Archive for April, 2007
Monday, April 30th, 2007
Linux/SELinux vs Solaris 10 + Trusted Extensions
Definitely worth the read if your curious about topics like SELinux and Solaris Trusted Extensions…
http://mentalrootkit.org/?p=16
The biggest misconception [sic] is that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is a “trusted operating system”. It is not and hopefully never will be. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a general purpose operating system that can meet the same requirements that traditionally required a special-purpose trusted operating system. This distinction may seem small, but it has large implications on the relevance and long-term viability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SELinux.
Friday, April 27th, 2007
Does Adobe “get it”? It seems they’re learning.
The Battle of the Titans for 2007-10 could be Adobe+Google vs Microsoft (think tag team wresting… I hated WWF…but it fits).
It will be interesting to see Adobe leverage open source as a means to win this game - but, if they did not use an open source tactic here, I’d say the writing was on the wall for Microsoft to take share (I say tactic, b/c they don’t have a full strategy here .. yet at least… please insert Flash/Apollo… ).
Good move by Adobe. The score is Adobe 3, Microsoft 1 by my count.
Now if I can attempt to script Microsoft’s next move I’ll bet we see Silverlight take an OOXML-like path with some sort of “open” adjective but nothing really open in the sense that “we” would want. Let’s face it Microsoft (and Sun) absolutely cannot stand the thought of Linux growing even more - and so Silverlight will be a half baked attempt to keep Windows users on Microsoft technology with a potential twist to try and speak to sufficient “openness” for 60% of the “community” and customers who prefer open source on Windows anyway. That’s my pure, 100% speculative guesstimate at this time. Microsoft may also chose to do nothing at all…. after all, Microsoft owns native Windows GUI/presentation development. Flash is but a spec of the native user apps that run on Windows. (which could also lead to Microsoft embedding a lightweight CLR into Silverlight as Miguel has speculated)
What would be great is if Microsoft and Adobe could work together on a standard and have a common open source project that could bridge both camps. BUT, I think both companies are still tepid in terms of truly finding ways to move up the stack and compete at new levels instead of at the implementation standard. Adobe is definitely much further ahead though - and if Google or even Eclipse down the road join in, this could get ugly for Microsoft. However, Microsoft seems near intent to prove on their own that they still don’t get it ;-).
All I know is the fun has just begun.
Friday, April 27th, 2007
Friday fun post: Domino PCs
Fun post of the day… funny video of PC Dominos.
Friday, April 27th, 2007
IBM Cell BE + Mainframe + Linux = Gameframe
Cool idea to put Cell processors (think PlayStation 3 processors) into Mainframes to power online 3D games and virtual worlds…. who would have thought….
I hear all the time - Linux doesn’t have games… yes, the client doesn’t, but it looks like network-centric gaming is pretty popular grounds for Linux servers. Now we just need the client end to shape up…
You can read about it all here.
Friday, April 27th, 2007
Can you point out the fake Windows XP?
Did you ever wonder why Microsoft’s initiative to counter OLPC is using XP and not Vista (hint… easy to pirate software…)
Well see if you can point out which of these is the fake one…
http://www.bnet.com/2346-13072_23-43043-1.html
I’d ask you to point out the fake Linux, but … that doesn’t make sense. Download it all you want - no registration required either (ahem…)
Friday, April 27th, 2007
Eben Moglen taking time off from FSF, focus on SFLC
I can only imagine the hours and insanity the GPLv3 process has strained Eben’s life over the last couple years. It’s great to see him taking some time to work on other projects - I know many people who have worked directly with him on GPLv3 and he carries high regard in every corner - except maybe Redmond ;-) The good news here is Eben has in essence declared GPLv3 done from a legal drafting standpoint. I think the long drafting process will yield a much more agreeable license compared to the edgy draft 1 of yore. We’ll see if the Linux kernel ever switches, but there is plenty of software out there that is not the Linux kernel that can take advantage of v3.
Eben took on a mountain of a task, broke down walls, is still standing and has a solid license for the community to execute on going forward. I wish him the best as he focuses on other projects including the SFLC and teaching.
http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/blog/organizations/SFLC/Transition.html
Thursday, April 26th, 2007
Note to self: Linux startup services
I noticed today I’ve been using Gentoo too much… I was trying to get sendmail to start during server boot. A couple of “command not found” attempts to find rc-update went by before I realized “wait, this system is running RHEL”… So I tried chkconfig but since /sbin wasn’t in my path I thought I was off… I was stumped - did they change it in RHEL5? So I did a Google search and confirmed, yes it was chkconfig, but since /sbin wasn’t in my path I had to “/sbin/chkconfig” and that’s what threw me off…. weird how you can forget simple things so easily…
Thursday, April 26th, 2007
Linux 2.6.21 kernel arrives
As SVN reports, Linus has signed off on 2.6.21 with new innovative features to help with real-time, virtualization, and power usage (yes, a greener Linux). Two big features arrive with 2.6.21.
First, there’s clockevents:
The clockevents feature provides a uniform interface and a device API for a computer’s various timekeeping and scheduling devices. With this, developers don’t need to delve down to the hardware level to work with a computer’s timing mechanisms, making it much easier to program extremely accurate timekeeping.
Then there’s dynticks (looks like we’re getting closer to a mainframe virtualization eh?):
dynticks, saves power by shutting down the system clock more completely during periods of idleness. With earlier kernels, the system clock keeps “ticking” the timer interrupt even when the system has gone idle, at a rate of 1,000 ticks per second, or 1Hz. That wastes a lot of Watts when the CPU is doing nothing but virtually twiddling its thumbs waiting for another job. With Dynticks, the timer interrupt is turned almost off and the CPU waits for a real interrupt to come from a program, network interface, or the like. By idling your processor, you save energy — and on a laptop, that’s not a small matter.
Dynticks is one feature I’m thinking of compiling a new kernel to get… while writing this, I see that Gentoo sources already has an x86 kernel source for 2.6.21 ready to go :-)
Thursday, April 26th, 2007
Windows Vista = Windows Me II? Starting to see a few comparisons…
One thing open source and Linux have done is offered customers choice - and with choice comes certain levels of personal power to make demands. It seems customers are speaking. The Inquirer calls Windows Vista something different, Windows Me II [twilight zone music starts here]. Yes, that’s right, the mother of all operating system slanders, Windows Me II. The article makes two valid points that you should really read.
Now for The Inquirer to make such a bold statement is not quite uncommon. But when Microsoft Watch from eWeek picks it up and seems to agree… now you’ve got trouble.
Thursday, April 26th, 2007
Funny comic
Wednesday, April 25th, 2007
RANT/PLUG/NEWS: No, it’s not “our UNIX server line”; maybe It’s the LUNIX line
So many people I run into refer to System p (POWER 4/5/6 servers) as the “UNIX servers” - far from reality b/c System p runs both Linux, AIX, and even i5/OS. Not convinced, look at our banner ads:
At LinuxWorld Scott Handy talked about consolidating 8 racks of LAMP servers onto a single rack of IBM System p 560Q servers. This is a new server update targeted specifically at consolidating Linux workloads… doesn’t sound very “UNIX-y” does it? It’s the UNIX+Linux platform. Or UNIX+GNU/Linux for those who like details ;-)
IBM also announced something revolutionary on Monday that goes even further. Transitive was once in the headlines for developing a product Apple OEM’d called Rosetta. Rosetta was the “magic” that allowed Apple to run Mac application binaries for PowerPC on the new Mac products with Intel chips. Rosetta was great b/c the user had no clue what chip the apps were written for - Rosetta did all the work under the covers. No assembly required!
IBM has OEM’d a similar product that essentially does the reverse - takes x86 Linux apps and runs them unmodified on POWER based servers (PowerPC, Power5). Yeah we have over 2,800 native Linux on POWER apps, but every IT shop has unique apps the like - and compiling or porting just is not always feasible.
Anyway, the product lacks a cool name like Rosetta and is instead called System p Application Virtual Environment for x86 Linux (p AVE). This new technology let’s most (lawyers never let you say all) x86 Linux applications on a POWER server running Linux - unmodified, no compiling, just copy/paste/or even just install using the same steps for an Intel system. Any System p user can download p AVE and test it out - there’s an open beta.
At the recent Linux on Wall St. event we actually found out Transitive has p AVE running on Linux on a PS3 - how cool is that? They were actually running Windows apps under Wine, running on pAVE on Yellow Dog Linux on a Cell (POWER architecture) processor. Makes your head spin, but it’s cool to see.
Anyway, if you have a POWER server, a PS3, or even a PowerPC based Mac from the days of old, download pAVE and try it out. Remember, any computer with POWER runs UNIX and Linux (oops, GNU/Linux). If you have any questions on how to setup or use pAVE, check out the free Redpaper.
Wednesday, April 25th, 2007
Linux on the desktop hits a new note: geekmysled.com
GeekMySLED.com - brought to you buy the guys at Novell (”the” Guy really)
Wednesday, April 25th, 2007
Google patches MySQL for availability, monitoring, and recovery
List of patch features:
- SemiSyncReplication - block commit on a master until at least one slave acknowledges receipt of all replication events.
- MirroredBinlogs - maintain a copy of the master’s binlog on a slave
- TransactionalReplication - make InnoDB and slave replication state consistent during crash recovery
- UserTableMonitoring - monitor and report database activity per account and table
- InnodbAsyncIo - support multiple background IO threads for InnoDB
- FastMasterPromotion - promote a slave to a master without restart
You can read all about it here.
Monday, April 23rd, 2007
Notes 8 on Linux open beta feedback
In the spirit of an open beta, here are some of my experiences/feedback re: Notes 8 client on Linux. In all fairness, my laptop is not the latest and greatest… so take performance comments for what they are on a Pentium-M 1.7 ghz w/1GB RAM (not core/core duo).
1) When logging in, Notes 8 spawns a slew of empty tabs for various applications (Contacts, Calendar, etc) - all you have to do is close them, but it’s annoying.
2) Notes 8 productivity editors are not up to OpenOffice functionality so I find myself almost exclusively reliant on OpenOffice. To set expectations, with MS Office, I’m one of the 5% who actually use 90% of the features of PowerPoint and Excel. I rarely used Access/Publisher/OneNote/Outlook.
I have seen the following:
- When opening a file from Gnome UI, Notes will launch an empty, new document - not the document I try to open.
- Formatting and styles: Notes 8 productivity editors do not render the same for ODP/ODT files as OO.org… can’t explain it but I have weird effects on margins, fonts, etc.
- Saving files: there is a limitation in the number of subfolders you can navigate to in the Save dialogs… granted it’s quite a few, but when you have an ntfs partition with quite a few subdirs, you can hit it….
- Master templates: um… where did they go…
- Fonts… fonts… fonts… need cross-OS common set of fonts.
3) Local / Server mail files: Notes 8 client always defaults to the server copy of your mail file - which is exhaustive and not quite as responsive as I’m accustomed to. I’d prefer one setting so I can set the default to the local copy (or I just haven’t found it yet…). In Notes 7/Windows I could right click to open the local copy…
4) Mail template: I think this is an IBM internal issue, but the public Notes client has a much better mail template than our internal users have for some reason… if you’re not an IBMer, you’re better off (weird…)
5) Performance & Archiving: Notes 8 client archives at a very slow pace - can take quite a while. In general Notes is a not exactly a lightweight sprinter (not specific to Linux), but I’m sure once the debug symbols are removed and beta code is put through the paces it will improve. The Sametime 7.5 native Linux client got a huge performance boost once it went gold.
6) Positive feedback: I love the new UI, it’s almost “non-IBM-ish”
7) Wish Notes 8 had true html email (xhtml compliant) features… the RSS feed list is non-useable but I suspect that may be because of my template…. not sure how this works yet. I’d prefer to have a full function RSS reader similar to the Notes mail application (this could be an awesome community project…)
8) Notes 8 client needs some sort of Database connections migration tool - very annoying to recreate all the connections again when coming from Windows.
9) Positive feedback: it’s native on Linux, that’s 1000% improvement.
10) Positive feedback: I haven’t had to boot into Windows for 28 of the last 30 days and of those 2 sad days, it was just to do a single/small task that for some reason I needed Windows (i.e. opening a PowerPoint to check fidelity and make sure it looked the same as in ODP).
Overall I’m quite pleased. I’d like to see Notes go further to extend beyond just an upgrade (i.e. better integration as a feed reader), but the new version definitely provides a great Eclipse based platform to build off of and get there.
Monday, April 23rd, 2007
eWeek: Linux Kernel Reaps the Fruits of Real-Time Technology
Linux with realtime extensions is going to be quite popular once companies realize all the benefits never before achievable (cost effectively). IBM and Red Hat have been aggressively developing real time extensions and if you’re in telco, financial or federal sectors, you should definitely take a look for any applications that require or desire guaranteed transaction determinism.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2121087,00.asp
“The real-time upstream kernel work is a mainstream community initiative and is all about determinism and latency, about being able to have guarantees that transactions will complete within finite periods of time and that the highest priority processes and applications will be able to run without being pre-empted by lower priority applications or low level system services.”
– Tim Burke, Red Hat
Monday, April 23rd, 2007
InformationWeek: “Feds Say Accenture, HP, Sun Kickback Scheme Involved Millions Over 10 Years”
Bad boys, bad boys… whatcha… ah nevermind.
http://www.informationweek.com/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199200496
Sun also is accused of deceiving the government in General Services Administration contracts between 1997 and 2004 that were valued at more than $200 million. The contracts were for general purpose IT equipment, software maintenance, and professional services, which are all distributed government-wide. In awarding the contracts, the government requires a guarantee that it was not paying any more than what Sun was charging its commercial customers. Prosecutors claim Sun didn’t tell the GSA it was charging some commercial customers less.
In addition, according to the complaint, Sun failed to honor the contract’s price reduction clause. Under the clause, if Sun sold the same products and services to another customer at a lesser price during the life of the GSA contracts, then the vendor was required to charge the government the same amount.
Sun’s not alone…
HP, which had business-development partnerships with a dozen companies, paid kickbacks in the form of “influencer fees” to companies that persuaded the government to buy products directly from the vendor.
From 2001 to 2006, at least $3.1 million in influencer fees were paid to the companies. “HP has not disclosed to the government the full extent of the influence fee agreements and payments,” the complaint said.
HP also paid partners “new business opportunity,” or NBO, rebates for buying products and then reselling them to the government. Under federal rules, the rebates should have been disclosed. “The NBO was designed by HP to benefit HP and the alliance partner, but not the end user,” the complaint said. “HP specifically informed its alliance partners that HP did not extend competitive pricing to end users through the NBO.”
As examples, the government said HP paid a total of more than $550,000 in rebates to Northrop Grumman and GTSI in 2005 and 2006.
Sunday, April 22nd, 2007
Debian 4.0 - on the todo list
It’s been a long time since I’ve used Debian proper. I’ll have to check this new release out.
BTW, has anyone else noticed Jason Brooks authors 90% of content in eWeeks these days and he’s writing primarily about Linux which is great. I’m not sure Jason’s the “Linux guru” so I’ve noticed a few inaccuracies or errors, but the coverage is interesting.
Saturday, April 21st, 2007
Michael Dell’s loaded (Ubuntu Linux) system
Love seeing this news spread everywhere….
Saturday, April 21st, 2007
I wish this were a joke…
Saturday, April 21st, 2007
Microsoft loses recent friend Palm to Linux
This is an industry that may possibly standardize on Linux for client devices in the long run. It makes economic sense. I’d buy a Linux based Treo.
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