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After about eleven weeks of development, Linus Torvalds has released the Linux kernel 2.6.37. The new version of the main development line has many improvements. Advances in the Ext4 file system mean it should be able to compete with XFS on larger systems and new discard functions can inform slow SSDs of vacant areas, without negatively affecting performance.

For those of you who don’t follow tech news, here’s a brief summary: OpenOffice, supported by Sun, has long been known as a excellent free alternative to MS Office. When Oracle bought Sun, many feared that Oracle’s control might not necessarily be a good thing for the project. Some members of the OpenOffice team decided to create The Document Foundation as a central place for the work to continue in an open community fashion, and even invited Oracle along in the hopes that “we can all just get along”. Well Oracle declined, and the result is that The Document Foundation will soon release LibreOffice, a community-based fork of OpenOffice which has already received backing from the likes of Canonical, Red Hat, and Google. While the final release is not yet available, we can get our hands on the release candidate which should tell us what kind of changes we’re in for.

While I do believe that most people would be better off running Linux, I fully understand that for some people this is just not feasible, for one reason or another. Even I have to run Windows occasionally at work. Fortunately, some of my favorite Linux programs are gradually becoming available in Windows. This makes using Windows at least a bit more bearable for me.

The official Nagios training classes, taught online by Mike Weber of CyberMontana Inc, have been scheduled for January 2011.

Actually, I tried them all, from the mythical Beagle to Tracker. Beagle is now in effect a dead project. It was quite interesting, able to search many types of files and miscellaneous information, but personally I was not willing to use so many resources for Mono. Patience, they had developed from the outset with the standard libraries perhaps it might be on all computers. I tried other less known programs, Catfish, Pinot and some other that escapes me, cursed memory, up to lead to Tracker a searching program for files (and information) for Gnome. Until version 0.6 it seemed that someone had finally decided to engage seriously in the implementation of a program that allowed me to not always use the memory to remember which file or e-mail contained the information i was searching for. I was promptly denied (and betrayed).

For those that were hoping that VIA Technologies would pull through in providing their open-source graphics driver support like they had promised with kernel mode-setting, a Gallium3D driver, and being Linux friendly, kiss those thoughts goodbye as they've been basically thrown out the window. Sadly, it's not happening. I had a very productive conversation with VIA's Stewart Haston, who is their international marketing specialist, and their Linux outlook is extremely dark.

Learn to shut down or reboot your Linux system, warn users that the system is going down, and switch to a more or less restrictive runlevel. You can use the material in this article to study for the LPI 101 exam for Linux system administrator certification, or just to learn about shutting down, rebooting, and changing runlevels.

Dell announced a seven-inch Android 2.2 tablet called the Streak 7, featuring a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, dual cameras, and compatibility with T-Mobile's 4G-like HSPA+ network. The company also announced an unlocked, GSM-ready "Dell Venue" smartphone that runs Android 2.2 on a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, with a 4.1-inch AMOLED display and eight-megapixel camera.

Let’s assume Attachmate finalizes the Novell acquisition on March 9, 2011. According to an SEC filing, certain Novell executives could earn $1.38 million to $6.85 million in lump sum cash payments if their positions are terminated on that date. So which Novell executives are staying and which ones may leave with a hefty bounty?

Google released a video overview of Android 3.0 ("Honeycomb"), confirming that it is designed for tablets while hinting at exclusivity for tablets. Honeycomb enhancements include a revamped, "virtual and holographic user interface," improved multitasking, drag and drop widgets, video chat with Google Talk, Google eBooks integration, and tablet-oriented overhauls for the browser, Gmail, and YouTube.

It seems as though every time someone sees me at my desk reading my mail, they ask what it is I am doing. I tell them I am reading my mail, and they're shocked. They see me pull up image attachments, and office and all this, and they think I am some kind of wizard. "How is it that you can do that in command line?" they ask. "I use Mutt," I reply. I have done an article on Mutt before, and I will do it again for clarity's sake.

The WWF must have understood by now that you cannot enter the realm of software development without finding the FOSS community on your way. For example, the French April organization, dedicated to the promotion of FOSS and open standards, sent a letter to the WWF, voicing its objections to the WWF format in general and the use of DRM in particular. As if that is not enough, the software itself is giving the WWF headaches as well.

Barry Kauler, the father of Puppy Linux, announced earlier today, January 6th, the immediate availability of Puppy Linux 5.2, a major version that is based on the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) operating system.

The purpose of this article is to get a reader started with an Android application development using an open source Android SDK on a Linux system. The main focus of the following lines will be concentrated on installation of Java based Eclipse IDE, Android SDK and Android Developer Tool (ADT) a special Eclipse plug-in on Ubuntu and Fedora Linux systems. The installation instructions will be followed by a simple Hello Android program example to test an entire installation. Since the combination of Eclipse and Android SDK provides a powerful Android Virtual Device emulator, a reader does not need to own any Android device to get started with the Android application development.

This guide explains how you can install and use KVM for creating and running virtual machines on an OpenSUSE 11.3 server. I will show how to create image-based virtual machines and also virtual machines that use a logical volume (LVM). KVM is short for Kernel-based Virtual Machine and makes use of hardware virtualization, i.e., you need a CPU that supports hardware virtualization, e.g. Intel VT or AMD-V.

LXer Feature: 06-Jan-2011

Paul Ferris reviews the state of Linux over the past decade from multiple perspectives: cloud, desktop, tablet and finally infrastructure market. The most pressing question rises to the top: Will 2011 be the year of Linux on the Doorstop?

It’s one thing to talk in vague terms about “the cloud,” and another to write software that actually works with it. Thanks to Ubuntu’s cloud-init package, coding for the cloud can be simple, practical and even straightforward. Here’s a look at the technology in action, and where it fits into the larger cloud-computing ecosystem. Take a look.

I've been chuckling. Inside. Silently. OK, not so silently. Never mind that little show called CES. The big tech news today is Qualcomm's $3.2 billion (with a "b") acquisition of WiFi chip maker Atheros.

Why are you using Linux on your desktop? Before answering this question, consider the advantages and disadvantages and then come back full circle to your own motivation for using Linux. Nearly every week, I find my news feeds filled with the usual generic articles describing rather vanilla reasons for using Linux on the desktop. Why do I have a problem with this? Perhaps because the reasons often being shared are just echoes of other opinions that clearly aren't that of the author. Instead, we are reading the thoughts and ideas of many articles since past.

The other day I stumbled upon a new distro called Bodhi. The website claims that Bodhi is a minimalistic OS (based on Ubuntu) using the enlightened desktop. I have never had luck using the Enlightment desktop, but I really wanted to try this distro.