Category Archive

I recently asked Tanya Reilly, Site Reliability Engineer at Google, to share her thoughts on how to make better disaster recovery plans. Tanya is presenting a session titled Have you tried turning it off and turning it on again? at the O’Reilly Velocity Conference, taking place Oct. 1-4 in New York. 1. What are the most common mistakes people make when planning … Read More

Gamer? Check. Linux user? Check. For years, one of the top excuses I heard from friends who would otherwise have switched to Linux long ago is that they just couldn’t give up their Windows-only games. I can empathize. I was a dual-booter for years for exactly this reason, and it made making the switch harder for me. After all, once … Read More

Hypothetical: You need to set up the IT infrastructure (email, file sharing, etc.) for a new company. No restrictions. No legacy application support necessary. How would you do it? What would that ideal IT infrastructure look like? I decided to sit down and think of my ideal setup — based on quite a few years of being a vice president … Read More

Is your system management tool robust enough? As your organization grows, so does your workload—and the IT resources required to manage it. There is no “one-size-fits-all” system management solution, but a centralized, open source tool such as Foreman can help you manage your company’s IT assets by provisioning, maintaining, and updating hosts throughout the complete lifecycle. Foreman becomes even more powerful when … Read More

As expected, Google today unveiled the name of the Android 8.0 mobile operating system as “Oreo” during a live event that took place in New York City and last for about 5 minutes or so. Android 8.0 is Google’s major release of the Linux-based mobile OS for Android devices, and it introduces a wide-range of new features and improvements, among which … Read More

With the newest Docker Enterprise Edition, you can now have Docker clusters composed of nodes running different operating systems. Three of the key OSes supported by Docker—Windows, Linux, and IBM System Z—can run applications side by side in the same cluster, all orchestrated by a common mechanism. [ What is Docker? Linux containers explained. | Go deeper with InfoWorld’s beginner’s guide to … Read More

Twenty-six years ago this month, a geeky student in Finland released the Linux kernel to the world. Today, hundreds of millions of people are using Linux. Why? That’s a question I try to answer in my new book For Fun and Profit: A History of the Free and Open Source Software Revolution. Sure, you can explain Linux’s popularity today in terms … Read More

Docker has released Docker Enterprise Edition (DEE), a Container-as-a-Service (CaaS) platform for managing and securing Windows, Linux, and mainframe containerized applications across multiple platforms both on premises and in the cloud. DEE provides a container management platform that unites Windows, Linux, and Mainframe apps on a single platform on the same cluster. This puts in competition with container orchestration market leader Kubernetes. Docker’s … Read More

There are so many Linux distributions available—so many, in fact, that it can become a bit of a challenge to find the one right for you. After you’ve looked at them enough, it seems the variations tend to blur together, such that one flavor of Linux is only a slight shift away from another. Perhaps your distribution of choice may … Read More

Selecting technologies means committing to solutions that will support an active, growing business over the long term, so it requires careful consideration and foresight. When an enterprise bets on the wrong horse, the result is often significantly higher development costs and reduced flexibility, both of which can stick around for the long haul. In the past decade, adoption of open … Read More

Short Bytes: Several operating systems have been developed for a broad range of purposes, but, currently, there are only three best operating systems for gaming: SteamOS, Ubuntu and Windows 10. Naturally, all three will have varied gaming performance between them, and it is our job to provide you with accurate information on which OS to use if your primary usage will be … Read More

Operationalizing, or implementing, cybersecurity is an ongoing effort that continually evolves and grows.  Just like organizations can’t achieve safety; they cannot achieve cybersecurity.  Therefore, having a well-defined organizational cybersecurity strategy is essential in keeping organizational security goals in mind. Board members are becoming increasingly aware of the requirements to implement cybersecurity strategies and the perils faced by those organizations that … Read More

I’m a huge proponent of using mind maps in creative work, which you may know if you’ve read any of my previous articles or follow my podcast. Most folks know mind maps are great for organizing your thoughts and brainstorming ideas for a project. The semi-free-flowing, branched structure of a mind map really lends itself to helping you wrap your brain around whatever it … Read More

Network Policies is a new Kubernetes feature to configure how groups of pods are allowed to communicate with each other and other network endpoints. In other words, it creates firewalls between pods running on a Kubernetes cluster. This guide is meant to explain the unwritten parts of Kubernetes Network Policies. This feature has become stable in Kubernetes 1.7 release. In … Read More

Open standards exist for all manner of wireless and terrestrial communications, but so far none has emerged for underwater communications. Below the waves, submarines, autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), and undersea sensor stations use a hodgepodge of incompatible proprietary technologies including acoustic, radio, and optical modems. Manned submarines and many automated subs can surface to communicate over the air, where the bandwidth is … Read More