Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

On Unix platform, tar command is the primary archiving utility. Understanding various tar command options will help you master the archive file manipulation. In this article, let us review various tar examples including how to create tar archives (with gzip and bzip compression), extract a single file or directory, view tar archive contents, validate the integrity of tar archives, finding out the difference between tar archive and file system, estimate the size of the tar archives before creating it etc.,

While there's likely already a number of you tired of hearing about Valve's efforts to bring the Steam client and Source Engine to the Linux desktop and are just waiting for an official announcement, there's a few more Linux details to shed this afternoon for those interested in this event that has the possibility of sparking a Linux game revolution. Valve rolled out their "Steam 2010 Client" to Windows gamers today, which brings a new user-interface and other improvements (here's the details for those interested), and is also what their forthcoming Mac OS X client is based upon. Hidden within this major Steam client update are more references to Linux.

Canonical - the commercial entity behind the Ubuntu distribution of Linux - is taking to the clouds. But will cloud builders take to the new Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and its Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud variant? It sure looks like it, if the early results with UEC are any indication. Companies like the utility computing ideas embodied in Amazon's EC2 compute cloud and S3 storage service. But any company that has been managing its own data processing for decades is not going to trust its key applications and workloads on EC2, no matter how cheap and easy it is, no matter how secure Amazon says it is.

Canonical has announced that it will offer its own certification programme for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and that graduates will be entitled to claim an 'Ubuntu Certified Professional' certification. Previously Canonical had worked with the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) to offer the Ubuntu Certified Professional exam which combined the general Linux LPI 101 and 102 modules with the Ubuntu 199 module to provide an Ubuntu tailored qualification.

The clipboard is one of the oldest and most important features of desktop computing. With it, you can temporarily store pictures, images, and even file information in the system’s memory, and then copy or move that information to a new destination. KDE has an advanced clipboard system, largely due to a small program called Klipper, which can store more than one piece of data. KDE also has the ability to copy and move files with copying and pasting, and automatic creation of files using clipboard data.

I just finished writing that new book about Fedora 13 last night, so I'm feeling pretty good right now. It's nice to have a project like that put to bed. Of course, when writing any beginner's Linux book, invariably the topic of DVD playback comes up, and I always wrestle with what to tell new Linux users about the convoluted legal mess that watching a DVD on a Linux machine has become. For those who are unfamiliar, DVDs are encrypted with a content scrambling system (CSS) that is designed to prevent unauthorized machines from playing DVDs. What it's really for, of course, is to prevent unauthorized machines from copying the content of a DVD, so illicit copies of Did You Hear About the Morgans? won't be distributed freely across the Internet.

Google's Android, the increasingly important embedded Linux, had one major problem: it had been moving slowly away from the Linux mainstream. Now, after the recent Linux Foundation Collaboration Conference, Android and Linux are coming back together. Not only is Google going to be hiring two new Android developers to work more closely with the Linux kernel development team, they're also working on re-merging its driver code with Linux. Indeed, the first series of driver patches that will bring Android and Linux back into alignment have already arrived.

Freescale Semiconductor announced that it has signed strategic agreements with Enea, Green Hills Software, and Mentor Graphics to support Freescale's QorIQ, PowerQUICC, and StarCore processors. The agreement with Mentor Graphics calls for the company to work with Freescale on developing a common Linux build and distribution methodology for PowerQUICC and QorIQ system-on-chips (SoCs).

Prior to launching their next-generation graphics processors, NVIDIA dropped their obfuscated open-source driver and have said they will not provide any open-source support at all for their GeForce GTX 400 "Fermi" series as they just recommended their customers use the X.Org VESA driver until they can install the official binary Linux driver. However, the community developers working on the Nouveau driver project still plan to support the GeForce GTX 470/480 graphics cards via clean-room reverse engineering. Today their efforts might be helped thanks to a hardware sponsorship.

It was simply a matter of time before Linux became my primary operating system. My most recent malware incident was the final straw that sent me into the safe haven of Ubuntu. Suffice it to say that last week was a pretty crappy one for me. My FaceBook account was somehow compromised, causing untold amounts of my friends to receive a spammed invite to some sort of diet seminar scam event and then having to endure the embarrassment that accompanied it.

LXer Feature: 26-Apr-2010

In this week's LXWR we have Oracle charging for Sun's ODF plug-in, Stallman reconsiders his existence, Steve Jobs tells people who want porn to buy an Android, a farewell to Songbird and much more. Enjoy!

Free software began as a political movement: its central aim was – and remains – the propagation of freedom. Later, it became a development methodology too, largely at the hands of Linus, whose geographical isolation in Finland forced him to develop ways of using the Internet to coordinate a new kind of massive, but decentralised, global collaboration. Later still, free software also became a way of making serious money – something that Stallman has repeatedly said he is quite happy with, contrary to much FUD claiming otherwise.

The past few days we have been reporting on Valve's Steam client coming to Linux (and some of the Source Engine games too) soon as we had found Linux references within the Steam Mac OS X client and then other Linux references. We even ended up finding the unreleased Linux files on the Valve servers.

While a bulk of the Linux community is engaged by the release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS next week, another popular Linux distribution put out its first major update of 2010 a few days ago. PCLinuxOS, the Mandriva-based OS that is one of the top 10 most popular Linux distributions according to DistroWatch, is out with this update that bumps their kernel to Linux 2.6.32.11 while still carrying the BFS scheduler, updated NVIDIA and ATI driver support, locale improvements, and much more. We have a few benchmarks up this morning of PCLinuxOS 2010 compared to the latest snapshot of Ubuntu 10.04.

The final version of the Procurement and Open Source Software Guideline has been published on OSOR.eu. The study, commissioned by the European Commission as part of the "Dissemination of good practice in Open Source Software (GPOSS)" measure under the IDABC programme, gives guidelines for public administration on how and why publicly acquire open source software.

Previously, iFixit was a repair site that posted step-by-step disassembly instructions for gadgets posted by iFixit staff. The company makes money by selling parts (like replacement iPhone screens) that intrepid fixers can use in their repair projects. Later, iFixit implemented a gallery tool for anybody to post an illustrative teardown manual for their gadgets (which Gadget Lab helped introduce with a Sony teardown contest). Now, the site has repurposed itself into a full-blown wiki for repair manuals, where contributors can collaborate on repair instructions in real time.

IBM is turning to technology from Novell to build Linux OS powered software appliances -- a move that aims to deliver easy-to-deploy software for physical, virtual and cloud-based environments in use at small to midsized businesses. The new software appliances deliver solutions for IBM Lotus, Websphere and Cognos software applications. Specifically, IBM will be offering software appliances for the IBM Lotus Foundations collaboration suite as well as the Lotus Protector for Mail Security. IBM's WebSphere Application Server is also benefiting with a software appliance aimed at virtualized environments, while Big Blue is ramping up its analytics offerings with appliances for its Cognos Now! and IBM Smart Analytics Optimizer packages.

TORONTO -- How will we know when IPv4 address space is all used up? And what will happen when that day comes? The modern Internet has been built using IPv4 (define), which provides for 4.3 billion address, a supply that could run dry within the next two years. Organizations that allocate IP address space like the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) have attempted to forecast when IPv4 address space will be gone, but it's not an exact science, and there is no precise date to mark on a calendar.

Most Linux distributions include attractive graphical interfaces, but you can do a lot more from the command line interface once you know your way around. For tasks like controlling and monitoring the distro's underlying system, the command line remains indispensable.

Opera Software has released a version of its flagship mobile web browser that runs on Linux, Windows, and Macintosh desktop computers. Useful for testing mobile websites, Opera Mobile 10 runs in a variety of resolutions and in both touch and keypad-only modes, the company says.