Linux Archive

First Day at the Ottawa Linux Symposium

Submitted by jonsmirl 2006-07-23 Linux 2 Comments

The 8th annual Ottawa Linux Symposium kicked off Wednesday in Ottawa, Canada at the Ottawa Congress Centre. Jonathan Corbet, co-founder of Linux Weekly News, opened the symposium with The Kernel Report, an update on the state of the kernel since last year.

Why Linux Isn’t Mainstream

Eugenia Loli 2006-07-22 Linux 108 Comments

Toby Richards wrote an opinion article for NewsForge, claiming that for him, Linux won't get mainstream until Evolution - or another capable Outlook-like client - gets optimized and offers 100% compatibility with Exchange. In the comments section of Newsforge readers offered more reasons as to why Linux is not mainstream, offering a view on their needs. My take: While for my personal, home usage of Linux my needs are different, I agree with Toby that companies won't switch their desktops if full Exchange compatibility isn't reached and if Evolution stops being the memory beast it currently is.

Submitted by jonsmirl 2006-07-22 Linux 40 Comments

The Linux file systems community met in June 2006 to discuss the next 5 years of file system development in Linux. Organized by Val Henson, Zach Brown, and Arjan van de Ven, and sponsored by Intel, Google, Oracle, the Linux File Systems Workshop brought together thirteen Linux file systems developers and experts to share data and brainstorm for three days. Read here, here and here.

Top Five Things Linux Can Learn from Microsoft

Submitted by anonymous 2006-07-21 Linux 58 Comments

The Linux world's very own version of Paul Thurrot, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, lists 5 things Linux can learn from... Microsoft. "Linux does a lot of things right - open-source, security, reliability - but it's far from perfect. In fact, Linux and its vendors could stand to learn a few things from Microsoft. Yes, Microsoft. Like what? Here's my list of the top five things that Linux could learn from Microsoft." Next thing you'll know we'll have Apple switching to Intel and... Oh, wait.

Submitted by misha 2006-07-19 Linux 39 Comments

'Why Reiser4 is not merged' is a widespread question around forums, Slashdot, OSNews, and wherever else Linux-related new appears on the web. The flame-wars on this topic have gotten to the 'mine is bigger than yours' level. Hence, it's not easy to see where the real problem lies. This document tries to make clear the 'official' point of view of Linux developers on this matter.

How to Restore a Hacked Linux Server

Submitted by anonymous 2006-07-17 Linux 27 Comments

"Hopefully you never had to restore your own system from a compromise and you will not have to do this in the future. Working on several projects to restore a compromised Linux system for various clients, I have developed a set of rules that others might find useful in similar situations. The type of hacks encountered can be very variate and you might see very different ones than the one I will present, or I have seen live, but even so, this rules might be used as a starting point to develop your own recovery plan."

Installing Software in GNU/Linux

Submitted by Borys Musielak 2006-07-15 Linux 56 Comments

Here's a quick guide on how to install applications using various types of package formats in Linux. It is aimed at people new to Linux. "Installing software in GNU/Linux looks quite different to the way you’re probably used to from Microsoft Windows. This is due to philosophical reasons. GNU/Linux is a free (as in freedom) operating system. Most of the software is free as well. Thus, the programs can better cooperate with each other and often depend on each other for getting a job done."

NTFS-3G: Full Read-Write Open Source Linux NTFS Driver

Eugenia Loli 2006-07-15 Linux 88 Comments

Finally Linux has got full read-write open source NTFS support! Preliminary benchmarks show that the still unoptimized driver already sometimes twice as fast as ext3 and 20-50 faster than the commercial Paragon NTFS. Interestingly Captive NTFS, which uses the native Windows NTFS driver, fails all benchmarks with file loss.

Smart Package Manager: a Better Mousetrap

Submitted by lh8 2006-07-14 Linux 26 Comments

"The Smart Package Manager hopes to beat the native package management applications for distributions like Red Hat, SUSE, and Debian at their own game. Still in beta, it has support for most major GNU/Linux package and repository formats, with a modular codebase that hints at further compatibility. Smart introduces many innovative and useful ideas, but its killer feature, with which it purports to excel beyond its counterparts, is the algorithms it uses to select packages and versions that best resolve dependencies and ensure cooperation between the hundreds of applications and libraries on a user's system."

Submitted by Rahul 2006-07-10 Linux 18 Comments

As has been reported on LWN recently , Andrew Morton (one of the core Linux kernel developers) has been heard to worry that bugs are being added to the kernel more quickly than they are being fixed. But it is hard to know for sure. In an attempt to obtain a little more data on the problem, Andrew has asked LWN to run a survey of its subscribers. The results will, hopefully, shed some light on how a wider part of the community sees the kernel quality issue; they will be discussed at the upcoming kernel summit.

The GNU/Linux Semantic Storage System

Eugenia Loli 2006-07-09 Linux 20 Comments

GLS³ is an open source semantic storage solution for GNU/Linux that indexes your data, extracts from it metadata and relevant information, allows you to organize it using queries and tags, an API to allow Developers to integrate searching and organization capabilities in their application, shared schemas between applications through an API, a pseudo file system for backward compatibility, a web interface, As-You-Type searching and more. Check their site for demonstration.

Safely Connect From Anywhere to Your Closed Linux Firewall

Submitted by anonymous 2006-07-07 Linux 10 Comments

"The first time I have seen the knockd project I liked it instantly. The idea is so simple, and though so effective. Knockd is a port-knocking application that silently runs on a server passively listening to network traffic. Once it will see a port sequence it has an action configured for it, it will run that action. We can see this as a remote control to our server: once we hit the right button it will take the appropriate action!"

Inside the Linux Scheduler

Submitted by IdaAshley 2006-07-05 Linux 77 Comments

"The Linux kernel continues to evolve, incorporating new technologies and gaining in reliability, scalability, and performance. One of the most important features of the 2.6 kernel is a scheduler implemented by Ingo Molnar. This scheduler is dynamic, supports load-balancing, and operates in constant time -- O(1). This article explores these attributes of the Linux 2.6 scheduler, and more."

Dropping GNU/Linux Helps Restore Corel Profitability

Submitted by lmh8 2006-07-03 Linux 36 Comments

After six years of financial difficulties and reorganizations, Corel finally seems on track with promising first and second quarters in 2006 and a return to public trading. One of the first steps in this turnabout, according to Graham Brown, executive vice president of software development at Corel, was the jettisoning of the company's products for Linux, WordPerfect for Linux and Corel Linux.

Submitted by jchalifour 2006-07-03 Linux 54 Comments

"They said it at LinuxWorld in Toronto a few months ago. They've buzzed it at analysts, and now the press is saying it to the public. Novell says this is the year of the Linux desktop, and I'm familiar with evidence showing gains in popularity for Linux. Yet, I disagree that this is the year. Nothing is happening this year to make it, specifically, the year of the Linux desktop and I'm going to hypothesize what could change that."

Watching the Evolution of Arch Linux

Eugenia Loli 2006-07-03 Linux 31 Comments

It's been over a year since the last time I reviewed (1, 2) the Linux distribution that I use most of the time, Arch Linux. Since then, while the distro-specific innovations have slowed a bit down, maturity and stability has emerged.

Damn Small Linux 3.0 Review

Submitted by Mark 2006-07-02 Linux 13 Comments

As its name suggests, Damn Small Linux (DSL) is a damn small distribution! The ISO is just 50MB and it fits on a business card CD so you can carry it with you wherever you go. It also acts as a Live CD so you can run the system without installing it on the machine. The idea is to access your Linux environment from any computer, thanks to a tiny CD that would fit in your wallet.

Manage Source Code Using Git

Submitted by anonymous 2006-06-30 Linux 12 Comments

"Git is the open source revision control software that Linus Torvalds developed to help manage Linux kernel development. You can download it yourself and use it for your own kernel hacking - or for software projects of your own. This article shows you how to get started hacking Linux with the Git tools."

Why Linux Has Failed Most Beginners

Submitted by Yadav Ji 2006-06-30 Linux 176 Comments

"Over the years, I've had a number of people asking me what I believe the problem was with further migration over to Linux by the public at large. To be frank, I don't believe that there is a simple answer to this. To me, there are a number of factors that play a role in keeping Linux out of the mainstream limelight" writes Matt Hartley in his opinion piece.

Editorial: The Chaos of Incompatibility in Mobile Linux

Eugenia Loli 2006-06-29 Linux 66 Comments

Linux has one, last, chance to become the No1 OS in a particular consumer-oriented market (not counting servers): the mobile phone market. The open nature and yes, the hype around Linux has made lots of mobile-oriented companies to consider using Linux for their next-generation cellphones. But there is a major problem on the way to success, a problem which is created not by Linux itself, but by the greed and close-mindness of these same companies that endorse Linux.