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With it being a while since we last compared many Linux distributions when it comes to their measurable desktop performance, we decided to run a new round of tests atop four of the most popular Linux distributions: OpenSuSE, Ubuntu, Fedora, and Mandriva. To see where these Linux distributions are at, we used their latest development releases and then performed all package updates as of 2009-07-15. Following that, we ran an arsenal of tests using the Phoronix Test Suite. Here are the results.

Hewlett-Packard Co., looking to take advantage of uncertainty surrounding the future of Sun products once it is acquired by Oracle, today unveiled a series of migration plans to entice Sparc users to switch to HP.

Bugs are a fact of life in the technology world, and the Open Source community is no exception. What is exceptional, however, is the open way these vulnerabilities are handled, as the developers behind Mozilla's Firefox browser have aptly demonstrated.

With all the recent heat generated about Mono and the C# language, it only seems appropriate to take a look at the issue from a programmer's perspective. David Siegel talks about how he came to choose C# for writing GNOME Do.

The FSF Boss told a press conference why he's vehemently against Digital Rights Management (DRM), which he describes as “Digital Restrictions Management” and criticized the European Patent Office's policy on software.

Using its expertise in LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project), Symbio Technologies has helped bankrupt schools in California re-use their existing workstations and finally find a use for the many outdated machines they receive as donations.

If you're coming fresh from Microsoft Excel, you might wonder where the Pivot tables are in OpenOffice.org Calc. The problem is, they're masquerading under the name of DataPilots. But, under any name, DataPilots are Calc's way of allowing you to quickly reorganize information in a range of cells so that you can gain a new insight into them. In a way, you could think of them as the spreadsheet equivalent of queries in databases. They aren't difficult to create, but they do take a little bit of thought to set up correctly.

Microsoft has signed another patent licensing agreement with a Linux using vendor. In this new case, Microsoft has signed a deal with Melco Group the group that owns tech vendor Buffulo Technology. The deal specifically deals with Buffalo's NAS (network attached storage) devices as well as Buffalo routers - both of which run Linux. The real problem here (among others) is the fact that neither party is expressly stating what patents are involved.

The KDE team are to work closer with Kwin developers to reinforce the integration of the KDE window manager into the project. The announcement was made at the end of the joint Gnome and KDE Gran Canaria Desktop Summit that came to a close July 11.

Kenneth Wimer of the Canonical Design Team has announced that the team is seeking high quality desktop backgrounds from "anyone and everyone" for the upcoming Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" release. The team have created a Flickr photo group pool where users can submit or simply browse the proposed backgrounds. "Ubuntu would like to include a beautiful set of images for our users to choose from in our next release," said Wimer.

Emery Fletcher knows just as much about Google's ChromeOS, the reigning champion of blogware, as any other commentator in the whole world, and generously shares his baseless insightful insights with a grateful audience.

Note: this is a post from one of our readers. I obviously have different views om the topic, but I think it’s important to share maruadventurer’s views. — Tony Mobily 1: The Operating system is no longer important. In 2009, people develop for the Web, full stop There are whole genre of programs that like Photoshop will probably never make it to the web. Practically any program that requires a physical interface will require an OS. CAD/CAM, topology, astrophysics, astronomy, etc. The list is long. The examples given by the author make a major omission. Read the contrarian view at Free Software Magazine.

Skip-free audio and video playback is a fundamental expectation for many - if not most - Linux users. Given the importance of this feature and the increase in hardware performance over the years, one would think that the audio latency problem would have been solved some time ago. The recent posting of (and mixed reception for) the "RealtimeKit" mechanism shows that this issue remains open, though, and that we are still short of a consensus on how it should be solved.

Some interesting comments above, but the gross inaccuracy is in the headline and story. Peer-to-Patent has not shut down. It is still operating. The only thing that has occurred is that the USPTO has decided to suspend an[y] new applications until they have an opportunity to assess the effectiveness of the program. Meanwhile, Peer-to-Patent still has 70+ pending patent applications under review. Come on over and check it out.

The Luxembourg security specialists G-SEC have published details of a vulnerability in the majority of browsers which will either crash the browser or consume so much memory that it makes the computer virtually unusable. The trick is simple. Using JavaScript's DOM (Document Object Model), create a selection menu on the web page; a select element. Then assign to that select element's length attribute a very high value, as a result there is a continuous allocation of memory. The length attribute specifies the number of menu items the select element should contain, and according to the specification (and common sense) should be read only, but in many cases, it is writeable.

Amid the fanfare of last week's Chrome OS announcement, Google quietly released an open-source NX server, dubbed Neatx, for remote desktop display. NX technology was developed by NoMachine to handle remote X Window connections and make a graphical desktop display usable over the Internet. By its own admission, Google has been looking at remote desktop technologies for "quite a while" and decided to develop Neatx because existing NX server products are either proprietary or difficult to maintain.

At the recent Gran Canaria Desktop Summit in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Amarok developers Bart Cerneels and Nikolaj Hald Nielsen gave a talk about how a community-developed Free Software project like Amarok can work with businesses in a way that benefited both, without compromising on the spirit or openness of the project. One of the things that was touched upon was the recent release of the Palm Pre smartphone which relies on Apple's iTunes software for synchronising music with a computer. An interesting question asked was what would happen if Apple decided to block the Pre from using iTunes. Now, just over a week later, this is exactly what happened. Apple has indeed blocked the Pre from using iTunes with its latest update.

Being a special unique snowflake, I work part-time for Red Hat as a file systems developer and part-time as a science writer and Linux consultant. I love having more than one job; boredom is my greatest enemy and switching gears every week keeps me interested and entertained.

One of the most volatile and yet needed industries is the data storage industry. As computing technologies become more cloud centric and rely upon the web for business, productivity, education to even recreation, there is a constant push to increase capacities but even more so increase I/O throughput. As a result of recent demands, our approach with these technologies need to be re-evaluated. The primary focus of this article is on the future of data storage concepts and the limited life and functionality of RAID.

The inaugural meeting of the Online Gaming High Scalability Special Interest Group was a one day conference on the theme of "Should you bet on the Cloud". From the users point of view, an online gaming system seems simple but behind the scenes there is a high level of complexity, from ensuring response times, handling hundreds, thousands or more clients, ensuring the reliability of the entire system and managing the security of a system which may be handling virtual or real money. The question asked by the conference was can "The Cloud" help address those issues. The 180 conference attendees came from a wide range of businesses, from the obvious online bookies, poker and other game oriented companies to banks and financial institutions who have similar issues.