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Software packaging systems are a strange phenomenon. They all seem to aim at solving the general problem of shipping some named, versioned collection of files to the world. Yet, this common ground seems insufficient given the overwhelming number of incompatible packaging systems in the wild. The “overwhelming” part of above is what we need to talk about. Specifically, despite having similar goals, one package system is rather unlikely to have anything in common with another. Different terminologies, different tools, different technologies, different distribution mechanisms, different policies. The side effect with this phenomenon of “similar goal, nothing meaningful in common” is that you get punished.

Three days ago here in northern Michigan, we had a heavy frost overnight. Those gardeners who ambitiously planted their plants early had to cover them with tarps or tents to make sure they didn't die in the frigid night. Yesterday, the temperature was 96°F. Michigan weather is weird. This month is our Cool Projects issue, so even if the temperature continues to push 100°, I'll rely on the June issue of Linux Journal to keep things cool.

It is an alternative to Google Analytics and from my experience, better in many respects. The latest version, released just today June 1 2012, is Piwik 1.8, and it comes with its share of new and improved features and bugfixes.

This release is rated critical, so if you are running Piwik 1.7.1, the previous stable version, immediate upgrade is highly recommended.

Friday, 1st June, Stat Counter reported that keen speculations during the month of May 2012, reveal that Google’ Internet browser Chrome has finally surpassed the usage share of IE the default browser in Microsoft desktop OS for the complete month of May.

I've been looking for an alternative to Google's Google Voice product that provides one number for all my phones -- mobiles and landline -- and includes online voicemail and discounted calling. Google Voice is a fine product, and I've had exemplary use out of it, but it has a couple of failings related to a lack of international functionality.

Despite my recent attempt to categorize what’s coming in Windows 8 for businesses -- and, seriously, it’s not a bad list -- it’s become increasingly clear to me that Microsoft doesn’t actually expect businesses to upgrade to this new system in any meaningful way.

As a result of a recent discussion on IRC, I decided to take a number of DE (Desktop Environments) for a test drive and see how much ram they used.

Ever since the Stuxnet worm was first discovered in the wild by cybersecurity experts, the world has wondered who had developed the worm, and why. Once it became known the primary target of the worm was Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, suspicion immediately formed around Israeli and/or U.S. involvement.

5 beautiful GNOME 3 theme packs (include GTK2/3 and some also have GNOME Shell themes) for GNOME 3.4, available in an Ubuntu PPA.

In spite of the fact that companies are expanding their data centers, IDC reports that the traditional x86 server market is in decline, possibly because IT is moving toward smaller, more cost-effective and energy-efficient alternatives like high-density blades.

I must admit that Fedora was the first GNU/Linux distribution that introduced me to this world. We used it as the default OS in Linux For You magazine where I worked as a writer and editor. Fedora was also the first GNU/Linux OS that I installed on my PC. I moved to PCLinuxOS, then Mandriva, then Debian and then to Ubuntu. These days I multiboot between Ubuntu, openSUSE and some random OS. I stayed away from Fedora due to RPM Hell. I still remember being burnt by it in Fedora 14. But things have changed dramatically. Fedora is now extremely useful for novice users. I build confidence in Fedora with version 16 and planned to revisit it as 17 hits the Internet. I confess, I never used Fedora as my primary OS, outside my work at LFY.

So, you just got back from a trip, and you have tons of photos you want to share with the world. While there are dozens of photo sharing services to choose from, uploading megabytes of photos doesn't sound like a fun pastime. And why bother with a third-party service if you already have a Linux-based server? In this case, consider using Bizou.

Read the howto at Free Software Magazine.

Clement Lefebvre proudly announced a minutes ago, June 1st, the immediate availability for download of the OEM installation images of the recently released Linux Mint 13 operating system.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand—Kim Dotcom, who once seemed like an underdog in the U.S.'s largest-ever criminal copyright case, has notched several legal wins.

For those that haven't heard, for Google's Chrome web-browser and ChromeOS operating system, they have their own Linux video playback acceleration API...

This tutorial shows how to set up a high-availability storage with two storage servers (Debian Squeeze) that use GlusterFS. Each storage server will be a mirror of the other storage server, and files will be replicated automatically across both storage servers. The client system (Debian Squeeze as well) will be able to access the storage as if it was a local filesystem. GlusterFS is a clustered file-system capable of scaling to several peta-bytes. It aggregates various storage bricks over Infiniband RDMA or TCP/IP interconnect into one large parallel network file system. Storage bricks can be made of any commodity hardware such as x86_64 servers with SATA-II RAID and Infiniband HBA.

Canonical announced on June 1st, in a security notice, that a new Linux kernel update for its Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) operating system is now available.

Google Inc. GOOG -1.82% said it filed an antitrust complaint Thursday in Europe arguing that Microsoft Corp. MSFT -2.13% and Nokia Corp. are using proxy companies to brandish patents and hurt the prospects of Google's Android mobile-phone software to the advantage of Microsoft's technology. Google also plans to share its complaint about patent "trolls" with U.S. competition regulators. The Internet-search giant alleges that Microsoft and Nokia have entered into agreements that enable entities such as Canada-based Mosaid Technologies Inc. to legally enforce their patent rights and share the resulting revenue.

To run on UEFI-secured machines, the next version of Fedora will use a digital key from Microsoft.

XFCE 4.10 has been released and announced by XFCE development team, it comes with many improvements which include new application finder, a vertical display mode option for the XFCE panel, a new MIME type editor, behavioral changes, and the window manager can be configured to tile windows when dragging them to screen edges. There’s also Alt-Tab improvements and other functionality improvements. For more info about the XFCE 4.10 desktop release see @XFCE_Announcement and @XFCE_tour