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Ubuntu recovery mode is a basic boot configuration for repairing a broken system. In this mode it skips most configuration files and daemons in order to achieve a functioning root prompt. For the security-conscious administrator this itself is a problem.

In early November we delivered benchmarks of EXT4 vs. Btrfs on an early Linux 2.6.37 kernel as our latest round of tests comparing these two leading Linux file-systems. There were some changes in the Linux disk performance with these file-systems using the latest Linux kernel code, but overall it was not too interesting. However, as the Linux 2.6.37 kernel does introduce a new mount option for Btrfs, the space_cache option, we decided to explore its performance in today's article.

There is a discussion going on @ Ayatana mailing list regarding the merge of Me Menu (the applet that displays your name, used to set your status) and Messaging Menu (Chat, Email, etc.) and mockups have already started to be posted:

About 3 years ago when I started my my Linux adventure one of the challenges I initially had was finding an easy way to convert videos to formats I could play on my mobile phone. I remembered having to search through the web and the only option available then was FFmpeg which (don’t get me wrong) is a very power ?tool for converting from one video file format to another, but it was commandline and not something a newbie like me (coming fresh from windows) would want to try out. Fast forward to 2010 and the landscape has changed.

Xonotic preview 0.1 is released, this release is still a preview, which means that is not a stable release yet, in this release many things have progressed, both in features and graphics. Xonotic is a free (GPL), fast-paced first-person shooter that works on Microsoft Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. Xonotic is a direct successor of the Nexuiz Project.

One of the strangest things that I have heard recently is that Microsoft is porting their Windows operating system to the ARM platform. By itself, that wouldn't seem all that strange. ARM is clearly an up-and-coming platform for which many different companies are writing a ton of software. The strange thing about this move by the Redmond Washington giant is that the port is almost completely unnecessary.

If 2010 was the year that taught open source "how to disappear completely," 2011 will be the year we're reminded that "anyone can play guitar"…or open source. At present, open source is de rigueur with the underdog class, those vendors seeking to challenge incumbents like Apple and Oracle.

Amid an enterprise environment that is now more receptive to utility computing and focused on service-based contracts, open source software adoption has grown over the past two years and entered the IT mainstream.

Today I present you an interview with Bertrand Florat the creator of Jajuk. “Jajuk is software that organizes and plays music. It is a full-featured application geared towards advanced users with large or scattered music collections. Using multiple perspectives, the software is designed to be intuitive and provide different visions of your collection.” Jajuk has many interesting features and being developed in Java is available for Linux (it’s available as package in the main distribution), Windows and Mac OS X. I found this great project some time ago (I’ve been the first Italian translator), but my work and laziness brought me away, today I’ve met again with Bertrand and he’s been so kind to give me some of his time for this interview.

Mozilla has released a beta version of the MPL 2.0, the first update to its open source license in more than a decade. Mozilla chief lizard wrangler Mitchell Baker calls this a "feature complete" beta, saying it "addresses all major known issues". The license is shorter and simpler than the aging MPL 1.1. The beta draft drops the word count from 3,702 words to 2,289. But it's also designed to make the MPL more compatible with other licenses, including the Apache license and the GPL. Its patent language has been massaged to look more like that in other licenses. And it removes the "original software" and "original developer" concepts.

Twitter has seen an extraordinary increase in the number of tweets, brief posts of 140 characters. That's right, an absurd constraint, with no pictures, video, or audio. Nevertheless, these short messages seems to bring out the best in humour, understanding, and observation, with tweets often sticking to the facts. 25 billion tweets were made in the past year alone using this text message service by over 100 million people around the world!

Somewhere along the line, the Ubuntu development team disabled a standardized keyboard shortcut that many long-time Linux users had grown accustomed to. Namely: using the ctrl-alt-backspace key combo for quickly and conveniently restarting the system’s X window system when needed.

Include virtualization group during initial install. Comment out lines 343,344 in /usr/share/virt-manager/virt-manager.py to allow virt-manager to start . Set up bridged networking as follows . .

The kernel now includes some components for supporting operation as a Xen host (Dom0). Switching into and out of sleep mode should be accelerated by the use of LZO compression. Following years of work, almost all parts of the kernel are now able to run without using the big kernel lock (BKL).

Using Linux on a laptop has always been a hit and miss affair. With sometimes obscure proprietary hardware, many laptop manufacturers have showed no interest in supporting the free operating system. Nevertheless, through hard work by developers and support from some hardware manufacturers, Linux now supports a wide variety of laptops and netbooks.

A couple of new Nautilus 3.0 mockups were posted by Allan Day on his blog. Althouth they look a lot like some older mockups, they are more polished and make better use of space:

There comes a time in every Linux users’ life when you will open the Terminal more often than not because you have realized that it is faster, more efficient and more powerful than GUI (Graphical User Interface). You’ll have started to learn more and more commands and now feel more comfortable with command prompt. The command prompt is all about commands – short commands as well as long commands. If you are like me then you may not like to type the long commands (or even small commands) :)

OpenBSD project leader Theo de Raadt disclosed an e-mail earlier this month in which former NETSEC CTO Gregory Perry claimed that his company was paid by the FBI to plant a "backdoor" in the OpenBSD IPSEC stack. The allegations led to a thorough code review and historical analysis of the relevant code.

One of my biggest beefs with Gmail on my Droid (rooted, running Cyanogenmod 6.1.2) is that I could never reply with an address other than my gmail account. I have several accounts tied to gmail, and with the web client, you can choose which account to reply with. In fact, Gmail does a good job of replying with the address the email was sent to.

Ubuntu Linux spent the last few months of 2010 dropping bombshells on the Linux world. Founder Mark Shuttleworth is clearly intent on shaking the foundations of his popular Linux distro and pushing it, and Linux at large, in new directions.…