Linux Archive

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A Trip Down Linux Distribution Memory Lane

Submitted by QPounder 2009-02-08 Linux 41 Comments

What did the Linux world look like back in 2000? TuxRadar has republished a distribution round-up from Linux Format issue 1, May 2000. Many distributions such as SUSE, Mandrake and Red Hat are still around in various incarnations, but a few such as Corel and Definite have fallen by the wayside. Still, it does bring back some memories.

Avoid Virtualization Overhead with Linux Containers

Thom Holwerda 2009-02-05 Linux 7 Comments

Linux Containers provide lightweight virtualization that lets you isolate processes and resources without the need to provide instruction interpretation mechanisms and other complexities of full virtualization. In this step-by-step tour of Linux container tools (LXC), the author introduces you to the Linux container tools and shows how to get up and running on them. This article will show you how Linux containers significantly lower the overhead of using true virtualization, while still providing isolation.

Torvalds: Multiple Distributions “Absolutely Required”

Thom Holwerda 2009-02-04 Linux 80 Comments

With Linux traditionally coming in many, many flavours, a common call among some Linux fans - but mostly among people who actually do not use Linux - is to standardise all the various distributions, and work from a single "one-distribution-to-rule-them-all". In a recent interview, Linus Tovalds discarded the idea, stating that he thinks "it's something absolutely required!"

Torvalds on Filesystems, Netbooks, KDE 4.0

Thom Holwerda 2009-01-24 Linux 138 Comments

Ever year, Linus Torvalds goes on vacation to Australia, during which he usually also visits linux.conf.au. During his stay this year he gave an interview to ComputerWorld, in which he talked about the success of point releases and the important topic of file systems in Linux, which is quite an active field today with ext4 and Btrfs. He also gave some insights into why he switched away from KDE, moving to GNOME instead, and he shares his thoughts on Windows 7.

HyperSpace OS Coming to ASUS Laptops

Submitted by Richard 2009-01-21 Linux 2 Comments

Phoenix Technologies has signed a deal with ASUS to include their HyperSpace "instant on" OS on new ASUS laptops, including Eee PC netbooks. Hyperspace is a stripped down Linux OS that provides you access to just a few frequently used applications like Firefox, or a media player, without waiting for a full fledged OS like Windows, or Linux to boot.

The Linux KVM May Change the Way You Use linux

Thom Holwerda 2009-01-20 Linux 4 Comments

Linux and flexibility go hand in hand, and the options for virtualization are no different. KVM supports the virtualization of Linux guest operating systems - even Windows with hardware that is virtualization-aware. This article explores the architecture of the Linux KVM as well as why its tight integration with the kernel may change the way you use Linux.

Building a Mini-ITX Web Content Filter with Ubuntu

Thom Holwerda 2009-01-17 Linux 10 Comments

Using an Mini-ITX motherboard and some spare parts lying around my study, I was able to put together an extremely powerful internet filtering appliance that is not only powerful but fast, reliable, and darn near impossible to circumvent by computer savvy teens. Most parents do not want to bother becoming the internet police of the household but today's internet is a very hostile place with many different opportunities for trouble.

Enabling Linux-HA for Composite Applications

Thom Holwerda 2009-01-14 Linux No Comments

This article describes an implementation of high availability for a composite application using Linux-HA. Delivering high availability to composite applications can be challenging. Because composite applications consist of several distinct applications, each with different availability requirements, configuration is complex.

Submitted by diegocg 2009-01-12 Linux 13 Comments

Versin 0.17 of the Linux filesystem btrfs has been released. The main news on this release is that it has been included in the Linus' tree. The changes include support of transparent compression, seed devices, improved block sharing while moving extents, improved block allocation and many bug fixes and performance improvements. Also, the disk format is not expected to change unless a critical bug is found.