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Microsoft's unexpected move Monday to donate thousands of lines of code for inclusion in the Linux operating system kernel is being interpreted by some as recognition by Microsoft that it's a hybrid IT world out there, and its software must co-exist with Linux and other open-source products. Make no mistake, Microsoft hasn't abandoned its ambitions to be the dominant player in the data center, just as it already is on the desktop. And if that means engaging in some "co-opetition" with Linux in the short-term, so be it. But anyone who sat through the keynote speech by Microsoft COO Kevin Turner at the Worldwide Partner Conference last week knows Microsoft has a long list of technologies -- including Linux -- it has in its competitive sights.

atop is a handy top-like program that shows system load information in a separate section on top of process information; Juliet Kemp gives us a tour of this useful utility.

A week after adding API access to its Amazon-esque cloud, Rackspace has now open-sourced these APIs. On Wednesday, the company said it had opened up the specs for both its Cloud Servers APIs and Cloud Files APIs under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Meant to encourage the development of open standards for all so-called infrastructure clouds, the move is in stark contrast to Amazon's much-discussed silence over its own API philosophies.

In less than two weeks we will be officially releasing Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 "Sandtorg" and this by far is the biggest upgrade ever to our flagship testing and benchmarking software. While the Phoronix Test Suite is most often associated with Linux, this open-source software is also compatible with Mac OS X, OpenSolaris, and BSD operating systems too, all of which offer new improvements with Phoronix Test Suite 2.0. In this article we have detailed some of the major highlights of Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 and how we seek to drive innovation into PC benchmarking and performance profiling.

Mozilla recommends its updated Firefox 3.0.12 version for its new 3.0 series in that it removes a few critical security issues.

This guide explains how you can run virtual machines with Sun VirtualBox 3.0 (released on June 30, 2009) on a headless Fedora 11 server. Normally you use the VirtualBox GUI to manage your virtual machines, but a server does not have a desktop environment. Fortunately, VirtualBox comes with a tool called VBoxHeadless that allows you to connect to the virtual machines over a remote desktop connection, so there's no need for the VirtualBox GUI.

Adobe has used the Open Source Conference (OSCON), currently taking place in California's San Jose, to announce a new strategy for its Flash Platform. Some people are questioning Adobe's motives.

Rumors are swirling that Dell’s U.S. Web site has stopped selling Ubuntu-based desktop Linux PCs. What are the potential implications for Canonical and the desktop Linux movement? Here's the scoop.

"A lot of people say calling Debian, Fedora, or Slackware, GNU/Linux opposed to calling it Linux, makes it harder to explain to people. An example, Bob could tell Sarah “You should use Fedora. It will work with your hardware, it’s fast, and it’s free” and Sarah might ask “What’s Fedora?” and Bob would tell her “It’s Linux.” and Sarah will understand. Wrong."

Microsoft was in violation of the GPL (General Public License) on the Hyper-V code it released to open source this week. After Redmond covered itself in glory by opening up the code, it now looks like it may have acted simply to head off any potentially embarrassing legal dispute over violation of the GPL. The rest was theater.

Many a vigorous debate has been fought over any possible legal threats that might be inherent in Mono. Now that Microsoft has extended its Community Promise to cover select parts of the C# programming language, which is what Mono is built on, it is being hailed as evidence that Mono is safe. Bruce Byfield tries to answer the question, is it really?

The real-time web is shaping up to be the next online revolution, and as we saw during our RealTime CrunchUp earlier this month, it’s already begun. But there are still some things that are holding us back — for one, many services still aren’t actually real time, they’re just something close to it. That may work well enough for sites like Facebook, but as we begin to see more innovation on this front, there’s likely going to be much more demand for technology that is truly real time. Groovy Corp, a database software marker partially owned by Intel, thinks it has the answer: a relational data management system called the SQL Switch, which it says will make true real-time both affordable and feasible.

Now that everybody has jumped on the Netbook bandwagon, a new mobile device parade is pulling into town. Led by Qualcomm, so-called Smartbooks are slated to debut in late 2009. Expected to be slightly larger than the iPhone, Smartbooks are mobile Internet devices (MIDs) that run Linux, Google Android and Windows.

LiVES is a video editing and VJ tool for Linux and BSD systems and today it celebrates its version 1.0 birthday. LiVES provides realtime video performance and non-linear editing for all classes of video editors and VJs (VJ is the Video equivalent of a DJ).

The management interface of the current stable version of DD-WRT, the free router firmware, suffers a vulnerability that lets attackers run programs with root rights on the router. The vulnerability, described at milw0rm and in the DD-WRT forum, is caused by inadequate handling of meta-characters in the query string in DD-WRT's httpd web server. The server will then run programs even when no session is running.

Known for manufacturing storage solutions in the enterprise, desktop, mobile computing, consumer and retail markets. It was only a matter of time before Seagate introduced their very own Network Attached Storage (NAS) product, the Seagate BlackArmor NAS. No, BlackArmor isn't some epic World of Warcraft item to lust over. This is serious business, just as backing up your data should be. Read the full Seagate BlackArmor NAS 420 Review.

After writing my article on The Linux RAM Disk for Linux+ Magazine and also after writing a very generic Linux RAM disk block device module, I decided to play around with the concept of RAM disks on OpenSolaris 2009.06. I must admit that this was actually a very great learning experience. One that I wish to share with the reader. Note that this post will be separated into two section: (2) tmpfs and (3) ramdiskadm.

I am a Linux geek. There I said it. Actually, I am kind of proud of being a Linux geek. I slogged through the bad old days to get here. It seems like every day something new shows up that makes me glad that I chose Linux as my tool of choice.

Yesterday NVIDIA released their first 190.xx Linux beta driver for their GeForce and Quadro graphics cards. The NVIDIA 190.16 Beta driver brought a number of VDPAU fixes, PowerMizer control features, a number of new official and unofficial OpenGL extensions receiving GLX protocol support, and there were a number of other fixes and enhancements too. However, now that we have had a chance to analyze this driver, there is more in store than what the change-log shares regarding this driver. There is in fact support for the unreleased OpenGL 3.2 specification.

Free software may be becoming more attractive to businesses, but even though using the software is free, chances are they'll still need to hire some technical assistance from time to time. Open source tech support experts sometimes need a few different skills than their proprietary counterparts, but their salaries are often quite similar -- if not better.