Red Hat's Fedora 8 hope: An all-purpose Linux foundation

Over the years, Red Hat's Fedora has made a name for itself as a version of Linux for enthusiasts, developers, and those who want to try the latest thing in open-source software. But a curious feature of the new version 8, released Thursday, is the ability to strip out the Fedora identity altogether.

The reason: Red Hat wants Fedora to be a foundation for those who want to build their own Linux products on a Fedora foundation. With Fedora 8, that's easier, because all the Fedora-specific elements are wrapped up into one neatly optional package, said project leader Max Spevack.

Red Hat is releasing Fedora 8 Thursday.

(Credit: Phoronix)

"It becomes really easy to have a built-from-Fedora distribution that is branded in your own way," Spevack said.

That re-brandability is notable, given that even in the share-and-enjoy world of open-source software, people can become attached to their brands. But there's something in it for Red Hat, too: a potentially broader community.

Red Hat is vying with Novell's OpenSuse, Canonical's Ubuntu, and others for the attention of developers who can get involved in the project. A Fedora user no doubt is much more likely to become a Red Hat Enterprise Linux customer than the average Linux user. And while Fedora is free, RHEL is available only for a fee.

The ability to "re-spin" Fedora is attracting some interest. Among the Fedora-based variations that will be available are one for gaming, one for designing microprocessors, and one for programmers.

Those trying out Fedora can download what's called a LiveCD, which enables a computer to boot the operating system from a CD rather than from a disruptive installation on the hard drive. The LiveCD was introduced with Fedora 7, but Ubuntu got there first.

"Back when Fedora 6 came out a year ago, we didn't have a solid LiveCD at all. Ubuntu was killing us because they had it working," Spevack said. So Red Hat jumped on it, and Spevack thinks they even leapfrogged Ubuntu by making a variation that boots off a USB flash memory drive, he said.

"We recognized an area where we were lacking and fixed it in a way that now has set us up technically as being more advanced," he said.

Among other new features in Fedora 8:

• New software to do a better job detecting printers when they're plugged in, installing the appropriate driver automatically, and informing users as the process proceeds. "Plugging in a printer is one of those things that should just work. The new printer stuff we've got in Fedora 8 makes that a lot easier," Spevack said.

• A screen background that changes colors subtly as the day progresses, offering darker images at midnight, perking up as dawn approaches, and becoming bright blue mid-day.

• The PulseAudio application improves some audio abilities, for example letting users set different volumes for different programs or making sure that one user's music is hushed when the system is fast-switched to another user.

• The GNOME Online Desktop, which lets groups of users share information such as blog posting alerts or now-playing music information.

• The tickless kernel, a low-level feature designed to reduce power consumption and increase efficiency by letting the computer actually idle when it's not busy, is now available for 64-bit systems as well as the 32-bit systems that were supported when the feature arrived with Fedora 7.

• Another run at a longstanding problem with Linux, better support for laptop features such as suspend/resume, special keys, and monitor backlights.

LINUX : Installing Vtiger 5.x on Debian Sarge 3.1

This small guide will help you install Vtiger 5.x on a Debian Sarge 3.1 Linux Server.

Getting ready.

First get the source of vtiger and the manual of installation.

Install your Debian.

You can follow the screenshots provides here to install your Debian server from the net-install-cd

As soon as you finished installing your server.

Install Backports respository

This is needed because Vtiger 5.x needs the MySQL version 5.x and Debian Sarge comes by default with version 4.x

DARPA teams up with Arteriocyte to create ominous-sounding blood pharming machine for the military

November 17th, 2007 admin Posted in Uncategorized No Comments »

DARPA’s been running a blood pharming program for quite awhile now, but it’s gotten a real kick start this week with the announcement of a partnership with Cleveland-based biotech company Arteriocyte. Arteriocyte, it seems, has developed a Nanofiber Based System, or NANEX, a technology that enables the production of red blood cells without a donor. The two companies hope research will eventually lead to an “in theatre” blood-making machine for the military. So, if there’s no donor, where do the progenitor cells come from? Well, that’s a little hazy at this point, though Arteriocyte developed the NANEX using “blood of the umbilical cord” (stem cells), but we don’t know what will fuel the final product. Personally, we hope they can squeak out a way to do it using the less controversial “blood of the dragon.”

Products that Run Windows on Macs

Products that Run Windows on Macs

Parallels Desktop is at this time the most advanced x86 virtual machine product for Intel Macs.

A commercial package that was a port from Parallels Workstation for Linux. The company said that the software will run “nearly any x86-compatible OS,” including Windows 3.1-through Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003, as well as Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, OS/2, eComStation, and MS-DOS. Drag and drop files between Mac OS X and Windows.

Parallels Desktop includes a feature called Coherence Mode, which hides the Windows desktop while displaying Windows applications, much as Classic mode displayed OS 9 applications in Mac OS X on PowerPC Macs. Windows still runs in the background, but is hidden from view. Windows applications appear in the Dock, letting you switch between them without using the Windows interface.

Version 3 added support for 3D hardware acceleration, enabling it to run some of the most demanding PC 3D games. It also added a feature called SmartSelect, which lets you set defaults so that a Mac program opens a type of file when you double-click a file in Windows. For instance, you could double-click .doc files in Windows and have Parallels Desktop launch Word for Mac. You can set another file type to launch a Windows application when double-click in the Mac Finder. You can also select a Mac or Windows application.

XP receives kiss of death, long live Vista

Monday was the last day on which Windows XP will be sold as a boxed product or licensed to PC manufacturers.

However, 30 June is not the end of the road for the venerable operating system, which was introduced back in 2001. Although Microsoft is keen for users to switch to XP's successor, Windows Vista, that operating system has not been the success that was hoped for by Redmond.

XP will, therefore, continue to be made available in certain circuitous ways. Here is the sequence of events that led to the dilution of Microsoft's XP-killing strategy.

March 2008: A vintage OS for a new breed of laptops
Asus's Linux-toting Eee PC, launched in 2007, was a surprise hit and opened up a whole new market for tiny, cheap, low-powered subnotebooks. Dubbed 'netbooks' by Intel, these devices were set to introduce open-source operating systems to a new generation of users, so Microsoft wanted to make sure Windows would be in there as a rival option.

The problem for Microsoft was that netbooks could in no way handle the resource demands of Vista. The only option, therefore, was to stick XP on them, despite the fact that this would extend XP's life even further. In an attempt to salvage its original plans for killing off XP, Microsoft reportedly set strict limitations on the specifications of any netbooks that could use its operating system.

Novell finalises OpenSuse 11

OpenSuse 11.0 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) appeared on Thursday, the same day Novell revealed strong growth in its Linux business, strengthening its position against Linux market leader Red Hat.

Features added to OpenSuse 11.0 since version 10.3, the latest stable version, include Linux kernel 2.6.25, Xen 3.2 virtualisation, windowing engine X.Org 7.3, version 2.22 of the Gnome desktop manager, and both versions 3.5.9 and version 4 of the KDE desktop manager.

OpenSuse 11.0 also includes a new package management system that is designed to deliver significantly better performance.

Since the previous beta, released in mid-May, developers have fixed 578 bugs and resolved another 1,118, developers said in a statement. However, the software is still not ready for production use, due to significant problems with the Grub boot loader, Nvidia graphics drivers and Gnome desktop manager.

OpenSuse originated in 2005, with Novell's decision to begin developing the existing Suse Linux Professional product in collaboration with external developers, including bringing the community into the beta-testing process. Previously all development had been done in-house. OpenSuse is comparable to Red Hat's Fedora, which is also developed collaboratively.

Novell released its financial results on Thursday, announcing that its Linux business topped US$29m in the second fiscal quarter of 2008, up 31 percent over the same period a year ago.

Other business units also saw healthy growth according to Novell, with only the Workgroup business unit continuing to underperform, down one percent in the period that ended 30 April.

Open source to take enterprise by stealth

Open source promoters have welcomed the endorsement but predict the changes will go further than the analyst house assumes.

"By 2012, more than 90 percent of enterprises will use open source in direct or embedded forms," predicts a Gartner report, The State of Open Source 2008, which sees a "stealth" impact for the technology in embedded form: "Users who reject open source for technical, legal or business reasons might find themselves unintentionally using open source despite their opposition."

However, Gartner argues that at the operating system level, Linux deployments are showing smaller benefits in total cost of ownership (TCO) as it is applied to more demanding projects, because of the technical skills required to use it: "Much of the availability, management and DBMS licensing costs will remain proprietary," says the report, and "version control and incompatibilities will continue to plague open-source OSs and associated middleware".

"Gartner has woefully underestimated the penetration of open source," said Mark Taylor, president of promotion group the Open Source Consortium. "Everyone uses [open source] on a daily basis in services like Google."

Want to know more?

For all the latest news, analysis and opinion on open source, click here

However, he welcomed the analyst's prediction that open source would disappear from view: "Open source has been promoted since 1998. If it fades from view now, because it is embedded in the mainstream. That is exactly what we wanted."

Gartner has also underestimated the benefits of Linux, said Taylor: "There are a range of open source business models, from a completely proprietary version where open source is used as a sprinkling of magic pixie dust, to a full-on, services-based deployment using a free Linux distribution. Gartner assumes that the pseudo-open proposition will hold sway, but companies change. They may initially need the reassurance of a proprietarised version of Linux but, in our experience, they are then increasingly happy to go to a services model, using a distribution like Debian."

HP considers own Linux-based OS

An article appearing in BusinessWeek last week cited anonymous sources who say Hewlett-Packard is at least looking into the matter. "Sources say employees in HP's PC division are exploring the possibility of building a mass-market operating system," the article stated.

The operating system would reportedly be Linux-based, but would be tweaked to be more accessible to mainstream users. Those same sources said it was part of an HP plan to become less dependent on Windows, and to compete better with Apple for the same type of person who would consider a Mac, which has its own operating system on its computers touted as more user-friendly than Windows Vista.

HP wouldn't confirm the report, but had previously been open about the formation of a new group within its Labs that developed the touch-screen technology and special software used in its TouchSmart PC. The software lets users get around certain features of Vista to do certain multimedia tasks more easily.

Phil McKinney, CTO of HP's Personal Systems Group, didn't deny the company was looking into the matter, but said it didn't make much sense to build its own operating system. "Is HP funding a huge R&D team to go off and create an operating system? (That) makes no sense," he told ,i>BusinessWeek.

Maybe not for HP, who's the world's leading purveyor of Microsoft software, through the approximately 50 million PCs the company ships around the globe each year. The article also points out Intel's recent support for Netbooks, mini-notebooks that use its Atom processor and run Linux, and Dell's decision to offer Linux as a Windows alternative on some of its PCs.

Whether Windows' dominance is in any actual danger of disappearing, Microsoft has already begun to fight back. Last week it rolled out the beginnings of a high-profile and expensive ad campaign starring its co-founder Bill Gates and comedian Jerry Seinfeld.

Mac Operating System: Email

Sincerely yours.

Mail for Leopard features more than 30 professionally designed stationery templates that make a virtual keepsake out of every email you send. From invitations to birthday greetings, stationery templates feature coordinated layouts, fonts, colors, and drag-and-drop photo placement from your iPhoto library — everything to help you get your point across. You can even create personalized templates. Messages created with stationery in Mail use standard HTML that can be read by popular webmail services and email programs on both Mac computers and PCs.

Noteworthy indeed.

Ever email yourself a reminder that gets lost in your inbox? Mail lets you write handy notes you can access from anywhere. Brainstorm ideas, jot down meeting notes, scribble a phone number — notes can include graphics, colored text, and attachments. Group notes into folders or create Smart Mailboxes that group them for you. Since your notes folder acts like an email mailbox, you can retrieve notes from any Mac or PC using an IMAP mail service like .Mac or AOL.

Much ado about to-dos.

Forget manually adding a new item to your to-do list every time an email hits your inbox. Simply highlight text in an email, then click the To Do button to create a to-do from a message. Include a due date, set an alarm, or assign priorities. Every to-do includes a link to the original email or note, and to-dos automatically appear in iCal, complete with any changes you make. And since to-dos are stored with your email (when using an IMAP mail service), you can access them from Mail on any Mac.

Spotlight on Mail.

With smarter relevance ranking in Spotlight, you’ll find the right email at the top of the search results list. Everything you create in Leopard Mail — to-dos, notes, and, of course, email messages — appears in a Spotlight search of your system.

Stop the presses.

Subscribe to an RSS feed in Mail and you’ll know the moment an article or blog post hits the wire. Even better, you can choose to have new articles appear in your inbox alongside your latest email messages. Sorting your news is easy, too. Use Smart Mailboxes to organize incoming news articles according to search terms that pique your interest. Mail shares its unread RSS feed count with Safari, so your reading list always stays in sync.

Data, detected.

Say you get an email invitation to dinner. What if Mail recognized the address of the restaurant and let you map directions on the web? Or let you click once to add the date to your iCal calendar? With Leopard, it does. Mail even recognizes relative dates (“let’s meet next Tuesday”) and keywords (“dinner tomorrow”), so you can act on information rather than enter it.

Setup made simple.

Now you can set up a new Mail account in one easy step. Just enter your current email address and password and let Mail do the rest. Mail works with the most popular email providers, like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and AOL Mail, automatically configuring those cryptic server settings for you.

Which Vista Operating System is Right for You?

When purchasing a new computer, you have several Vista operating systems to choose from including the Home, Professional and Enterprise Editions. You may also be wondering how the Vista versions compare to the XP version you have become accustomed to.

Luckily, choosing a Windows Operating System (OS) isn't rocket science, but you do have to think about what you plan to do with your new computer. Vista is available in five versions and runs best on high–end systems. Vista also has laptop and tablet PC features and is ready for flash drives. Here is a brief outline of the Vista operating systems.

Home Use

• Windows Vista Home Basic – This is for basic computing; it has enough security for home use and can be installed on a simple network. This OS will run on PCs with at least 512 MB of RAM.

  Replaces: Windows XP Home

• Windows Vista Home Premium – Has the computing elements of the Home version with the Media Center. A capable PC with this OS can be connected to a home entertainment system and will play movies, music, organize photos and access online content. This OS requires a high–end PC and a fast Internet connection.

  Replaces: Windows XP Media Center

Office Use

• Windows Vista Business – This is for basic computing and has administration and networking tools and security devices for business use. It can run on basic PCs.
• Windows Vista Enterprise – For large–scale, global companies. This version can handle multiple languages, a mobile workforce and Unicode.
• Windows Vista Ultimate – Contains all business and home computing elements as well as the Media Center. Basically, this version does everything and requires a good system to run.

  Replaces: Windows XP Professonal and Professional x64

In this site, you’ll find articles related to operating systems, as well as scomprehensive review and a side–by–side comparison to help you make an informed decision on which Windows Operating System is right for you. At TopTenREVIEWS — We do the research so you don’t have to.

Linux and the GNU Project

Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

Many users do not understand the difference between the kernel, which is Linux, and the whole system, which they also call “Linux”. The ambiguous use of the name doesn't help people understand. These users often think that Linus Torvalds developed the whole operating system in 1991, with a bit of help.

Programmers generally know that Linux is a kernel. But since they have generally heard the whole system called “Linux” as well, they often envisage a history that would justify naming the whole system after the kernel. For example, many believe that once Linus Torvalds finished writing Linux, the kernel, its users looked around for other free software to go with it, and found that (for no particular reason) most everything necessary to make a Unix-like system was already available.

What they found was no accident—it was the not-quite-complete GNU system. The available free software added up to a complete system because the GNU Project had been working since 1984 to make one. In the The GNU Manifesto we set forth the goal of developing a free Unix-like system, called GNU. The Initial Announcement of the GNU Project also outlines some of the original plans for the GNU system. By the time Linux was started, GNU was almost finished.

The Linux oprating system 2.6 Kernel

It was Januari 2001, almost 3 years ago when the previous Linux operating system kernel 2.4 was released, with kernel support for ISA Plug-and-Play, USB, PC Card. But last December the new Linux kernel 2.6 was released and we must say there are a lot of great new features in it.

In this article we give an overview of the most important new features and give you some useful links where you can find the info how to upgrade your kernel from 2.4 to 2.6

The new Kernel 2.6 features

To name every new feature in detail this article has to be about 10.000 words so we stick to an overview of the most important enhancements and new features.

Hyperthreading

A major hardware advancement supported under Linux 2.6 is the support for hyper threading. This technology is currently built into modern Pentium 4 800 MHZ processors. It allows a single physical processor to act as two processors. Some current applications already can use this technology and show a better performance.

Also important to mention in the 2.6 kernel's improved support for hyper threading is that the scheduler recognizes and optimizes processor loads across both real and virtual processors within a machine. In the former versions of the Linux kernel, it was possible to overwork a single processor.

Engarde Secure Linux

Guardian Digital, Inc., the world's premier open source security company, announced an update to the next generation, award-winning platform that delivers features designed to ease the process of building a complete Internet presence and the level of security necessary to prevent system compromise. EnGarde Secure Linux leverages open source applications available to provide secure Internet connectivity, user privacy, Web and email functions, and intrusion detection.

"The proactive security improvements inherent into its design are one of the primary factors in the success of EnGarde," writes Pete O'Hara, vice president of engineering at Guardian Digital. "Coupled with the most sophisticated open source Web-based management system, EnGarde consistently protects users from even debilitating kernel security vulnerabilitiesl."

EnGarde features secure web-based management of all functions, including Internet edge services (Web, DNS, email), integrated intrusion detection, cryptography, improved authentication and access control, as well as protection from many forms of intrusion such as buffer overruns and denial of service attacks. Enhanced availability and access control mechanisms delivers a potent combination suitable for the largest enterprise.

"Security management is an essential component of any successful online operation. Mitigating security risks through the use of a dynamic, rapidly-evolving development process bolstered by collaboration of the open source community provides the most efficient form of protection," writes Paul Brisson, orthopedic spinal surgeon, New York Spinal Care. "EnGarde Secure Linux and its secure-by-design approach combined with the security benefits engineered by Guardian Digital offer the best in proactive protection," continues Brisson.

Linux likely to dominate mobile internet device market

In a report released this week, ABI Research says that the Linux operating system appears positioned to take the lion's share of the market for devices that are bigger than a cell phone but smaller than a laptop.

So far, devices in this category haven't enjoyed significant success in the market. But some of the available products are run by Linux, and more are appearing.

Nokia's N800, for example, is a small handheld device with a screen larger than a typical mobile phone and running the Maemo Linux operating system. Nokia has been selling the line of devices since 2005 but hasn't revealed sales figures.

In addition, the Moblin community is actively developing a Linux OS designed for mobile Internet devices (MID), and the software is being tightly integrated with Intel's Atom processor built for the device category, ABI notes. Most products based on the software and chips are hitting shelves this year.

Because the MID market is new and requires a new operating system, Linux has a good chance of success because it is on equal footing with others, ABI reports. Its flexibility and cost advantage compared to Windows Mobile may pay off here, says Stuart Carlow, an ABI analyst, in the report.

What is Ubuntu?

Ubuntu is a community developed operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. Whether you use it at home, at school or at work Ubuntu contains all the applications you'll ever need, from word processing and email applications, to web server software and programming tools.

Ubuntu is and always will be free of charge. You do not pay any licensing fees. You can download, use and share Ubuntu with your friends, family, school or business for absolutely nothing.

We issue a new desktop and server release every six months. That means you'll always have the latest and greatest applications that the open source world has to offer.

Ubuntu is designed with security in mind. You get free security updates for at least 18 months on the desktop and server. With the Long Term Support (LTS) version you get three years support on the desktop, and five years on the server. There is no extra fee for the LTS version, we make our very best work available to everyone on the same free terms. Upgrades to new versions of Ubuntu are and always will be free of charge.

Everything you need comes on one CD, providing a complete working environment. Additional software is available online.

The graphical installer enables you to get up and running quickly and easily. A standard installation should take less than 25 minutes.

Once installed your system is immediately ready-to-use. On the desktop you have a full set of productivity, internet, drawing and graphics applications, and games.

Red Hat Delivers Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 Beta

We’ve released the Beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 (kernel-2.6.18-120.el5), including versions for x86, x86/64, Itanium, IBM POWER and System z. The Beta runs until January 6, 2009. We’ll highlight a few of the more interesting new features and updates below, but for full details, see the official announcement.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 Beta is the sheer size and scope of enhancements, which cover every aspect of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux environment. The enhancements clearly illustrate the power of the open source development model to create new technology with breathtaking speed. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 will be provided to all subscribers for no additional charge, as part of their subscription service.

As with any Beta, the aim is to provide our customers and partners with the opportunity to sample and test new features of the release before it is finalized. So, bear in mind that things are still open to change before the final GA (General Availability) release. Also, the software should not be used for production environments or for performance testing. An important feature of any Red Hat Enterprise Linux update is that kernel and user APIs are unchanged, so that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 applications do not need to be rebuilt or recertified.

The list of new features and bug fixes for the beta is long, so for full details please refer to the official announcement document. Here is a brief summary:

• Virtualization enhancements. Of the many virtualization enhancements, the more important include:
• Support for larger x86-64 systems: 126 CPUS, 1TB physical memory, more guests and more devices per guest.
• Intel Extended Page Table (EPT) support. With this feature virtual memory page tables translate from linear addresses to guest-physical addresses. A separate set of page tables (the EPT tables) then translate from guest-physical addresses to the host-physical addresses that are used to access memory. This means that guest software is free to modify its own page tables and so directly handle page faults. The result is that the virtual memory management software is a lot more efficient, so that dramatic performance improvements are possible.
• Support for more than four NICs
• Xen paravirtualized drivers are included for fully-virtualized (FV) Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 guest kernels, so they don’t need to be downloaded separately as previously necessary.
• Cluster Improvements (note that clustering is included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform).
• The big news here is that GFS2, which was previously in Technology Preview, is expected to be fully supported in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3. Also, Cluster-wide mirroring (RAID-1) is now supported. This dramatically improves the availability of shared storage environments, so will be valued by customers who are deploying virtualized environments and using live migration.
• Desktop Enhancements
• NetworkManager has been enhanced in a number of areas, to offer support for a number of mobile broadband devices, static IP address assignment and to allow networking to start prior to login. Additionally, users will appreciate much faster connection times and connection sharing/multiple active connections.
  A number of graphics drivers have been updated.
• General Improvements
• Many kernel, device driver and architectural improvements have been implemented. The offical Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 Beta announcement documents over 150 additions and updates. As mentioned earlier, these enhancements cover every aspect of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux environment.

As usual, with Red Hat Enterprise Linux Betas and full releases, some technologies are provided that, while not formally supported at this time, are appropriate for wide exposure. These are offered as “Technology Preview” features. Once again, refer to the official Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 Beta announcement for a full list of features, but some of the more intriguing include:

• AIGLX including X server and updated Mesa package
• Limited kernel-based eCryptFS capabilities
• Ext4/e4fsprogs: the successor file system to ext3
• Firewire
• GCC 4.3 compiler, with OpenMP3 conformance
• Additinal Indic languages: Assamese, Kannada, Sinhalese, Telugu
• iSCSI boot support
• Kerberos security and kernel DFS support for CIFS
• Ktune: a service that sets several kernel tuning parameters to values suitable for specific system profiles
  Support for 32-bit para-virtualized (PV) guests on 64-bit AMD64/Intel(r) 64 hosts
• Systemtap utrace support for user space tracing
• VMWare ESX cluster fence agent, allowing Red Hat Enterprise Linux VMware guests to be clustered

Where’s Red Hat this November?

North America
It’s been a busy fall season for Red Hat as we’ve been on the road for several events. November is no different and we’ll be traveling across North America from New York to San Jose and hitting several cities in between.

Red Hat is a sponsor of InfoWorld’s Virtualization Executive Forum on Wednesday, November 5, 2008 in New York City. The conference will cover key virtualization themes from the software licensing implications and impact on existing IT processes, to the skillset and security needed to tame the technology.

Brian Stevens, CTO and vice president, Engineering, will be presenting at Virtualization Conference & Expo West in San Jose, CA on Nov. 19-21, 2008. Stop by Red Hat’s booth to learn more about how to transform IT infrastructures through virtualization.

November also marks the end to a successful 2008 Red Hat Road Tour which hit 17 cities over the course of three months. The last three stops include Toronto, Philadelphia and Montreal.

Check out all of the North American events where Red Hat will be present this month:
Nov. 4, 2008 Red Hat Road Tour, Toronto, ON
Nov. 5, 2008 Red Hat Road Tour, Philadelphia
Nov. 5, 2008 Financial Services Venture Capital Alliance, Cambridge, MA
Nov. 5, 2008 InfoWorld Virtualization Executive Forum, New York, NY
Nov. 18-19, 2008 CIO Forum, Columbia, SC
Nov. 19-21, 2008, Virtualization Conference & Expo West, San Jose, CA
Nov. 20, 2008 Red Hat Road Tour, Montreal, Canada

For more information on North American events, visit here.

EMEA
Nov. 12, 2008 LinuxWorld, Utrecht, Netherlands
Nov. 19, 2008 JBoss Switch Seminar, Finland
Nov. 20, 2008 How to Build a Successful SOA Architecture, Denmark
Nov. 26, 2008 JBoss User Group, London

MetaMatrix Enterprise Data Services Platform expands data source and platform support, ease-of-use and monitoring

We are pleased to announce that the latest Service Pack release for MetaMatrix Enterprise Data Services Platform, v5.5 SP3, is now available for new and existing customers. 5.5 SP3 adds and extends capabilities in the areas of platform and data source support, usability and monitoring.

In addition to long-standing support for 64-bit JVMs on Linux and Unix, the MetaMatrix server is now certified to run with a 64-bit JVM on Windows 2008 Server. Several new database versions are supported for use by the MetaMatrix repository including Oracle 11g, SQL Server 2005, MySQL 5 and PostgreSQL 8.1. To view the complete list of supported platforms and repository configurations, click here

The list of supported data sources has also grown in 5.5 SP3 with the addition of:

• Salesforce.com – A comprehensive solution for importing all or parts of the Salesforce.com data model and exposing Salesforce data through standard SQL constructs – for both reading and writing. This capability allows users to integrate data maintained in Salesforce with other data sources maintained on-premise in real-time without the need to copy or replicate Salesforce data to internal storage.

• LDAP – Read and write access to LDAP v3-compliant directories enables data stored in LDAP to be integrated with data from other enterprise data stores.

• Oracle 11g XA – Full read/write and XA transactional support for Oracle’s 11g RDBMS.

• MySQL 5 XA and PostgreSQL 8.1 XA – MySQL and PostgreSQL are the two most widely deployed open source database systems, increasingly in production scenarios. In addition to existing read/write support for these databases, MetaMatrix v5.5 SP3 adds XA transaction support as well so federated write operations involving MySQL and PostgreSQL data sources can participate in XA transactions.

A variety of enhancements have been incorporated that streamline the user interface and increase user productivity. Highlights include:

• Data and transformation preview capability– the Eclipse-based Enterprise Designer now provides the ability to more quickly and easily preview data results without the need to create and execute a virtual database. This increases developer efficiency as transformation logic can be evaluated in real-time.

• Simplified views for managing data source connections and user-defined functions – significant changes have also been made to Enterprise Designer in the area of connector management and user-defined function (UDF) creation and management. These changes enable users to complete common tasks more quickly and intuitively.

• Support for publish/unpublish to UDDI registries – through the MetaMatrix Console, WSDLs associated with web service models can be published more easily to and unpublished from UDDI v2-compliant registries facilitating integration with service oriented architectures.

The new release also provides an advanced technology preview showing the future direction of Data Services Platform monitoring and administration. The new solution is based on JBoss Operations Network. The tech preview provides the ability to inventory, monitor and control (e.g. Start and stop) MetaMatrix server resources and raise alerts in response to system events.

Red Hat Delivers Red Hat Network Satellite 5.2

The Red Hat Network (RHN) Satellite team is pleased to announce the general availability of RHN Satellite and Proxy version 5.2 today. Though 5.2 is an incremental release for Satellite, it marks an important update for highlights including expanded platform and database support.

Primarily a platform update, the major highlights of this release include:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 platform support
  Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is now supported as a base operating system for RHN Satellite Server and RHN Proxy installation, as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. Every Satellite subscription includes a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription, so now you have the option of running Satellite on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. For customers who are looking to standardize their Red Hat Enterprise Linux environment on one version, they now have Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 as an added option.
• Oracle 10g support
  Satellite now supports Oracle Database 10g Release 2 Standard and Enterprise Edition. Oracle 10g provides better performance, especially on 64-bit platforms and is one of the most popular database versions in the world. Most Satellite subscriptions include an embedded Oracle database for Satellite to use, or you can choose to use an external copy of Oracle as well. Support for Oracle 10g gives customers more choice and flexibility in regards to how they deploy Satellite.

Since these are major platform releases, be sure to review the system requirements section of the Satellite documentation.

Other Satellite 5.2 highlights include:

• RHN Proxy Server command line installer in Technology Preview
  A Technology Preview feature is one that is currently not supported under the RHN Proxy Server subscription service, may not be functionally complete and is generally not suitable for production use. However, this feature is included as a customer convenience and to provide the feature with wider exposure. Customers may find this feature useful in a non-production environment. Customers are also free to provide feedback and functionality suggestions for this feature before it becomes fully supported in the RHN Proxy Server 5.3 release. Errata may be provided for high-severity issues.
• db-control improvements:
  • gather-stats - Gather statistics on RHN Oracle database objects
  • report-stats - Show tables with stale or empty statistics
  • shrink-segments - Shrink RHN Oracle database segments

Linux Commands: more and less

Command line options are described below. Options are also taken from the environment variable MORE (make sure to precede them with a dash (``-'')) but command line options will override them.

-num

This option specifies an integer which is the screen size (in lines).

-d

more will prompt the user with the message "[Press space to continue, 'q' to quit.]" and will display "[Press 'h' for instructions.]" instead of ringing the bell when an illegal key is pressed.

-l

more usually treats ^L (form feed) as a special character, and will pause after any line that contains a form feed. The -l option will prevent this behavior.

-f

Causes more to count logical, rather than screen lines (i.e., long lines are not folded).

-p

Do not scroll. Instead, clear the whole screen and then display the text.

-c

Do not scroll. Instead, paint each screen from the top, clearing the remainder of each line as it is displayed.

-s

Squeeze multiple blank lines into one.

-u

Suppress underlining.

+/

The +/ option specifies a string that will be searched for before each file is displayed.

+num

Start at line number num

COMMANDS

Interactive commands for more are based on vi(1). Some commands may be preceded by a decimal number, called k in the descriptions below. In the following descriptions, ^X means control-X.

h or ?

Help: display a summary of these commands. If you forget all the other commands, remember this one.

SPACE

Display next k lines of text. Defaults to current screen size.

z

Display next k lines of text. Defaults to current screen size. Argument becomes new default.

RETURN

Display next k lines of text. Defaults to 1. Argument becomes new default.

d or ^D

Scroll k lines. Default is current scroll size, initially 11. Argument becomes new default.

q or Q or INTERRUPT

Exit.

s

Skip forward k lines of text. Defaults to 1.

f

Skip forward k screenfuls of text. Defaults to 1.

b or ^B

Skip backwards k screenfuls of text. Defaults to 1. Only works with files, not pipes.

Go to place where previous search started.

=

Display current line number.

/ pattern

Search for kth occurrence of regular expression. Defaults to 1.

n

Search for kth occurrence of last r.e. Defaults to 1.

! or :!

Execute in a subshell

v

Start up an editor at current line. The editor is taken from the environment variable VISUAL if defined, or EDITOR if VISUAL is not defined, or defaults to "vi" if neither VISUAL nor EDITOR is defined.

^L

Redraw screen

:n

Go to kth next file. Defaults to 1.

:p

Go to kth previous file. Defaults to 1.

:f

Display current file name and line number

.

Repeat previous command

Juergen's Linux Blog

The software package TrueCrypt offers easy to use functions for encrypting hard disk partitions, USB drives, and other external storage devices. Once a filesystem is encrypted, TrueCrypt performs the decryption and encryption on-the-fly as files are accessed, without further user intervention. The user can choose from several encryption algorithms

Encrypting your files is a way to safeguard information that you don't want to be stolen. For example, if somebody steals your laptop computer on a trip, you don't need to worry that private data on it may be used without your permission. Only people who know the password that you used to do the encryption will be able to use the files.

However, as you would expect, encryption slows down reading and writing files, and the initial encryption of your hard drive can take serveral hours. For more information see here.

TrueCrypt is free and open source and can be downloaded here. The latest version includes a graphical user interface (GUI) for Linux users. Step-by-step instructions for how to install TrueCrypt with GUI can be found here.

LINUX : Wine Runs Windows Applications

The goal of the Wine project is to develop a "translation layer" for Linux and other POSIX compatible operating systems that enables users to run native Microsoft Windows applications on those operating systems.

This translation layer is a software package that "emulates" the Microsoft Windows API (Application Programming Interface), but the developers emphasize that it is not an emulator in the sense that it adds an extra software layer on top of the native operating system, which would add memory and computation overhead and negatively affect performance.

Instead Wine provides alternative DDLs (Dynamic Link Libraries) that are needed to run the applications. These are native software components that, depending on their implementation, can be just as efficient or more efficient than their Windows counterparts. That is why some MS Windows applications run faster on Linux than on Windows.

The Wine development team has made significant progress towards achieving the goal to enable users to run Windows programs on Linux. One way to measure that progress is to count the number of programs that have been tested. The Wine Application Database currently contains more than 8500 entries. Not all of them work perfectly, but most commonly used Windows Applications run quite well, such as the following software packages and games: Microsoft Office 97, 2000, 2003, and XP, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Project, Microsoft Visio, Adobe Photoshop, Quicken, Quicktime, iTunes, Windows Media Player 6.4, Lotus Notes 5.0 and 6.5.1, Silkroad Online 1.x, Half-Life 2 Retail, Half-Life Counter-Strike 1.6, and Battlefield 1942 1.6.

After installing Wine, Windows applications can be installed by placing the CD in the CD drive, opening a shell window, navigating to the CD directory containing the installation executable, and entering "wine setup.exe", if setup.exe is the installation program.

When executing programs in Wine, the user can choose between the "desktop-in-a-box" mode and mixable windows. Wine supports both DirectX and OpenGL games. Support for Direct3D is limited. There is also a Wine API that allows programmers to write software that runs is source and binary compatible with Win32 code. For more information on Wine's features, see here.

The project was started in 1993 with to objective to run Windows 3.1 programs on Linux. Subsequently, versions for other Unix operating systems have been developed. The original coordinator of the project, Bob Amstadt, handed the project over to Alexandre Julliard a year later. Alexandre has been leading the development efforts ever since.

Microsoft will soon release 'Windows Cloud' OS, Ballmer says

Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer revealed a few details on Wednesday of a forthcoming operating system that will help developers write Internet-based applications.

Within a month, Microsoft will unveil what Ballmer called "Windows Cloud." The operating system, which will likely have a different name, is intended for developers writing cloud-computing applications, said Ballmer, who spoke to an auditorium of IT managers at a Microsoft-sponsored conference in London.

Cloud computing is a term often applied to programs that are presented in a Web browser, but the actual computing is performed at a distant data center.

Ballmer was short on details, saying more information would spoil the announcement. Windows Cloud is a separate project from Windows 7, the operating system that Microsoft is developing to succeed Windows Vista.

Companies such as Google Inc. and Salesforce.com Inc. have embraced the concept of delivering software over the Internet, as it can mean lower costs and less maintenance for those who use the applications. Microsoft, which has built its fortunes on desktop-based software, has been anxious to show it also has plans for adapting its software for the Internet.

Ballmer was quick to point out that Microsoft doesn't envision products such as the Office productivity suite moving entirely off desktop PCs and onto the Internet. But Microsoft is working on a service that would let people do "light editing" of Office documents at places such as a public Internet kiosk, Ballmer said.

"That's all I can say on that," Ballmer said. "Otherwise, we have no drum-roll announcement in a month."

Microsoft is developing online components for many of its products such as its SharePoint collaboration software, the Exchange e-mail server and its Dynamics Customer Relationship Management software, Ballmer said. Microsoft calls its strategy "software plus services," where its core applications are augmented by Web-based functionality.

Microsoft is facing increasing pressure from Google, which offers a Web-based productivity suite called Google Docs and Spreadsheets.

Ballmer was dismissive of Google, saying Docs and Spreadsheets has "relatively low usage" and that users want richer features in an office software package. "We want software more powerful than software that runs in a browser," Ballmer said.

Microsoft launches Windows Azure: Cloud operating system

Microsoft has launched a "cloud operating system" called Windows Azure, or the operating system formerly known as Windows Cloud. Azure is basically a platform for developers of web applications. It combines hosting and tools for managing service delivery and will compete directly with Amazon's EC2 platform.

Developers can build applications using existing Microsoft tools like Visual Studio. Azure can be used to add web capabilities to existing desktop applications or to host completely cloud-based apps. In other words, you could build an online calendar or task management service and host it on Windows Azure, or you could create a desktop calendar that synchronizes with a web calendar. Or you know, something far more creative.

Microsoft unveiled the platform at the Professional Developers Conference today, saying that what's being made available today is just a community preview. More features will be available when the full version is released.

LINUX:Motivation - Why is Centralization an Issue?

Many people have complained over the last few years that there should be some sort of "central" Linux organization.

Some common reasons that I see include:

*

It would be good for there to be some "central" Linux presence on the Web.
*

It would be good for there to be some organization holding the Linux trademark to prevent situations like one that recently occurred where an individual named Della Croce claimed a trademark on the name "Linux," and began demanding royalties from anyone using the name.

Items "in public trust" need to remain in public trust.
*

Many companies want and need some sort of central "Linux Authority."

Companies want a rather more formalized support mechanism than Go ask questions on the Internet. They want a formal system of Linux Support so that users having problems have some sort of help desk to call. This could involve telephone support as well as more formal consulting.

That being said, InfoWorld recently awarded "Linux People on the Internet" their award for InfoWorld Best Technical Support. Evidently there is some value to Internet-based support.
*

Linux could use some sort of centralized advocacy organization for marketing purposes. The point here being that other operating systems have marketing machines, while Linux doesn't.
*

Every other major operating system has a central organization.
*

We need to have a way to encourage financial sponsorship of worthwhile development projects.
*

A less favorable reason is that many people apparently like to be herded by others.

There is little agreement as to what organization should be "king," but there is desire for a "king" nonetheless.

I would like to argue that while there are imperfections in the support presently available for Linux, this does not mandate the creation of an authoritative central Linux organization.

I would argue furthermore that the decentralization Linux displays represents a strength in that it allows support to grow simultaneously in many areas, unhindered by any particular controlling agency.

What Is Domain Parking?

Domain Parking is a simple way to earn money from your domains' natural traffic. If you have registered domain names, but they are not currently being used, then domain parking is a great way to put those domains to work, earning you revenue. You can make money without even lifting a finger! The idle domain is used to display relevant advertisements -every time a consumer clicks on one of the advertisements, you earn money. To view an example of a domain parked with Sedo please visit:

http://www.freefonetones.com

MAC:HISTORY

Mac OS X is based on the Mach kernel and is derived from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) and later, certain parts from FreeBSD's and NetBSD's implementation of Unix in Nextstep. Nextstep was the object-oriented operating system developed by Steve Jobs' company NeXT after he left Apple in 1985.[7] While Jobs was away from Apple, Apple tried to create a "next-generation" OS through the Taligent, Copland and Gershwin projects, with little success.

Eventually, NeXT's OS—then called OPENSTEP—was selected to be the basis for Apple's next OS, and Apple purchased NeXT outright.[8] Steve Jobs returned to Apple as interim CEO, and later became CEO again, shepherding the transformation of the programmer-friendly OPENSTEP into a system that would be adopted by Apple's primary market of home users and creative professionals. The project was first known as Rhapsody and was later renamed to Mac OS X.[9]

With each new version, Mac OS X evolved away from a focus on backward compatibility with the earlier versions of Mac OS, toward an emphasis on "digital lifestyle" applications such as the iLife suite, enhanced business applications (iWork), and integrated home entertainment (the Front Row media center). Each version also included modifications to the general interface, such as the brushed metal appearance added in version 10.2, the non-pinstriped titlebar appearance in version 10.4, and in 10.5 the removal of the previous brushed metal styles in favor of the "Unified" gradient window style.

LINUX

User interface
See also: User interface

Linux can be controlled by one or more of a text-based command line interface (CLI), graphical user interface (GUI) (usually the default for desktop), or through controls on the device itself (common on embedded machines).

On desktop machines, KDE, GNOME and Xfce are the most popular user interfaces,[15] though a variety of other user interfaces exist. Most popular user interfaces run on top of the X Window System (X), which provides network transparency, enabling a graphical application running on one machine to be displayed and controlled from another.

Other GUIs include X window managers such as FVWM, Enlightenment and Window Maker. The window manager provides a means to control the placement and appearance of individual application windows, and interacts with the X window system.

A Linux system typically provides a CLI of some sort through a shell, which is the traditional way of interacting with a Unix system. A Linux distribution specialized for servers may use the CLI as its only interface. A “headless system” run without even a monitor can be controlled by the command line via a protocol such as SSH or telnet.

Most low-level Linux components, including the GNU Userland, use the CLI exclusively. The CLI is particularly suited for automation of repetitive or delayed tasks, and provides very simple inter-process communication. A graphical terminal emulator program is often used to access the CLI from a Linux desktop.

Development
Main article: Linux distribution

A summarised history of Unix-like operating systems showing Linux's origins. Note that despite similar architectural designs and concepts being shared as part of the POSIX standard, Linux does not share any non-free source code with the original Unix or Minix.

The primary difference between Linux and many other popular contemporary operating systems is that the Linux kernel and other components are free and open source software. Linux is not the only such operating system, although it is the best-known and most widely used. Some free and open source software licences are based on the principle of copyleft, a kind of reciprocity: any work derived from a copyleft piece of software must also be copyleft itself. The most common free software license, the GNU GPL, is a form of copyleft, and is used for the Linux kernel and many of the components from the GNU project.

As an operating system underdog competing with mainstream operating systems, Linux cannot rely on a monopoly advantage; in order for Linux to be convenient for users, Linux aims for interoperability with other operating systems and established computing standards. Linux systems adhere to POSIX,[16] SUS,[17] ISO and ANSI standards where possible, although to date only one Linux distribution has been POSIX.1 certified, Linux-FT.[18]

Free software projects, although developed in a collaborative fashion, are often produced independently of each other. However, given that the software licenses explicitly permit redistribution, this provides a basis for larger scale projects that collect the software produced by stand-alone projects and make it available all at once in the form of a Linux distribution.

A Linux distribution, commonly called a “distro”, is a project that manages a remote collection of Linux-based software, and facilitates installation of a Linux operating system. Distributions are maintained by individuals, loose-knit teams, volunteer organizations, and commercial entities. They include system software and application software in the form of packages, and distribution-specific software for initial system installation and configuration as well as later package upgrades and installs. A distribution is responsible for the default configuration of installed Linux systems, system security, and more generally integration of the different software packages into a coherent whole.

Linux

The creation of the Linux kernel

In 1991, Torvalds began to work on a non-commercial replacement for MINIX while he was attending the University of Helsinki,[5] which would eventually become the Linux kernel.

Contributions from GNU

Linux was originally dependent on the MINIX user space which, due to license issues, complicated distribution. With the user space from GNU freely available, it was in both in the Linux hobbyists and the GNU Project's interest if both could be distributed together. However, at the time Linux had a license that prohibited commercial distribution making it incompatible with the GNU General Public License. In 1992, with version 0.12 of the Linux kernel, Torvalds initiated a switch from his original license to the GPL.[6] Various Linux distributions (Slackware, Debian, Red Hat, and others) combined Linux and GNU code to make a fully functional and free operating system.[7]

Commercial and popular uptake
Main article: Linux adoption

Today Linux is used in numerous domains, from embedded systems[8] to supercomputers,[9] and has secured a place in server installations with the popular LAMP application stack.[10] Linux use in home desktop and enterprise desktop has been rapidly expanding and now claims a significant share of the desktop market.[11][12][13][14]

Linux has also become popular with the newly founded netbook market, with many devices such as the ASUS Eee PC and Acer Aspire One shipping with customized Linux distributions pre-installed.

Current Development

Torvalds continues to direct the development of the kernel. Stallman heads the Free Software Foundation, which in turn supports the GNU components. Finally, individuals and corporations develop third-party non-GNU components. These third-party components comprise a vast body of work including kernel modules, libraries, and user applications. Linux vendors and communities combine and distribute the kernel, GNU components, and other components in the form of Linux distributions.

How Operating Systems Work

When you turn on your computer, it's nice to think that you're in control. There's the trusty computer mouse, which you can move anywhere on the screen, summoning up your music library or Internet browser at the slightest whim. Although it's easy to feel like a director in front of your desktop or laptop, there's a lot going on inside, and the real man behind the curtain handling the necessary tasks is the operating system.

Most desktop or laptop PCs come pre-loaded with Microsoft Windows. Macintosh computers come pre-loaded with Mac OS X. Many corporate servers use the Linux or UNIX operating systems. The operating system (OS) is the first thing loaded onto the computer -- without the operating system, a computer is useless.
Types of Systems
Linux
Windows Vista
Web Operating Systems



More recently, operating systems have started to pop up in smaller computers as well. If you like to tinker with electronic devices, you're probably pleased that operating systems can now be found on many of the devices we use every day, from cell phones to wireless access points. The computers used in these little devices have gotten so powerful that they can now actually run an operating system and applications. The computer in a typical modern cell phone is now more powerful than a desktop computer from 20 years ago, so this progression makes sense and is a natural development.

The purpose of an operating system is to organize and control hardware and software so that the device it lives in behaves in a flexible but predictable way. In this article, we'll tell you what a piece of software must do to be called an operating system, show you how the operating system in your desktop computer works and give you some examples of how to take control of the other operating systems around you.

Tweak Your Windows Operating System With Xpy

The current Windows operating systems are far from perfect, One is 7 years old and the other is.. well.. Vista. There are often situations where you would want to change a particular setting (or settings) on your system, you Google for a solution, find one and then you have to mess with the registry.

Enter Xpy, to take care of your tweaking needs!

Xpy allows you to tweak a number of Windows settings easily. All you have to do is place a check mark next to the setting you wish to change and then hit “next” and Xpy will take care of the rest. There are a number of other features that make Xpy a tool worth having, however first le’ts have a look at some of the settings you can tweak with Xpy.

The tweaks are classified into several categories:
General
Services
Internet Explorer
Windows Media Player
Windows Messenger
Windows Desktop Search
Usability
Delete Files

And they range from “Enable delete pagefile at shutdown” to “disable selected services” to “Increase maximum connections in Internet Explorer” to “Disable DRM for imported music in WMP” to “Disable balloon popups, Autorun, Desktop Cleanup” to “Deleting Recycle Bin, My Documents, My Computer shortcuts” and much much more.

There are a couple of interesting features that I really like in Xpy.

It allows you to save all the tweaks that you made on the system in a file. Just use Xpy with /file switch and it creates a settings file on the desktop. Next time provide the file as an argument and boom all your settings are applied! This is especially useful if you have to re-install the system or you are responsible for maintaining a number of computers.

Secondly it allows you to restore any changes you made to the system using Xpy. When you run Xpy, after you have applied the tweaks, it gives you the option to restore previous settings or go ahead with further tweaking.

About Solaris 10

Sun Microsystems develops the technologies that power the global marketplace. Guided by a singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer"(TM) -- Sun drives network participation through shared innovation, community development and open source leadership. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com.
Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Java, Solaris, OpenSolaris, ZFS and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Intel and Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks of SPARC international, Inc. in the US and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
SPEC and SPECjbb are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from www.spec.org as of 9/12/2008 and this announcement. For comparison purposes, the terms CPU, chip and processor are used interchangeably. For the latest results visit: http://www.spec.org.

New Features in Solaris 10 10/08

ZFS File System Enhancements: The ZFS file system has been enhanced with recent work from the OpenSolaris community, providing ease of data management with no additional cost for acquisition or support. The new version of Solaris ZFS file system offers increased data integrity and fully integrated disaster recovery capabilities. ZFS file system can be used as the sole file system for any class of system, with support for booting and/or for use as a root file system.
-- Virtualization and Solaris Containers Updates: Solaris 10's virtualization technologies, such as Solaris Containers, have been enhanced with new features to make it even easier for customers to migrate workloads among Solaris systems and reduce the administrative overhead necessary to move a container between unlike system configurations.
-- Intel architecture optimization: Sun and Intel continue to collaborate to help ensure Solaris 10 will support Intel's latest Intel Xeon(R) processor line so customers can benefit from the improved functionality, power efficiency and reliability of systems that contain those CPUs. In addition Sun and Intel have achieved several new world records(a) for Solaris 10 on Sun Systems powered by Intel Xeon processor 7400 series.
Compatibility continues to be a key feature of the Solaris 10 OS. Through the Solaris OS update model, customers can easily upgrade to Solaris 10 10/08 without requiring additional hardware/software upgrades or recertification of existing projects and applications. In addition, Solaris 10 10/08 preserves full compatibility with over 7,000 third-party products and customers internally-developed applications.
With built-in, open source, no-cost virtualization via Solaris Containers and Sun(TM) Logical Domains (LDoms), Sun and Fujitsu's recently announced Sun SPARC Enterprise(R) T5440 server is an ideal platform for consolidating hundreds of existing enterprise class workloads onto a single system. Additionally, for existing Solaris OS customers, the Solaris(TM) 8 and 9 Containers capability enables customers to run multiple Solaris 8 or 9 environments on a single SPARC-based system. As a result, customers can quickly and easily move existing physical environments to virtual containers on Solaris 10 and take advantage of the performance, scale and cost savings of new SPARC Enterprise CMT-based servers today.

System requirements for Windows XP operating systems

SUMMARY
This article contains information about the minimum hardware requirements for Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Professional. 
MORE INFORMATION
These are the minimum requirements for basic functionality. Actual requirements vary, depending on the system configuration and the programs and features that you choose to install. If you are installing Windows XP over a network, you may need additional available hard-disk space.

The minimum hardware requirements for Windows XP Home Edition are: • Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended)
• At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended)
• At least 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available space on the hard disk 
• CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
• Keyboard and a Microsoft Mouse or some other compatible pointing device
• Video adapter and monitor with Super VGA (800 x 600)or higher resolution 
• Sound card
• Speakers or headphones

Linux is geeky and based on text command

Linux has come a long way from being the system of geek's. It has an extremely advanced X Windows systems that has a complete graphical user interface-you know, like Windows. It also has a large number of window manager that let you work with different levels of customization of your desktop. Linux has a robust character-cell interface where commands need to be typed in. x Windows is a free program that runs with Linux to provide a GUI where the mouse and keyboard can be used extensively. But the X system itself is quite primitive and needs a window manager, or a desktop environment- like GNOME or KDE- to be really usable. Window managers are programs that let you interact with the underlying X system and LinuxOS by relaying commands. The popular window managers are Sawfish, Enlightenment, Black box, after step and Window maker. As for desktop managers, they have their own window manager and other tools that make you feel that you are working in Window! GNOME and KDE are the most popular of these. GNOME stands for GNU Network Model Environment and KDE for K desktop Environment. They have tools that allow drag and drop, have panels and task bar - almost like clones of windows.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard vs. Windows 7

Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday revealed Windows 7 at its annual Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles. Windows 7 is designed to replace Windows Vista as the main operating system for Windows-based PC users.

With Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X "Snow Leopard" also under development, we met up with Ian Moulster, Windows Live Commercial Lead at Microsoft, to talk through some of Microsoft's key ideas and discover what the next generation of operating systems aims to offer both Mac and PC users.

At this year's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), Apple announced that the next version of its operating system would take a break from introducing new features and focus on performance. "We have delivered more than a thousand new features to OS X in just seven years, and Snow Leopard lays the foundation for thousands more," said Bertrand Serlet, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering. "In our continued effort to deliver the best user experience, we hit the pause button on new features to focus on perfecting the world's most advanced operating system."

The OS X update, expected to ship in June 2009, will be optimized for multicore processors and enable "breakthrough amounts of RAM -- up to a theoretical 16TB," according to Apple. The company also promised a new, modern media platform with QuickTime X. The update will also offer out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange 2007.

On the other side of the fence, Microsoft has had highly publicized troubles with its Vista operating system. So our first question to Microsoft was whether Windows 7 was a smokescreen for fixing some of the problems with Vista. "No, Service Packs 1 and 2 are fixing things," said Moulster. "This is less about fixing things and more about building on the good stuff. This is about where we go from here."

Having got that out of they way, we got stuck into discussing the future of the operating system. It's clear that Snow Leopard is about much more than just a speed bump, and Microsoft has more than just a few borrowed ideas being used to fix Vista's flaws.

So let's get started with the biggest news: Sometime next year, the desktop and laptop computer is highly likely to sport multitouch, touch-screen technology.
Touch-screen technology confirmed

One major new feature confirmed for Windows 7 is a vastly improved touch-screen support. Taking its cue from the iPhone and the technology from Microsoft Surface, Windows 7 will see the same kind of multi-touch gestures applied to the desktop or laptop computer.

"You'll be able to drag around windows and resize photos by pulling them apart ... that sort of thing" said Moulster. "We've redesigned the interface to make touch screen a lot easier, and it'll be good to see what the take up will be. We already have several ways to interact with the computer -- keyboard, mouse, voice -- and we see this as another way that users can interact with their computers. It's more about choice than anything, just giving users another way that they can interact."

Firefox cracks 20% market share in October, then slips

 (Computerworld) Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox climbed above 20% market share for two weeks last month but ended October just under the milestone, a Web metrics company said today.

During two separate weeks last month, Firefox exceeded 20% share, said Net Applications Inc. For the week ended Oct. 5, the open-source browser averaged exactly 20%, while for the week ended Oct. 26, Firefox accounted for 20.06% of the browsers used to connect to the thousands of sites that Net Applications monitors for clients. 

For the month as a whole, however, Firefox's share averaged a close-but-no-cigar 19.97%, a jump of nearly half a percentage point over September. That month, Firefox lost ground because of Google Inc.'s introduction of its own browser, Chrome. Firefox has now regained what share it lost, and then some. 

In June, Vince Vizzaccaro, Net Applications' executive vice president of marketing, had predicted that Firefox might reach the 20% mark as early as July, but instead the browser's growth stalled, then slid, when Google released Chrome. 

Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer (IE), meanwhile, lost share again last month. Although IE remains the most-used browser by far, with a 71.3% share for October, that was down from 71.5% the month before. IE has dropped seven percentage points in the past year, the bulk of it lost to Firefox, with smaller portions going to Apple Inc.'s Safari, Opera Software ASA's Opera and Google's Chrome. 

Chrome, which came out strong in early September but faded later that month, closed October with 0.74% of the browser market, slightly off September's 0.78%. Google has released three versions of the Chrome beta so far. 

Apple's Safari, which was the only major browser to boost its share in September -- largely because of the lack of a Mac OS X edition of Chrome -- dipped during October to 6.57% from 6.65% the month before. Apple's share of the operating system market, as measured by Net Applications, also dropped slightly during October. 

Mozilla users continued to update from the older Firefox 2.0 to the newer Firefox 3.0 during October; the latter now accounts for 73% of all copies of Firefox in use. Mozilla first offered users the upgrade to 3.0 in late August, but the company today said it plans to repeat the offer later this month to nudge Firefox 2.0 users one more time. 

Firefox 2.0 is slated to slip out of support before the end of the year. Mozilla's current plan is to release a final security update for the older browser in mid-December, according to notes from a company status meeting held Monday. 

Net Applications' browser market share data is available online.

Vista drives Windows market-share gains

November 3, 2008 (Computerworld) For the second time in three months, Windows has boosted its market share, an Internet measurement company reported today.

The increase by the Microsoft Corp. operating system was the largest in over a year, said Net Applications Inc. 

During October, 90.46% of users who connected to the Web sites that Net Applications monitors did so from systems powered by Windows. The share was up 0.17 percentage point from September and was the biggest gain since June 2007, when Windows climbed by 0.4 point. 

Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X, meanwhile, failed to grow its share for just the fourth time this year. The decline was extremely small, just 0.02 percentage point. Apple's operating system remained above 8% for the second month running, however. 

Mac OS X tends to slip slightly each October, according to Net Applications. Last year, for example, the OS slid 0.05 point that month. 

Windows' overall gain appeared to come courtesy of a strong showing by Vista, which increased its market share by more than the other editions -- notably Windows XP and Windows 2000 -- lost. 

According to Net Applications, Vista added 0.96 percentage point last month to end at 19.29%, while XP and 2000 lost 0.56 and 0.17, respectively. Previous increases in total Windows share, including one in August, have also been pegged to stronger-than-average gains by Vista. 

Vista has yet to crack the 20% share mark, although if past performance is any guide, it will do so shortly. The operating system's share surged during November and December 2007, and in January 2008 -- likely because of new purchases of PCs by consumers during the holiday season. 

Over the long term, however, Windows' share has declined. In the past 12 months, Microsoft's market share has fallen from 92.42%, a decrease of nearly 2 percentage points. During the same period, Apple has increased its operating system market share by 1.41 points, or 20.7%. 

Net Applications also noted a dip in market share for the open-source Linux operating system, which dropped from 0.91% in September to 0.71% last month. 

The company's operating system market share data is available online.

UNIX Operating System

Media reviews "Once you've established a connection with the network, there's often a secondary obstacle to surmount.... Learning the UNIX Operating System helps you figure out what to do next by presenting in a nutshell the basics of how to deal with the 'U-word.' Obviously a 92-page book isn't going to make you an instant UNIX guru, but it does an excellent job of introducing basic operations in a concise nontechnical way, including how to navigate through the file system, send and receive E-mail and--most importantly--get to the online help. The fast information is invaluable when you wand to do something simply and either don't know how to, can't remember how to, or--thanks to UNIX's penchant for commands that look like random characters from the alphabet--can't figure out which command to use." --Michael L. Porter, Associate Editor, Personal Engineering & Instrumentation News, December 1993 

"If you have someone on your site who has never worked on a UNIX system and who needs a quick how-to, Nutshell has the right booklet. Learning the UNIX Operating System by Grace Todino and John Strang can get a newcomer rolling in a single session. It covers logging in and out; files and directories; mail; pipes; filters, backgrounding; and a large number of other topics. It's clear, cheap, and can render a newcomer productive in a few hours." --;login, May/June 1989 

"Whether you are setting up your first UNIX system or adding your fiftieth user, [this book] can ease you through learning the fundamentals of the UNIX system." --Michael J. O'Brien, ABA/Unix/group Newsletter

The UNIX operating system

The kernel 

The kernel of UNIX is the hub of the operating system: it allocates time and memory to programs and handles the filestore and communications in response to system calls. 

As an illustration of the way that the shell and the kernel work together, suppose a user types rm myfile (which has the effect of removing the file myfile). The shell searches the filestore for the file containing the program rm, and then requests the kernel, through system calls, to execute the program rm on myfile. When the process rm myfile has finished running, the shell then returns the UNIX prompt % to the user, indicating that it is waiting for further commands. 
The shell

The shell acts as an interface between the user and the kernel. When a user logs in, the login program checks the username and password, and then starts another program called the shell. The shell is a command line interpreter (CLI). It interprets the commands the user types in and arranges for them to be carried out. The commands are themselves programs: when they terminate, the shell gives the user another prompt (% on our systems). 

The adept user can customise his/her own shell, and users can use different shells on the same machine. Staff and students in the school have the tcsh shell by default. 

The tcsh shell has certain features to help the user inputting commands.

Filename Completion - By typing part of the name of a command, filename or directory and pressing the [Tab] key, the tcsh shell will complete the rest of the name automatically. If the shell finds more than one name beginning with those letters you have typed, it will beep, prompting you to type a few more letters before pressing the tab key again. 

History - The shell keeps a list of the commands you have typed in. If you need to repeat a command, use the cursor keys to scroll up and down the list or type history for a list of previous commands.

HP revs netbooks: Attempts custom Linux OS

Hewlett Packard on Wednesday rolled out a netbook lineup designed to play catch up with Dell, Asus and others. But the real interesting play here is HP’s move to develop a custom Linux operating system for one of its netbooks.

First the news (statement, specs, Techmeme): HP is rolling out three netbooks powered by Intel’s Atom processor. Given that netbooks are accounting for most of the growth in PC units HP would be foolish not to dive in. Frankly it’s a bit surprising HP has waited this long to dive into netbooks. As for the models, HP is launching:
The HP Mini 1000: A black netbook powered by Windows XP Home with solid-state or traditional hard drive options. Screens are 8.9 inches to 10.2 inches. This one is available in December and will start at $399.
The HP Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam Edition (right): Basically a Mini 1000 with a red peony-flower design from Tam, who is a fashion designer HP says. (I wouldn’t know Tam if she fell on my head to be honest.) This netbook, which will be available in mid-December and start at $699, is for “Internet centric fashionistas.” I’m not in that fashionista club but it sounds interesting.
And the HP Mini 1000 with MIE (mobile Internet experience): This one comes with an HP interface that’s built on Linux and is designed for digital content–videos, music and video. It also comes with Skype, instant messaging and a dashboard to get to email and browsing. The MIE will start at $379 with availability in January.

That latter one is the most interesting for a few reasons. Among them:
HP has been increasingly dabbling in operating system refinement and the user experience.
By customizing Linux it HP is illustrating that the open source OS is still too complicated for the average bear on the desktop.
However, if HP–and others–start improving the user experience of desktop Linux it could be an emerging threat to Windows.

When you look at the netbook market–and its growth–you realize that these mobile Internet devices are really a Trojan horse for desktop Linux. We’ll see how the Mini 1000 MIE sells, but I’m very interested in HP’s interface and how it compares to other operating systems.

A Better File System for Linux?

At the heart of every operating system is the file system that provides read/write access to data. Since 2001, Ext3 has been the mainstay of Linux file systems. But the winds of change could be blowing toward a better file system in the works. 

BTRFS (pronounced better FS) is currently under development in an effort led by Oracle engineer Chris Mason. With the support of Intel(NASDAQ: INTC), Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), HP (NYSE: HPQ), IBM (NYSE: IBM), BTRFS could become the engine that brings next generation filesystem capabilities to Linux. 

"The main goal is to let it {Linux} scale for the storage that will be available," Chris Mason Director of Linux Kernel Engineering at Oracle told InternetNews.com. "Scaling is not just about addressing the storage but also means being able to administer and to manage it with a clean interface that lets people see what's being used and makes it more reliable." 

After all, Mason noted, although hard drives are getting bigger, the error rates on those drives are not going down. 

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"We need to be able to easily determine when disks have the wrong information on them," Mason said. "And we need to be able to do filesystem consistency checking and need to be able to recover from errors in a much more robust fashion then we currently do." 

With the current Ext3 Linux filesystem, scaling to meet the needs of large storage is a challenge for several reasons. 

One of them is that Ext3 was never designed for the large data pools that enterprise and even consumer desktop users now have available to them. Mason noted that on Ext3, for every 4k of data there is a piece of metadata pointing to where that 4k of data is on the drive. So as files grow larger, the grows the amount of metadata. It's not very efficient. 

"BTRFS uses something called extents, which just says that from this starting position for this number of blocks, use this part of the disk," Mason said. 

The extents approach is more scalable and efficient than the 4k block approach of Ext3. Extents are also part of the new Ext4 file system, which is part of the upcoming 2.6.28 Linux kernel release. 

Though Ext4 adds extents, Mason noted that BTRFS adds a number of other features beyond that. Among those features are items like snapshotting, online file consistency checks and the ability to perform fast incremental backups. 

"Btrfs is a file system that we think has a lot of potential to be a key next generation file system for Linux," Ric Wheeler, file system kernel for Red Hat, told InternetNews.com. 

Wheeler noted that Red Hat engineers are actively contributing to its development and have made substantial contributions to the project. Intel is also active in BTRFS. Imad Sousou, the Director of Intel's Open Source Technology Center told InternetNews.com that Intel likes and contributes to Btrfs. 

Intel's view is that it has the right technology and architectural decisions to evolve Linux file systems to support the increased demands in areas such as performance and fault tolerance. 

HP is also a key backer of the effort and is putting some of its UNIX heritage in play to help out. 

"BTRFS is very interesting to HP because its goal is to provide a core set of features that are very similar to what we have with Tru64 AdvFS and a set of features that go beyond that," said Bdale Garbee, chief technologist for HP's open source and Linux organization. 

In June of this year, HP open sourced its Tru64 AdvFS file system, which has its roots in Digital Equipment Corporation's Digital Unix. Oracle's Mason noted that he was a Tru64 user years ago and that the open sourcing of AdvFS by HP has been a major benefit to the BTRFS effort. 

Mason is now pushing to have a testable version of BTRFS available to Linux user before the end of 2008. He's currently targeting to have a version of BTRFS available as part of the 2.6.29 Linux kernel as well. 

"This week I pushed out the last huge format change and there are still a few small ones to come, " Mason said. "Once all that is done it will make it much easier to get out to a broad number of testers." 

At this point, Mason's biggest challenge in getting BTRFS together is keeping it stable. 

"There is a big volume of changes coming in because we have a lot of contributors," Mason said. "It's mostly just a software engineering effort to make sure we make it easy to test and don't introduce regressions.

Mac OS X (2000–present)

Mac OS X brought Unix-style memory management and pre-emptive multitasking to the Mac platform. It is based on the Mach kernel and the BSD implementation of UNIX, which were incorporated into NeXTSTEP, the object-oriented operating system developed by Steve Jobs' NeXT company. The new memory management system allowed more programs to run at once and virtually eliminated the possibility of one program crashing another. It is also the second Macintosh operating system to include a command line (the first is the now-discontinued A/UX, which supported classic Mac OS applications on top of a UNIX kernel), although it is never seen unless the user launches a terminal emulator.

However, since these new features put higher demands on system resources, Mac OS X only officially supported the PowerPC G3 and newer processors, and now has the additional requirement of built-in USB (10.3) and FireWire (10.4)).

For over three years, Mac OS X has become faster with every release - faster on the same hardware.[2]

PowerPC builds of Mac OS X include a compatibility layer for running older Mac applications, the Classic Environment. This runs a full copy of the older Mac OS, version 9.1 or later, in a Mac OS X process. PowerPC-based Macs shipped with Mac OS 9.2 as well as Mac OS X. Mac OS 9.2 had to be installed by the user — it was not installed by default on hardware revisions released after the release of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. Most well-written "classic" applications function properly under this environment, but compatibility is only assured if the software was written to be unaware of the actual hardware, and to interact solely with the operating system. The Classic Environment is not available on Intel-based Macintoshes due to the incompatibility of Mac OS 9 with the x86 hardware, and was removed completely on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

Users of the classic Mac OS generally upgraded to Mac OS X, but many criticized it as being more difficult and less user-friendly than the original Mac OS, for the lack of certain features that had not been re-implemented in the new OS, or for being slower on the same hardware (especially older hardware), or other, sometimes serious incompatibilities with the older OS. Because drivers (for printers, scanners, tablets, etc.) written for the older Mac OS are not compatible with Mac OS X, and due to the lack of Mac OS X support for older Apple machines, a significant number of Macintosh users have still continued using the older classic Mac OS. But by 2005, it has been reported that almost all users of systems capable of running Mac OS X are doing so, with only a small fraction still running the classic Mac OS.[citation needed]

In June 2005, Steve Jobs announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote that Apple computers would be transitioning from PowerPC to Intel processors. At the same conference, Jobs announced Developer Transition Kits that included beta versions of Apple software including Mac OS X that developers could use to test their applications as they ported them to run on Intel-powered Macs. In January 2006, Apple released the first Macintosh computers with Intel processors, an iMac and the MacBook Pro, and in February 2006, Apple released a Mac mini with an Intel Core Solo and Duo processor. On May 16, 2006, Apple released the MacBook, before completing the Intel transition on August 7 with the Mac Pro. To ease the transition for early buyers of the new machines, Intel-based Macs include an emulation technology called Rosetta, which allows them to run (at reduced speed) pre-existing Mac OS X native application software that was compiled only for PowerPC-based Macintoshes.