The Blog

Does Red Hat Enterprise Linux perform any better (or worse) than the various “Enterprise Linux” distributions that are derived from RHEL? Now that Scientific Linux 6.2 was released, here is a performance comparison of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Oracle Linux, CentOS, and Scientific Linux across three different systems. Full story

Open source software usage has accelerated over the past decade, and today most enterprises use open source on the desktop as well as in development and critical infrastructure. As open source adoption has increased, so too has the realization that responsible open source usage requires organizations to actively manage it with policies, processes, tool sets, and human resources. Best-in-class enterprises … Read More

According to Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical is moving quickly ahead with its plans to bring Ubuntu to platforms going well beyond just desktop computers. In his latest blog post, Shuttleworth notes: “We’ll show Ubuntu neatly integrated into Android at Mobile World Congress next week. Carry just the phone, and connect it to any monitor to get a full Ubuntu desktop with … Read More

Your next desktop could be a phone Why carry two devices, when you could carry only one? Your next high-end smartphone has far more horsepower than you’ll need on a phone, and more than enough for a laptop. So we’ve brought Android together with Ubuntu, the world’s favourite free operating system, to give you a full productivity desktop that fits … Read More

The use of open source software, cloud computing technologies, and an integrated approach to search, video, and social media seems almost common-place in industry these days. Yet government websites aren’t quite there with the exception of a few noteable exceptions (not an exhaustive list by any means). This is why I’m so excited about that NASA has […] Full story

The world of desktop Linux is often portrayed these days as a battle primarily between longstanding leader Ubuntu and up-and-coming challenger Linux Mint, frequently with the suggestion that Mint is winning. It’s true that Mint is now in the No. 1 spot on DistroWatch’s page hint rankings, but it’s critical to remember that those rankings indicate just that–page hits per … Read More

Eight in ten (81%) recruiters say hiring Linux talent is a priority in 2012. Dice Holdings and The Linux Foundation today are releasing the first-ever Linux Jobs Report. The 2012 Linux Jobs Report is the result of a survey of more than 2300 hiring managers and reveals that Linux talent is in higher demand than ever and that people who … Read More

This release of BCS contains an all-new WebClient, designed to be more flexible, stable and extendable. IntelliPanel has received a number of bugfixes as well. What’s New? ————– * Your BCS installation may now be upgraded with the smaller bynari-isuite package, containing only the IntelliPanel and IntelliMail WebClient software. See the Special Considerations section below for more information. Consult with … Read More

The LibreOffice 3.5 release is due out shortly, and this release comes with a number of improvements that free office suite users will find useful. From grammar checking to better importing for Microsoft Office documents, LibreOffice 3.5 contains a number of useful improvements. This release also contains preliminary work for porting LibreOffice to the Web and mobile devices. Full story

  Red Hat has been involved with OpenStack development for some time. Unlike the bulk of companies involved, however, Red Hat has gone about its work quietly and without “officially” joining the effort. Red Hat still isn’t saying exactly what it hopes to get from OpenStack contributions, but Brian Stevens did divulge a bit about the company’s involvement.   Full … Read More

Regularly, we at OStatic update our collections of open source resources, tutorials, free open source books, reviews, product comparisons and project tours. These educational toolkits are an essential part of the learning mission we try to preserve at the site. Whether you’re looking for resources for working with and enjoying online video and audio, Linux tutorials, offbeat open source applications, … Read More

The February 2012 issue of ;login: has a detailed overview of Btrfs [PDF] written by developer Josef Bacik. “Btrfs’s snapshotting is simple to use and understand. The snapshots will show up as normal directories under the snapshotted directory, and you can cd into it and walk around like in a normal directory. By default, all snapshots are writeable in Btrfs, … Read More

Data centers are power-hungry, and Facebook’s Oregon center in Crook County is no exception, using 28MW. While that’s fairly standard, it has doubled the power use of the county. Full story

The 3.3 kernel release will let you boot an Android userspace with no modifications, but not very good power management. The 3.4 kernel release will hopefully have the power management hooks that Android needs in it, along with a few other minor missing infrastructure pieces that didn’t make it into Full story

Developer Jonathan Riddell has announced that, after the release of Ubuntu 12.04, Canonical will no longer be paying him to do development work on Kubuntu, the KDE derivative of Ubuntu. As a Canonical employee, Riddell has, for the last seven years, been paid to work on Kubuntu and is now moving on to other tasks within the company. Riddell has … Read More