Linux Today Sticky Page On this page we'll maintain links to important articles and documents that pertain to Free Software, Linux, and the tech industry. Please submit your suggestions to editors@linuxtoday.com. Thank you! (Jun 15, 2009)
Small Features
Is Bill Gates’ New Website Really Running On Linux? TechCrunch: "Sometimes tips come in that seem too good to be true. Take today, for example. I got a tip that Bill Gates’ new site, The Gates Notes, was running on a Linux-powered server." Feb 1, 2010
HP Launches First Quad-Core Itanium Systems (Feb 9, 2010, 19:33 UTC) (359 reads)
(2 talkbacks)
(feedback) Serverwatch: "Intel launched what will be its largest server and storage refresh beginning Monday with the introduction of the Itanium 9300 line, the long-delayed "Tukwila" family of quad-core Itanium processors."
BM Ups Its Processor Power to 7 (Feb 9, 2010, 17:33 UTC) (629 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Hardware Central: "During an event late last month celebrating the completion of Oracle's merger with Sun, the company's outspoken chief executive took repeated shots at IBM (NYSE: IBM), saying that Big Blue's systems couldn't scale."
Health Check: FreeBSD - "The unknown giant" (Feb 4, 2010, 23:33 UTC) (2061 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) The H Open: "FreeBSD is the most accessible and popular of the BSDs, has code at the heart of Darwin and Apple's OS X, and has powered some of the more successful sites on the Web, including Hotmail, Netcraft and Yahoo!, which before the rise of Google was the busiest site on the internet."
How to configure maximum performance storage space for Debian GNU / Linux on IBM (Feb 4, 2010, 14:03 UTC) (1283 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Linux Blog: "The IBM DS 8300 Data Storage Systems are multi millions dollars flexible high availability and performance SAN machines.
But you may left much of such performance and availability behind if you do not configure then correctly for Debian GNU / Linux."
Size Can Matter: Throughput Performance with a Disk-Based Journal - Part 4 (Feb 4, 2010, 00:03 UTC) (1229 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Linux Magazine: "Turning from Metadata performance to throughput performance, we examines the impact of journal size on ext4 when the journal is disk-based. Dig into the numbers and see what you can do to improve throughput performance."
TPC Benchmarks Now Measure Server Power Use (Feb 3, 2010, 17:32 UTC) (818 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) ServerWatch: "The Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) today announced its newest specification, TPC-Energy, which measures the energy usage of a server to gauge not only transactions per second but transactions per watt as well."
London Stock Exchange Linux switchover set for September (Feb 3, 2010, 16:32 UTC) (1690 reads)
(2 talkbacks)
(feedback) Computerworld UK: "The London Stock Exchange will switch on the first module of its Linux and Unix-based trading platform in September, replacing existing Microsoft .Net architecture."
When Memory Serves You: Using ramfs and tmpfs (Feb 1, 2010, 15:33 UTC) (2102 reads)
(1 talkbacks)
(feedback) Linux Magazine: "Need a performance boost for your reads from and writes to a database or other dynamic files? A RAM-based filesystem is just what the good system doctor ordered"
High-end NAS device runs Linux (Jan 30, 2010, 20:02 UTC) (3151 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Linux Devices: "Enhance Technology announced an eight-disk, Linux-based network-attached storage (NAS) device, offering up to 16TB of SATA storage. The UltraShare NAS8000-P4 incorporates an Intel Xeon (Nehalem) CPU clocked at 2.0GHz, four gigabit Ethernet ports, and an optional gateway for expanding to up to 176TB."
Blade Server Reality Check (Jan 29, 2010, 13:03 UTC) (2108 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Serverwatch: "Are you seriously considering, or currently deploying, blade servers in 2010? If so, I hope you've done your research and accepted their vendor lock-in and other shortcomings in addition to their marketed promises."
Record-setting Linux (Jan 26, 2010, 12:34 UTC) (1470 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Cyber Cynic: "Recently, French software engineer Fabrice Bellard calculated the value of pi to 2.7 trillion numbers — with a souped-up but otherwise ordinary home PC running Red Hat's Fedora Linux."
China Details Homemade Supercomputer Plans (Jan 25, 2010, 13:33 UTC) (1232 reads)
(4 talkbacks)
(feedback) Technology Review: "It's official: China's next supercomputer, the petascale Dawning 6000, will be constructed exclusively with home-grown microprocessors. Weiwu Hu, chief architect of the Loongson (also known as "Godson") family of CPUs at the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT), a division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, also confirms that the supercomputer will run Linux."
Grid Computing and the Future of Cloud Computing (Jan 22, 2010, 09:04 UTC) (1782 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Enterprise Storage Forum: "One of the most notable projects to make use of grid computing was SETI@home, which utilized thousands of Internet-connected computers to search for extraterrestrial intelligence (and still does)."
10 Years of IBM Linux: Embracing Customer Choice (Jan 21, 2010, 12:02 UTC) (1414 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Database Trends: "Involved with Linux since IBM's initial entry into the space more than 10 years ago, Jonathan Prial is now vice president of enablement for sales teams at IBM. Here, he talks with The Linux Executive Report from IBM about IBM's early presence in the Linux market, how he sees Linux use evolving, and why it's important to be a student for life in the world of technology."
Size Can Matter: Ramdisk Journal Metadata Performance - Part 2 (Jan 20, 2010, 20:03 UTC) (1612 reads)
(1 talkbacks)
(feedback) Linux Magazine: "Previously, we examined the impact of journal size using a separate disk on metadata performance as measured by fdtree. In this follow-up we repeat the same test but use a ramdisk for the journal, thereby boosting the best performance. Or does it?"
VirtualBox’s Little Secret: The Command Line (Jan 19, 2010, 23:34 UTC) (4548 reads)
(3 talkbacks)
(feedback) Linux Magazine: "Casual VirtualBox users might not know about the awesome power that lurks just beneath the surface in the Command Line Interface (CLI)."
The Performance Of EXT4 Then & Now (Jan 19, 2010, 23:04 UTC) (4132 reads)
(1 talkbacks)
(feedback) Phoronix: "The performance of the EXT4 file-system commonly goes down with new kernel releases and not up, as kernel developers continue to introduce new safeguards to address potential data loss problems that initially plagued some EXT4 users."
Google To Switch To EXT4, Hires Ted To Code (Jan 16, 2010, 20:03 UTC) (6171 reads)
(2 talkbacks)
(feedback) Phoronix: "Google is in the process of migrating their EXT2 file-systems over to the modern EXT4 file-system. This was brought up in a JFS benchmarking discussion"
How Social Networking Works (Jan 8, 2010, 12:03 UTC) (2111 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) IT World: "How do the social networks manage millions of users and hundreds of millions of updates? The answers lie in open-source software and thousands of servers"
Avatar Movie Made Possible With Linux (Jan 6, 2010, 23:05 UTC) (5040 reads)
(13 talkbacks)
(feedback) Really Linux: "But then I realize the significant absence of credit for the underlying operating system that made these extreme and complex computer generated graphics possible.
Where are the accolades for Linux?"
System z: Dinosaur or Phoenix? (Jan 6, 2010, 12:34 UTC) (1973 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) ServerWatch: "Scan through IT news on any given day, and there's a good chance you'll find a story about some large organization or another replacing its IBM mainframe with servers running UNIX, Linux — and sometimes even Windows."
I/O Bottlenecks: Biggest Threat to Data Storage (Jan 4, 2010, 18:34 UTC) (2690 reads)
(2 talkbacks)
(feedback) Enterprise Storage Forum: "Data storage has become the weak link in enterprise applications, and without a concerted effort on the part of storage vendors, the technology is in danger of becoming irrelevant"
DRBD and MySQL - Virtualbox Setup (Jan 4, 2010, 18:04 UTC) (1961 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Database Journal: "DRBD is a Linux project to provide a real time distributed filesystem. Part two of this series will dig deep into a real-world installation example. We'll use Sun's virtualbox software to create a couple of VMs, then configure those VMs with DRBD, and finally install and test MySQL running on volumes sitting on DRBD."
Virtualization With KVM On Ubuntu 9.10 (Dec 30, 2009, 03:33 UTC) (3225 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Howtoforge: "This guide explans how you can install and use KVM for creating and running virtual machines on an Ubuntu 9.10 server. I will show how to create image-based virtual machines and also virtual machines that use a logical volume (LVM). KVM is short for Kernel-based Virtual Machine and makes use of hardware virtualization, i.e., you need a CPU that supports hardware virtualization, e.g. Intel VT or AMD-V."
AMD Does RAID On a Chip (Dec 23, 2009, 21:32 UTC) (3339 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Enterprise Storage Forum: "AMD is adding RAID data protection to its server chips, thanks to an OEM deal with Dot Hill."
Open Science and climategate: The IPCC/CRU needs to take a leaf out of CERN's Book (Dec 23, 2009, 08:02 UTC) (2988 reads)
(7 talkbacks)
(feedback) Free Software Magazine: "This is not the place to debate the immense subject of climate science but it is necessary to say something about “climategate” in order to explain what happens when scientists and politicians collude to distort, hide and even destroy critical (raw) data and methodologies which, unlike the output of CERN, have absolutely colossal financial implications for every man, woman and child on this planet."
The Future of Data Storage: FCoE, SSD Mergers, But No Clouds (Dec 22, 2009, 19:02 UTC) (2300 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Enterprise Storage Forum: "As I wrote a year ago, the data storage market was going to be tough to predict this year because of the economy, and indeed, the economy did hold back some technological advances that might otherwise have occurred this year."
Installing VirtualBox 3.1 On An Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop (Dec 18, 2009, 21:32 UTC) (3847 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Howtoforge: "This tutorial shows how you can install Sun xVM VirtualBox 3.1 on an Ubuntu 9.10 desktop. With VirtualBox you can create and run guest operating systems ("virtual machines") such as Linux and Windows under a host operating system."
HP Enlists Partners to Help Steal Sun's Customers (Dec 16, 2009, 09:03 UTC) (1787 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) ServerWatch: "IBM has been crowing about its efforts to lure away Sun Microsystems customers, but it's not the only major IT vendor hoping to benefit from its continued woes."
Gluster Does Clustered Storage for Less with Open Source (Dec 15, 2009, 21:02 UTC) (2088 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Enterprise Storage Forum: "Gluster has added a Linux operating system layer and a management interface, and the whole platform can fit on a USB memory stick that the company says can turn a bare server into a clustered storage node within 15 minutes."
Linux controls IBM mainframes (Dec 15, 2009, 13:32 UTC) (2060 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) The H Open: "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."
University of Antwerp builds desktop supercomputer with 13 NVIDIA GPUs (Dec 15, 2009, 03:02 UTC) (3037 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) DarkVision Hardware: "Almost a year and a half ago researchers of the University of Antwerp were among the first to take advantage of the latest developments in GPGPU technology to create FASTRA, a desktop PC with supercomputer power."
DRBD and MySQL - Excellent Low-cost HA Solution (Dec 10, 2009, 23:32 UTC) (2571 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Database Journal: "DRBD is a Linux project to provide a real-time distributed filesystem. Although it has some clustering support, it's not really a true clustered filesystem like OCFS2 or GFS2. What it provides is a mirrored copy of a block device across a network"
