Tux Watch

The results of Linuxquestion.org’s Voting for its Members Choice Awards [here] have finally been announced [here] with Ubuntu taking the lead again on the Linux Distribution of the Year Choice by the website’s users with KDE being the dominant Desktop Environment. Knoppix still leads the show for Live Distros and Firefox continues to be the king of web browsers. Mysql continues to the bag Mr. Favorite choice while GIMP is the best Graphics App of the year. Cheers to Linuxquestion.org users, great going!

Here are the official results for the 2006 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards:

• Distribution of the Year - Ubuntu (26.44%)
• Live Distribution of the Year - Knoppix (26.22%)
• Browser of the Year - Firefox (74.61%)
• Database of the Year - MySQL (61.68%)
• Office Suite of the Year - OpenOffice.org (89.79%)
• Desktop Environment of the Year - KDE (56.58%)
• Video Media Player Application of the Year - mplayer (41.93%)
• Video Authoring Application of the Year - Kino (27.81%)
• Audio Media Player Application of the Year - amaroK (57.07%)
• Audio Authoring Application of the Year - Audacity (67.07%)
• Multimedia Utility of the Year - K3b (69.51%)
• Messaging Application of the Year - Gaim (51.52%)
• Window Manager of the Year - Fluxbox (21.44%)
• IDE of the Year - Eclipse (34.47%)
• Mail Client of the Year - Thunderbird (52.74%)
• Text Editor of the Year - vi/vim (38.42%)
• Graphics Application of the Year - GIMP (65.60%)
• Security Application of the Year - nmap (20.94%)
• Windows on Linux Application of the Year - Wine (50.10%)
• Web Development Editor of the Year - Quanta (36.34%)
• Shell of the Year - bash (89.45%)

According to the Red Hat Website [here], the Swedish Armed Forces have made the decision to migrate their servers from Windows NT to Red Hat Enterprise Linux thus replacing Windows NT with Red Hat Enterprise Linux across its core IT infrastructure. The decision by Swedish authorities is driven by security considerations.

(more…)

An interesting article from the IBM Website [here] that a lack of physical memory can severely hamper Linux performance. In this article, learn how to accurately measure the amount of memory your Linux system uses. You also get practical advice on reducing your memory requirements using an Ubuntu system as an example. A much-touted benefit of Linux is that it is more efficient than Microsoft® Windows®, and will therefore perform better on less than cutting-edge hardware. This performance makes Linux a very attractive upgrade for the many people who have old Windows 98-era boxes still sitting around that are no longer being treated to the latest and greatest software (particularly security patches).

The article walks readers through the basics of memory, choosing the right desktop environment with appropriate applications, removing unwanted services and settings, appropriate planning and then how to optimize your system.

The news of the month is that the Linux kernel community is offering end users and in particular companies free Linux driver development services says Greg on the Linux Kernel Monkey Blog [here]. The objective is to reduce the issues and sufferings of searching for a suitable device driver for Linux thus no need to search Linux Device Driver Kits and browse through tens of example drivers in the Linux kernel source tree.

(more…)

According to the Guardian Digital-EnGarde Secure Linux website [here], the EnGarde Secure Community is a secure distribution of Linux engineered from the ground-up to provide organizations with security required for creating a corporate Web presence and conducting e-business online. EnGarde can be used as a Web, DNS, E-mail, Database, E-commerce and general Internet Server platform with security as a primary concern. I call it “Linux Truly Secure By Design” since it complies to SELinux security audit measures as well as follows the principle of Linux application design, that is, “Secure By Design” though many may disagree.

(more…)

FreedomHEC is the hardware conference [here] where you’ll learn how easy it is to make your hardware compatible with free, open source operating systems such as Linux, and available to new markets such as servers, next-generation entertainment devices, and more.

(more…)

The Linux Professional Institute has launched [here] the LPIC-3 Certification Program representing the culmination of LPI’s Certification Program. LPIC-3 is designed for the “enterprise-level” Linux professional and represents the highest level of professional, distribution-neutral Linux certification within the industry. The LPIC-3 program consists of a single exam for LPIC-3 “Core” designation. A number of “specialty” exams are proposed as additional designations on top of the LPIC-3 “Core” certification. Proposed specialties include the following: Mixed Environment, Security, High Availability and Virtualization, Web and Intranet, and Mail and Messaging. The first such “specialty” designation, “Mixed Environment” has been made available in January 2007.

(more…)

Part- 4. India Plays “IT” Big

Further adding to local FOSS Ecosystem development initiatives in India, the Indian state of Tamil Nadu has been making headlines [here ] the world over as the state goes for FOSS due to concerns over security and the high costs that Microsoft offers for Windows. The Indian state is not new to FOSS as the local government been running Red Hat Linux on various backend servers coupled with JBoss application server and PostgreSQL databases.

Mr. C.Umashankar the Managing Director, Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (Elcot is a state-owned IT supplier) has clearly announced that

(more…)

Part- 3. India Plays “IT” Open

India has been very prominent on the FOSS world news bulletins due to the fact that with one of the largest populations in the world, the country has been on preference list for Information Technology and Software Business Process Outsourcing for the western or developed world. Adding to this, almost every major FOSS development corporation has either Research and Development center in India as well as country operations including giant brand names like Red Hat, Novell, IBM etc. In India, the Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) [here ] has been leading FOSS initiatives in the country.

(more…)

Part- 2. Pakistan Brings Nation Closer To Realization

To take FOSS efforts to the next level in Pakistan, the Government initiated a project worth Rs29 million titled “Open Source Resource Center” (OSRC) [here] was established at the through the Ministry of IT’s [here] implementation arm the Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) [here] in January 2004 in Islamabad to facilitates stake holders and investors in the software industry, should they decide to shift their businesses from vendor-dependent proprietary software to open source software technology. It aims to create a culture of open source software use in Pakistan through media awareness and training workshops, and act as a virtual community for experts in this field.

(more…)

Part- I. Realizing True Potential

Readers on this side of the world may not be aware of some very interesting ICT and FOSS developments taking place in the various regions of Asia. First of all, there are many FOSS initiatives that are very active within the overall region adding value to the global FOSS movement. These regional or country level initiatives include organizations and groups like:

(more…)

The debate about how operating systems manage security has been the talk of the Tech Industry since long. If I was to answer this question that how secure is Linux or any other OS in the market today, it would be simply the Software Architecture and Design of that particular OS environment. From my experience with Windows after DOS, it gradually moved up the security ladder but today exists as a very unsecure platform that requires many applications to secure it.

(more…)

DistroWatch’s statistics on how the various favorite Linux Distributions have performed during 2006 are available [here]. A list of the top 25 distributions that are ranked by page hit figures in the past 12 months of 2006, compared with the same period in 2005 is available.

According to the list, Ubuntu Linux maintained its top spot for both 2005 as well as 2006. OpenSUSE stands second in 2006. Mandriva, KNOPPIX and Xandros have been loosing fans where as “geek” distributions like Slackware and Gentoo, swapped places in the table. New in the top 25 are SabayonLinux, Xubuntu and Freespire, replacing Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Linspire and VLOS. And the biggest climbers? Zenwalk shot up 8 and PCLinuxOS went up 5 places. Good show Linux world!

According to the Software For [website], Software for Starving Students is a free collection of programs organized for students (also available to anyone). They’ve gathered a list of best-in-class programs onto one CD (one disc for OS X, one for Windows), including a fully-featured office suite, a cutting-edge web browser, multi-media packages, academic tools, utilities and more. Why did they put this collection together in the first place? Well, they say the at the cost of a college education is always increasing and usually faster than students can earn money. They hope that

(more…)

Have you ever tried searching for content information through the Linux search facility at Google Linux? Google Linux allows you to search the web’s Linux resources using this specialized version of Google. Enter any keyword related to FOSS or Linux and you get tons of relevant search results making your life very easy. It even brings out my name and all that I have been doing related to Linux from around the world and thus (more…)