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Last week we published Ubuntu 9.04 vs. Mac OS X 10.5.6 benchmarks where we compared the performance of these two popular operating systems on a Mac Mini. With the OS X kernel currently being 32-bit but with support for 64-bit applications, we had used the 32-bit version of Ubuntu 9.04. In a majority of the Leopard operating system from Apple outperformed Canonical's Jaunty Jackalope, but today we are adding in the results from an Ubuntu 64-bit installation. As you can see from the results, the x86_64 version of Ubuntu Linux is more competitive against Mac OS X 10.5.6.

Red Hat's going up against business-rules giants IBM and Oracle with a management system that builds on its popular JBoss application server. The company is today expected to announce the JBoss Enterprise Business Rules Management System to separate code from business rules in a system. The idea is to let you build and maintain business processes without needing to re-code the applications.

Nagios Enterprises founder and Nagios maintainer Ethan Galstad has admitted to development bottlenecks in his project and recognizes that Nagios developers want a stronger participation in the Icinga fork project. Nevertheless, he's disappointed that Icinga didn't engage with him before they struck off on their own.

The DisplayLink USB display system, which allows Windows and Mac systems to drive multiple displays connected via USB 2.0 using custom lossless compression technology, is coming to Linux. The release, by DisplayLink, of libdlo, an LGPL 2.1 licensed library, will allow Linux developers to discover and connect to DisplayLink devices. This is the first step in developing application level support, such as X servers and other graphic platforms.

LXer Feature: 18-May-2009

The Mozilla Foundation has released version 1.0 beta of its Prism software. Danijel Orsolic puts a new take on the semantics of whether Linux is an OS or not. Paul Rubens shows us how to optimize hard drives for maximum speed in Linux and Pogoplug, which is a little device that can connect to a USB 2.0 hard drive and an Ethernet connection, and then instantly makes the drive an Internet-accessible storage device promises to publish the source-code if the product fails.

Using ModSecurity is not easy. The complexity of your site, your use of PHP, MySQL and other scripting languages will make it more difficult to configure correctly. Basically, the more complex your site, the more time you will need to work out issues with rules. This tutorial will provide you with several important tips to get started with ModSecurity.

On the hunt for Linux in Las Vegas. InterOp has it all but will it have Linux?

Super Ubuntu, now referred to as Super OS, started with a simple need: having a Live CD that worked out-of-the-box. "A long time ago" I used Live CDs a lot (now I use mainly Live USBs) , and one thing that frustrated me was having to install flash and MP3 codecs on the Live CD everytime I needed those features! I also know MP3 and flash (and all that restricted/"non-free" stuff) are probably the first things many people install on their Ubuntu systems, so I decided to make their life easier and at the same time promote ubuntu and open-source software. But that only gives him a jumping off point for his real innovation.

A quick walk-through on setting up org-signed SSL certificates for JBoss, Tomcat, etc. Specific notes on using your own company's CA as the signing authority.

Most of you may already be aware of Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems. If not, here is an article stating just that from Sun’s website. I read the news as soon as it was published on the net along with the reactions of Sun users for Sun products. What will be the future of mySQL or OpenOffice? It just dawned on me yesterday: What will be the future of ZFS and Btrfs, seeing how Chris Mason, the lead developer to Btrfs works for Oracle?

Canonical has begun beta-testing a file-synchronization service called Ubuntu One for its Ubuntu Linux desktop operating system. The closed beta test began Monday for invited members of the Ubuntu user community, with further testers able to sign up by requesting an invitation, Canonical said. Ubuntu One offers file synchronization for systems running Ubuntu 9.04, code-named Jaunty Jackalope, and is intended to be available to the general public in time for the launch of Ubuntu 9.10, code-named Karmic Koala, in October, Canonical said.

Several weeks ago, we saw a burst of news around memcached, an increasingly popular open-source caching software framework gaining attention from web companies and investors. Gear6 announced details of a new memcached-based product, and Schooner Information Technologies launched a set of memory-dense appliances, one targeted to MySQL, one to memcached. These announcements coincided with the MySQL Conference, as some see MySQL as the killer application for memcached, or perhaps vice versa. Other companies coming out of the woodwork around memcached include NorthScale, which has released no news as of yet except a shingle-sized web site introducing its capabilities.

When working on the TCO analysis of some large scale deployments of ICTs in developing countries I was really concerned with a main impediment to the use in most schools in many rural areas: the availability of electricity. In many countries low cost devices could make a significant difference in education in rural and isolated areas. But of course, most of these areas in developing countries don't have grid electricity, and won't have for many years to come as the infrastructure needed is just too expensive.

Microsoft has defended itself against criticism over aggressive marketing techniques in Africa to win people over to its software. “Despite the wealth of information that gets around, it's sad that sometimes reality has a hard time catching up with perception,” said Dr Cheikh Modibo Diarra, chairman of Microsoft in Africa. “I think that that perception comes from the fact that we are very successful because wherever we are, we are competing respectfully and openly; you can verify that everywhere," he told the BBC World Service's Digital Planet programme. For Dr Diarra, one problem alone defines Africa's situation. “Technology wise, African needs can be summarised in one word: access," he said.

In most Linux distro (including Ubuntu), the keyboard combo Ctrl + Alt + Backspace is often used as a shortcut key to restart X. However, in Ubuntu Jaunty, this keyboard shortcut was disabled, “to reduce issues experienced by users who accidentally trigger the key combo”, as quoted by Ubuntu. I don’t know how many people will find this a welcome improvement in Ubuntu. Personally, this has caused me a lot of inconvenience as I always depend on it to get myself out of a nasty crash.

May 13 VideoLAN announced and made ready for download the release candidate of its VLC Media Player 1.0. The new version supports more codecs and provides numerous enhancements.

This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install Xen (version 3.0.3) on a CentOS 5.3 (x86_64) system. Xen lets you create guest operating systems (*nix operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD), so called "virtual machines" or domUs, under a host operating system (dom0). Using Xen you can separate your applications into different virtual machines that are totally independent from each other (e.g. a virtual machine for a mail server, a virtual machine for a high-traffic web site, another virtual machine that serves your customers' web sites, a virtual machine for DNS, etc.), but still use the same hardware. This saves money, and what is even more important, it's more secure. If the virtual machine of your DNS server gets hacked, it has no effect on your other virtual machines. Plus, you can move virtual machines from one Xen server to the next one.

A nice online tool to translate your regular text into hacker-leet.

This interview with Red Hat Community Architect Greg Dekoenigsberg is a continuation of the LQ Community Manager Interview Series. I'd like to thank Greg for taking the time to answer these questions.

Over the years, Adobe has become more Linux friendly. First, Adobe released an excellent version of its Flash Player for Linux, and, more recently, the company launched a version of AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) for Linux. Now, however, with Strobe, its just announced Flash framework, Adobe looks like it may be getting more open-source friendly as well. Strobe, which will show up in the 3rd quarter of 2009, is an open framework for creating SWF (ShockWave Flash) server-side players. With Strobe, content creators and Web developers will be able to easily create sites that host their own video.