● 07.21.10

Posted in GNU/Linux, IBM, News Roundup, Servers, Ubuntu at 10:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Further catch-up with GNU/Linux news (mostly from last week)

●●● GNU/Linux

Of Hardware and OSsCurrently, Linux systems take the very high end machines (any machine more powerful than a fully tricked out MacPro {read supercomputers and mainframes}) and the very low end machines (phones, routers, palm-tops, PVRs). Stop Apologizing For Linux!There’s almost nothing that desktop Linux can’t do. A modern Linux desktop is probably a better choice for 95% of the heavy Internet service using population than the big commercial behemoth that dominates the desktop. I’m not saying Windows doesn’t have its place or that it doesn’t do the job for a lot of people, but Linux is better, faster, stronger, safer, and sexier than anything else out there. It’s cool. It rocks. It dramatically increases your sex appeal. And if you’ve got a 64 bit processor instead of 32, that goes double. What more do you want? 10 things that drive me crazy about current operating systemsFunUsing Compiz As A Window Management ToolYou’ve seen the wobbly windows, you’ve seen the cube, you’ve seen the raindrops. Compiz is just a bunch of useless eye candy right? Wrong. While the flashy effects get most of the attention, Compiz is a top-notch window manager in its own right. In fact, it’s got so many workspace and window management tools that many people use Compiz for years without ever knowing about some of the most useful features. This guide will cover each of the best window management plugins for Compiz and explain how each can be used to create a more productive desktop, with or without wobbly windows. Pimp my Linux desktop!Linux, which I’m using at the moment, comes with a pretty standard blue-themed Gnome desktop common to several distros- Debian, Mandriva and Fedora- distinguished only by a branded wallpaper.It’s a simple and elegant theme, but over the last few days I’ve been customising my desktop, changing the theme and icons. The new theme is a dark one which I think suits my laptop with its grey-bordered screen.DesktopHas Linux lost the desktop battle?Even I have done it. I don’t think you can be a Linux blogger without having done at least one post about how this year is the year the Linux desktop will take over the world. However, no matter how many people seem to write about it. The year the Linux desktop takes over the world always seems to fall through the cracks. Sometimes I think that there must be some Pinky foiling the Linux Brains plans But! The pundits cry, Linux is gaining market share every year. Surely it will win the Linux desktop prize soon. Nay! Say the naysayers, at the rate Linux is gaining desktop market share even those not born yet will have one foot in the grave before Linux has any significant rating. Which one is right? Linux: No bloatware, popups, and annoyancesGNU/Linux has the answer to these annoyances, and it is this: they are simply not there. Why? Because the software is written by developers that are not trying to sell you something. China and the Year of the GNU/Linux DesktopIt’s an old joke by now that this year will be the year of the GNU/Linux desktop – just like last year, and the year before that. But now there’s a new twist: that this year will be the year of the GNU/Linux smartphone – with the difference that it’s really happening.That’s mainly being driven by the huge success of the Linux-based Android system, but it’s not the only open source system here. There’s also webOS and MeeGo, both of which have their loyal fans. What that means is that whichever of these takes off, the open source world will benefit. [...]If Baidu does come out with its own Android rival, that could help to achieve two things. It would finally take open source into the Chinese mainstream, and help to ensure that Linux unequivocally becomes the world’s leading operating system for smartphones – if not on the desktop. PT: “Nearly all school children getting familiar with open source’Almost all school children in Portugal are becoming familiar with using open source, including the Linux operating system, says Paulo Trezentos, founder of Caixa Mágica Software.By the end of this year, the company’s eponymous Linux-based operating system will have been installed on 890,000 school PCs and school laptops, he says. “In a country with a population of 10 million, this means that Linux is reaching the majority of the young people.” 5 ways to use bootable Linux live discsIn the almost 20 years since Linux was first released into the world, free for anyone to use and modify however they like, the operating system has been put to a lot of uses. Today, a vast number of servers run Linux to serve up Web pages and applications, while user-friendly versions of Linux run PCs, netbooks, and even Android and WebOS phones.One incredibly useful way that Linux has been adapted to the needs of modern computer users is as a “live CD,” a version of the operating system that can be booted from a CD (or a DVD or, in some cases, a USB drive) without actually being installed on the computer’s hard drive. Given the massive RAM and fast CPUs available on even the lowest-end computers today, along with Linux’s generally lower system requirements compared to Windows and Mac OS X, you can run Linux quite comfortably from a CD drive. ServerCanonical bundles Linux, IBM database for the cloudCanonical is offering enterprises a chance to try cloud computing via a virtual appliance that bundles Ubuntu Linux with the IBM DB2 Express-C database running on the Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) public cloud platform.The free appliance, which features Ubuntu Server Edition 10.04, also can be deployed in private cloud configurations.

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