Vista, Leopard, Linux to compete in hack contest

Apple's OS X, Microsoft Windows, and Linux operating systems are to be pitted against each other in an ethical hacking contest in Vancouver next month. Run by the organizers of the CanSecWest Vancouver 2008 security conference, the competition is a repeat of the "PWN to Own" contest at CanSecWest in 2007, when security researchers competed to win a MacBook Pro and $10,000. The prize was shared between security researchers Dino Dai Zovi and Shane Macauley for their successful Read More>>

Linux Guru Bashes Apple OS

Linus Torvalds, leader of the cult of Linux, took a swipe at Apple's OS X and Microsoft Vista in the same breath at a conference in Australia last week, adding more fuel to the simmering programming language battle between the world's high-profile geeks.

Speaking at the linux.conf.au conference in Melbourne, Australia, a few weeks ago, Torvalds called Leopard "utter crap" and bashed the proprietary OS makers for being greedy, according to Australian reporter Nick Miller in the The Age.

"I don't think they're equally flawed -- I think Leopard is a much better system," Torvalds said. "(But) OS X in some ways is actually worse than Windows to program for. Their file system is complete and utter crap, which is scary."

He also scoffed at his rivals' practice of revenue-through-renewal by launching upgrades that require new purchases.

"An operating system should be completely invisible," Torvalds said. "To Microsoft and Apple (it is) a way to control the whole environment -- to force people to upgrade their applications and hardware."

Torvalds swipes at Microsoft and Apple come on the heels of a highly publicized tiff between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Sun Microsystems developer and "father of Java" James Gosling.

Earlier last year Jobs reportedly said that "Java's not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It's this big heavyweight ball and chain."

The ball was lobbied back at Jobs when in the fall Gosling abandoned his Mac laptop, writing on his blog that in addition to abandoning his "eye candy" Mac laptop for a real developer's machine, he thinks "iPods are nice, but they're not the defining center of my life."

Who will strike the next blow?

Our bet is on Bill Gates, as soon as he finishes re-installing Windows XP.

Torvalds: Linux ready to go green

The infrastructure and tools required to make Linux a green operating system are now in place, according to Linux leader Linus Torvalds, who was in Melbourne this week attending Australia's largest Linux conference.

In an interview at the linux.conf.au conference, the developer of the Linux kernel admitted that the operating system was lagging behind on power-management and energy-diagnosis tools.

"It is an area we were pretty weak in a few years ago and just building up the infrastructure took a long time, but now we are at a point where we have most of it done," Torvalds said.

"That doesn't mean we are done. Now we have an infrastructure in place... we have the tools to measure power and notice when the power is higher and why that is, which is pretty important. Before, it used to be a black box," he said. read full story

what is One Laptop per Child(OLPC)?

The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, with a dual-mode display—both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white reflective and sunlight-readable at 3× the resolution. The laptop will have a 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory; it will not have a hard disk, but it will have four USB ports. The laptops will have wireless broadband that, among other things, allows them to work as a mesh network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network. The laptops will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data.

Read the FAQs from www.laptop.org

Dell to Introduce More Linux OS Desktops and Notebooks

PC maker Dell has announced its collaboration with Canonical Inc. Both companies together will soon offer more desktops and notebooks incorporating the Linux operating system instead of Windows.

Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Canonical Inc said, “What’s been announced to date is not the full extent of what we will see over the next couple of weeks and months. There are additional offerings in the pipeline.”

Gerry Carr, Marketing Manager at Canonical said, “This is the next great battle and this is where Linux has never really been before - Linux as a consumer product.”

However Dell has refused to make any comment on the collaboration but has said that the company is happy with the response towards its Linux PCs launched earlier.

Seems very soon Linux operating system is going to give a tough fight to Windows of Microsoft.

Web 2.0 is built on Open Source

Amazon uses Linux. eBay uses Windows. But what OSs and webservers run Web 2.0? We tested 17 of our favorites and found out. The script is included below to check for yourself. Read more

	Site	Webserver	Operating System
		Apache httpd	Linux
		Apache httpd	Linux
		Apache httpd 1.3.33	Linux
		lighttpd 1.4.13	Linux
		lighttpd 1.4.11	Linux
		Unknown	Linux
		Apache httpd 2.0.52 ((Red Hat))	Linux
		Apache httpd	Linux
		Unknown	Linux
		Apache httpd 2.0.52	Linux
		Microsoft IIS webserver 6.0	Windows (although OS responding is Linux, this is a caching service).
		lighttpd 1.4.15	Linux
		Apache httpd	Linux
		Apache httpd 2.0.55 ((Ubuntu) DAV/2 PHP/5.1.2)	Linux
		Mongrel 201.0.1	Linux
		Apache httpd	Linux
		Squid webproxy 2.6.STABLE12	Unknown (while OS responding is Linux, this is likely a caching service).

Tamil Nadu gets dual-boot Win-Linux desktops

The Indian state of Tamil Nadu has finalized a tender for 40,000 Lenovo desktops which can be installed with both Novell's Suse Linux and Microsoft's Windows XP Starter Edition.

According to C. Umashankar, managing director of Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (Elcot), the desktops will be deployed across schools and government departments in the state. Elcot is Tamil Nadu's state-owned IT supplier.

Umashankar said the desktops will be installed with either Suse Linux or dual-boot Windows XP Starter Edition/Suse Linux configurations, depending on the needs of the organization.

For instance, schools will be provided with Suse Linux desktops, while government employees who still require Windows in their work will get dual-boot machines, he told ZDNet Asia.

Dual-boot machines will cost 22,000 rupees (US$497) each, though this was not the initial price point quoted by the vendors, Umakshankar said, adding that Chennai-based IT company Origin Infosys will supply the Lenovo desktops.

He said that Elcot was originally quoted 21,800 rupees (US$492) for each Lenovo system, whether the preloaded OS was Suse Linux or Windows XP Starter Edition. After some negotiation, Elcot secured the final price of 22,000 rupees (US$497) for dual-boot systems, Umashankar said.

Suse Linux is a full-fledged OS with no restrictions on how the platform is used, while Microsoft's Windows XP Starter Edition does not allow users to run more than three software applications at one time.

According to Umashankar, users will be "encouraged" to use Suse Linux as far as possible.

Earlier this year, Tamil Nadu announced plans for all government agencies across the state to switch from Microsoft Windows desktop to Linux and the OpenOffice productivity suite. The move is expected to slash the local government's IT cost by 15 to 25 percent.

Dell to Sell Linux PCs

After collecting some 1,800 new product and service ideas from IT users and customers using an online "suggestion box," Dell Inc. has announced that it's taking the user suggestions seriously and will soon debut and sell a new line of certified, user-ready Linux-loaded desktop and laptop computers.
The Dell IdeaStorm Web site, where customers and other IT enthusiasts can offer recommendations about future Dell products and configurations that they'd want to buy, was started on Feb. 16 by CEO Michael Dell, who is looking for ways to re-energize the company's sales and financial performance after several disappointing quarters.
One post that got a lot of interest was the idea that Dell bring back a reasonably priced laptop computer that runs Linux.More>>

Linus Torvalds - Godfather of Open Source

Linus Torvalds was just 21 when he changed the world. Working out of his family's apartment in Helsinki in 1991, he wrote the kernel of a new computer operating system called Linux that he posted for free on the Internet — and invited anyone interested to help improve it.

Today, 15 years later, Linux powers everything from supercomputers to mobile phones around the world, and Torvalds has achieved fame as the godfather of the open-source movement, in which software code is shared and developed in a collaborative effort rather than being kept locked up by a single owner.

Some of Torvalds' supporters portray him as a sort of anti-Bill Gates, but the significance of Linux is much bigger than merely a slap at Microsoft. Collaborating on core technologies could lead to a huge reduction in some business costs, freeing up money for more innovative investments elsewhere. Torvalds continues to keep a close eye on Linux's development and has made some money from stock options given to him as a courtesy by two companies that sell commercial applications for it.

But his success isn't just measured in dollars. There's an asteroid named after him, as well as an annual software-geek festival. Torvalds' parents were student radicals in the 1960s and his father, a communist, even spent a year studying in Moscow. But it's their son who has turned out to be the real revolutionary.More>>

Oracle unveils new apps, Linux support program

Oracle Corp. has unveiled a new version of its Oracle E-Business Suite of business applications and a support program for the Red Hat Linux operating system.

The E-Business Suite 12 software adds features to help worldwide operations more easily consolidate data, said John Wookey, senior vice president of application development at Oracle. The new version was introduced during the company's OpenWorld user conference here this week.

Oracle E-Business Suite 12 offers easier deployment than Version 11i and includes tools to help users more easily execute profitability analysis by channel or product line, Wookey said. The updated E-Business Suite also adds a Web service repository and links to Oracle's Fusion middleware, the company said.

The new release will begin shipping within a year, Oracle said.More>>

The Indian Summer of Linux

In recent weeks attention has focused on rapidly growing markets in the developing world where the relative absence of legacy computing systems, makes the choice more interesting. India is on the radar of dozens of software service providers, waiting and watching, which way large spenders will jump. And the media has caught on to the excitement:

`Linux spreads its wings in India' reported Business Week earlier this month, with Nandini Lakshman reporting that eight state governments here have put their treasury operations on Linux systems, while Maharashtra is fuelling its revamped health care system on Open Source systems.

Pankaj Mishra writes in the September 30 issue of CTO Forum that 18 of 28 Indian states have embraced Linux in some form or are running pilot e-governance schemes.

The `Open Source Symposium' and Red Hat Developer Day on successive days in Bangalore last week, provided another opportunity to assess to what extent the Penguin's Progress across India is the unstoppable march many watchers seem to suggest.More>>

Chicago selects Red Hat to help improve services provided to citizens

The world's leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise today announced the City of Chicago's successful migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux for essential government programs including the vehicle registration system online job applications restaurant inspections ethics training and more. The City of Chicago migrated to Red Hat in order to reduce costs and improve support performance and scalability. The city has already saved more than $250 000 and is reducing server hardware maintenance and operating costs as a result of Oracle's certification and support infrastructure on Red Hat.More>>

Kerala government to use Linux everywhere

Linux or open source seems to thrive wherever Left governments rule. And as Kerala schools log Microsoft out and boot open source systems, Linux world is buzzing with excitement over possibilities in the communist-ruled states. Though West Bengal and Tripura have to go whole hog to adopt a free software model, ideological closeness is more than evident.More>>

Ubuntu Next Version : Edgy Eft Beta Released

The next version of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution was released called as, Edgy Eft will include bleeding-edge Linux technologies, with many of the packages expected in Edgy to be beta themselves. There is quite big change in Ubuntu starting from their startup services. Checkout their feature lists. It is been planned to released on October 2007.
EdgyBeta>>