Advanced Format disks use 4,096-byte sectors rather than the more common 512-byte sectors. This change is masked by firmware that breaks the 4,096-byte physical sectors into 512-byte logical sectors for the benefit of the operating system, but the use of larger physical sectors has implications for disk layout and system performance. This article examines these implications, including benchmark tests illustrating the likely real-world effects on some common Linux file systems. As Advanced Format disks have become the norm, understanding how to cope with these disks is a vital skill for anyone who wants to avoid serious performance penalties associated with suboptimal configuration.

It’s been a while since I started to talk to people in the financial services ecosystem about our approach towards open source. At first, most of them thinking we were either bold, ahead of our time, or mad would listen to our story but would not really comment: "Let’s see where it goes" or "good luck with your brave intentions." Only after we started to show progress with the delivery of the FinTP Project, did people start to look seriously at what we were doing. That's when FinTP started to stir up interest and we got many inquiries about the project. I’ve already shared the most common questions, like: Why do we do it? Why should we join?

Google is beefing up its Compute Engine offering to go head-to-head against Amazon Web Services. The company is adding autoscaling and reserved instances to its infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offering.

It's nearly spring, which means it's time for the first installment of Ubuntu for 2014.

I think Microsoft has a real shot of being a top-tier Android hardware company. Yes, I'm quite serious.

Eurotech announced a rugged, Linux-ready COM based on the Intel Atom E3800, offering dual video, SATA, GbE, and USB ports, PCIe expansion, and IoT support.

At South by South West this morning, Box CEO Aaron Levie predicted a future in which the generic Box app, which is the most popular use of the service now, would take a back seat to custom apps built on top of the Box platform to meet the needs of specific verticals and individual services.

AntiSquad is a fun looking turn based strategy game with character development included at no extra cost, bargain! The developer has confirmed it will come to Linux.

A survey conducted by PerspecSys at RSA Conference shows that the security of cloud is still a top priority and a top concern among IT security professionals.

If you're curious how Ubuntu 14.04 LTS is running against upstream Debian, given that SteamOS is Debian-based and Gabe Newell runs Debian, here's some fresh benchmarks comparing several flavors of Debian against Ubuntu 14.04 in its current development state.

Seco has spun a pair of nearly identical Qseven COMs, based on Intel Atom E3800 and AMD G-Series SoCs, and featuring extended temperature and optional SSDs.

The ASUS Zenbook UX301LA-DH71T is a Haswell-based Intel ultrabook that I have found to be quite interesting and will be carrying out a large number of Linux tests (and Windows 8.1 vs. Linux benchmarks) from this laptop that sports Intel Iris Graphics 5100, dual SSDs, and other impressive features.

TinyKeep is an upcoming action RPG with a heavy focus on smart monster AI. We all hate dumb AI in games right? I hope their AI is as smart as they make it out to be!

The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has ruled against a U.S. government request that it be allowed to hold telephone metadata beyond the current five-year limit as it may be required as evidence in civil lawsuits that question the data collection.

“Why we don’t all switch to Diaspora I will never understand.”

My friend Ross made this remark on Facebook Thursday as introduction to a link to a petition by Demand Progress, a progressive political action site. The petition addresses Facebook and privacy issues, making some rather disturbing accusations. Although the text is short on siting sources, the accusations still ring true. The claim is that every time something is typed into a comment box but then not posted, Facebook keeps a record.

In today's open source roundup: Lubuntu could be the best replacement for Windows XP. Plus: A review of Portal 2 for Linux, and an interview with the creator of educational distro Ubermix.

Indeed, ever since Snowden provided reporters with a trove of top secret documents, we've been subjected to all sorts of NSA word games. And the word "collect" has a very special definition, according to the Department of Defense (DoD). A 1982 procedures manual says: "information shall be considered as 'collected' only when it has been received for use by an employee of a DoD intelligence component in the course of his official duties." And "data acquired by electronic means is 'collected' only when it has been processed into intelligible form."

Aimed at the complete novice, this is an overview describing in some detail the reasons I use Linux.

What's new for Google's Summer of Code (GSoC) internship program this year? For one, GSoC accepted 190 mentoring organizations, which is more than any other year. The very first GSoC program began in the summer of 2005, so this year also marks another milestone—they're 10th year anniversary. What is likely to remain the same this year is the overwhelming response from students from all over the world who want the chance to work on free and open source projects with mentoring organizations that Google has hand-picked.

In the world of mail servers, MailScanner is one of the best open source software for virus scanning and spam detection. MailScanner relies on pre-installed anti-virus and anti-spam software to check incoming and outgoing emails for malicious content or patterns of spamming. This makes sure that the mail server does not participate in the distribution of malware and unsolicited spam emails. It also helps preventing the mail server IP from becoming blacklisted, keeping the mail server records clean. This tutorial will focus on setting up MailScanner along with Clam Antivirus and SpamAssassin in a CentOS system. The procedure should work on RHEL as well.

Consistency—a necessity when it comes to any large-scale, open source project. Sharing source code and libraries between the different components of OpenStack is critical to its rapid evolution and fast-paced development. The Oslo program is what holds it all together and brings consistency to OpenStack. We wanted to learn more about Oslo and what is does for OpenStack. So we asked the program lead to share his thoughts.

MakuluLinux was already a solidly performing distro, but the latest version, released last month, takes Makulu to the next level of usability and maturity. Earlier versions offered a choice of Xfce, KDE and Enlightenment 17 desktops. So far, only the Xfce version is available in MakuluLinux 5. However, the tweaking Makulu developer Jacque Raymer built into this upgrade makes up for any loss.

Today, we are announcing the release of our signature releases, Black Lab Linux Education, and Black Lab Professional Desktop for the masses.

The patent exchange was spun in positive terms, as something that would boost Twitter's intellectual property portfolio to help it defend itself from other threats against competitors. The exchange does do that, but this "deal" wouldn't have happened but at the end of IBM's massive patent gun, which was pointed at Twitter right before its IPO.

Deb Cinkus is the CEO of Polished Geek, a Raleigh, NC-based Joomla CMS web development company. Opensource.com community manager Jason Hibbets interviewed Cinkus about project management tips and open source project management tools during the 2013 All Things Open conference in Raleigh, NC. the subject in this Opensource.com article: Top 5 open source project management tools in 2014

Slackel 6.0 Openbox has been released. Slackel is based on Slackware and Salix. Includes the Linux kernel 3.10.30 and latest updates from Slackware's 'Current' tree. Slackel 6.0 Openbox includes the Midori 0.5.7 web browser, Claws-Mail 3.9.2, Transmission, SpaceFm, Openjre-77u51, rhino, icedtea-web, Pidgin 2.10.9, Gftp 2.0.19, Wicd.

This guide shows how to connect to the Raspberry PI from the Chromebook using SSH and VNC.

Ctags lets you tag your current code and header files. It supports many languages. With tagging, when you are writing code, you can quickly traverse to the declarations and definitions of functions and variables.

Seco unveiled the “SECOpITX-GX,” a Pico-ITX SBC that ships with an AMD G-Series SoC, an HDMI port, dual GbE ports, six USB ports, and mini-PCIe expansion. We’ve seen a number of Linux-ready single board computers based on AMD’s Embedded G-Series SoCs, including Avalue’s 3.5-inch ECM-KA, Habey’s 3.5-inch EMB-3700, and Deciso’s networking-focused Netboard A10. The SECOpITX-GX […]

This week's KDE Commit-Digest: Artikulate improves filtering, can show phrases containing native speaker recordings; KDE-PIM adds email filtering and contact auto-completion via Baloo; Skrooge offers new "responsive" template for monthly reports; Bug fixes in Calligra, KGet.