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This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install Xen (version 3.0.3) on a CentOS 5.4 (x86_64) system. Xen lets you create guest operating systems (*nix operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD), so called "virtual machines" or domUs, under a host operating system (dom0). Using Xen you can separate your applications into different virtual machines that are totally independent from each other, but still use the same hardware.

On behalf of the developers of the BusyBox embedded utilities collection, the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) filed suit against 14 consumer electronics companies for violating GPLv2 licensing requirements. The lawsuit covers almost 20 Linux-based products, from companies including Best Buy, Samsung, Westinghouse, and JVC, says the SFLC.

It's not like I actually did anything, but my issues regarding my Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptop from the long-ago year 2001 and its Intel 82830 (aka 830m) video not working all that well in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) have mostly disappeared.

Evidence of GPL Violations and Copyright Infringement Found in TVs, DVD Players, and Dozens of other Electronic Devices New York, NY, December 14, 2009//Best Buy, Samsung, Westinghouse, and JVC are among the 14 consumer electronics companies named in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed today in New York by the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC). The SFLC is a non-profit law firm established in 2005 to provide pro-bono legal services to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) developers. The suit was filed on behalf of the Software Freedom Conservancy (Conservancy), the non-profit corporate home of the popular software application BusyBox and many other FOSS projects, and Erik Andersen, one of the program's principal developers and copyright holders. The suit charges each of the defendants with selling products containing BusyBox in violation of the terms of its license, the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2).

Linus Torvalds has merged the kernel code for the GeForce-compatible nouveau open source graphics driver as a staging driver into the Linux main development tree – from which kernel version 2.6.33 will emerge in around two and a half months. The 2.6.33 kernel should therefore support kernel-based mode setting on the bulk of Nvidia graphics chips (GPUs/graphics processing units) in addition to existing support for AMD and Intel chips.

Oracle has assured the European Union that the company will continue investing in Sun’s MySQL open source database. That move potentially clears the way for Oracle’s pending buyout of Sun. So what will Oracle actually do with MySQL? Early chatter involves a so-called Unbreakable MySQL plus a potential a specialization within Oracle's Partner Program.

When you say that something is expensive, you have to say also, compared with what? This comparison cannot only be on price. You have to compare value received. What is the value of an education, then? In crass financial terms, you can set a price on education based on the Net Present Value of expected earnings over a lifetime. You can design a government education budget around the NPV of the person's tax contributions over a lifetime, with due consideration for other expected public services.

Canonical recently launched Ubuntu One, a cloud storage service that synchronizes data between computers. In this programming tutorial, we will show you how to use the service to add cloud syncing capabilities to your own software.

Simple access to desktop computing: It's something that myself, among countless others, take for granted every single day. With proprietary operating systems, there are programs readily available for those who need accessibility assistance with their computers. But what is it like for someone who needs accessibility options on the Linux desktop? We often hear how the Linux desktop is ready for the masses, how ready is it for those with special accessibility needs?

The European Union held its meetings on Oracle's acquisition of Sun last week, and the decision should be forthcoming by January 19th. In the meantime, MySQL creator Monty Widenius is calling for a letter-writing campaign to "help save MySQL from Oracle's clutches. At the same time, Oracle has been moved to put up a list of commitments regarding MySQL should the company be successful in acquiring Sun.

Consolidation for everyone is IBM's stated reason for releasing a Linux version of its System z mainframe. The new Enterprise Linux Server (ELS) is a stand-alone system specifically designed for Linux environments. According to IBM, the financial savings can be up to 80 per cent. Furthermore, a "save-as-you-grow" pricing model is intended to facilitate investment decisions by allowing customers to gradually purchase resources at considerably lower prices than that of a complete system.

LuckyBackup is an application that backs-up and/or synchronizes any directories with the power of rsync. Its main features are: backup, safety, synchronization, exclude/only include options, allows custom rsync options, remote connections, restore and dry-run operations, scheduling, profiles and command line mode.It is simple to use, fast (transfers over only changes made and not all data), safe (keeps your data safe by checking all declared directories before proceeding in any data manipulation ), reliable and fully customizable.

Good news for Google Chrome users: the latest version of the browser supports extensions, so you can extend its default functionality by installing extensions from the official extension repository.

We have published articles containing EXT4 benchmarks many times now going back to our original real world benchmarks of EXT4 to when Ubuntu 9.04 received EXT4 support and when we ran a variety of file-system benchmarks on an Intel X25-E SSD. We had also thrown in EXT4 numbers when benchmarking Btrfs (and again with Btrfs 0.19) along with NILFS2 benchmarks. Each time has been with a different kernel and the performance of the different Linux file-systems continue to change as each file-system matures and picks up different features. Though with the Linux 2.6.32 kernel the EXT4 performance had changed a great deal due to a change that provides better data integrity on writes but at a significant performance cost. To see how this changes the Linux file-system landscape, atop the latest Linux kernel we have a fresh set of benchmarks for EXT3, EXT4, XFS, ReiserFS, and Btrfs.

Dan Kegel announced the release of winetricks 20091213 here is the email he sent to the wine-devel mailing list. Austin and Andrew have been hard at work keeping winetricks working smoothly. In particular, the ie6 and gecko verbs should work again. Thanks guys!

With Fedora 12 and Ubuntu 9.10 now out the door, developers are already turning their attention to the spring releases. KDE3 has definitively gone the way of the dodo as far as openSUSE and Mandriva are concerned. Google is taking its first steps in the operating system market with Chrome OS.

Opera is still the only browser to offer mouse gestures, so you can navigate with dragging motions rather than having to click on small buttons. It also offers native support for BitTorrent downloads and ‘widgets’: mini-applications similar to Windows gadgets…

Most users that have used Linux as their desktop operating system for any length of time will tell you that Ubuntu is one of the most user-friendly Linux versions available. The people over at Linux Mint disagree, however, and make it their mission to customise each new release of Ubuntu with a layer of additional user-friendliness. To do this they re-build Ubuntu with a range of popular tools that are excluded by default from Ubuntu as well as including a couple of their own scripts to make managing the system easier.

Nessus is a proprietary comprehensive vulnerability scanning tool. It is free of charge for personal use in a non-enterprise environment. Its goal is to detect potential vulnerabilities on the tested systems. Tanable Network Security announced the release of Nessus 4.2.0 last month. Nessus is now using a web based interface to manage scans and their results. Scan results and policies are now stored on the server. Additionally you can now compare the current scan with „older“ scans.

LXer Feature: 14-Dec-2009

The rest of you may already be aware of this, but I just discovered something about Ubuntu I was not aware of.