March, 2007

Posted March 7th, 2007 in News

We have compared the 32-bit and 64-bit performance of Ubuntu and started a performance comparison of Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu, but how does the performance of the upcoming Feisty Fawn release compare to that of Fedora 7? In this article we have enclosed benchmarks from Fedora Core 6, Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft, Fedora 7 Test 2, and Ubuntu Feisty Fawn Herd 5. In gaming and desktop benchmarks, which of these Linux distributions is faster? We hope to answer that question today.

It is important to note that testing/development releases of both Ubuntu and Fedora are slower than their final versions, which is partially why we had went back to also include benchmarks from Edgy Eft 6.10 and Zod. Both Fedora Core 6 (Zod) and Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) were released this past October, while Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) will be introduced this April and Fedora 7 this May. Originally Fedora 7 was slated for release around the same time as Feisty Fawn, but a delay in the feature freeze has postponed the release by a month.

For comparing these two versions of two distributions the Linux benchmarks used were Enemy Territory, Timed Disk Reads, Gzip Compression, LAME compilation, and LAME encoding. Below is the hardware selection used in these benchmarks as well as the stock package 32-bit versions in both Fedora 6/7 and Ubuntu 6.10/7.04. On the following pages are our results.

Read Complete Report here

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Posted March 7th, 2007 in News

The problem with answering this question is that those asking it know only OSes where viruses, trojan-horse programs, worms, nasty Javascripts, ActiveX controls with destructive payloads, and ordinary misbehaved applications are a constant threat to their computing. Therefore, they refuse to believe Linux could be different, no matter what they hear.And yet it is.

Here’s the short version of the answer: No. If you simply never run untrusted executables while logged in as the root user (or equivalent), all the “virus checkers” in the world will be at best superfluous; at worst, downright harmful. “Hostile” executables (including viruses) are almost unfindable in the Linux world — and no real threat to it — because they lack root-user authority, and because Linux admins are seldom stupid enough to run untrusted executables as root, and because Linux users’ sources for privileged executables enjoy paranoid-grade scrutiny (such that any unauthorised changes would be detected and remedied).

Here’s the long version: Still no. Any program on a Linux box, viruses included, can only do what the user who ran it can do. Real users aren’t allowed to hurt the system (only the root user can), so neither can programs they run.

Because of the distinction between privileged (root-run) processes and user-owned processes, a “hostile” executable that a non-root user receives (or creates) and then executes (runs) cannot “infect” or otherwise manipulate the system as a whole. Just as you can delete only your own files (i.e., those you have “write” permission to), executables you run cannot affect other users’ (or root’s) files. Therefore, although you can create (or retrieve), and then run, a virus, worm, trojan horse, etc., it can’t do much. Unless you do so as “root”. Which it’s simple to avoid doing.

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Posted March 7th, 2007 in News

The image “http://www.stephencuyos.com/images/ubuntu.png” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

The top 10 linux distributions based on the number of its registered members are the following:

1. Ubuntu = 250,190 members
2. Gentoo = 105,828 members
3. Fedora = 89,088 members
4. Mandriva = 41,868 members
5. Xandros = 25,185 members
6. OpenSuse = 17,607 members
7. Kubuntu = 16,106 members
8. Freespire = 11,732 members
9. Arch Linux = 8,290 members
10. PCLinuxOS = 6,344 members

Read Detailed report here

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Posted March 7th, 2007 in Tutorials

About Gimparoo!

This blog is dedicated to adapting popular Photoshop tutorials for The GIMP. This blog assumes you already know some basic things about the program, such as what layers are or how to use the pen tool. I may put some beginner tutorials up at some point, but until then, please visit the GIMP homepage and utilize their documentation and wiki.

About The Author

I am a husband, father, and college student. I hold a full time job as a computer technician, and I’m an open source advocate. [profile]

Latest Topics

Read Complete Tutorials at gimparoo.blogspot.com

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Posted March 7th, 2007 in News
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In January, Chicago native Katie McAuliff, who has worked for Novell Inc. for 13 years, took over as president of Novell Canada, replacing Don Chapman. Ms McAuliff will oversee all facets of the Canadian organization including sales, marketing, consulting, support, training, finance and operations, with a focus on expanding and strengthening Novell Canada’s partnership model.She sat down with Jack Kapica of Globetechnology.com to explain her company and its plans.

JACK KAPICA: Novell has been shifting its image recently. What markets is the company focussing on?

KATIE McAULIFF: A lot of people don’t really know who we are and what we do today. We’re in five markets — data centre, desktop, security and identity management, resource management and workgroups. Novell is firmly behind all these markets.

The Linux desktop is a complete blast. This market just went to a million downloads. It’s hot, it’s cool, it’s a lot less expensive, the kids are loving it. School systems have some great desktop operating systems — it’s also in kiosks, retail systems, point-of-sale systems. A lot of those systems are being refreshed now, so the best thing now is really lowering the cost of ownership, increasing return on investment. This is a great space, very strong selling. We’re 95 per cent there as a viable alternative to anything else.

These are huge growth markets for us, enjoying double-digit growth.

A lot of people don’t even realize that Linux runs on a mainframe, and that we do a lot of business on mainframes with Linux partitions. My sense here is that the potential has not yet been realized in the Canadian market.

Read the complete conversation here

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Posted March 6th, 2007 in Distros

The image “http://www.puppylinux.org/user/images/logosmooth.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Puppy Linux, started by Barry Kauler, is a small (28-72M), fully featured Linux distribution.

Puppy Linux Trivia

  • Puppy will easily install to USB, Zip or hard drive media.
  • Booting from CD, Puppy will load totally into RAM so that the CD drive is then free for other purposes.
  • Booting from CD, Puppy can save everything back to the CD, no need for a hard drive.
  • Booting from USB, Puppy will greatly minimise writes, to extend the life of Flash devices indefinitely.
  • Puppy will be extremely friendly for Linux newbies.
  • Puppy will boot up and run extraordinarily fast.
  • Puppy will have all the applications needed for daily use.
  • Puppy will just work, no hassles.
  • Puppy will breathe new life into old PCs

Blindingly fast, incredibly powerful, amazingly tiny…

These are extraordinary goals, yet Puppy achieves them all. Obviously, some objectives have qualifications, for example, to load totally into RAM the PC must have either 128M RAM or failing that a swap partition. Also, the “will just work, no hassles” objective is a work-in-progress!

One thing to be very much aware of is that Puppy is incredibly small. After all, to load totally into RAM and run from there, Puppy has to be small. The live-CD is about 28-72M, yet “every” applications you need is there — I’m quite serious — it doesn’t seem possible but it is. Furthermore, as everything runs in RAM, there are no delays and the speed is nothing short of astounding. Download Puppy / Get CDs

Puppy 2.15CE project has been launched!

“The next release of Puppy is going to be 2.15 Community Edition, incorporating improvements and ideas that Puppy enthusiasts want. Official releases of Puppy are created by me, and everything gets filtered through me, which is good from the point of view of maintaining a unified development of Puppy. However, now is the opportunity for users to have a more direct input to the final product.

Here is a forum thread, supervised by WhoDo:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=15529

Note, I’m still here, and will test the alphas/betas on all my hardware and also offer suggestions and contributions.”


Alpha release will be available this weekend 23/24 Feb:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=15674

Prepare to be amazed!

Previous Community Editions
Puppy 109CE
Puppy 2.03CE (Puppy with Open Office)

Website: http://www.puppylinux.org

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Posted March 6th, 2007 in News

Written by Steve Wild
Published March 05, 2007
Published at: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/03/05/161203.php
When people find out I run Linux on my computer instead of Windows or even Mac OS X they sometimes have funny ideas about what it must be like. Some of it is historical; Linux used to be quite difficult to administer in its younger days. Some of it is misinformation, or no information at all. I hope to dispell some of the misconceptions.

Linux is difficult to install - Myth. For the most part. Depending on the distribution, Linux is much faster and easier to install than Windows is. A smooth install of Linux takes me about an hour including installing updates, and even less sometimes. This includes installs of Red Hat (before it was Red Hat Enterprise Linux), Fedora (after it was Red Hat), Mandrake (now Mandriva), and Ubuntu (still Ubuntu). Of course, there are some distributions aimed at more experienced users that seem to go out of their way to make the whole installation process a little more, shall we say, complex. I’m looking at you, Gentoo.

I just recently re-installed Windows on a friend’s computer that had become so infected with god-knows-what that it was completely unusable. I didn’t keep track of how long the install took, but it was hours and hours, not even including when I had to go to bed and continue the install in the morning. Downloading and installing updates, rebooting, downloading and installing more updates, rebooting again. On and on it went.

Of course, after the install all he had was Windows with some minor applications like Notepad and Wordpad, and some games like Solitaire and Minesweeper. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve wasted plenty of time on both of those, but it’s a pretty sparse selection.

When I install a Linux distro I get a complete, usable desktop. An office suite, CD and DVD burning software, image manipulation software, full featured email suites, and lots of games. All for no cost. And lots more easily available. Which brings me to my next point…

Continue Reading here

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Posted March 5th, 2007 in Guides

In December 2006, the Fedora Linux distribution released its first official Live CD, which, thanks to an intelligent selection of applications, nicely advertises the best features of Fedora. In addition to many applications, the Live CD has several games, uses the Compiz 3D desktop, and is accessible by non-English speaking users. But what stole the show for me was David Zeuthen’s livecd tools, which make creating and maintaining a custom Fedora-based Live CD a walk in the park.

Zeuthen is the developer of Pilgrim, which creates system images that can run off USB flash drives for the One Laptop Per Child project (OLPC; see Resources for a link to more information). The livecd tools used for creating the Fedora Live CD is a rewrite of Pilgrim in Python. It can be used for creating live CDs out of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, and other downstream Fedora distributions.

Before getting down to making your own Live CD, you need to understand how a Fedora release is assembled, distributed, and maintained. The Fedora project keeps packages in two publicly accessible repositories. The repository maintained by official Fedora developers is called the “core” repository, while the one maintained by contributors and the community is called the “extras” repository. A repository is simply a collection of packages. Apart from the core and extras, there are several third-party repositories such as Livna and FreshRPM.

A Fedora Core distribution contains all the packages in the core repository, the latest being Fedora Core 6. The first official Fedora Live CD is based on packages in Fedora Core 6 and the extras repository. The livecd tools have been submitted for inclusion in Fedora’s extras repository, which will be merged with the core repository by the time Fedora 7 is released.

Continue Reading: here

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Posted March 5th, 2007 in News

01. People will ridicule you for using Ubuntu

I have been sat at work and had people actually laugh out loud at my laptop running Ubuntu. I’ve had people pick up the free professionally-made official Ubuntu CDs, sneer and throw them back at me. Once people try it out though, they often change their opinion. Even if they don’t use it daily, their respect for Ubuntu goes up after at least trying it.

02……..

… Read More

Source: http://popey.com/The_Truth_About_Switching

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