World's Largest Linux System Image Achieved on SGI Altix 4700 Blade Servers

Silicon Graphics today announced another high-performance computing first: the world's largest computer to operate under a single copy of the Linux OS. On its SGI Altix 4700 blade platform and a beta version of Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux Ver. 10, Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) demonstrated a single system image (SSI) running on a world-record 1,024 processors breaking a prior record of 512 processors, also held by SGI. The system is now installed in Munich, Germany, at the Leibinz Rechen-Zentrum (LRZ) centre. LRZ houses Germany's National Supercomputer System, and the Altix 4700 installation marked the completion of LRZ's Phase I deployment.

Read the press release here.

Fedora Core 5 Re-Spin for May

Fedora Unity has released the Fedora Core 5 Re-Spins for May 2006. These are DVD ISO Re-Spins of Fedora Core 5. These ISOs are based upon Fedora Core 5 and all updates released as of May 23rd, 2006. They are available for i386 and x86_64 architectures.

The Re-Spin task has been taken up by Fedora Unity to provide the Community with the chance to install Fedora Core with recent updates, which might otherwise be several hundred megabytes of downloads, already included. The Fedora Unity Project intends to release early and release often, with new Re-Spins provided early each month during the life of each Fedora Core release until that release is transferred to Fedora Legacy.

See http://fedoraunity.org/news-archives/unity-respin5-20060523/

My page at GooglePages

As I am sure many of you have heard. Google are now offering a simple way to create web pages without needing to know HTML and CSS called GooglePages.

I though I would give the site a try. Here is Gary's page on GooglePages for your delight!

Thanks,

THP

A look at the FreeNAS server

The newsforge.com people have published another article of mine. This time on the FreeNAS server.

You can read it at A look at the FreeNAS server

Thanks,

THP

LDAP in the enterprise

Hi,

Newsforge.com have published a new article by your truly called "LDAP in the enterprise". The article looks at the basics of LDAP in the small to medium company and then takes a practical look at the OpenLDAP server.

LDAP in the enterprise

Thanks,

THP

Redhat to acquire JBoss

Red Hat has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire JBoss. By acquiring JBoss, Red Hat expects to accelerate the shift to service-oriented architectures (SOA), by enabling the next generation of web-enabled applications running on a low-cost, open source platform.

Red Hat will acquire JBoss for approximately $350 million in initial consideration, plus approximately $70 million subject to the achievement of certain future performance metrics. The transaction consideration is composed of approximately 40% in cash and 60% in Red Hat common stock. The acquisition is expected to be completed around the end of Red Hat's first fiscal quarter (May 2006), subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval.

More here

Fedora Core 5 released

The Fedora Project has announced the release of Fedora Core 5. According to their website, "New desktop applications, advances in security, better localization tools, improved software installation and management facilities and strong Java integration help to make Fedora Core 5 the most innovative Linux distribution ever."

Included in this release are Gnome 2.14, KDE 3.5, OpenOffice.org 2.0.2, Firefox 1.5, Xen 3.0, and a rewritten version of the Anaconda installer, to match the new look-and-feel of the distribution.

Fedora has switched to using the reference policy for the SELinux security framework. This supports binary modules, allowing SELinux policies to move into individual packages. Developers can use this to ship site-specific policy customizations. Fedora Core also supports the Multi Category Security (MCS) SELinux policy by default, in addition to Type Enforcement (TE), Muti Level Security (MLS), and Role Base Access Control (RBAC) security policies.

The release also includes new free Java support, Fedora can now compile and run software written in Java without relying upon proprietary and closed Java machine implementations. It does this through the introduction of the completely free software stack java-gcj-compat that runs native
and bytecode Java.

Many packages are now compiled and run on a 100% free and open software stack. These include OpenOffice.org, Eclipse, Apache Tomcat, and Jakarta. Other Java applications include the popular BitTorrent utility Azureus and RSSowl.

FC5 Release Summary

Xara releases Xtreme open source code at Libre Graphics meeting

At the Libre Graphics meeting in Lyon on 18th March, Xara announced that, after the last few months of readying the source code, it has now made the first release of the majority of the Xara LX source code for public download.

Commenting on Xara's goals, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu Linux and the second space tourist, says: "The announcement by the Xara team positions them well for the growing wave of momentum behind free and open source software. In each market sector, there is emerging a dominant open source application to challenge the existing dominant proprietary application. I wish the Xara team every success in their efforts to ensure that Xara becomes the leading open source graphics application, and to craft a strong community and business around that work."

http://www.xaraxtreme.org/

Mandriva fires founder Gael Duval

Gael Duval, one of the founders of Mandriva, was fired by his own company as part of a set of cost-cutting measures, designed to help the company recover from its current financial losses. Duval had voluntarily moved to a new branch of the company which was planning to improve its open source community involvement, while the company as a whole has been turning increasingly towards "enterprise" applications, hoping to compete with Red Hat and Novell SuSE, among others. NewsForge reports that Duval intends to sue the company for "abusive layoff", but Mandriva CEO Francois Bancilhon mildly described the decision as part of cost-cutting measures. It remains unclear what the company's next moves will be, as it will face serious competition in the enterprise Linux market sector.

Knoppix 5.0

The latest release of the Knoppix live DVD Linux distribution is available, with a more "genuine Debian" collection of packages, more and better hardware detection, and improvements to the install to hard disk option. In particular the system now supports updating a hard disk installation from a more recent live DVD or CD. The system includes a Linux 2.6.15.4 kernel, Xorg xserver, KDE 3.5.1, Gnome 2.12, and Open Office 2.0.1.

The first release of Knoppix 5.0 was made exclusively available as a free pressed DVD at CeBIT.

Earliest date 2 weeks after CeBIT, the CD edition of KNOPPIX 5.0 should be ready and will be available for download, together wih the DVD version, from the usual mirrors.

Get the FUD from New Zealand

A new "Get the Facts" style report commissioned by the New Zealand government cautions strongly against the use of open source software, making a wide variety of misleading claims about copyleft "infection". The report states "While the use of open source software has many benefits, it brings with it a number of legal risks not posed by proprietary or commercial software." Perhaps unsurprisingly, the report was created by legal firm Chapman Tripp, which is closely associated with Microsoft. New Zealand Green Party Information Technology Spokesperson Nandor Tanczos, responds critically, "Asking Microsoft's general counsel and IT adviser to prepare what is supposed to be a neutral guide to open source software is just scandalous."

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060301213210833

GPLv3 draft

The first discussion draft of the GNU General Public License, version 3, has been published by the Free Software Foundation. This is a the beginning of a public review process that is expected to take the rest of 2006. The new license includes lots of rewording for clarification and new definitions that were missing from GPL 2, as well as aggressive new clauses dealing with Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and replacing "distribution" with "propagation", broadening the application of the copyleft to include edge cases such as running an application on a publicly-available server. The license also contains compatibility clauses increasing the flexibility of combining GPL software withsoftware under other free copyleft licenses.

http://gplv3.fsf.org/draft

KDE 4 to incorporate Solid device and network capabilities

After a lot of coding behind the scenes, a new initiative to improve
KDE's interaction with network and hardware devices has been launched.
Solid, will provide an API for better interaction with dynamically
changing hardware and network environments as a result of newer wireless
and hotplugging environments. The project aims to start including these
features in KDE 4.

"Solid will be a giant leap for KDE," says project lead Kévin Ottens.
"For example, the desktop will be able to deal wisely with your computer
hibernating. You'd want network interfaces to go down and for
network-enabled applications to gracefully handle the disconnection; USB
devices should be synced to avoid data loss".

http://dot.kde.org/1136389547/

British government announces review of 'intellectual property' law

Following in the footsteps of their American counterparts, British lawmakers will be reconsidering the UK intellectual property regime in order to "modernize copyright and other forms of intellectual property so that they are appropriate for the digital age". The process is structured on essentially the same lines as the review that, in 1998, gave rise to the United States' Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The British independent review will be led by Andrew Gowers, former editor of the Financial Times, has been commissioned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and will run for 12 months.

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/newsroom_and_speeches/press/2005/Press_102_05.cfm

Starting Linux in single user mode

Hi,

Just a quick note. The other day I need to start a friends Linux machine
in single user mode so I could do a low level fsck. I didn't know how to
do it and I thought I would share the information with you!

At the boot prompt (Grub or Lilo) type: linux single

Linux is the name of the boot option defined in the boot loader and most
of the time it is just "linux" and "single" is the command to force boot
up in single user mode.

Thanks and happy linuxing,

THP

Proposed License Amendment to Avoid Content Ghettos in the Commons

The issue of license interoperability is an important one for those involved in creating "free" content. There exists and interoperability issue that arises in the context of content licensed under a Creative Commons license and content licensed under other "free" licenses. As many of these licenses are now crafted, there is no way for creativity to be shared among these licenses, even if the underlying freedoms guaranteed by the licenses are the same.

Creative Commons is now considering a proposal designed to "avoid content ghettos". They have pledged to work "with as many representatives from the free culture movement as we can to build this federation offree licenses".

http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5701

Microsoft to compete with ODF

Seeing that a closed file format isn't going to win market share and seemingly in response to the Open Document Format, Microsoft has announced that it will release its own "Open XML" formats under a non-free license which it calls 'open', rather than taking the technologically much simpler path of supporting their customers' need to interoperate with OpenOffice.org's ODF format. Microsoft intends to submit its standard to the ISO, apparently to compete with ODF for the creation of an ISO standard for document files. This is despite the fact that ODF has already been in the standardization process for some time, and lacks the patent problems of "Open XML".

http://fsdaily.com/article.pl?sid=05/11/23/0749203

Linux powers my new venture

I have started a new web site called The Free Press Release Center and of course it is powered by Linux with PHP, MySQL and of course Apache (this combination is often called LAMP).

FPRC is a free Internet based news and press release distribution service for businesses of all sizes. We are aiming to raise the standard for Internet news distribution.

Press release submission is free and each press release is sorted according to category and keyword. To help you in submiting your press communication we have a sample press release as well as a how to write a press release section.

But the great part about FPRC is the keyword linking. With each press release the you can choose a keyword and a URL (different to your main site URL) which will appear as a link (using the keyword as the anchor text) in your press release. This gives you free links to your site using the anchor text of your choice. Plus it is in a natural context, i.e. the text of their release. To understand this more read the press release and SEO section on the web site.

There is also a PRO upgrade which gives you 3 keywords and URLs and your press release remains permanently in the system. Other benefits of a PRO upgrade are: your press release will remain in our system permanently, after the upgrade you will have access to add your company to our business directory and you can distribute your press release in up to 5 other related industries.

Thanks,

THP

How to shop for Web hosting

Hi,

I have had another article published by the NewsForge people this time on IT Managers Journal. It is called How to shop for Web hosting but its working title was "How to read Linux hosting adverts".

The article is a top level analysis of Linux hosting including shared hosting, Virtual private servers and dedicated hosting.

Enjoy!

THP.

Patent Commons established to defend free software

The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) has established a site for
registering pledges on open source technologies from companies such
as Red Hat, Sun, and IBM. The patent commons site is divided into two
main areas: one for developers, with detailed resources available on
patent commitments, termination provisions, and other guidance, and
the other, dedicated to a library of patents and broader patent
portfolio claims, along with pledges from the companies which hold
these patents. Site maintainers hope it will help to dispel the angst
that open source developers have had in the present software patent
environment.