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This is a guide on setting up a IPSEC/L2TP vpn on Ubuntu 12.04 using Openswan as the IPsec server, xl2tpd as the l2tp provider and ppp for authentication.

We choose the IPSEC/L2TP protocol stack because of recent vulnerabilities found in pptpd VPN's.

Microsoft is taking the rare step of suing Google directly for something, tacking it onto a lawsuit against Motorola Mobility over Google Maps. Yesterday in Munich court, Microsoft's general counsel Dr Tilman Müller-Stoy told Moto that it was going to amend its complaint to add its parent Google as an additional defendant. Dr Müller-Stoy confirmed the move to The Register, but wasn't authorised to give any further information.

Glx-Dock/Cairo-Dock is an interactive dock (like the one you know from a Mac) that provides easy access to some of the files, folders, and applications on your computer, and more. You can use it with OpenGL (to use your graphics card) or without, and it is compatible with Compiz, but it can also run without a composite manager. It works under Unity, GNOME, KDE, and Xfce. This tutorial shows how to install and use Glx-Dock/Cairo-Dock on an Ubuntu 12.04 desktop (with Unity).

In past years on Phoronix there has been no shortage of 32-bit vs. 64-bit Linux benchmarks. Assuming you don't have a limited amount of RAM and under memory pressure, 64-bit distributions tend to be much faster than the 32-bit versions. However, some Linux users still often wonder whether they should use the 32-bit or 64-bit version of their distribution even when on 64-bit hardware. So with that said, here's some more 32-bit vs. 64-bit benchmarks of Ubuntu 12.10 with the Linux 3.5 kernel.

Intel's open-source Linux graphics driver continues to be the most popular GPU driver on the Linux desktop...

For those that have never benchmarked the performance differences between GCC's different optimization levels, here are some recent test results comparing the performance differences when using an AMD FX-8150 processor with GCC 4.7.2.

With GNOME starting the GBeers initiative, for the weekend I couldn't help but to think about what beer pairings I would do if needing to match the popular Linux desktops with beer...

Coming up next weekend is the first-ever LinuxDays event in Prague, which will happen alongside a Gentoo mini-conference, an openSUSE conference, and the SUSE Labs conference...

There's patches available for those wishing to try out experimental OpenMP support for the LLVM/Clang C/C++ compiler...

A big Enlightenment E17 snapshot was released, days ahead of their big announcement during LinuxCon EU 2012 concerning an official release of the window manager...

There’s a new GNU/Linux distro designed to help you in every aspect of your mobile forensics, mobile malware analysis, reverse engineering and security testing. It’s called Santoku Linux. Santoku is a general purpose kitchen knife which originated from Japan, meaning “three virtues” or “three uses”. This distribution is not from Japan, but the name was suggested by Thomas Cannon of viaForensics (who happens to be the project leader of Santoku Linux) because the distribution was crafted specifically for Mobile Forensics, Mobile Malware Analysis, and Mobile Security Testing. The current alpha release is based on a fork of the OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) MobiSec Ubuntu distro thus making this alpha release an OWASP MobiSec Remix (released under GPL) with added tools from viaForensics and some of its contributors or supporters. This project or platform is sponsored and launched by viaForensics which is a known and very innovative digital forensics and security firm that focuses or specializes on computer and mobile forensics, mobile application security, enterprise security, information security and penetration testing, and forensics training.

In the week ending 13 October - Firefox 16 arrived but was withdrawn to fix more security holes, WoW fell victim to a mass extinction hack, and the Linux Foundation proposed a Secure Boot solution. Also, building a GSM network and how Moore's Law has affected the use of technology

So you have installed a fresh copy of Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal. Canonical offers a number of new features in Ubuntu 12.10 which we have already talked about. This post is to help an Ubuntu newbie to get a more comfortable Ubuntu experience. Because you do need to configure few things or install some applications to get the seamless and pleasant computing experience with Ubuntu. The post is actually a checklist of the stuff which I mostly do every time I install Ubuntu. Lets see the must to-do stuff after installing Ubuntu 12.10..

Gamecaster is a graphical frontend for open source project glc. It can capture real time footage of any Linux game that uses ALSA for sound and OpenGL for drawing.

Jim Whitehurst presented on Saturday morning at the 2012 installment of TEDxRaleigh, speaking to a sold-out crowd in Raleigh’s Lincoln Theatre. Now in its third year, TEDxRaleigh has brought together local innovators, researchers and thought leaders to give local flair to a wildly successful national event.

Lightweight Linux distro usually comes in the file size ranging from 20MB to 50MB and they are best suited to use on a old computer. Recently, I come across this tiny Linux distro that weighs only 12MB and it boots up really fast. I am referring to Tiny Core Linux. Weighing at 12 MB, Tiny Core Linux is one of the tiniest Linux distro I have ever seen. Being a barebone distro, it only comes with a few essential applications that are required for it to boot up and run properly. It also comes with a graphical desktop, but if you are looking for a turnkey solution, this is not the one for you.

In mid-September, the 3.6 kernel appeared to be stabilizing nicely. Most of the known regressions had been fixed, the patch volume was dropping, and Linus was relatively happy. Then Nikolay Ulyanitsky showed up with a problem: the pgbench PostgreSQL benchmark ran 20% slower than under 3.5. The resulting discussion shows just how hard scalability can be on contemporary hardware and how hard scheduling can be in general. Borislav Petkov was able to reproduce the problem; a dozen or so bisection iterations later he narrowed down the problem to this patch, which was duly reverted. There is just one little problem left: the offending patch was, itself, meant to improve scheduler performance. Reverting it fixed the PostgreSQL regression, but at the cost of losing an optimization that improves things for many (arguably most) other workloads. Naturally, that led to a search to figure out what the real problem was so that the optimization could be restored without harmful effects on PostgreSQL.

Now The Linux Foundation has stepped in with a solution which will allow every (and not just one distro or only Linux distro) open source operating system to run on UEFI secure boot systems.

Telling the time on Linux is more complicated than it might seem at first glance. To start with, the time command on Linux doesn't tell the time:

NVIDIA developer Robert Morell has proposed removing a marker for the Linux kernel's GPL licence from a Linux kernel driver interface, apparently in order to permit the use of the interface with proprietary drivers. A discussion thread on the topic has seen several key kernel developers express clear opposition to the proposal and debate over which developers would have to consent to such a change.