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Everyone knows applications drive the HPC (High Performance Computing) boat. It is one thing to run benchmarks and burn-in programs, but when it is time for production work, applications take over. Fortunately, there are many applications that can take advantage of clusters.

LXer Feature: 13-Jul-2009

IBM has announced the availability of an open source machine learning compiler, which the company says intelligently optimises applications, meaning shorter development times and bigger performance gains. Called Milepost GCC, the compiler is the result of a collaboration between IBM and partners in the European Union-funded Milepost consortium. The project is an extension of the GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) effort.

As Microsoft prepares to launch Windows 7, the software giant is wisely describing Windows 7’s connectivity to Windows Server, Exchange Server and other popular back-end solutions. But is it time for Microsoft to think outside the Redmond box, and talk about Windows 7’s connectivity to Linux servers? Here's the scoop from Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference.

Phoenix Technologies announced that its fast-boot "HyperSpace" technology is now "aligned" with the Moblin project and that it will work with Intel to promote the technologies to netbook and nettop OEMs and ODMs. HyperSpace will improve the Linux-based Moblin stack's already considerable capabilities for fast-boot and power management, says Phoenix.

I'm doing all I can to stick with Ubuntu 8.04, the long-term-support release of the world's most-talked-about Linux distribution. But when a bug threatens my desktop harmony, I begin both attacking said bug and exploring OS alternatives because the most important thing about this particular installation — my main Toshiba 1100-S101 laptop — is that I keep working with little to no interruption.

Mark Shuttleworth has suggested that the next Long Term Support (LTS) version of Ubuntu Linux may be delayed. The expectation was that the next LTS version would be 10.04, due for release in April 2010, but in an interview with derStandard.at, Shuttleworth says "The LTS will be either 10.04 or 10.10 - based on a conversation that is going on right now betweeen Debian and Ubuntu".

This article was originally published on “2008-06-15 13:09:55 +0000”. I re-read it, and decided that it deserved to be re-published in Free Software Magazine as a tribute to those individual who made GNU/Linux possible. Every field has its own key individuals who donated much of their time to the ideas they believed in. Each one of them is a reminder that it’s up to individuals to make a difference — and to make history. Their work affects large chunks of the world’s population, and bring amazing changes to the way we see and experience the world. The free software world has its own heroes. You probably know a lot of them already; if you don’t, you probably use the results of their work on a daily basis. This article is both a tribute to them, and a summary to those people who are new to the free software world. Read the full roll call of open-source honour at Free Software Magazine.

When a group of European museums joined together to put images of all of their paintings, drawings, sculptures, photos and other artifacts together in a centralized, online collection for the world to view, they turned to open source enterprise search software to make it happen.

In the wake of Chrome OS, what will it take for Linux to succeed in the netbook market? Linux Foundation, Ubuntu and openSUSE respond... "Linux will naturally capture more share on netbooks as Microsoft economics prove unrealistic for this market," Amanda McPherson, vice president of marketing and developer programs at the Linux Foundation told InternetNews.com. "Microsoft as it existed for the past 20 years does not fit into a world of free carrier-backed netbooks and an Internet OS."

Microsoft plays to win. As a result, it seems to regard any legal means as justified, and sometimes even strays outside the law, as the US anti-trust case demonstrated. In the context of marketplace rough-and-tumble, such aggressiveness is perhaps acceptable, but in other realms, there may be serious collateral damage. A good example of where that is the case is Microsoft's behaviour during the OOXML standardisation process at the ISO.

Since we began benchmarking Btrfs a few months ago we have found it to not deliver any spectacular file-system performance results on Linux. This next-generation Linux file-system that has often been compared to Sun's ZFS has not really performed that well, granted it's still very much under development. Btrfs is far from being the performance king and even its SSD mode has had little positive effect. Just weeks ago we delivered EXT4, Btrfs, and NILFS2 benchmarks, but now there is a new release of Btrfs available. Committed to the Linux 2.6.31 kernel was Btrfs v0.19. Does this release bring any performance improvements? Yes and no.

The BBC has begun working on a series of four one-hour documentaries for its BBC Two channel about how the web has, and still is, changing our lives. The current working title for the open and collaborative documentary series is the "Digital Revolution". According to a post on the Digital Revolution Blog, the goal of the project is to open up the production process as much as possible by asking for advice and stories from online users and by sharing as many of the production teams thoughts and ideas as possible.

Google's Chrome OS isn't the first operating system to challenge Microsoft Windows' commanding lead. But it's got an advantage that other rivals such as Linux lacked: the Web. Any new operating system must attract the developers who produce the applications to make it useful. The trouble Windows challengers have had is matching the wide spectrum of software available for Windows already.

If you looked at DistroWatch for a typical day five or six years ago you'd see a lot of familiar Linux distributions with announcements. You also would likely see some names that would be unfamiliar if you are relatively new to Linux. Currently the DistroWatch database contains 278 discontinued distributions and 36 more that are listed as dormant. Of these 314 distributions and countless others that never were listed on DistroWatch at all there are many which are probably best forgotten. There are others which were promising but for one reason or another were abandoned. A smaller number were truly exceptional but still failed to survive. This week I decided to wax nostalgic and look at five that seemed special to me at one time or another. Obviously this list is based on my personal experience. If you've been around Linux for a long time you might have a list of your own.

iTWire reported on HP's Mini 110 range in late May. Now the company has revealed Australian pricing and specifications. The 1.09kg Mini 110 will be sold in Australia in two versions, but initially it's a case of "any colour you like as long as it is black." The Linux based model comes with a 16G solid state drive in place of a hard disk, and sells for $499. The alternative is Windows XP and a 160G hard disk for $699.

Nginx (pronounced "engine x") is a free, open-source, high-performance HTTP server. Nginx is known for its stability, rich feature set, simple configuration, and low resource consumption. This tutorial shows how you can install Nginx on an Ubuntu 9.04 server with PHP5 support (through FastCGI) and MySQL support.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about an impending meeting with Microsoft to discuss some of its actions during the standardisation process of OOXML at the ISO. I asked Linux Journal readers for some help in preparing for this, and you responded with a generosity entirely in keeping with the spirit of free software. The many helpful comments to that post give some indication of the scale of the response, but that overlooks the extraordinary emails I received from others, packed with useful information, which clearly represented many hours' work. To everyone, I'd like to express my thanks. The bad news is that the meeting is not going to take place after all. read more

Now Mepis doesn't present Network Manager on first boot. Warren has devised a pretty cool Network connection utility in Mepis so I followed the bread crumbs to the menu link and opened it. I configured the settings with a couple clicks and then started Network Manager. We were in like Flynn...pulling a fluctuating 61-73 percent signal strength for the next three hours. I couldn't buy a wireless signal from the Windows machine.

A ten year old boy tries out Fedora Linux 11 Game spin, and likes it a lot, but not for the reasons you would expect.