Practical Technology

for practical people.

February 17, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

Debian 5’s Five Best Features

Despite delays and internal arguments, Debian 5, Lenny, has finally arrived, and it’s a darn nice Linux distribution.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Consider what Warren Woodford, the well-regarded Linux developer, who uses Debian for the foundation of his SimplyMEPIS Linux distribution. Woodford, who switched MEPIS’ cornerstone distribution from Ubuntu to Debian in 2007, said, “Behind the scenes, MEPIS is being used more and more in demanding environments, so I was happy the Debian teams decided to use the hardening features in gcc to increase the security of Debian in Lenny.

Woodford added, “I know a lot of our users were happy that Debian decided to continue supporting KDE 3.5. They like what they have and don’t want to be forced to learn the KDE 4 look and feel.”

More >

February 16, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

Red Hat & Microsoft partner up!

In what came as a surprise to many Linux observers, Red Hat announced on the morning of February 16th that it has signed reciprocal agreements with Microsoft to enable increased interoperability for the companies’ virtualization platforms.

While Red Hat, after Novell partnered with Microsoft, had talked with Microsoft in 2007 about partnering, those talks came to nothing since Red Hat would not have anything to do with Microsoft’s various IP (intellectual property) claims.

Things have changed. Red Hat announced that each company will join the other’s virtualization validation/certification program and will provide coordinated technical support for their mutual server virtualization customers. The object according to Red Hat’s press statement is: “The reciprocal validations will allow customers to deploy heterogeneous, virtualized Red Hat and Microsoft solutions with confidence.”

More >

February 15, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

Ubuntu partners with HP on Servers

While HP was slow in supporting Linux on the desktop, HP has long supported Linux on the server. HP currently supports RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), Novell’s SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server), Oracle Enterprise Linux and even the community’s own Linux, Debian on its server hardware. Now, HP is about to start supporting Ubuntu on its ProLiant server line.

Canonical, Ubuntu’s parent company, has been working towards moving Ubuntu into enterprise servers for some time now. We tend to think of Ubuntu as the community favorite Linux and on desktops. Ubuntu started coming into its own as a server operating system in mid-2006 with Ubuntu 6.06LTS-the first Long Term Supported version. When Wikipedia chose Ubuntu to run its servers, Ubuntu officially arrived as a world-case server operating system.

HP agrees.

More >

February 13, 2009
by sjvn01
7 Comments

Moonshine brings Windows Media to Linux

When I first looked at Moonlight, Novell’s open-source version of Microsoft’s Sliverlight, I liked it, but I didn’t really see much of a point to it. Silverlight, Microsoft’s latest answer to Adobe Flash, isn’t used in many sites. What I liked the most about Silverlight was that it provided a fully legal way to access WMV and WMA (Windows Media Video and Audio) from Linux. Unfortunately, since you could only use it to get to content hidden in Silverlight streams, that didn’t seem to matter much. Now, it does matter.

It matters because Aaron Bockover has created Moonshine, a program that encapsulates any WMV or WMA content into a Silverlight container so you can view or listen to this content from your Firefox browser. Neat!

Continue Reading →

February 13, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

Vista to XP charge leads to lawsuit

Emma Alvarado is mad as heck and she’s not going to take it anymore. Alvarado purchased a PC from Lenovo on June 20, 2008, it came with Windows Vista Business and she to pay an additional $59.25 in order to “‘downgrade’ her operating system to Windows XP Professional.”

Most people would have just complained about it and moved on. Not Alvarado. She decided she wasn’t going to take it. Though the law firm of Arias, Ozzello, & Gignac, in Santa Barbara Calif., a law firm specializing in class action and consumer rights litigation, Alvarado is suing Microsoft, both on her own behalf and for other users who have been stuck with Vista and want XP. In short, she’s started a class-action suit against Microsoft.

Linux users are long familiar with variations on this theme. Desktop Linux users usually have no use for Windows, but still have to pay for it on most PCs. You can get around paying the Microsoft “tax,” but it’s not easy.

More >

February 12, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

The first dual Windows/Linux PCs arrive

You won’t find a word about it on Dell’s sales site for the Dell Latitude E4200 laptop or the Latitude E4300, but these Windows Vista, or optionally XP, notebooks come not only with Windows but with an embedded Linux desktop as well.

Dell calls this embedded Linux, Dell Latitude ON. The Austin, Texas computer giant describes Latitude ON as, a “communication module,” that “enables bi-directional remote access to your Microsoft Exchange data with the single touch of a button without booting or waking your entire laptop-lowering power consumption and extending battery life.”

Yes, it is that, but, it’s also a Linux desktop, based on Novell’s SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) 10. This runs on system-on-a-chip subsystem that comes with its own ARM processor and flash memory that runs without needing to call on the E4200’s 1.4GHz Intel Core2 Duo ULV (Ultra Low Voltage) or the E4300’s 2.26/2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SP9300 CPUs or the system’s drives and memory.

More >