Showing all newswire headlines

Ubuntu 10.10 codenamed 'Maverick Meerkat' just reached to Release Candidate version. I have been testing Ubuntu 10.10 from 2nd Alpha onwards. The development have been going at fast pace with constant addition of new features and bug fixes. The new version has become a lot more stable since the alpha and is already past feature freeze and final freeze. With bug fixes and updates everyday the developers are looking at a perfect launch on October,10.

Last week, I came across a tutorial about tweaking a specific parameter in the Linux virtual memory subsystem. So I figured that I would share all of the optimizations that I usually go through in a new installation of Linux.

Over the years, I've heard a lot of different people try and explain the economic proposition that open source and Linux offers. One of the best such explanations I've ever heard came on CNBC's Mad Money show this week during which host Jim Cramer was interviewing Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst. With Red Hat, Cramer noted that it is a disruptive force and that's what makes it attractive. His view is that in tech, disruptive forces are the most valuable types of companies.

Fedora 14 beta is released, this is the last development build before the final release scheduled for early November ,The Beta release of Fedora 14 “Laughlin” similarly provides a preview of some of the best free and open source technology currently under development, integrated into an ordered distribution that anyone can freely download, use, modify, and redistribute.

Amarok 2.0 received a lot of flak for its rather unstable and buggy early releases. But slowly but surely, Amarok 2.0 series is getting better. Latest Amarok 2.3.2 codenamed "Moonshine" was released like a week ago and I have to say, it's a job well done.

A few minutes ago, the Ubuntu development team unleashed the Release Candidate (RC) version of the up-coming Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) operating system, due for release in October 10th, 2010.

Ubuntu 10.10 Release Candidate has just been released. There aren't too many visual changes since the beta version (most of the visual changes happened before the beta so see THIS post), but there are a few things worth mentioning like a new installer slideshow, the new Ubuntu font, changes to the Ubuntu Software Center, Sound Menu and default theme as well as a new default wallpaper and others. Read on!

Stormy Peters, executive director of the GNOME Foundation and champion of the GNOME platform for more than ten years, talks exclusively to Linux User & Developer magazine…

Rather than installing a server, such as a web server, directly onto your main computer, why not install it in a VM? This sort of setup has a few advantages of security and convenience. These days, spreading resources out into the cloud is the in-thing, but consolidation is often underexploited. Hosting a server in a virtualizer such as VirtualBox is often a good approach for casual or occasional server needs on a home network.

One of the constant complaints about the Android diaspora is its fragmentation — the increasingly diverse multiplicity of OS versions and devices that are so relevant yet so confusing to the average consumer’s mobile decision-making process. Apparently, the powers that be (at Google, that is) have heard users’ complaints on this score and have created the Google Phone Gallery, a carousel of devices that displays images, phone features, manufacturer and carrier information and more.

The beauty of an open development platform is that anyone can take a stab at creating an application. KDE, which is built upon the Qt application and UI framework, is a shining example of this. A quick look at KDE-Apps.org reveals that new apps are added daily. I periodically browse through the latest KDE apps to see if anything stands out, and I found these five, some of which are in early development.

Linutop released version 4.0 of a Ubuntu Linux-based distro optimized for kiosk applications on small, energy-efficient fanless PCs, including legacy 386-based PCs and the company's own mini-PCs. Linutop OS 4.0 is based on Ubuntu 10.04 ("Lucid Lynx"), has a 700MB footprint, is available in a bootable USB key, and offers a variety of display and security features, says the company.

If you frequently use the terminals and the command line, I hope you know the command screen, otherwise get ready to see something that will help you immensely. Screen ? (from the man page) Screen is a full-screen window manager that multiplexes a physical terminal between several processes (typically interactive shells). Each virtual terminal provides the functions of a DEC VT100 terminal and, in addition, several control functions from the ISO 6429 (ECMA 48, ANSI X3.64) and ISO 2022 standards (e.g. insert/delete line and support for multiple character sets). There is a scrollback history buffer for each virtual terminal and a copy-and-paste mechanism that allows moving text regions between windows.

Version 9.0 of the PostgreSQL database management system was released on September 20, with considerably more "buzz" than a PostgreSQL release has had in a while. The PostgreSQL Project does a major release every year, but this one is special. It has more than a dozen major features and nearly 200 minor improvements, so the release has more new goodies in it for database geeks than any release before it, hence the "9.0" version number.

I will say again, for the record, I am not a fan of bloated GUI desktops like KDE and GNOME. I am a GUI minimalist and use the fluxbox window manager for my “GUI desktop”. However, I do like some of the applications that are available for both KDE and GNOME. For a long time now I have been using Kmail and then Kontact with Kmail for my e-mail needs. With Kontact/Kmail I have saved a few thousand messages in Maildir format going back several years, have dozens of contacts both personal and professional, and over 200 filters to keep messages organized. I have been pleased with Kontact/Kmail … until now.

This month we have been testing a new kernel patch named bcache that takes SSDs and uses them as a cache for block devices (with the typical device being hard drives). This article wraps up the testing with an investigation of the throughput of large files and summarizes all the testing to date (and there’s a lot of that).

Last week I wrote about Ares and Draftsight, and how they where close to go full comercial (Ares, Draftsight will be free as Mac and Win released versions), so this is it.... So, since 18 Set., what happened here? Let's go back a few days, and: 22 September - I found out that Draftsight for MAC is available for download 28 September - After reporting a bug for ARES, I received an email from Graebert, that says "BTW: We have released a final version of ARES Commander on Linux yesterday evening.".

Lighttpd is a secure, fast, standards-compliant web server designed for speed-critical environments. This tutorial shows how you can install Lighttpd on an OpenSUSE 11.3 server with PHP5 support (through FastCGI) and MySQL support.

Launched in October of 2004, Linux Mint has rapidly emerged as one of the most popular desktop Linux distributions. In this review, LinuxTrends takes a look at the latest Linux Mint release and finds it to be preferable to Ubuntu (on which it’s based) in several significant ways.

It’s a small step for Dell and symbolic victory for Ubuntu Server Edition, Canonical’s Linux distribution. Specifically, selected Dell PowerEdge servers are now certified to run Ubuntu Server Edition. Does that mean Dell is shifting away from Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Novell SUSE Linux? And what are the implications for Linux channel partners? Hmmm… Here’s the reality check.