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Few days ago Ubuntu announced that there is a serious security issue in the kernel from version 6.06, 8.04, 8.10, 9.04 and 9.10 . 7.xx versions are not affected. Canonical has been recommended as a solution to update the kernel of its various versions.Today i show you how to upgrade the kernel the safe way in Ubuntu and LinuxMint. I tested this tutorial on Ubuntu 9.10 karmic koala and LinuxMint 8 helena .

Red Hat released the first beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.5, providing memory allocation enhancements to the KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) hypervisor. RHEL 5.5 also introduces new storage and WiFi drivers, and supports new AMD, IBM, and Intel processors, says the company.

The major derivatives of Ubuntu are well known, but what about the others? Just because they aren’t as popular doesn’t mean they don’t have something to offer! We introduce five of the least known, yet simply outstanding distributions.

Let's get one thing straight. We don't like the term cloud computing any more than you do. Of course, Richard Stallman doesn't like when we call it Linux rather than GNU/Linux. He's gotta live with Linux. And, well, we've gotta live with cloud computing. It's not going away.

GRUB2 has been a long time coming, and is finding its way into users' hands mainly via Ubuntu 9.10. Is it better than legacy GRUB? Should you upgrade? Akkana Peck guides through the mazy paths of GRUB2 in this series.

Ksplice has launched a subscription service that updates Linux servers without rebooting. Based on an MIT-bred utility that has been considered for merging into the Linux mainline kernel, Ksplice Uptrack is claimed to reduce costly downtime, while also speeding installation of security patches and other upgrades.

On the application platform side of the cloud, Red Hat is developing the BoxGrinder project. JBoss Fellow Bob McWhirter explained during the forum that one of the goals of BoxGrinder is to make is easy to grind out server configurations for a variety of virtualization fabrics.

The MBR or Master Boot Record is an area at the beginning of your hard drive. It is very important because it contains the partition table. There are also routine boot whose goal is to load the operating system. Backup your MBR does not really interest. Unless you intend to perform manipulations risky on your hard drive or install a new Boot Loader (Grub, Lilo ...) for examples.

Once again, the British Library is working closely with Microsoft to promote proprietary technologies instead of open ones - giving away open source code that requires Windows Server, SQL Server .NET Framework and SharePoint to work. Shouldn't publicly-funded libraries be helping to spread knowledge, not locking it down?

This guide explains how you can run virtual machines with Sun VirtualBox 3.1.x on a headless OpenSUSE 11.2 server. Normally you use the VirtualBox GUI to manage your virtual machines, but a server does not have a desktop environment. Fortunately, VirtualBox comes with a tool called VBoxHeadless that allows you to connect to the virtual machines over a remote desktop connection, so there's no need for the VirtualBox GUI.

Working on a little script the other day I had the need to determine if the input to the script was coming from a pipe or from the terminal. Seems like a simple enough thing to determine but nothing jumped immediately to mind and a quick internet search didn't help much either. After a bit of pondering I came up with two solutions: the stat command and using information from the proc file system.

I've been hearing a lot about Google Buzz lately and lo and behold, it shows up in Gmail this morning. Initially, I ignored it, but I visit my Gmail account quite often and so figured, "what the heck". As I was going through the set up process (which isn't really involved), I was inspired to open up Google Wave for the first time in more than a month. I saw a few new Waves, but nothing like the flood of unread messages I'd expect if I just ignored Gmail for about six weeks. I've written a couple of blogs on Wave, including an an initial review and an update called Why Hasn't Google Wave Gone Viral? My interest in Wave has waxed and waned and now that Google has thrown Buzz into the mix, was I supposed to get excited?

In the latest part of "An Open Source Business", we take a look at the online music world and the business models for competing with or even making a business out of "free."

"I have come to believe that a license alone is neither a secret to success nor an absolution of sin." Michael Tiemann President of the Open Source Initiative

Recently, Google announced that its operations in China (and beyond) had been subject to sophisticated attacks, some of which were successful; a number of other companies have been attacked as well. The source of these attacks may never be proved, but it is widely assumed that they were carried out by government agencies. There are also allegations that the East Anglia email leak was a government-sponsored operation. While at LCA, your editor talked with a developer who has recently found himself at Google; according to this developer, incidents like these demonstrate that the security game has changed in significant ways, with implications that the community can ignore only at its peril.

Why use a derivative of Ubuntu (or Debian for that matter) instead of just using the original product? Simple: The derivative is better.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5 (RHEL) is now available in early beta, providing users of Red Hat's flagship operating system with bug fixes and an early look at some new features, too. With RHEL 5.5, Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) is continuing to build on the RHEL 5 base, which was launched in 2007. Its most recent update was the RHEL 5.4 release, which officially debuted in September and was notable for its new KVM virtualization base. It's a base that Red Hat is further expanding now with RHEL 5.5, thanks to a new run-time memory allocation feature for KVM virtual guests.

Lost in all the Google Buzz hype today was an announcement Google was making 1 gigabit super high speed fiber channel internet access available to a few lucky communities in the US. This is unheard of speed and I would certainly welcome it in my home town.

LOS ANGELES -- Ubuntu announces that it will hold the first UbuCon hosted at the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE 8x) on Friday, Feb. 19, in an all-day session of talks and activities. Part unconference and part scheduled sessions, UbuCon will cover what is going on with, and how to improve, the Ubuntu community. The final hour of the event will include lightning talks.

When Jammie Thomas (now Thomas-Rasset) became the first alleged P2P file-swapper to take her case all the way to trial and verdict, no one suspected that she would actually have three trials and verdicts, but that's the case today, as the RIAA rejected a federal judge's decision to slash Thomas-Rasset's damage award. Instead, we're headed to a truncated third trial on the issue of damages. The recording industry also made it clear this week that both Thomas-Rasset and Joel Tenenbaum (the second P2P defendant to go to trial and verdict) are, in its view, quite terrible people: lying, deceiving, irresponsible, and unreasonable. And the industry can't understand why they're both fighting on.