Is Now The Time for Software Defined Storage – SUSE Briefing Note

Jonathan MathewsPublic

Storage remains the thorn in the side of IT as it attempts to meet the expectations of the organization. According to a study commissioned by SUSE, 70% of IT departments say their current storage strategies are not keeping up with the exponential growth of data and the demand for faster and faster responses. Ninety five percent of those organizations are looking to … Read More

How to Install OpenStack in Less Than an Hour

Jonathan MathewsPublic

OpenStack is a framework for building IT infrastructure. This framework consists of a collection of many smaller projects including OpenStack Nova (compute), Keystone (identity service), Glance (image service), Neutron (networking), and many others. These components are combined into working software, either through a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach or by using one of the many available distributions. Brave admins will go the DIY … Read More

Technology has failed us

Jonathan MathewsPublic

Technology was meant to solve the world’s problems, give us all more freedom, and create opportunities. Everywhere in the world people are struggling, are working more, are unemployed, or simply lack access to the tools and resources they need to create their own success. Note: Technology has done a lot but, I believe we can do more, we can do … Read More

A free, open resource to solve our third world problems

Jonathan MathewsPublic

Corruption, poverty, war, hunger, healthcare, education, safety. These are only a few of the problems faced by people in developing countries. Many of these problems are caused by exclusion, fear, intimidation, broken infrastructure, and lack of money, resources, access to information, and tools. These are hard problems to solve but, as Theodore Roosevelt said: “Nothing in this world is worth having … Read More

Canonical: Windows 10 Loves Ubuntu

Jonathan MathewsPublic

Canonical is announcing today, through software engineer Dimitri John Ledkov, the availability of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system as an “App” in the Windows 10 Store. As we reported the other day, users already spotted the presence of Ubuntu Linux in Microsoft’s Windows Store, as part of the Microsoft WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) initiative to help cross-platform developers … Read More

Fabric 1.0: Hyperledger Releases First Production-Ready Blockchain Software

Jonathan MathewsPublic

Open-source software isn’t so much built, it grows. And today, the open-source blockchain consortium Hyperledger has announced that its first production-ready solution for building applications, Fabric, has finished that process. But even before the formal release of Hyperledger Fabric 1.0 today, hundreds of proofs-of-concept had been built. With contributions to the platform for building shared, distributed ledgers across a number of industries (coming from 159 different engineers in … Read More

OpenStack: Driving the Future of the Open Cloud

Jonathan MathewsPublic

As cloud computing continues to evolve, it’s clear that the OpenStack platform is guaranteeing a strong open source foundation for the cloud ecosystem. At the recent OpenStack Days conference in Melbourne, OpenStack Foundation Executive Director Jonathan Bryce noted that although the early stages of cloud technology emphasized public platforms such as AWS, Azure and Google, the latest stage is much … Read More

New Kubernetes Online Course Now Open: Sign Up for Free

Jonathan MathewsPublic

Want to learn more about Kubernetes? A new massive open online course (MOOC) — Introduction to Kubernetes (LFS158x) — is now available from The Linux Foundation and edX. Get an in-depth primer on this powerful system for managing containerized applications in this free, self-paced course, which covers the architecture of the system, the problems it solves, and the model that it uses to … Read More

Desperately Seeking Security: 6 Skills Most In Demand

Jonathan MathewsPublic

The last several years have seen a slew of reports coming out lamenting the typical enterprise’s ability to recruit and retain quality cybersecurity talent. Earlier this year, ISACA’s Cybersecurity Nexus survey found that more than one in four organizations take six months or longer to fill priority cybersecurity positions. Respondents to the survey said that 40% of organizations report receiving … Read More

What does it mean to have an open mindset?

Jonathan MathewsPublic

Successful companies are those that grow and expand. But bigger companies often need more managers. Excessive layers of management can instill cumbersome bureaucracy in a company, and bureaucracy can become a significant problem for companies when it can causes wasteful resource allocation, decreases productivity, and decelerates innovation. We can observe that open thinking can challenge or overcome potential problems of … Read More

Simplify the Linux Command Line with Fish Shell

Jonathan MathewsPublic

The Linux command line is a tool that every system administrator should get to know. With the power of commands at your fingertips, there’s very little you cannot do. However, along with that power comes the need to remember those commands. When you take into consideration how complicated those commands can get, it’s understandable that some admins have trouble recalling … Read More

Linux Malware on the Rise: A Look at Recent Threats

Jonathan MathewsPublic

Over the past few years, anecdotal evidence has suggested that security threats to Linux devices are on the rise. Last fall’s Mirai botnet attacks, which turned thousands of Linux devices into a zombie army used to attack infrastructure via Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), were particularly effective in waking up the Linux community. Now, we’re seeing quantitative statistics to support … Read More

How Linux containers have evolved

Jonathan MathewsPublic

In the past few years, containers have become a hot topic among not just developers, but also enterprises. This growing interest has caused an increased need for security improvements and hardening, and preparing for scaleability and interoperability. This has necessitated a lot of engineering, and here’s the story of how much of that engineering has happened at an enterprise level … Read More

Dell Precision 5520 Mobile Workstation review: The Ubuntu Linux laptop for power developers

Jonathan MathewsPublic

Dell describes their Project Sputnik computers as systems developed by and for developers. They’re right. They are. While the XPS 13 is the best known of these, it could stand a little improvement. For example, it can only hold 16GBs of RAM. For those who need even more power and memory, you can get a Dell Precision 5520 Mobile Workstation. You can up the RAM … Read More

Linux Kernel 4.12: “One of The Bigger Releases”

Jonathan MathewsPublic

Linus Torvalds released Linux kernel 4.12 on Sunday, July 2 and remarked how it was “one of the bigger releases historically.” Indeed, just shy of 12,000 commits, only 4.9 was significantly larger, and that was because Greg Kroah-Hartman declared it an LTS release. Despite Torvalds’ unassuming comment about how there’s “nothing particularly odd going on” in this release, there are definitely … Read More