Linux News for Feb 26, 2009

• Video: Ted Ts'o on Ext4, BtrFS and first steps with Linux (Feb 26, 2009, 23:34)
  Linux Magazine: "Ted talks about the improved acceleration of ext4 and the difference between ext4 and BtrFS. He explains who actually pays him, and why he's on assignment from IBM. Subsequently, Ted reminisces about what he did with Linux when he first discovered it in the 1990's."


• Server Sales Fall 14 Percent in Q4 (Feb 26, 2009, 23:04)
  ServerWatch: "Linux server sales were down 7 percent, while Windows server sales fell 17.8 percent. Unix server revenues account for 36.2 percent of quarterly server spending, compared with 35.3 for Windows and 13.6 percent for Linux."


• Novell's Open Source Rex Talks Linux (Feb 26, 2009, 22:34)
  InternetNews: "It's not all about the code in the Linux ecosystem. Any Linux project needs leadership. Markus Rex is one such leader."


• Weekly Ten(2-23-2009): The unknown hackers, SteamPunk Frankenstein, Greatest Science Fiction Movies (Feb 26, 2009, 22:04)
  Tech Source From Bohol: "Not many Linux-come-latelies know this, but Linux was actually the second open-source Unix-based operating system for personal computers to be distributed over the Internet."


• Music Executive Ridiculed at Pirate Bay Trial (Feb 26, 2009, 21:34)
  Wired: "Laughter filled The Pirate Bay trial here Wednesday when John Kennedy, the chief executive of the International Federation of Phonographic Industries, testified that people would have purchased every music track they got free file sharing."


• Windows = Antivirus = Pollution? (Feb 26, 2009, 21:04)
  Technology FLOSS: "... but then the next even more obvious question was "then how much pollution is produced by the usage of antivirus?""


• Freescale Plans Reference Design for Linux ARM Netbooks (Feb 26, 2009, 20:34)
  Linux Magazine: "When will power-saving and affordable ARM netbooks become available? Freescale Semiconductor has ventured into an advanced standard..."


• Three Node Replication Using DRBD 8.3 (Feb 26, 2009, 20:04)
  DRBD refers to block devices designed as a building block to form high availability (HA) clusters. This is done by mirroring a whole block device via an assigned network. DRBD can be understood as network based raid-1. This howto details how to set it up on Debian Etch.


• Opening the phone (Feb 26, 2009, 19:34)
  The H Open: "How do you take a project with 40 million lines of code that's shipping on millions of devices around the world and make it open source? That's the Everest of a problem facing the Symbian Foundation as they start to deliver on the promises made when Nokia brought Symbian under its wing."


• Tour the Linux generic SCSI driver (Feb 26, 2009, 19:04)
  IBM Developerworks: "Computers control and transfer data to SCSI devices via SCSI commands. In this article, the author introduces some of the SCSI commands and methods of executing SCSI commands when using SCSI API in Linux. He provides background on the SCSI client/server model and the storage SCSI command. Next, he explains the Linux generic SCSI driver API and offers an example of using a system that focuses on executing the inquiry command using the generic driver."


• Jones and Updegrove on Microsoft vs. TomTom (Feb 26, 2009, 18:26)
  Andy Updegrove IAL (is a lawyer) and Pamela Jones is a paralegal, so here are their comments on Microsoft vs. TomTom:
  "A new guy at the wheel, letting the marketplace know that they better not take him for granted."
  "Have I lost my cotton-pickin' mind?"


• Novell-Red Hat Conundrum: What's a FOSS Supporter to Do? (Feb 26, 2009, 18:02)
  Datamation: "When you are a free and open source software (FOSS) supporter, life often seems black and white. You are for user freedom and shared source code, and against proprietary software and companies -- especially Microsoft. But sometimes things get more complicated."


• Distro Review: Sabayon 4.0 (Feb 26, 2009, 17:32)
  Adventures In Open Source: "I've had mixed feelings about it in the past, I found 2.2 Professional to be very bloated, capable of interesting innovations but overall slightly disappointing. It's a Gentoo based distro from Italy and it seems there's no love lost between the Gentoo and Sabayon camps. I wanted to see how it had developed now they'd reached version 4.0, so here goes nothing..."


• UK government backs open source (Feb 26, 2009, 17:02)
  BBC News: "Tom Watson MP, minister for digital engagement, said open source software would be on a level playing field with proprietary software such as Windows."


• trixbox CE Functions and Features (Feb 26, 2009, 16:32)
  Packt: "Every commercial PBX system has its own set of advanced features that are activated by key commands, also known as vertical service activation codes. In this article by Kerry Garrison, we will look at the standard and advanced features of trixbox CE. We will even look at how to add our own custom features to the system."


• Red Hat throws down gauntlet in virtualisation battle (Feb 26, 2009, 16:02)
  Tectonic: "The move will not only position Red Hat strongly against industry leader VMWare but will also better position Red Hat against Microsoft which also has a line of virtualisation tools."


• Corporate Investment the price of Linux's freedom (Feb 26, 2009, 15:32)
  IT Pro: "Recently Alan Cox, a key Linux kernel developer, moved from his job at Red Hat to Intel. This move may have been surprising to some, but it makes a lot of sense for Intel, for Cox, and for Red Hat."


• Ext4 (Kernel Newbies Overview) (Feb 26, 2009, 15:02)
  Kernel Newbies: "In many ways, Ext4 is a deeper improvement over Ext3 than Ext3 was over Ext2. Ext3 was mostly about adding journaling to Ext2, but Ext4 modifies important data structures of the filesystem such as the ones destined to store the file data. The result is a filesystem with an improved design, better performance, reliability and features."


• Could Server Netbooks Reshape the Market? (Feb 26, 2009, 14:32)
  ServerWatch: "What this failed to recognize is that many potential buyers don't actually need vast amounts of computing power, storage space or memory. For web browsing, word processing and spreadsheeting, the power of an Intel Atom processor is enough, as is a fairly moderate amount of RAM (512Mb) and a tiny (by modern standards) 8Gb of storage."


• Red Hat Recruits Middleware Experts From Oracle, Sun and IBM (Feb 26, 2009, 14:02)
  The VAR Guy: "A few weeks ago, The VAR Guy told readers Red Hat's JBoss middleware business would eventually be larger than Red Hat’s Linux platform business."


• Ubuntu Makes Cloud Strategy a Big Joke (Feb 26, 2009, 13:32)
  ServerWatch: ""... bear with me" (geddit!?) "A good Koala knows how to see the wood for the trees, even when her head is in the clouds." (Very droll.) "Wouldn't it be apt for Ubuntu to make the Amazon jungle (aaaagh!) as easy to navigate as, say, APT?""


• Is Microsoft finally taking Linux to court? (Feb 26, 2009, 13:02)
  Cyber Cynic: "Once a year, Microsoft president Steve Ballmer, would proclaim that Linux violated some of Microsoft patents. Then, he wouldn't do anything about it. Now, perhaps, he has."


• State of the Computer Book Market 2008, Part 2: The Technologies (Feb 26, 2009, 12:02)
  O'Reilly Radar: "In this second installment (the first post is found here), we look at computer book sales in specific technology categories. Remember that we've organized the data into six "Category Families" -- Systems and Programming, Web Design and Development, Business Applications, Digital Media Applications, Consumer Operating Systems and Devices, and Other"


• Parted Magic 3.7 Is Here (Feb 26, 2009, 10:32)
  Softpedia: "Just ten days after the Valentine's Day release, Patrick Verner announced today the immediate availability of his Parted Magic 3.7 Linux distribution. This new version fixes several bugs, adds some new features and updates a few software packages."


• Back To Basics: Getting File Information Using Perl's Stat Function (Feb 26, 2009, 09:02)
  The Linux and Unix Menagerie: "Today we're going take a (somewhat) beginner's look at extracting lots of useful information from files on Linux or Unix using Perl. More specifically, we'll be using Perl's stat() function."


• The Falcon Programming Language: a brief tutorial (Feb 26, 2009, 07:32)
  Free Software Magazine: "The Falcon Programming Language is a typeless language born for rapid development, prototyping, and ready-made integration. We may also describe Falcon as a "scripting" language with features that enable the programmer to create even complex multi-threaded applications."


• Linux - Find latest file in a directory (Feb 26, 2009, 06:02)
  UNIX BASH Scripting: "I have a huge set of(more than 300) log files(nmn_log.*.txt) in one of my logdir. I had to find out the latest log file name."


• X Server 1.6.0 Has Been Released (Feb 26, 2009, 04:32)
  Phoronix: "It's arriving about two months later than originally scheduled (and didn't arrive in 2008 like Intel wanted), but X Server 1.6 has been officially released this afternoon and it wasn't 212 days late like the infamous X Server 1.4.1 release"


• WFTL Bytes! for Feb 23, 2009: Govt. Needs FOSS, Microsoft Acquires Buddies, OpenSUSE "Troubled" (Feb 26, 2009, 03:02)
  WFTL Bytes!: "This is WFTL Bytes!, your occasiodaily FOSS and Linux news show for Monday, February 23, 2009, with your host, Marcel Gagne. This is episode 52. On today's newscast . . . we ask why government isn't saving big with FOSS, what constitutes good personal marketing, who's buddying up to Microsoft, why are things so tough over at OpenSUSE, and who put the ram in the ramma lamma ding dong?"


• How to install OpenOffice.org 3 on Ubuntu 8.10 (Feb 26, 2009, 01:32)
  To a free world: "Ubuntu is coming by default with OpenOffice 2.4, so, I decided to upgrade to version 3. To do this, there are two methods, either install it from "http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main deb" repository or manually from files directly downloaded on the OpenOffice web site. I started by trying the installation from the repository because it's much simpler."


• Microsoft sues TomTom over Linux and other patent claims (Feb 26, 2009, 00:10)
  TechFlash: "Microsoft filed suit against TomTom today, alleging that the in-car navigation company's devices violate eight of its patents -- including three that relate to TomTom's implementation of the Linux kernel."


• 8 of the Best Free Linux Blog Software (Feb 26, 2009, 00:02)
  LinuxLinks: "Software that provides a method of managing a website is commonly known as a Web Content Management System (or WCMS). Many blogging software programs are considered a specific type of WCMS. In this feature we have included some of the best WCMS software which also make great blogging tools"