Linux Archive

Automating software testing allows you to run the same tests over a period of time, ensuring that you are really comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges. In this article, Linux Test Project team members share their methodology and rationale, as well as the scripts and tools they use to stress-test the Linux kernel.

"This concept of seamless code migration offers a homogeneous OS for heterogeneous hardware. It is imperative in an anti-Microsoft, 'We don't want to be nailed down to one thing anymore' world. We want a choice," Terra Soft CEO Kai Staats told MacNewsWorld in an exclusive interview.

Corey Touchet just finished up my review of the state of 64bit Linux on the desktop. He is focused on the problems he experienced and the total user experience while usable, does leave a bit to be desired.

Red Hat's Havoc Pennington blogs about the issue of dependency hell and weighs in the good and bad of static linking. He also links to an interesting article by Jono Bacon.

Public-sector deployments of Linux are continuing to grow at the expense of Unix and Windows. The latest Linux win is the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AOUSC), in Washington, which provides administrative support, program management and policy development services to U.S. federal courts.

Recently, I got my hands on version 0.2 of Cobind, a Linux lite desktop, based on Red Hat/Fedora Core 1, from a software company in Pittsburgh. Not yet in general release, Cobind is a one disc wonder.

TuxS.org has posted a short review of the PCLinuxOS Live CD PR7.

"I am not hearing of many wholesale swaps from Windows to Linux," says Laura DiDio of the Yankee Group. "A company has to have a self-sufficient, experienced I.T. staff that can write custom applications, and be willing to risk not having an indemnification policy."

SciTech Software, Inc. today announced the official release of the world's first web-based, graphics-driver build system with support for Windows, Linux, OS/2 and more. With SciTech’s exclusive online build system users can now easily configure, build and install certified SciTech SNAP Graphics drivers on their home machines, for non-commercial use free of charge.

Can a company count on Linux to lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) of an enterprise system? Reaction to this question from CIOs and IT managers usually goes something like this.

During the majority of my time working with computers, Windows was the operating system of choice. Reason being, it's all I've known. In 2002, I took a college course titled "Linux Administration" which entitled me to a few cd-roms of Redhat 7.x. While this course was nothing more than a few extra credits for me, I fell in love with Linux and went through the entire textbook a week into the class. It was a nice feeling to use something "different" than what I was used to.

Ingo Molnar announced the availablity of support for AMD's NX, or "no execute" bit for the x86 architecture. Originally introduced by AMD with their Athlon 64 and Opteron processors and marketed as Enhanced Virus Protection, Ingo notes that support for this new bit was also announced by Intel, Transmeta and VIA.

The Brazilian Linux distribution Kurumin has just released version 3.0 final. I don't know much more, because my Portuguese isn't so good. Download locations, ChangeLog, and plenty of other information is available here, along with plenty of other useful information, I'm certain.

Oracle will finish switching its 9,000-person in-house programming staff to Linux by the end of 2004, the database powerhouse said Wednesday. In October, the company finished the Linux transition for the 5,000 programmers of its Oracle Applications software. Now the transformation has begun for those who work on the database product, said Wim Coekaerts, director of Linux engineering, in an interview at the CeBit trade show in New York.