Google Timeline says Linux from year 1910 !

Google Timeline is a snazzy experimental feature which generates timelines for search queries. That “experimental” part seems to be there for a reason, as the results for a Linux search claim that Linux has been around since the 1910ies. Then, after a brief reappearance in the 1920ies, it disappears from the

Hulu for Linux Users with Shiny New Tools

Just like the primetime television season, online TV website Hulu has been sleeping this summer, adding a few shows here or there while it waited for the fall primetime season. Behind the scenes though, the ABC/FOX/NBC joint venture has been building new features such as Hulu Desktop and its Facebook app.

Karmic Koala: The best Ubuntu Linux ever?

I’ve looked at hundreds of Linux distributions over the years. Some of them have been awful. Many have been OK. Few have been great. Based on my early look at Karmic Koala, Ubuntu 9.10, I think we’ve got a very strong Linux desktop distribution coming down the way.

Before jumping into my early review, let me say that while I like Ubuntu, I’m not an Ubuntu fanboy. I also like Fedora, openSUSE, Mint, and MEPIS to name a few Linux distributions that I use on a regular basis.

What caught my eye with this version of Ubuntu is that, especially for a beta, it’s a remarkably attractive and smooth-running Linux distribution. I first installed it as a virtual machine with Sun’s VirtualBox on a Gateway DX4710-09. The computer uses an Intel Dual Core 2.5GHz E5200 processor. I have the 64-bit version of the new Ubuntu, 2GBs of RAM and a 10GB virtual drive. In addition, I installed Koala on a Dell Inspiron 530S. This low-end PC is powered by a 2.2-GHz Intel Pentium E2200 dual-core processor with an 800-MHz front-side bus. The test machine had 4GB of RAM, a 500GB SATA (Serial ATA) drive, and an Integrated Intel 3100 GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) chip set.

On both systems, I was very impressed by installation program. Not only did it look great, but it also automatically detected and set-up all the hardware. Linux distributions, in general, have gotten much better with this kind of thing, but Ubuntu 9.10 worked great both at taking a PC from a lifeless pile of chips to something living and useful, and looking good doing so.

It was also fast. How fast? On both my systems, I went from the hard-drive starting its spin to a working desktop in less than 20 seconds. Let me remind you, this is beta software running in a virtual system on a not especially-fast PC.

The interface itself is the brand-spanking new GNOME 2.28. While generally speaking I prefer KDE, this updated GNOME with Ubuntu has a nice, clean look that I and many others will like.

Along with the update interface, Ubuntu uses GNOME’s vastly improved Empathy IM client and my favorite e-mail/groupware client, Evolution. Those, along with Firefox 3.5.3 for Web browsing, give you all the first class Internet tools you’ll need.

This distributions runs on top of the latest Linux kernel, Linux 2.6.31. This also includes the Ext4 file-system, which delivers excellent hard drive performance.

Another real nice addition to this distribution for new users is the Ubuntu Software Center. This take on an app store makes it mindlessly easy for people to find and install software, though experienced Linux users won’t need it. For them, the Synaptic package manager and all the other usual package installation programs are there. This is a great feature if you have a friend who’s just getting their feet wet in Linux.

Is this edition of Ubuntu going to be the best one ever? Well, this is only a beta, so I can’t say that as a sure thing, but it’s sure looking great so far. Check it out. I think you’ll be happy with what you find.

10 important Linux developments everyone should know about

Celebrating 10 years of Linux accomplishments

The Linux® technology, development model, and community have all been game-changing influences on the IT industry, and all we can really do is stand back and look at it all, happy to have been along for the ride for developerWorks’ first 10 years. The Linux zone team has put together this greatly abbreviated collection of things that stand out in our minds as having rocked the world of Linux in a significant way.

Much too much has happened with Linux in the last 10 years to do anything like a complete job of listing the important events and technological advances surrounding this operating system. But nevertheless, in celebration of our 10th birthday, the Linux zone team looks back and presents to you some major milestones, why they matter, and what we wrote about them. Please to enjoy.

Be sure to check out the developerWorks 10th birthday page to see what else is going on across the site, including a timeline of developerWorks events over the last 10 years.

1. Linux Professional Institute certification

In 2000, LPI announced the availability of test 1a, the first exam in its new Linux administrator certification program, a program that now consists of seven tests across three certification levels. developerWorks published its first series of LPI exam-prep tutorials by Daniel Robbins in 2002, and we’ve kept up with it ever since.

Why it matters: You can argue about the value of certifications, but the fact that employers were looking for a consistent measure of Linux expertise was one of many signs that Linux had arrived.

2. Samba

Andrew Tridgell’s Samba on Linux predates developerWorks by a good five or six years, but his implementation of Microsoft’s Server Message Block (SMB) protocol is such an important component of mixed networks everywhere that we really didn’t feel right not including it here.

Why it matters: In many companies, Linux snuck in as a Web server, firewall, e-mail server, or other specialized appliance. Why not try hiding in plain sight as a Windows® file and print server? Linux plays well with others, and this is proof.

3. Linux on S/390

"One box, one operating system" no longer applied to Linux when it arrived on the S/390® mainframe in early 2000.

Why it matters: You can now run numerous virtual Linux instances at once, distributing your costs across multiple application sessions running on a single piece of hardware. Plus, your Linux expertise now scales as well as your applications.

4. SELinux

Released under the GPL by the US National Security Agency in early 2001 and merged into the kernel since 2.6.0, Security Enhanced Linux provides support for a number of access control policy models, such as mandatory access control and role-based access control.

Why it matters: Although not the simplest thing to use, SELinux brings an additional level of security to Linux for installations for which discretionary access control is not enough. And there’s something sort of cool about the NSA giving technology away.

5. Linux LiveCDs

A LiveCD lets you boot Linux on a machine without actually installing anything on the hard drive—Linux boots from the CD or DVD and lives in RAM while running. Many distributions have LiveCD versions, and there are a number of LiveCD distributions created for specific tasks, such as system diagnosis and recovery.

Why it matters: Your favorite Linux distribution can generally be assumed not to be installed on any given machine, so for demos, trial software, the aforementioned diagnostic purposes, or just to show off Linux to a Windows user, having a self-contained disk that you can pop in and boot from is an invaluable tool.

6. Linux clusters

Linux users early on started chaining multiple boxes together to provide more fault tolerance or better performance. Beowulf, for one, was an important early architecture for multi-machine parallel computations. There’s even a load-balancing cluster LiveCD, ClusterKnoppix.

Why it matters: Cluster computing is supercomputing (or fault tolerance) for everyone, using free software and commodity hardware to achieve what only specialized, expensive systems could do before.

7. Linux supercomputing

Of course, tightly coupled, multi-core systems will always outperform networked boxes. Blue Gene®/L and the now Blue Gene/P running Linux are setting records in the most compute-intensive technical and scientific workload environments.

Why it matters: Besides the gee-whiz value of running the fastest computers on Earth, advanced techniques and standards for multiprocessing environments are flowing back to the rest of us for business computing.

8. Linux on Playstation

Sony has allowed and even encouraged the installation of Linux on its game consoles, and for developers interested in exploring Cell/B.E. programming, the PS3 is an accessible option.

Why it matters: Linux on the Playstation makes a fine computer and all, but frankly, in the greater scheme of things, we’re not sure it changes the Linux landscape all that much. Consider this a subversive high-five to all the hackers out there who try things like this just because you can™.

9. Virtualization

Virtualization allows one or more guest operating systems to run on top of another operating system that acts as the host. The 2.6.20 kernel was the first to include the Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM), but Xen, User-Mode Linux, QEMU, VMware, and other virtualization technologies are important as well.

Why it matters: Virtualization is a necessary ingredient of many cloud architectures. For developers, virtualization can be a good way to create a nice, safe sandbox for testing.

10. One Laptop Per Child

Announced in 2005, the OLPC project was created to provide low-cost, durable, connected computers to underprivileged children around the world. As much about the user interface as the hardware, the Linux-based Sugar operating environment is designed to encourage exploring and expressing rather than focusing on traditional productivity tools.

Why it matters: It’s a nice idea. It also represents a shift away from exposing Linux’s traditional user interface(s), to instead employing purpose-driven UIs that overlie and conceal the gory details of the operating system. Linux might win on the desktop by simply hiding the fact that it’s there.

How GNOME and KDE spend their money

Quarterly reports are the stuff of business. In most people’s minds, they are as far from the spirit of free and open source software (FOSS) as anyone can imagine. All the same, as non-profit organizations, many FOSS projects issue them. And while your first reaction may be to avoid quarterly reports, they can give some insights into projects, especially if you read between the lines.

For instance, if you have been assuming, as I have, that GNOME has more corporate support than KDE, and a larger budget, a look at the latest report for GNOME and KDE may surprise you. Together, the two reports give an entirely different impression than you might assume.

Neither quarterly report has much in common with the glossy publications offered by multi-national publications. Both are PDF files with undistinguished layouts and a minimum of graphics. Even head shots of people mentioned or reporting are absent. Compared to corporate reports, those of both GNOME and KDE are practical, unadorned publications.

Of the two, GNOME’s (its first, covering June, July, and August 2009) comes closest to the spirit of a corporate report. It includes not only the obligatory message from GNOME’s executive director, but also reports from the Release, Bugsquad, Marketing, Web, Usability, Accessibility, Documentation, Art and Localizations Teams. Although some of these reports were outdated by the time the report was released, their overall impression is of a multi-tiered multi-national’s executives reporting in. In general, the report fits in well with GNOME’s traditional tendency to favor the corporate side and with its recent interest in marketing. Like most quarterly reports, it is as much a public relations document as an effort to provide concrete information (although it does both). The one non-corporate note is at the beginning, when executive director Stormy Peters asks readers, "please let us know if you find it useful!"

In comparison, KDE’s report for March through June 2009 is less than one quarter the size of GNOME’s. Although it includes the usual redundant introduction — this time by Aaron Seigo — it contains far fewer individual summaries than GNOME’s report. These differences may reflect the greater experience that KDE e.V. — the German non-profit that manages KDE — has with the whole idea of reports, and has the advantage that it is more likely to be read completely. At the same time, because it is so short, the KDE report seems less corporate, an impression that is fitting for the project’s more community-based orientation.

Beyond these general impressions, what is most interesting is the financial accounting in the reports. The two reports are not strictly comparable, given that many FOSS activities occur in the northern hemisphere’s summer rather than spring. Nor is it always obvious in either report what falls under each line item. Still, some differences emerge.

For instance, GNOME lists an income of just over $102,000 for the quarter covered by its report. This income includes $65,000 from the Desktop Summit, $20,000 from "advisory board fees" (which I interpret mainly as donations from corporate sponsors), and $12,400 collected by the Friends of GNOME, a promotional and fund-raising project.

Omitting the Desktop Summit as a one-time source of income, these figures mean that GNOME has traditionally relied on corporate supporters. Corporate supporters continue to provide the bulk of GNOME’s income, but the total from Friends of GNOME suggests that GNOME may be switching to a more community-based source of income. However, given that GNOME reported an approximate income of $54,000 per quarter in 2008 (http://markmail.org/message/bsk4gush6hoq42ef), GNOME does appear to be suffering from reduced income this year; if you divide the one-time Desktop Summit income over all quarters, GNOME is apparently operating this year on about $47,000 per quarter.

By contrast, KDE’s income for the quarter covered by its report totaled just over $111,000 (if you convert the figures from Euros to approximate American dollars). This is actually an increase from the incomes of $93,000 and $102,000 in the fourth and second quarter of 2008. In other words, despite GNOME’s wooing of corporate support, KDE appears to have roughly twice the budget of GNOME in each quarter. And, just as importantly, KDE does not seem to have been affected by the recession.

What is not altogether clear is where KDE’s income is coming from. However, if you assume that the Camp KDE sponsorships and donations indicate corporate donations, then KDE is attracting more support from business than GNOME, Assuming that "supporting members" refers to individuals, KDE is also is collecting more than twice as much from indviduals.

To keep running, GNOME spends $34,401 on wages and $3300 on employee travel, while sponsoring the costs of developers traveling to the desktop summit with $10,300. No other travel expenses are listed, so, presumably, GNOME spends a comparable amount for travel each quarter.

In comparison, KDE spends $17,000 on wages, plus some $2000 for legal expenses and $3,000 for board meetings — presumably because a number of board members travel from North America to attend. Even so, its administrative costs are less than half GNOME’s, despite its larger income.

Moreover, KDE also provides some $27,000 in travel expenses to events ranging from developer meetings, conferences and Camp KDE, a total well over twice that of GNOME, even in a quarter without the Desktop Summit. From these figures, it appears that KDE places a far greater emphasis on face to face meetings than GNOME currently does.

Considering these figures, you should not be surprised that KDE was reporting a positive balance of over $288,000. GNOME’s total balance was not reported, but, considering that last year GNOME was expecting a short fall of some $40,000, the chances are that its bank balance is nowhere near KDE’s.

These suppositions might change if we knew exactly what each line item involved. Still, the differences are consistent enough to make clear that KDE is more than holding its own in the corporate world. What’s more, it appears to run more cheaply than GNOME, and to spend more of its money on its community.

These conclusions are no reflection on GNOME, nor on the current members of the GNOME Foundation. If nothing else, being centered in North America, GNOME might have been harder hit by the recent recession than KDE, which tends to be centered in Europe.

But these conclusions do show how your impressions can change when you get to the bottom line. KDE, from what I can see, is not the underdog that many imagine.

Use an Old Linux Computer to Put your Baby to Sleep

If you are not a geek, let me explain the logic of this very simple program.

The program will first auto-eject the CD-ROM drive of your computer and then it will close that open tray. This open-close loop will run forever unless you terminate the program manually.

 

 

while [1 = 1]
 do
	#eject cdrom
	eject

	#pull cdrom tray back in
	eject -t
 done

Now the interesting part — using just these four lines of code, a geek turned his old Linux* computer into a baby rocker.

He attached a string between the tray of the CD-ROM drive and the baby seat and as the tray would open and close repeatedly, the smooth movements were enough to put his baby to sleep. Awesome.

[*] you are not on on Linux, you can build a similar Baby rocker program for Windows using Autohotkey software.

SystemRescueCd 1.3.1 Includes Filesystem Benchmarking Tools

SystemRescueCd creator François Dupoux is committed to keeping his distribution running on the latest and greatest software, because yesterday he released SystemRescueCD 1.3.1 and, as everyone is expecting, it is powered by version 2.6.31.1 of the Linux kernel. Along with that you will find a 2.6.27.35 alternative kernel, a fresh NTFS-3G, 2009.4.4-AR19, and PartImage 0.6.8, which allows you to disable SSL at runtime.

The shiny and new Memtest86+ 4.0 boot image is twice as fast when running the first test pass on your RAM, brings added support for more processors and it also features better detection of Integrated Memory Controllers. Gdisk, the GPT partition editing tool, has been updated to version 0.5.0 and FSArchiver 0.6.1 has its cryptographic functions provided by libgcrypt.
SystemRescueCd 1.3.1 isn’t all about updates, though; some applications have been replaced, fixes to the distribution were made and, more importantly, a new feature was added. TigerVNC 1.0.0 took the place of TightVNC, and in support of this change the VNC server configuration was modified. From the fixes department comes a change to the initial RAM filesystem, which allows you to boot SystemRescueCd over the network when the source URL uses a hostname.
Newly added in this release is the support for filesystem speed testing, provided by the IOzone Filesystem Benchmark version 3.242. By using it you will be able to replicate those EXT4 versus ReiserFS tests that were all over the Internet a while ago, or just pick the best filesystem for your computer.
About SystemRescueCd
SystemRescueCd, a Linux-based Live CD, is a quick and easy way to repair systems and recover data after serious crashes. With tools ranging from partition managers and disk diagnostic mechanisms (like TestDisk and sfdisk) to basic day-to-day applications (text editors, Midnight Commander etc.), as well as support for all important filesystems, SystemRescueCd is a solution that anyone who is experiencing data loss or other system-related problems should consider using.
Download SystemRescueCd 1.3.1 right now from Softpedia.

Gentoo Linux Celebrates 10 Years of Existence Through a Special Release

The LiveDVD of Gentoo 10.0 features a great package list

 

Back in 1999, Daniel Robbins released the first version of Gentoo Linux, which quickly became renowned for its unmatched speed. Fast forward to September 2009 and you’ll see that Gentoo is still one of the most appreciated source-based Linux distributions. Since this venerable distro has just had its 10th birthday, the developers decided to make a special LiveDVD release, Gentoo 10.0, packed with many one-off improvements that should give users one more reason to celebrate.
In the official release announcement, Matthew Summers highlights the "superb list of packages" included on the LiveDVD. However, what users will certainly notice when starting up Gentoo 10.0 for the first time is the awesome artwork made by Ben Stedman and Alex Legler.

These two graphic artists didn’t stop at creating a special wallpaper for this occasion, they reached out of the desktop and made matching DVD and Jewel case inlays, and a DVD label. These extras are available on the Gentoo website, and they make for a smooth graphical transition from the moment you take the disk out of the case to when the desktop environment starts up. You can get a glimpse of the default wallpaper by clicking the thumbnail at the beginning of this article.
Powering this latest Gentoo release is the Linux kernel 2.6.30, which is tweaked with custom patches, version 2.18 of the GNU Binary Utilities, GCC 4.3.2, GLIBC 2.9 and BASH 4.0. Along with those come Python 2.6.2 and Perl 5.8.8 for your scripting needs, and even Speakup 3.1.3 for the visually impaired.
After booting the DVD you will be greeted by KDE 4.3.1, but if you aren’t at home on this Qt-based desktop environment, just pick one of the following: GNOME 2.26.3, Xfce 4.6.1, Enlightenment 0.16.8.15, Openbox 3.4.7.2, Fluxbox 1.1.1, TWM 1.0.4, or look into the portage system for more. The desktop wouldn’t be complete without a web browser, and there are plenty of those to choose from, like Mozilla Firefox 3.5.3, Arora 0.7.11, Opera 10.0 or Epiphany 2.26.3, just to name a few. Getting in touch with others is easy when you have Pidgin 2.5.9, Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0.23 and Ekiga 2.0.12 at your fingertips.
If you want to use Gentoo 10.0 in the office, OpenOffice 3.1.1, Abiword 2.6.4, GNUCash 2.2.9, Scribus 1.3.3.11 or GIMP 2.6.4 will surely help, and since writing endless documents can be greatly sped up if you have some background music, Amarok 2.1.1 and MPlayer 1.0_rc4 will come in handy.
Download Gentoo 10.0 right now from Softpedia.

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