Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

What do you get when you cross a Red Hat with a Green Beret? I don't know, but the commercial Linux and Java application server markets are about to find out. Retired General Henry Hugh Shelton — a native Tarheel born in Tarboro, North Carolina, and a former commander of the 82nd Airborne Division based in Fort Bragg — was named chairman of the board of directors at Red Hat on Monday.

If you've ever been gridlocked in a group decision-making process, you know how quickly things can go from frustrating to downright unwieldy. Even with a common goal in mind, it's easy to get bogged down in data and competing opinions. Analysis of Competing Hypothesis (ACH) is an open source application that's been helping the CIA with its research methodologies for years and it's freely available to the public to help groups look at -- and solve -- problems objectively.

Key to any operating system buying decision is its lifespan for support and maintenance updates. As it turns out, most of the major operating system vendors offer support lengths that, on the surface, don't differ radically from each other -- though there are exceptions to the rule that IT managers need to keep in mind if they're going to get the most support for their dollar.

Japanese reseller Redstar has begun taking pre-orders for an ARM11-based 10.1-inch tablet computer from RealEase that runs the new Shogo Linux distro. The Shogo Tablet runs on a 533MHz Freescale i.MX37 system-on-chip (SoC) with 256MB RAM and 4GB flash, and offers a 1024 × 600 capacitive display, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, plus 3G and Zigbee options, says RealEase.

Google developers have announced that Chromium, the open source browser on which the company builds the Chrome browser, is getting a GPU graphics overhaul. The development has been driven by the work on developing WebGL and 3D CSS transform support. It involves incorporating a new GPU process into the browser's many-process model which processes rendering requests from other Chromium processes through OpenGL or Direct3D using ANGLE (Almost Native Graphics Layer Engine)$.

Last week we reported that a native ZFS implementation for Linux is soon being released that is based upon the work by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to bring Sun's ZFS file-system to Linux as a CDDL-licensed kernel module. As said though in that article, there is already a ZFS module for FUSE (File-system in User-space) that is already available and with it not living in the GPL-land of the Linux kernel, it is legally allowed, but it does not come without some performance overhead. Over the weekend though there's been some discussions in the related forum thread and elsewhere about the dependability of ZFS-FUSE and what the level of impact on using FUSE really amounts to in real-world usage. We have tested the ZFS-FUSE -- both the latest stable and Git snapshots -- and have compared this alternate ZFS Linux implementation to that of the native EXT4 and Btrfs.

The Linux Mint team has released the final version of Linux Mint 9 ("Isadora"), based on Ubuntu 10.04. Linux Mint 9 features a new software manager with 30,000 packages, a new backup tool, and menu and interface improvements, says the team.

For years, decades, the big companies didn't tend to wage patent wars on each other. The reason is simple. Major patent holders don't tend to target other major patent holders because of MAD (mutually assured destruction). Or, in other words, if you sue me, I sue you, and we can both burn potentially hundreds of millions per year in legal costs just to conduct a business fight. Well that was the case until Oracle went after Google and now Allen is suing the world.

So, do you hate software patents yet, now that you've read about Paul Allen's patent infringement lawsuit against the world and his dog? I think it ought to inspire you, reading Allen's complaint, that it might get you to the tipping point, or at least help you to understand why most engineers do hate software patents, because they are a drain on the economy and a hindrance to innovation. So we did Allen's complaint as text, sort of as Exhibit A, shall we say, illustrating the point. But if you can figure out precisely what this litigation is about from this complaint, what the defendants are alleged to have done wrong, you are doing better than I am. It's unbelievably vague.

At home, you use Linux. At work, you use Windows. How do you share files between them? If you said, “USB drives” or “CDs” or “DVDs” there is a better way: Dropbox. Dropbox provides you with the ability to sync files between computers via a daemon. Additionally, they’re available on the web for those times when you don’t have physical proximity to one of your computers but you still need access to your files.

If you recall, Novell's former best friend for SUSE Linux was Microsoft. Microsoft and Novell have a partnership where the two parties had certificates that indemnified SUSE users from any intellectual property liability. In addition, Microsoft officially recommended SUSE Linux Enterprise for hybrid Windows/Linux shops. Microsoft also distributed coupons for maintenance and support for Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. The Microsoft-Novell partnership dates back to 2006.

I whipped up a couple of t-shirt designs on the topic of Oracle's commitment to releasing Java. If you're attending JavaOne or OpenWorld, I'd appreciate it if you'd wear one, just to let Larry know that you care. Or if you just happen to be wandering the neighborhood (I know that there are lots of Java hackers who work within just a few blocks of Moscone). Or if you will be spending quality time with an Oracle salesperson. Or in any other situation where the spirit moves you. It's a gentle but clear way to express your feelings (well.... the last design on the page isn't all that gentle - but it's more fun).

LXer Feature: 29-Aug-2010

The big stories this week include still more fallout from the Oracle-Google lawsuit, 10 differences between Linux and BSD, the joys of determining Linux market share, Microsoft says they love Open Source..again, and last but not least Paul Allen decides to sue just about everybody for patent infringement. Enjoy!

Earlier this month we delivered benchmarks comparing the ZFS, EXT4, and Btrfs file-systems from both solid-state drives and hard drives. The EXT4 file-system was the clear winner in terms of the overall disk performance while Btrfs came in second followed by Sun's ZFS in FreeBSD 8.2. It was a surprise that in our most recent testing the EXT4 file-system turned around and did better than the next-generation Btrfs file-system, but it turns out that Btrfs regressed hard in Linux 2.6.35 as to be found in Ubuntu 10.10 and other soon-to-be-released distributions. However, regardless of where Btrfs is performing, its speed can be boosted by enabling its transparent zlib compression support.

Former Microsoft executive and billionaire Paul Allen sued several major Internet companies and three large retailers for patent infringement today, asserting that four patents originating at Interval Research, Allen's dot-com era think tank, cover basic web browsing and e-commerce technologies. A Wired magazine profile of Interval Research suggests that by 1999, the institute was struggling, with Allen having spent upwards of $100 million on research and not much to show for it. "Interval always had a special buzz and a collection of talent that, even in the annals of technological genius, stands out."

Just shy of a month ago was when NVIDIA last released a proprietary Linux driver, at which point they also released a second driver that was their OpenGL 4.1 preview driver. This Saturday though NVIDIA has provided a new driver release, which is tagged as the 256.52 pre-release. This new Linux driver release isn't overly exciting, but it does carry some prominent fixes that will please some NVIDIA customers.

Many electrons have been expended in the discussion of Oracle's recently-filed lawsuit against Google alleging patent and copyright infringements in the Android platform. Your editor is somewhat reluctant to contribute to the flood; at this point, the amount of real information which is available is minimal while the amount of speculation is high. This will be an important case, though; the world will be watching to see how it turns out. So here are a few thoughts to add to the pile.

The Linux Mint team has released the final version of Linux Mint 9 ("Isadora"), based on Ubuntu 10.04. Linux Mint 9 features a new software manager with 30,000 packages, a new backup tool, and menu and interface improvements, says the team.

In the second episode of the new Behind KDE series of interviews with KDE sysadmins, we meet KDE's "identity expert", Ben Cooksley - the guy behind the new identity.kde.org, which will be launched next week. Ben is one of the leaders involved in setting up key parts of the new git infrastructure. Normally he's quiet and avoids publicity - another reason to put him in the spotlight. This interview even contains one of the rare pictures that are available of Ben.

You may think that the last thing on earth that could happen to your company would be that your business might be sued because it used a particular software program. You’d be wrong. In the aftermath of the Bilski Supreme Court decision, the Supreme Court did nothing to stop software or business method patents. As a result, not only software development companies but all businesses are now in more danger from patent lawsuits than ever before.