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Announced to the public last year by Facebook was HipHop, an open-source project that transforms PHP code into highly-optimized C++ and then uses the GCC C++ compiler to produce a native system binary. Facebook's original numbers showed that by using this transformer/compiler on their servers the CPU usage went down by about 50% and they were able to supply around 70% more traffic on existing resources since the PHP code is no longer being dynamically interpreted. Here's a look at Facebook's HipHop during some of our first tests.

One of the more interesting aspects of Ogg Video is that it allows an essentially unlimited number of subtitle tracks to be included. This is especially useful for free-culture videos, since they are generally released globally, and there are often contributed subtitles. In fact, for “Sintel”, I was able to find 44 subtitle files. I will be including them all as Ogg Kate streams in my prototype “Lib-Ray” version of “Sintel”, and in this column I will demonstrate the use of several command line utilities useful for this, especially the kateenc tool for creating the streams.

The post discussed 3 versions of stories Bob Young, co-founder of Red Hat, tells three official versions of the stories about how Red Hat got its name! Each of them is an interesting one to read.

SimplyMEPIS 11.0 is supposed to be a user-friendly Debian-based KDE distribution, but it absolutely refused to cooperate with my hardware, and I couldn't get the information I wanted.

Imagine a web where our browsers connected directly to each other to do voice, video, media sharing and run applications, using P2P and real-time APIs, rather than going through centralized servers that controlled traffic and permissions. . .

Sponsored in part by NVIDIA, at the University of Utah they are exploring speeding up the Linux kernel by using GPU acceleration. Rather than just allowing user-space applications to utilize the immense power offered by modern graphics processors, they are looking to speed up parts of the Linux kernel by running it directly on the GPU. From the project page: "The idea behind KGPU is to treat the GPU as a computing co-processor for the operating system, enabling data-parallel computation inside the Linux kernel. This allows us to use SIMD (or SIMT in CUDA) style code to accelerate Linux kernel functionality, and to bring new functionality formerly considered too compute intensive into the kernel. Simply put, KGPU enables vector computing for the kernel."

After the social networks the new trend on the Net it’s the microblogging, choose your style: Twitter, identi.ca, Picotea or something else but at the moment this is a must for the internet addicted, or just for keeping in touch with all the news you are interested in or just with your friends. So, while it’s always possible to use your favorite browser to keep in touch with all these messages, today we’ll see some Micro-blogging clients on Linux.

There are not many people that are immune from the charms of computer games at some stage of their life. Even the father of Linux, Linus Torvalds, is reported to have been hooked on playing a single game for a month.

The latest version of the renowned SimplyMEPIS Linux operating system that is designed to be easy to install, easy to use, and easy to make your own. SimplyMEPIS 11.0.00 is released for i386 and amd64 platforms. It's configured with a 2.6.36.4 kernel, the KDE 4.5.1 desktop, and many applications, including LibreOffice 3.3.2, Firefox 4.0.1, VLC 1.1.3, Amarok 2.4.0, Kdenlive 0.7.9, Digikam 1.9.0, GIMP 2.6.10, and Inkscape 0.48.1. Additional applications are available for easy installation from the MEPIS and Debian package pools including Dropbox, Skype, Scribus, Eclipse, Evolution, WINE and thousands more. SimplyMEPIS 11.0 Screenshot Tour

The chip technology at the center of the company's stripped-down business model is 30 years old but has attracted fresh attention from investors that has sent the stock zig-zagging. Demand for MIPS-based parts has been growing rapidly.

If you're looking for a useful tool to facilitate the administration of your Linux-based server-client-system, m23 may be just the right tool. It is intentionally designed for use by an administrator with basic Linux knowledge, making it a perfect tool for businesses and organizations transitioning to Linux.

Red Hat announced a number of new developments including OpenShift (Platform as a Service) and CloudForms (Infrastructure as a Service). Basically Red Hat continues to sponsor development on a large number of open source projects and bundles them together into more comprehensive solutions.

Ubuntu 11.04 was released on April 28 with a brand new interface and a couple default application changes. But all the talk is about Unity, that brand new interface. As one might predict, reactions are all over the spectrum. The Unity interface has taken design cues from popular mobile systems with the focus being on saving screen space and making everything readily accessible from within that limited space. It appears designers were shooting for easy and beautiful, but some users are finding adjustment during these early days a bit challenging.

Mozilla Firefox 4.0 was released in March with many new features, including GPU-based acceleration, but on the Linux side this support was disabled. The Mozilla developers found the Linux GPU driver support to be a problem, even with the open-source solutions. It looks like though by Firefox 6 the Linux GPU acceleration will be in better standing.

IDC indicated in an announcement that it has begun tracking PC microprocessor shipments by architecture, such as x86 and ARM, for the first time. The research firm now predicts that ARM will grab 13 percent of the PC microprocessor market by 2015.

This was my 5th year attending and it was their 11th annual LinuxFest Northwest conference at Bellingham Technical College in Bellingham, Washington. As usual, I took my camcorder along and recorded all (8) of the presentations I attended and took a lot of pictures. Haven't ever attended LinuxFest Northwest? Here's your chance to learn about it.

The latest Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal is probably the most dramatic Ubuntu release to date, and the key to this is its new Unity default user interface. Unity marks several important shifts from Ubuntu. ... Good ideas that aren’t executed well, however, wont bear fruit, and this is what this review is about.

This comes from a very cool site – wondermark.com. As a hacker of computers and gadgets – in the true sense of the word hacker, not the media hijacked sense of the word – this is a set of rules I can stand behind.

Bitcoin is different: It wholly replaces state-backed currencies with a digital version that's tougher to forge, cuts across international boundaries, can be stored on your hard drive instead of in a bank, and--perhaps most importantly to many of Bitcoin's users--isn't subject to the inflationary whim of whatever Federal Reserve chief decides to print more money.

The very first person that I ever spoke with about Ubuntu was Matt Zimmerman. Zimmerman happily helped a hapless journo (me) in IRC no less, when I first started to write about Ubuntu back in 2005. Ubuntu didn't have real PR at the time, but Zimmerman was there as CTO answering my questions without a PR/marketing filter with exceptional clarity. Last year (even with Ubuntu having real PR), I had lunch with Zimmerman in Boston, where we chatted about Unity and the future of Ubuntu. Zimmerman is now leaving Ubuntu.