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With all the hubbub about Snow Leopard and Windows 7, there's another operating system out there you may not have noticed that's getting a significant update: Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu backer Canonical plans to release its "Karmic Koala" version on Thursday, and both the desktop and server versions of the open-source operating system take significant steps toward cloud computing. The concept of moving work away from the computer in front of you and into the network does have some merit, but cloud computing is today's fashionable buzzword, and Canonical Chief Executive Mark Shuttleworth is sensitive to its overuse.

Psystar and Apple continue to battle it out, and things are coming to a head next month. They are fighting on two major fronts, and both will be the subject of oral argument on November 12. It looks like we will see an end, one way or another, of much of the first Apple-Psystar litigation. Psystar, I gather, would like this to be the end of this litigation, period, and then it will be on to Florida, I assume, for the second, the one over Snow Leopard, which Psystar has already been infringing, from Apple's point of view. Psystar has said it will accept an injunction of just Leopard, since it claims it isn't selling it any more anyway, and a nominal fine. All the rest of Apple's claims, it argues, are then moot.

Much of the realtime scheduling work in Linux has been based around getting the best behavior out of the POSIX realtime scheduling classes. Techniques like priority inheritance, for example, exist to ensure that the highest-priority task really can run within a bounded period of time. In much of the rest of the world, though, priorities and POSIX realtime are no longer seen as the best way to solve the problem. Instead, the realtime community likes to talk about "deadlines" and deadline-oriented scheduling. In this article, we'll look at a deadline scheduler has recently been posted for review and related discussion at the recent Real Time Linux Workshop in Dresden.

Not only has virtualization advanced the state of the art in maximizing server efficiency, it has also opened the door to new technologies that were not possible before. One of these technologies is the virtual appliance, which fundamentally changes the way software is delivered, configured, and managed. But the power behind virtual appliances lies in the ability to freely share them among different hypervisors. Learn the ideas and benefits behind virtual appliances, and discover a standard solution for virtual appliance interoperability called the Open Virtualization Format.

Fedora 12 provides "out of the box" support for kernel mode-setting with ATI R600/700 series graphics hardware, but it does not provide 3D acceleration by default. However, Red Hat's X developers have made it very easy to enable this 3D support for the ATI Radeon HD 2000, 3000, and 4000 series hardware by just installing a special Mesa package from yum. In this article we are taking a quick look at where the R600/700 3D support is at in Fedora 12.

What's new in the open source world? We've put together a list of software that was first released (or first made open source) in the last couple of years. While many of these apps are still early in the development process, they're all usable, and in fact, have all acquired fairly substantial user bases in a short time. What do they have in common? While the apps on our list cover a gamut of categories, we did uncover a few trends. First, a number of the most successful new open source projects relate to mobility.

Many Linux users pride themselves on being highly technical geeks. And, while that's great for finding people to contribute code patches to projects, it means that a lot of first-time Linux users get branded a "newbie" and are made to feel stupid when they ask fundamental questions about things we take for granted. To be blunt, that situation sucks. If people have honest questions about Linux, we need to be helping them find answers, and we need to do so without sarcastic comments, without "RTFM" and without telling people "just use Google."

IBM recently announced they are pairing up with Cannonical and Red Hat to develop a Windows 7 alternative (see “IBM Client for Smart Work“). This pairing makes perfect sense as IBM has been a supporter of open source and Linux for some time now. Not only that but IBM released their office suite, Lotus Symphony, a few years ago. Back when this suite was released I did some technical journals on it only to find it difficult to install, rather buggy, and not well supported. That was then, this is now.

Many KDE 3 users swear by the K menu and would dare anyone to challenge it with something better. Fortunately for those people, KDE 4 retained that menu version as an option. For the rest of us, there are a couple of more robust menus that offer a variety of features. Lancelot is a third-party menu that has now entered into the KDE fold. It is the one I use, and many others have found it pretty useful. In this post, I will present to you some of Lancelot’s features so that you can decide if it is right for you.

Qualcomm has established a subsidiary to develop software for mobile open source platforms. The Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. (QUIC) will optimize open source software with Qualcomm technology, using platforms including Linux, Webkit, Android, Chrome, and Symbian, which last week achieved a major milestone in migrating to open source.

First they wrestled down Microsoft, now they're litigating against other big IT players: Eolas intends to enforce its patent on web technologies and plug-ins for integrating interactive content at all cost. However, a partner of the legal firm representing Eolas assured the readers of German Focus magazine that the vendor does not intend to cripple the internet. The lawyer also said that individuals, such as Facebook users or bloggers, using the technologies for integrating, for example, videos into their web pages or profiles, have nothing to fear. Litigation against such individuals doesn't make sense economically, he added.

Is Red Hat making a play for the open source database market? Linux leader Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) is investing in open source database vendor EnterpriseDB, the official announcement is set for release on Tuesday October 27th. The official press release does not disclose the exact amount that Red Hat is investing, but it is part of a $19M series C round of funding. EnterpriseDB is one of the leading commercial backers behind the PostgreSQL(also known as Postgres) database. While the Red Hat investment in EnterpriseDB maybe new, EnterpriseDB and Red Hat are hardly strangers. EnterpriseDB's president Ed Boyajian is a former Red Hat exec. Red Hat is also no stranger to PostgreSQL either.

During an Oct. 26 phone briefing today, Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth described the Ubuntu 9.10 desktop, server and cloud strategy to members of the IT media. WorksWithU tuned in and posed some key questions to Shuttleworth. Here are 10 highlights from the call.

Vuurmuur 0.8 bèta 2 is released. Vuurmuur is a powerful Firewall Manager built on top of the Linux Iptables.

LXer Feature: 26-Oct-2009

The O is for October, harvest time here in NW Ohio USA. A beat-slicer, a book review, and a milestone release compose this trio of reviews for the Fall season in Linux audio fashion.

Windows 7 is now officially out. But in the next month four top-notch Linux versions will hit final release.

When it comes to video playback on Linux, the premiere choice for video acceleration is currently using VDPAU with its CPU-efficient, GPU-accelerated capabilities that even has no problems playing 1080p video files with extremely low-end hardware. However, VDPAU is not yet widespread in all Linux video drivers, and other free software developers have been working on improving other areas of the Linux video stack too.

Dropbox is a storage application and service operated by Evenflow, Inc. The service enables users to store and sync files online and between computers.Dropbox has a cross-platform client (Linux for x86 and x86_64, Mac, Windows and the iPhone) that enables users to drop any file into a Dropbox folder that is then synced to the web and the users’ other computers with the Dropbox client. Files in the Dropbox folder may then be shared with other Dropbox users or accessed from the web. Users may also upload files manually through a web browser.

When dealing with large distributed systems, knowing some basic performance and failure numbers helps you understand what you can reasonably expect both in terms of performance and reliability.