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If you manage remote servers or if you have more than one computer you most likely have used the ssh command. A simple description of ssh is that it's a secure version of telnet, but that's like saying a Porsche is a just a better version of a Volkswagen bug. Amoung other things, the ssh command allows you to setup secure tunnels to remote computers.

Last week we delivered benchmarks comparing the performance of Ubuntu 9.04 vs. Fedora 11 and found for the most part that these two incredibly popular Linux distributions had performed about the same, except for a few areas where there notable differences. However, like in the past when we have looked at Ubuntu 7.04 to 8.10 benchmarks or benchmarking the past five Linux kernels, we are now looking at the performance of Fedora over their past few releases. In this article we have a range of system benchmarks from Fedora 9, 10, 11, and the latest Rawhide packages as of this week.

I'm no coding guru. And I feel like having to write my own scripts to get stuff done in Unix/Linux is all too much like reinventing the wheel. Be that as it may, I hacked together these two short scripts to back up my /home files in Ubuntu 8.04 to an external USB drive.

After almost two years of relying on Kubuntu and Ubuntu, your editor has had enough. Farewell faithful *buntus, hello and welcome PCLinuxOS. Will PCLinuxOS work out better? Will I pine for the good old alliterative animal days? Will I become dissatisfied with PCLinuxOS and swap it out for something else? Is any Linux good enough?

A few days ago I reviewed what is in my opinion the easiest Linux distribution for Windows switchers: Linux Mint 7.0 The small group of talented people that manage this distribution is led by Clem, the "founder" of Linux Mint. Today he was kind enough to grant me an email interview as a follow up to my review.

LinuxCertified Inc, a leading provider of Linux training and services, announced its next Embedded and Real-Time Linux Development class to be held in San Francisco Bay Area from June 24th - 26th, 2009.

After a nuclear holocaust, the only thing left alive will be roaches... and the SCO Group. The company that thinks it owns some lines of Linux – and that everyone else thought was fated for Chapter 7 bankruptcy death this week – has instead revealed to the world that it is the immortal Highlander. Just before a crucial liquidation hearing in bankruptcy court today, SCO Group chief executive Darl McBride inked a life-saving deal with a company called Gulf Capital Partners. The investment firm is backed by the high-profile equity investor Stephen Norris, the very man who pondered buying SCO the last time it faced bankruptcy destruction.

Drizzle is a re-thought and re-worked version of the MySQL kernel designed specifically for high-performance, high-concurrency environments. In this exclusive article, MySQL guru Jeremy Zawodny takes an inside look at the goals and state of Drizzle development.

It's been many months since I last used Puppy Linux. I bet more than a year has passed since I seriously ran Puppy, still one of the best Unix-like distributions/projects for older, underpowered computers. I decided tonight to break out the 1999 Compaq Armada 7770dmt (233 MHz Pentium II MMX processor, 144 MB RAM), which has OpenBSD 4.2 on the 3 GB hard drive (yes, I know 4.5 is out, and yes I do have the CD set, and yes, I'll probably reinstall) and two pup_save files in its 0.5 GB Linux partition.

The Swiss Open Systems User Group and the canton of Berne treasurer's office have reached a rapprochement. The open source advocacy group had criticised the fact that a contract for revamping the canton's 14,000 workstations was awarded to Microsoft without a tendering process. Although the canton is insisting that the contract should stand, the Swiss Open Systems User Group has decided not to pursue the case in the courts.

The Department of the Interior-occupied voting agency has released the source code from its European election software.

One of the biggest problems with open source is understanding what it means out in the real world. I'm not talking about understanding the actual technology. I'm talking about the impact of open source, how it is actually useful. What's clear to me is that open source is not an end in itself. Open source is an enabler. It's a catalyst. It allows other things to happen. It's the fulcrum upon which can be rested the lever that will move the world. But it isn't the lever itself.

The fifth version of EnterpriseDB's Postgres Plus Advanced Server will facilitate easier migrations for Oracle applications, according to the company. In addition, its new Infinite Cache feature lets users dynamically expand their database cache to the terabyte range.

Get up and running with the Android Scripting Environment. Whip up a Twitter update app in a matter of minutes and tell everyone what sandwich you’re eating from within Android!

Using a Windows VPN client is a security oxymoron of epic dimensions, but often a necessity due to a lack of reliable Linux clients. Fortunately there is vpnc, the Linux client for the Cisco 3000 series VPN/firewall. Charlie Schluting is our guide to obtaining and setting it up.

I've been bringing more data into my main Ubuntu 8.04 LTS installation on one of my two Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptops, and I continue to be satisfied with the performance of what by most accounts is the world's most popular desktop Linux distribution. No, its GNOME desktop isn't as fast as Debian's. But even though I do have Xfce (and not the full Xubuntu) installed on this Ubuntu laptop, I'm still using the brownish-themed GNOME that ships with the distro.

An employee of Google has expressed himself regarding the disadvantages of OGG Theora in comparison with H.264 in a discussion on the mailing list of the web hypertext application technology working group.

A few days ago Opera launched a placeholder website which said they were going to "reinvent" the web, on June 16. Well, it's June 16, and Opera has announced Opera Unite, a technology which allows individual Opera users to connect to one another, turning every machine running Opera Unite into a web server.

While watching David Hollow of ICT4D Collective present his evaluation of OLPC Ethiopia at the recent Africa Gathering I was struck by his observation that teachers were banning XO laptops from their classrooms. David found a clear perception by teachers and even parents, that the XO laptop is a toy, not a tool, and children's usage of these computers was actually a detriment to their education. Teachers disliked them enough to ban them from the classroom and parents discouraged their use at home, thinking the laptops were taking away from study time.

With Linux being used as the foundation for numerous smartphone and mobile internet devices, it is tempting to suggest that this movement is going to open the doorway to desktop Linux. Tempting, but not accurate. Linux, the kernel and its immediate subsystems, has never been healthier and its openness has made it relatively easy for developers and manufacturers to get an operating system onto a new class of mobile devices. However, consider the two leading strains of mobile Linux; Android and Moblin. Both start with Linux at the core, but if you move up to the user interface, they diverge.