April 8, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

Customized Linux PC for MySpacers

PC vendor Everex and gOS (Good OS), the Linux distribution based around Google applications, is taking the next step in online-based computing by introducing a limited edition MySpace PC.

The companies hope that the white-cased, two-pound MyMiniPC will attract what Everex officials claim is some of the more than 100 million MySpace users. As such, it’s the first PC, using any operating system, designed expressly to use with a social network.

“To me, gOS Space can be the face of Linux for the MySpace generation,” Jim Zemlin, president of the Linux Foundation, said in a statement.

Unlike Google Apps, where neither gOS nor Everex have a formal relationship with Google, this time the companies have partnered with MySpace. “The MySpace Developer Platform is all about embracing developers and empowering them to create new and exciting ways for friends to connect on MySpace and share their experiences with one another,” Chuck Rosendahl, managing director of MySpace, said in a statement. “The MyMiniPC is the perfect appliance for MySpace users and those whose activities are consistently tied to the Web and less to the desktop. It is an ideal solution for getting access quickly to the MySpace apps that matter most to our users.”

This trade paperback-book sized PC runs gOS Space 2.9. This is a customized version of gOS Linux that features a set of new MySpace Apps and a media center dock stacked with MySpace and Web 2.0 folders for news, photos, videos, music, TV and movies.

The MySpace applications available on gOS Space dock include Super Mood, Super Graffiti, Super Quotes, and Current Time. The company’s press release described Super Mood as an application that enables users to add large emoticons and personal updates to their MySpace profiles. With Super Graffiti, users can draw pictures on their friends’ MySpace profiles, and Super Quotes allows users to select quotes to display on their profiles.

The gOS Space dock also includes expandable icons, such as those gOS uses with Google programs MySpace News, Photos, Videos, Music, TV and Movies, Work, and Fun. The MySpace icon lets users get directly to the MySpace navigation bar. Besides the MySpace applications, the PC also includes the usual Linux application favorites, including Firefox, GIMP and OpenOffice. The system also includes gOS’ characteristic easy access to Google applications.

The MyMiniPC is powered by a 1.86GHz Intel Pentium Dual-Core Mobile Processor T2130. It comes with 512MB of RAM and for storage it uses a 120GB hard-drive and a DVD+/-RW optical drive.

For graphics the system uses the Intel GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) 950 chipset. The PC can transmit video via both a DVI-I Port, and a S-video port. Audio is supported by Realtek ALC268 high-definition audio.

The tiny system also comes with a good number of ports. These include an IEEE 1394 and four USB 2.0 ports, a four-in-one media card reader for data, and a Gigabit Ethernet port for networking.

The system, which the Everex Web site states is only available in limited quantities, sells for $499 with a one-year limited warranty and toll-free, 24/7 technical support.

A version of this story first appeared in DesktopLinux.

April 8, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

Linux supporters gather at Foundation annual meeting

Austin, Texas—How do you herd cats? Well, as the famous EDS commercial shows, it isn’t easy. In a sense, that’s what the Linux Foundation, the nonprofit pro-Linux organization, will be doing this week at the invitation-only LF Collaboration Summit at the University of Texas Super Computing Center here.

Linux, as anyone who follows it knows, is the result of the efforts of hundreds of developers, and it serves the needs of at least as many companies and–thanks to its role in leading Web sites such as Google and its popularity with Web-hosting companies–hundreds of millions of users.

So, while no one “runs” Linux in the same way that Microsoft runs Windows, the Linux Foundation, and its related projects such as the Linux Standard Base, does the best it can to herd the Linux cats.

Or, to be more precise, the LF brings together the top cats from both the corporate world and the open-source community. At this week’s meeting, engineers and developers, and CEOs and CIOs will join together to talk about Linux’s recent path and its future for the coming year and beyond.

While the technology of the Linux kernel and Linux printing, for example, will be star subjects of the meeting, the attendees will also be discussing the economics of Linux. Make no mistake, this is no gathering of Linux fan boys. This is a gathering of chip vendors, such as AMD and Intel; PC OEMs, such as Asus, Dell, Everex and Hewlett-Packard; and Linux companies, from the biggest–Red Hat and Novell–to some of the smallest.

Among the subjects the attendees will be addressing are how well PC vendors are doing with their preinstalled Linux offerings; how MySQL–in a speech given by MySQL CEO Marten Mikos–will work with Linux now that the popular open-source DMBS company has been acquired by Sun; and how Google, the LiMo Foundation and OpenMoko, among others, will be bringing out Linux phones.

In addition, IDC Vice President of Research Al Gillen will be presenting a Linux Foundation-sponsored white paper: “The Role of Linux Servers in Commercial Workloads.” The gist of the paper is that Linux servers are transforming from simply being edge (Web servers and services) and infrastructure (file and print sharing) servers to “mainstream business-oriented workloads.” The bottom line is that IDC sees Linux server spending increasing from 2007’s $21 billion to almost $50 billion by 2011.

Also, top executives from Red Hat, IBM, Intel, Motorola, Oracle, and Via Technology, among others, will be speaking at the conference. The more important part of the gathering won’t be the speeches and panel discussions; it will be the gathering of open-source developers, desktop and server vendors, ISVs, corporate Linux consumers, and end users to work out where the Linux cat herd will be going next. It should be an interesting week.

A version of this story first appeared in Linux-Watch.

April 4, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

Microsoft Gives Up on Vista

The question now isn’t “Is Vista Dead?” It is. The real question is: Can Microsoft get Windows 7 out in time to save its desktop domination? I think Microsoft “could” pull it off. Here’s how.

Vista is dead.

That’s not what Bill Gates said at a seminar on corporate philanthropy in Miami on April 4, but it might as well have been. What Gates actually said, according to the Reuters report, is that he expects that the next desktop version of Windows, Windows 7, would be released “sometime in the next year or so.”

Goodbye Vista. It has not been fun knowing you.

I predicted that Microsoft was giving up on Vista in January. It seems I was right. Microsoft’s own top brass had hated Vista when it first came out, why should they expect anyone else to like it?

Vista SP1 has proven to be a painful upgrade and its performance still lags behind XP SP2 and, the still unreleased XP SP3. Worse still, from a Microsoft executive’s viewpoint, Windows is actually losing desktop market share to Mac OS X and Linux. Microsoft never loses desktop market share. But with Vista Microsoft is finally losing customers.

I think Microsoft saw the handwriting on the wall early on. The company started playing up Windows 7 as early as July 2007. Now, Microsoft’s business plan is always to get its customers to upgrade to the next version. It’s how they make their billions. But, in this case, Vista was barely out the door.

Can Microsoft actually make a Windows 7 that can ship by 2009 that will win customers? Vista was infamous for its blown deadlines. Windows 7 must not only replace the failed Vista, it has to convince Microsoft’s customers that Windows 7 will really be better than XP.

That isn’t going to be easy. I find it more than a little telling that Microsoft has given XP Home a new lease on life for UMPC (Ultra Mobile PCs). Still. I think Microsoft has one card up its sleeve that just might keep its customers happy and make it out in 2009: Server 2008 Workstation.

n stark contrast with Vista, Server 2008 works extremely well in eWEEK Labs and in my own Linux-dominated office. Even with some security troubles, Server 2008 is a darn sight better than Vista or Server 2003.

Cleaned and Speeded Up

So, what Microsoft could do is use Server 2008’s kernel as the core of Windows 7. On top of that it adds a cleaned and speeded up Aero Glass interface, Silverlight and Internet Explorer 8. At the same time, Microsoft should dump the Vista user interface command structure and return to XP.

One reason why people don’t like Vista is not only is it slower than XP, it requires them to relearn how to do bread-and-butter operations. While Microsoft is at it, they can also throw out such annoying ‘Vistaisms’ as requiring users to answer seemingly endless menu choices on whether they really want to install a program or what have you.

To make darn sure that Windows 7 doesn’t have the software compatibility problems that still plague Vista SP1, they can also add an XP compatibility layer. This would actually be an XP VM (virtual machine) running with Server 2008’s Hyper-V virtualization. If an application doesn’t run with the native Server 8 core, no problem; just automatically run it in the XP VM.

Old Windows hands will recall that Microsoft once used a similar approach in Windows NT 3.5 with a WOW (Windows on Windows) sub-system that let users run Windows 95 applications on NT.

If Microsoft were to take this path, I can actually see the company delivering a new desktop operating system by 2009 that users would actually want to use. If they try, as they did with Vista, to reinvent the desktop operating system wheel, there’s no way they’ll get anything out until 2011 that users will want to run.

And, by then, Microsoft’s problem may be convincing Linux and Mac OS users to come back to Windows rather than trying to get XP users to upgrade.

A version of this story first appeared in eWEEK. >

April 4, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

XP Home Lives, and So Does Linux, on UMPCs

When I thought Microsoft was going to extend XP’s lifetime to better slug it out with Linux on Ultra Mobile PCs and Mobile Internet Devices, I was afraid Linux was going to have to fight hard for the low-end of the desktop.

Now that we know that only XP Home is going to have a longer life and Microsoft is going to have to contort itself over what systems can and what systems can’t get it, I’m much happier. XP Pro was much more troublesome in my mind.

You see while XP Home will keep, well, the home users happy, XP Home has always been useless for businesses. It all comes down to one simple fact. You can use XP Pro on a business network, but not XP Home.

As my colleague Joe Wilcox over at Microsoft-Watch put it: “Ultra low-cost PCs and MIDs aren’t Windows PC companions, they’re replacements—for many end users. And Linux will deliver the enterprise capabilities lacking in Windows XP Home.”

Exactly.

More >

April 3, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

Another SCO buyout stumbles

Like the 11th chapter of a bad horror movie, the SCO zombie keeps stumbling forward moaning “Linux,” instead of “Brains.” This time, however, there may not be another movie left for SCO. SCO’s most recent would-be buyer, Stephen Norris & Co. Capital Partners LP, no longer wants to buy SCO.

SCO has staggered on since August 2007, when the U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City ruled that Novell, and not SCO, owned UNIX’s intellectual property Thus, with the legs cut out beneath all of its Linux cases, SCO filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in mid-September 2007.

In late October, SCO claimed it had found a buyer, York Capital Management. That proposed deal fell apart barely a month later. By year’s end, SCO had dropped off the Nasdaq.

You’d think that would be the end wouldn’t you? No case, no money, no buyer, and no more stock market presence. You’d think that would be the end wouldn’t you? Alas, no. On Valentine’s Day, SCO showed that even it could still get a little fiscal love—up to $100 million worth if you count the credit line—from Stephen Norris & Co.

In return for $5 million in cash, and loans of up to $95 million, Stephen Norris would buy SCO, move the company out of bankruptcy, take it private, and, of course, continue its seemingly endless and pointless Linux litigation.

It wasn’t a done deal, although SCO’s ownership agreed to both sell the company and fire long-time CEO Darl McBride. First, the proposed sale had to pass the scrutiny of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.

The deal didn’t make it that far. At the Bankruptcy Court on April 2, according to a report by Steven Church of Bloomberg News, SCO attorney Arthur Spector said that now the Stephen Norris deal was off. “We don’t have a new deal. But, when we get the deal that we think we are going to get, it’s going to be better.”

Instead of buying SCO, the company, Stephen Norris & Co. now wants to buy the Lindon, Utah’s business assets. Of course, the largest remaining question in both Novell’s lawsuit in Utah and in the Delaware bankruptcy court is what assets, if any, the company has left and who legally owns them.

In short, what could SCO possibly have left to sell that could, according to a report in Groklaw, leave SCO with “plenty of cash to pay their creditors with interest and have cash or cash reserves for paying future debts”?

There were no details given about this latest proposed deal. The Groklaw on-the-scene report continued that SCO’s attorney said he was “waiting until the deal is done before making full disclosures. He’s not going to leave any loose ends this time. He mentions that SCO may need an extension to get everything prepared and do due diligence.”

The Groklaw report also stated that, Joseph McMahon Jr., an attorney with the U.S. Trustee’s office, said “that the former York deal was basically a plan to sell IP that they [SCO] didn’t own and he wants to make sure that this new deal is clear about what is being sold since it is an asset purchase.”

So it is that, now without a deal in place, SCO continues to stumble forward. Whether the company will still be around to make its next court date remains an open question.

A version of this story was first published in Linux-Watch.

April 1, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

LPI to offer security training with LPIC-3 certification

There are Linux certifications, such as the RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer). There are security certifications, like the CCSP (Cisco Certified Security Professional). Now we have the first certification that combines Linux and security: the Linux Professional Institute’s LPIC-3 with its new “Security” exam elective.

The LPI certification, unlike the Red Hat and Novell certifications, is vendor-neutral. The long-delayed, top-level LPIC-3 arrived in 2007.

To obtain this certification, roughly equivalent to the RHCE or the NCLE (Novell Certified Linux Engineer), a Linux administrator must have already achieved the LPIC-1 and LPIC-2 certifications. In addition, he or she must pass the enterprise-level core certification exam (LPI-301) and a “Mixed Environment” elective (LPI-302). According to the LPI press release, “In 2008 LPI will develop a ‘Security’ elective (LPI-303) to accompany this level of the program. The introduction of this advanced-level ‘Security’ elective follows extensive consultation with industry leaders and enterprise customers on priorities for the LPIC-3 program.”

While Linux is known for being secure, security is not an operating system, it’s a process. While recent major security breaches such as the Advance Auto Parts network break-in and the Hannaford credit card heist have nothing to do with Linux, it can be expected that companies will want more security training for their administrators.

The LPI-303 Security exam development has already begun. The focus will be on dealing with real-world security threats, according to LPI. After the exam has been developed to an alpha stage, LPI and its corporate partners will give it a “global Job Task Analysis survey” during the summer of 2008.

This will be followed by a series of beta exams from October to November 2008. If all goes well, the course will be published and made part of the LPIC-3 certification in February 2009.

Practical Technology

for practical people.