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The time command is an excellent tool for analyzing the performance of a shell script or command. Simply type time followed by the command that you wish to time. Three results are printed when the program or script finishes executing: the actual length of time (real-world time spent on the program), the total time spent in the program, and the total time spent on CPU overhead. The first figure is perhaps the most useful, but the third figure will tell you how busy your CPU is.

Robotics is the branch of artifical intelligence concerned with the study of robots, automatically guided machines which are able to carry out tasks and functions on their own. Robotics covers a wide spectrum of areas including the design, construction, operation and manufacture of robots.

Fuduntu 14.8-4 is proving to be a solid release, with no significant issues reported since release on January 29th. Development focus now shifts towards Fuduntu 14 maintenance, and planning for Fuduntu 15.

By performing these basic commands you will begin to see the power and flexibility of the Linux utility awk. This exercise is designed to start you down the path of using awk.

MPEG LA, the organisation which acts as a patent pool for many royalty bearing standards, including H.264 and MPEG2, has begun a search for patents which are considered "essential" to Google's open source and royalty free WebM/VP8 video codec. The move by MPEG LA is the first step in possibly creating a patent pool which would be able to demand royalties for the use of WebM/VP8.

An update for Pinguy OS 10.04 LTS was released today: 10.04.2. For those who are not familiar with Pinguy OS: it's an Ubuntu remaster with a lot of useful default applications "built to have eye candy (Gloobus Preview, GNOME Do, Docky, Nautilus Elementary) and for every part of it to be user-friendly".

I’ve discovered Linux in 1995 and I have been using it as my only home/work operating system since then. I still love it and mean to continue to use and promote it, but in the last 2/3 weeks it’s become almost impossible. In this page I explain why, hoping to get and collect useful suggestions.

The proliferation of highly portable tablet PCs and the range of new operating systems these devices use has caught the IT security industry napping

With Nokia's recent news of jumping off the Linux bandwagon, it makes this Linux user wonder if a couple years down the road if we are going to have any choice other than Android when choosing a Linux based handset. I keep fairly current on news in the FOSS world, but I had never heard about the LiMo Foundation until a few days ago.

I've been anxious to try the next Ubuntu release, which will be even closer to the proverbial bleeding edge than usual, opting for a new interface called Unity that is slated to knock Gnome out of its default spot in the wildly popular Linux distribution.

Whether you are upgrading components for a system refresh, selling an old laptop on Craigslist, or recycling your desktop PC, there comes a time when you have to wipe a storage device in preparation for giving it to someone else. Chances are, you don't want whoever gets physical access to your old hard disk to have unfettered access to its contents: files, email, passwords, the embarrassingly-high frequency of Justin Beiber sites in your browsing history. You'll find several open source utilities for wiping away personal data — so this weekend, why not take stock of your options and put together a deep-clean routine?

The Android Market gets a much-needed updated and makes some important strides forward in how apps are distributed. For a couple of years now the Android app purchasing experience has been largely on-device as the web based “market” page was little more than a page with a handful of top-selling applications.

Version 1.0 of the Open Source Hardware Definition (OSHW definition), first initiated in July 2010, has now been published. Originally planned as a singular licence, the process expanded to cover a range of licences by creating a definition of what open source hardware is. The OSHW definition attempts to codify a definition for hardware that has a design made publicly available for others to study, modify, distribute, make or sell things based on that design.

When you run Debian Stable, you get used to updates to the system being few and far between. While there is certainly some truth to the open-source OS adage that bugs related to functionality (and not security) at release tend to stay unpatched, the emphasis in Debian on releasing when ready means there are theoretically (and practically) fewer broken pieces in the system and not as much need to push updates for non-security-related issues.

Lubuntu is best known as a lightweight and speedy Linux distro, but when it comes to beauty and elegant, it is still lacking. Its default theme is rather plain and boring and its library of themes is limited too. Luckily, there are tons of beautiful themes out there that you can use and you can easily theme it up to make it the best looking distro out there. Here’s how:

Canonical published a database of 1,300 certified components for Ubuntu, said to enable ODMs to more quickly bring to market Ubuntu- or other Linux-based computers. Meanwhile, Canonical and Autonomic Resources announced an "ARC-P-UEC" cloud computing platform for the federal government based on Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud running on Dell Blade servers.

When Nokia announced they where merging Maemo into the MeeGo project I openly voiced my support. With a corporate backer like Nokia, Meego was sure to quickly become a forerunner in mobile technology. Today Nokia revoked that backing.

Open sourcers unite! Open...and Shut Microsoft used to be the bête noire of open-source advocates, riling freedom-loving software developers with its sometimes anti-competitive behavior.…

The broad Nokia-Microsoft partnership announced Friday in which the Windows Phone operating system would run on Nokia smartphones sounds like good news for both companies because of their struggles in the smartphone arena.

But many analysts wonder what the companies will make of the relationship in the coming year. Can Nokia come up with smartphones, tablets and related services and applications that outdistance Google's Android, Apple's iPhone and others?

Who is smarter, Linux or people? IBM's SUSE Linux powered supercomputer Watson faces off against human contestants on the TV game show "Jeopardy".