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A couple weeks ago I wrote about NoSQL and provided a short overview of the landscape of non-relational databases. One that has become increasingly popular is Apache CouchDB, so I’d like to spend a couple weeks digging into it a bit and talking about why it’s so interesting. Before I do, it’s worth noting that Ubuntu 9.10 was just released and uses CouchDB under the hood. The Ubuntu One backup/synchronization service makes it easy to back up and sync Firefox bookmarks, Tomboy notes, files, contacts, and more. As more users adopt 9.10 and Ubuntu One, CouchDB usage grows accordingly. If you read my previous NoSQL article and wondered which projects are ready for prime time, consider this a big vote of confidence for CouchDB.

With the release of CentOS 5.4 last month to bring this community enterprise operating system on par with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4, we decided it was a good time to see how the server / workstation performance between this new CentOS release compares to that of Ubuntu 9.10, which was released last week, and also how it performs up against the release candidate of OpenSuSE 11.2. In this article are these benchmarks.

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is holding ApacheCon US 2009 from November 2-6 in Oakland, California. The foundation for a free webserver is also celebrating its 10th birthday. In honor of this 10th birthday, the celebration includes three days of the conference program available as a FREE Live stream.

While we are not sure yet what Intel's special Poulsbo driver means yet, we do have some firm information to report this weekend on another new Intel driver: a new Intel i965 driver for Gallium3D is coming.

Keith Whitwell of VMware (formerly Tungsten Graphics) has been hacking away at a new i955 driver for this extremely promising graphics driver architecture. While the open-source ATI/AMD developers have been hard at work on Gallium3D support and the Nouveau developers are solely focusing on Gallium3D for their OpenGL support, the official Intel developers haven't dabbled too much with Gallium3D...

It's funny isn't it? By default, any Linux distribution comes with business server functionality like an e-mail, file, and print serving, but Microsoft still gets the lion's share of the small business server world. Steve J. Vaughan-Nichols wonders what's going on here?

GRUB 2 is a new boot loader which comes with Ubuntu Karmic Koala. GRUB 2 is in charge of showing the menu that allows you to choose the operating system or Kernel version when your computer starts. This post will explain how to change the background image and colors in GRUB2.

Australian FOSS community member Arjen Lentz's efforts to share the problems he has faced with depression have led to the creation of a web resource for other sufferers.

Malgré la sortie de sa version 8 en mars dernier, Internet Explorer n’a pas renversé la tendance du marché des navigateurs en Europe, bien au contraire. Le navigateur leader continue de céder du terrain à ses concurrents et se fait même devancer par Mozilla dans certains pays…

[Quick & dirty translation: IE8 didn't reverse the tendency of the decrease of Market Share of IE in the EU. In the contrary, the market leader is still losing ground, and is even surpassed by Firefox in certain countries (SK/HU that would be - hk). - Translation ends. If you don't read French, just look at the tables, they speak for themselves. An English translation is normally released about one month after the French article - hkwint]

A few weeks ago I got my invitation to Google Wave. After using it for a while, I can see its potential as a collaboration tool, but it's too early to tell if this tool will change the way we communicate in the enterprise.

In 2008 CodeWeavers Gave Away 650,000 Free Licenses in 24 Hours, This Year’s Special Includes Lame Duck Insurance Policy, Offering 2-for-1 Support.

What I talked about was Linux on the desktop, specifically the definition (and delivery) of a user-friendly Linux distribution. To lure the masses from the clutches of Microsoft Windows, you need to provide an experience that is more than just technically superior. Linux has been technically superior for years -- it's a done deal. What you need to do is provide a way to continue doing those day to day things a Windows user takes for granted.

Linux in a Nutshell is considered a classic by anyone's standards, so it's expected to review well. In fact, the prior editions have reviewed extremely well so, in this case, turning in a bad review on the latest edition would mean that the authors and publisher must have completely rewritten the book and done a poor job of it. Fortunately, that's not the case here. Linux in a Nutshell, 6th Edition is a worthy successor to those editions that have come before it.

I just wrote a review for Linux in a Nutshell, 6th Edition and commented that it seemed as if each successive edition acquired more pages. In the Linux book's case, it isn't true, but it is true in the case of Lutz's book. In fact, between the 3rd and current edition, the book has expanded some 466 pages. Good grief, what accounts for such growth?

This tutorial shows how to prepare an Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) server for the installation of ISPConfig 3, and how to install ISPConfig 3. ISPConfig 3 is a webhosting control panel that allows you to configure the following services through a web browser: Apache web server, Postfix mail server, MySQL, MyDNS nameserver, PureFTPd, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, and many more.

In like a lion, out like a Snow Leopard? Apple changed its spots on Sun's ZFS fairly quickly. This week the company shutterd the ZFS Project on Mac OS Forge, and there's no hide or hair of ZFS to be found in Snow Leopard. It's a pretty quick turnabout from a few years ago, when Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz was touting Apple's inclusion of ZFS in Leopard.

Ubuntu Netbook Remix is optimised to run on a new category of affordable Internet-centric devices called netbooks. It includes a new consumer-friendly interface that allows users to quickly and easily get on-line and use their favourite applications. This interface is optimised for a retail sales environment. Screen shots at SEO Expert Consultants

The Gimp is a powerful graphical application that can handle just about any kind of bit-mapped editing job. You can re-touch photos, shrink or enlarge pictures, combine elements using layers, and many other operations with little to moderate effort. The program also has a bunch of interesting “filters” that transform your picture into something new. Perhaps you need to make a cool text logo for your company or are a teacher needing to create some coloring projects, for your kids. The Gimp has you covered in those departments. And, once you try using a few of the filters, I'm sure you'll see opportunities to "filter" pictures, all over the place.

There are far too many interesting Linux and free software conferences these days, so it would be difficult—really, impossible—to attend them all. Slides and videos of the talks can help fill in the gaps, but, for conferences with a more academic bent, the papers that are the basis of the presentations can give an even more detailed look. The papers from the recently concluded Real Time Linux Workshop are a good example; this article will briefly look at a few of them.

Android 2.0, nicknamed "Eclair," will make its big entrance on the Droid next month, and other handsets are sure to follow. Version 2.0 brings a set of new features to the table, including native support for Microsoft Exchange. However, the wide-open Android ecosystem may be prone to fragmentation as the underlying platform grows in strength and ability.

Everybody posts about applications to install after upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala. That's interesting, and some applications in those posts are quite useful. But those are just lists of applications like any other "Top 10 Ubuntu applications" list. I'm not saying they are not interesting, I'll even post some links to such posts from other blogs (look at the bottom of the post) I really liked, but to get there, you must firstly fix everything that's not working for you, tweak some things and so on. From the tweaks in the post: Fix the Internet connection, ctrl + alt + backspace behavior, update manager behavior, disable the login sound, enable icons in menus and buttons, fix the popping sound, browser specific tweaks, etc.