hasn't been a particular good way to do it ever, the switch to kernel mode setting for Intel drivers ahead of the Fedora 11 Beta release to be available shortly has exposed the fallacy of this. In short, don't use glxgears. There are better methods to assess performance.

PCLinuxOS 2009.1 Released, Eschews KDE4

Thom Holwerda 2009-03-12 Linux 78 Comments

After two years, the relatively popular PCLinuxOS distribution has finally put out a new major release, imaginatively called PCLinuxOS 2009.1. PCLinuxOS is a release originally based on Mandrake (now Mandriva), but which has taken on a life of its own. The distribution has one selling point (for some, at least) few other popular distributions have: it eschews KDE4 (for now).

Zemlin to Linux OEMs: Yer Doing it Wrong

Thom Holwerda 2009-03-10 Linux 71 Comments

Yes, it's apparently another netbook today on OSNews. Netbooks were supposed to become the major foot in the door, but as soon as Microsoft got off its fat bum and started offering Windows XP to netbook OEMs, the popularity among OEMs of Linux has dwindled; when the netbook surge started, Linux was the operating system of choice among OEMs, but now, the Windows version comes first, and the Linux version later - if at all. Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin basically tells OEMs: "Yer doing it wrong".

An Introduction to Logical Volume Management

Submitted by vijayd81 2009-03-10 Linux 8 Comments

In Linux distros, how do you know how much space to assign for each partition? And what if you do this and then later run out of room? Well you could delete data or move it off to other partitions, but there is a much more powerful and flexible way. It's called Logical Volume Management. LVM is a way to dynamically create, delete, re-size and expand partitions on your computer. It's not just for servers, it's great for desktops too! How does it work? Instead of your partition information residing on your partition table, LVM writes its own information separately and keeps track of where partitions are, what devices are a part of them and how big they are.

Intelligent Linux ext4 Migration Design

Thom Holwerda 2009-03-09 Linux 10 Comments

Ext4 is the latest in a long line of Linux file systems, and it's likely to be as important and popular as its predecessors. As a Linux system administrator, you should be aware of the advantages, disadvantages, and basic steps for migrating to ext4. This article explains when to adopt ext4, how to adapt traditional file system maintenance tool usage to ext4, and how to get the most out of the file system.

Video: Ted Ts’o on Ext4, BtrFS, First Steps with Linux

Guest post by Rahul 2009-03-01 Linux 2 Comments

Linux Magazine has put up a video of Ted Tso, one of the primary developers of Ext4 and current CTO of Linux Foundation, on the current state of Ext4, the current plan of Fedora to have it as the default filesystem for Fedora 11, how it compares to Btrfs, and other insights.Ted says that Ext4 is close to production-ready being built on the mature and stable Ext3 codebase and being an evolutionary step that brings in additional performance and scalability. Btrfs is a completely new filesytem developed from scratch with a number of new features like filesystem level snapshots that Ext4 could not accommodate. Ext4 is well on its way to becoming the next standard filesystem for Linux while allowing Btrfs to innovate more and mature over time.

The Return of the Linux Realtime Preemption Tree

Submitted by diegocg 2009-02-26 Linux 3 Comments

The realtime preemption project is a longstanding effort to provide deterministic response times in Linux. But for the last year progress toward getting the realtime work into the mainline has slowed. On February 11, Thomas Gleixner and Ingo Molnar resurfaced with the announcement of a new realtime tree and a newly reinvigorated development effort, LWN has a interviewed them.

13 Specialty Linux Distros Worth Considering

Guest post by snydeq 2009-02-24 Linux 2 Comments

InfoWorld's Rick Grehan offers a two-part roundup of 13 specialty Linux distros, each of which constructs a user environment tuned to a specific application or, in the case of Ubuntu Christian Edition and Ubuntu Muslim Edition, to a specific community's computing needs. Whereas the first installment focused on small-footprint distros, system-rescue Linux, and Linux flavors geared for archaic hardware, the second installment showcases the advantages of customizing both OS components and user-level software, focusing on firewall Linuxes, a Linux SAN/NAS appliance, two Linuxes for musicians, and the aforementioned religious flavors of Ubuntu. 'These distributions are outstanding examples of flexibility of the Linux OS,' Grehan writes. 'Hats off to the designers and developers who build these specialized distributions and make the fruits of their enthusiasm available to all.'

Anatomy of ext4

Thom Holwerda 2009-02-23 Linux 10 Comments

The next generation of the extended file system; ext4, provides improved scalability, reliability, and considerable new functionality. This article covers ext4 Functionality, scalability, and performance. It's an easy read to get to know the latest and greatest Linux file system.

ArchLinux 2009.02 Released

Thom Holwerda 2009-02-17 Linux 52 Comments

The ArchLinux Release Engineering Team announced the official release of the 2009.02 ISO after a long period of intense development. This distribution is among the first to officially support the new Ext4 filesystem. I've always noticed that Arch seems to be quite popular among OSNews readers, and I'm interested to know from our Arch users: why? What makes Arch such a good Linux distribution?

SELinux and Smack Security Modules for Linux Containers

Thom Holwerda 2009-02-13 Linux No Comments

A common response when someone first hears about containers is "How do I create a secure container?" This article answers that question by showing you how to use Linux Security Modules (LSM) to improve the security of containers. In particular, it shows you how to specify a security goal and meet it with both the Smack and SELinux security modules.

Cuba Says ‘No More Microsoft,’ Joins the Linux Bandwagon

Guest post by weildish 2009-02-12 Linux 116 Comments

Cuba recently launched its own answer to Windows this week, or, in the bigger picture, what the Cubans are calling "US Hegemony." Nova, the new open source OS being offered by the Cuban government, is being made to boot out US-based Microsoft products.

Linux Can Rule Cloud Computing

Thom Holwerda 2009-02-10 Linux 2 Comments

You can't read a technical Web site these days without some mention of so-called cloud computing. Cloud computing gives users access to massive computing and storage resources without them having to know where those resources are or how they're configured. This article discusses the anatomy of cloud computing and how Linux and the open source community contribute to the world of cloud computing. As you might have guessed, Linux and open source technologies play a huge role.