LXer Weekly Roundup for 3-Feb-2008

LXer Feature: 3-Feb-2008 In the ramp up to SCALE next weekend we have a SCALE announcement, a concise history of Linux, Nokia acquires Trolltech. We have articles on VLAN's and Rootkit detectors on Linux, How to apply Unix philosophy to personal productivity, Eight interesting improvements in GNOME 2.22, Mythbusters- Vista gets BUSTED and the big news of the week, if not the month Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo for $44.6 Billion dollars.

In the ramp up to SCALE next weekend we have a SCALE announcement, a concise history of Linux, Nokia acquires Trolltech. We have articles on VLAN's and Rootkit detectors on Linux, How to apply Unix philosophy to personal productivity, Eight interesting improvements in GNOME 2.22, Mythbusters- Vista gets BUSTED and the big news of the week, if not the month Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo for $44.6 Billion dollars.

SCALE Weighs In!: The SCALE staff continue to put the final touches on SCALE 6x If you want to meet me (Scott) I will be on the convention floor all day Saturday and Sunday.

History of Linux: In The Beginning: It was 1991, and the ruthless agonies of the cold war were gradually coming to an end. There was an air of peace and tranquility that prevailed in the horizon. In the field of computing, a great future seemed to be in the offing, as powerful hardware pushed the limits of the computers beyond what anyone expected. But still, something was missing. And it was the none other than the Operating Systems, where a great void seemed to have appeared.

Nokia to acquire KDE originator Trolltech: Trolltech, the originator of Qt, which forms the basis of the Linux KDE desktop environment, is being acquired by Nokia, the world’s number-one mobile phone vendor. Nokia expects its acquisition of Trolltech to accelerate its cross-platform software strategy for mobile devices and desktop applications, and to enhance its Internet services business.

How Linux Users Should React in a Windows World: Many Linux users find themselves working in Windows-based environments. More often that not, this is not something that can be avoided, and to be honest, I cannot actually say for certain that it should be.

Linux Detecting Rootkits: A rootkit is a program designed to take fundamental control of a computer system, without authorization by the system’s owners and legitimate managers. Most rootkits use the power of the kernel to hide themselves, they are only visible from within the kernel. How do I detect rootkits under CentOS or Debian Linux server?

Tiny PC, relatively tiny price (but the exchange rate's killing us): I'm always on the lookout for ultra-small PCs that are also a) fanless and b) not super-expensive. I've found a good candidate, via this link on Linux Devices, called the PicoPC, from Devon, England's Sharp and Tappin Technology. They use the pico-ITX boards from VIA, and they look great, are really small ... and don't cost an arm and a leg. Well, maybe an arm, but you can keep (at least half of) your leg.

VLANs on Linux: One thing that did not make it into the Linux Networking Cookbook was a chapter on setting up VLANs (Virtual LANs). VLANs are logical subnetting, rather than being constrained by your physical Ethernet switches. Now that “smart” switches have gotten so inexpensive, VLANs are nice options even for small networks.

Seven Stunning Facts About Microsoft's Profits: The VAR Guy loves Red Hat, open source and software as a service. But if you think open source and SaaS will quickly kill Microsoft, guess again. It takes Microsoft only 10 hours -- yes, 10 hours -- to equal Red Hat's entire quarterly profit of $20 million. Skeptical? Check out this stunning look at Microsoft's quarterly profits, from The VAR Guy.

Applying Unix Philosophy to Personal Productivity: Reprogramming your personal workflow with a productivity system is a lot like programming computer software: given a stream of incoming information and tasks, you set up holding spaces and logical rules for turning it all into action. Like software that automates activities, good productivity systems take the thinking out of what to do with incoming data, and make it a no-brainer to turn those bits into an accomplishment.

The Torvalds-Simpsons Prize: The Torvalds-Simpsons Prize is an experiment to see if the Open-Source community can influence mainstream media to give our hero, the one and only Linus Torvalds, a cameo appearance on a regular episode of The Simpsons.

Mythbusters- Vista is BUSTED: ...Why not start with a computer loaded with basic stuff that works 100 percent of the time? Then, give us the option of adding the bells and whistles. There's another solution available to consumers: Switch to a Linux-based OS such as Ubuntu. Since most Linux OSs are free, there's no business reason to bloat up the system with feature frills...

Eight Interesting Improvements In GNOME 2.22: Back in November we started sharing some of the exciting features planned for the GNOME 2.22 and 2.24 releases, and now that the first GNOME 2.22.0 Beta release is planned for later this week, we have taken another look at the packages set for inclusion and the changes that have actually been made. While nothing groundbreaking will be introduced in GNOME 2.22, this desktop environment does have some moderate changes worth noting. In this article are eight interesting packages that either have noticeable changes since GNOME 2.20 or are new to GNOME. Linux ext3 Filesystem" Optimize Directories / File Access Time: How do I improve my file server performance. I've many large files in directories and how do I speed up access time? The -D option causes e2fsck to try to optimize all directories, either by reindexing them if the filesystem supports directory indexing, or by sorting and compressing directories for smaller directories.

Microsoft Offers $44.6B for Yahoo: Microsoft Corp. has pounced on slumping Internet icon Yahoo Inc. with an unsolicited takeover offer of $44.6 billion in its boldest bid yet to challenge Google Inc.'s dominance of the lucrative online search and advertising markets. The Justice Department says it is interested in reviewing antitrust issues associated with it.

Linux has better Windows compatibility than Vista: I have been using Vista for well over a year now (since Beta 1). Of course Vista is slow, its bloated (over 10x the size of XP), aero kills system performance (even though this should be done on the video card), networking is pathetically slow, etc etc. We all know Vista sucks.

A Debian victory for the $15 Laptop: The fact that Debian Etch -- a modern, up-to-date Linux distribution -- can run so well in 233 MHz of CPU and 64 MB of RAM is something truly to behold.

We have two articles in our FUD section this week for you to peruse.

What's all the FUD about?: A great editorial article discussing the eruption of Linux-related FUD brought on by huge corporations that fear the little penguin that could.

Microsoft Runs Linux Smear Campaign: Microsoft is going out of their way to buy up keyword searches on Google. They've bought up the keyword "Linux" so that an erroneous website claiming that Windows Server 2008 is superior to Linux Servers pops up first. The site doesn't go on to backup this claim with any real evidence; in fact, it mostly argues that Windows Server 2008 is better than previous Windows Servers.