IBM expects Linux to make money

IBM has combined its “church” and “state” Linux functions under Bob Sutor, whose title now reads vice president of open source and Linux. (Picture from the resume page of Sutor’s Web site.)
##CONTINUE##
In the latest installment of his podcast interviews, Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin found Sutor focused mainly on opportunities for server and cloud Linux, through partnerships with Red Hat and Novell.

A rush transcript has been posted to the Linux Foundation web site, for those who find reading faster than listening.

Sutor’s latest promotion gave him not only corporate responsibility for Linux but profit responsibility also.

“If it’s IBM software, and if it runs on Linux, I care about it, and from a software company perspective, we want to sell more of it,” he told Zemlin, and much of the discussion involved IBM’s search for Linux profits.

Sutor described Linux as a secret sauce that lets it sell complete systems which may include Tivoli management, Rational tools, Websphere web servers, and IBM hardware. He said IBM currently has over 500 software products running on Linux and over 30,000 Linux desktops.

Still, IBM is tightly focused on server sales and the development of clouds, which can be sold, rented, or deliver profitable services.

For cloud computing, “why wouldn’t you run it on Linux?” he asked, because Linux can deliver all kinds of virtualization and those who want Windows desktops need never know they’re not.

(Picture of tux in a suit from IBM developer Tung-Sing Chong.)

Thanks to clouds IBM can profitably deliver thousands of desktops that look like Windows but have Linux on the back-end. It can also sell servers that are compatible with its clouds at the deepest level. Its alliance with Novell assures Windows file compatibility, and the one with Red Hat helps it in the corporate market.

Sutor also said IBM’s intense efforts on behalf of the Open Docuement Format are centered on interoperability:

by driving something like OpenDocument Format, it means you could have an organization that used these tools, and some people could be on Windows, and some could be on Linux, and some could be on the Mac, and some could be on iPhones, and some could be on Android phones, and so forth and so forth.

Thanks in part to IBM’s work, Sutor said, some 16 governments are now either mandating ODF or “suggesting it very strongly,” which can be almost as good.

Sutor and Zemlin also discussed what might be called the “corporate-cloud boundary,” the point in the growth of an enterprise system where building a cloud starts to make economic sense. Clouds start to make sense when heavy virtualization takes place, Sutor said, and there are new problems to solve.

But Sutor also defended the enterprise model:

if you’re purely looking at Enterprise workloads, no—it’s not all going to go to a cloud. It may not even be the majority of it goes to the cloud.

One final point Sutor made is that cloud computing will not always be a Linux lake. There will be clouds that, for technical or billing reasons, run things other than Linux. IBM will be happy to build them, if it can make money at it.

And that’s the real bottom line here. For Sutor today, the bottom line is the bottom line. I see nothing wrong with that. Having profit going to vendors who use Linux may be the best possible advertisement for open source. And IBM is doing that.

-----------------------------
BY Dana Blankenhorn
Source：ZDNet

Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

Linux first to offer USB 3.0 driver

A kernel hacker from Intel has posted a Linux driver for USB 3.0, making Linux the first operating system (OS) to support the new connectivity standard. Sarah Sharp (left) announced that her xHCI-compliant driver for USB 3.0 will be supported in Linux 2.6.31 in September.
##CONTINUE##
The xHCI (Extensible Host Controller Interface) host controller driver is available now, and will be formally supported by the Linux kernel in September in version 2.6.31, reports Sharp, also known as the "Geekess." This should make Linux the first OS to offer a USB 3.0 driver, according to Sharp, who says she has worked a year and a half on the project.

Sharp is now working with fellow Intel "OSV person" Keve Gabbert to ensure that Linux distributions including Ubuntu and Red Hat adopt the xHCI driver. She also plans to release instructions soon on how to compile a kernel using her git tree.

USB 3.0: ten times faster throughput
The Intel-backed USB 3.0 spec was completed by the USB Implementers Forum under the formal name "SuperSpeed USB" in November. The spec is said to offer physical-layer throughput speeds of up to 5Gbps (gigabits per second), compared to USB 2.0's 480Mbps (megabits per second). By comparison, Firewire (IEEE 1394) currently tops out at 3.2Gbps.

It's said real-world transfer rates for USB 3.0 may be as much as 500Mbps, compared to 25Mbps to 35Mbps for typical USB 2.0 mass storage drivers, offering the potential for 20x faster speeds. The technology is also claimed to offer reduced power consumption compared to USB 2.0.

USB 3.0 is targeted initially at PCs, Blu-ray players, hard drives, flash card readers, and optical drives such as DVD. The technology is said to be backward-compatible with USB 2.0, and will first appear in discrete silicon products, as opposed to being integrated in system-on-chips (SoCs). By September, says Sharp, NEC estimates it will have produced one million xHCI PCI Express add-in cards.

In November, MCCI Corp. and Synopsys announced they would together produce USB 3.0 compliant semiconductor IP and Linux-ready GPL'd drivers. Last month, MCCI announced more details about its USB 3.0 SuperSpeed products at the USB 3.0 Developer�s Conference in Tokyo, but has yet to announce details on availability.

Linux 2.6.31 will support the driver when it is expected to be released in September, says Sharp. Linux 2.6.30 arrived this week, offering several new filesystems, among other features.

Availability
A cached version of the apparently overtaxed Geekess blog page announcing the driver, may be found here.

-----------------------------
BY N/A
Source：LinuxDevices.com

Copyright © 1999-2009 Ziff Davis Enterprise Holdings Inc. All Rights Reserved.

How to Care For and Feed Software Developers

In this new weekly column, longtime Linux guru Matt Frye gives readers the full monty, the real trials and triumphs of a system administrator. This week: The care and feeding of software developers.
##CONTINUE##
Since the day I started my career as a system administrator, I have looked upon the profession with awe. As a system administrator, I am the custodian of the computing environment; the gate keeper to system resources; and the entrusted caretake of filesystems, backups, software, and more. In fact, I look at my job as a calling, an order of sorts, where I tarry every day in quiet devotions, learning and making my “Foo” stronger.

And I am not alone. Others feel the same way, and like an order, we convene and teach each other the ways of our craft. It might be called a user group meeting, but to dedicated practitioners, it is a place of worship—or at least an exclusive clubhouse, with arduous initiation rites, secret handshakes, and a cryptic esoteric vernacular. Call us the Brothers of Foo.

But also like an order, we brethren can look warily upon outsiders. Windows software? Heresy. The Sales department? Better lock down their permissions. Product development? What do they know? For political or practical reasons, technologies and colleagues can suffer our prejudices, and in the end, for better or worse, those biases affect the way we perform our jobs.

Now, I’ve mellowed a lot with age and experience and interpret the machine room more and more in shades of gray. However, business consolidation and the demand that IT deliver value to the enterprise still rankle my enlightenment. The bean counters treat system administrators as a cost center and, because we don’t bring in any revenue, we are forced to overtly demonstrate our value. More often than not, the math doesn’t add up for the CFO, and dedicated system staffers are let go or are rolled into engineering organizations. Recently, “Your local sysadmin” has taken on a mind-numbingly literal meaning and we’re often tasked with one thing: developer support.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s important to provide all the things that developers need: hardware changes, every possible environment to test with, tweaks, and new boxes. Virtualization has really helped. But we’re really mixing with another sect now.

Developers, though from the same proto-geek family tree, are now a distinct denomination from system administrators, and we don’t always integrate well. There was a time when developers had to be their own sysadmins and sysadmins were developers from days of yore. Early on, both developers and system administrators had to write code to make things work, but these days we are each used to our own practices and short cuts. The canon has diverged, and we are used to doing the things that define us as our own professions. Since both groups wear the battle scars of intense flame wars gone by, sometimes things get a little silly and sometimes things get a little tense.

So what do can we do about it? What can we learn from our heritage of system administration that we can apply here?

The most obvious point is that we don’t want to solve the same problem more than once. Instead of reverting to old, unproductive confrontation over doctrine, we can resort to maturity. One tip that I’ve given sysadmins for years is “Discard your technology bigotry and flame war debris of the past.” You know what you do and how to do it, so don’t spend a lot of time and energy proving it to other people.

Another important component of developer support is empathy. One thing I’ve often forgotten over the years while supporting developers is that they usually don’t have the visibility into system issues that we have.

Here is an example. Recently when trying to troubleshoot a directory issue in a severely stripped down Apache configuration, I asked a developer to tell me exactly what aliases needed to be mapped to what directories. It didn’t occur to me right away that he didn’t even have a login on this box, let alone that he wasn’t familiar with httpd.conf. Still, I asked him the same question three times before I realized that he wasn’t answering the question, not because he didn’t want to answer, but because he actually didn’t have any idea what I was talking about. When the light went on, it nearly blinded me. Have empathy with your developers.

There’s another angle to the empathy thing: When you look at a problem, find the most elegant and practical solution and then implement it. Don’t spend too much time with strong feelings over things that don’t matter in the long run. Going the long way around for a half-baked principle is a kind of ridiculous.

For example, if you like to use open source, that’s great. If it doesn’t fit, move on and do what makes sense, even if it’s a proprietary solution. Your developer may be on a different sort of timeline than you. They have crazy deadlines in release schedules and don’t get to take the Zen approach that sysadmins are lucky to afford. They will love that you got it done quickly.

And that leads to another point. Fundamentally, the developers we support are our customers. We are as responsible to them as a waiter in a restaurant is to a patron. We give them correct information about what is and is not available. We get things they need. We provide them with a generally pleasant experience. It’s all basic customer service.

It’s easy to point out how sysadmins are not like waiters. I can hear it now, “If I get bad service in a restaurant, I’d walk out. The developer I work with doesn’t have that choice.” Yeah, yeah. That’s great that you can look at the reasons why not to provide good customer service, but there are a few problems with that argument.

• It’s a particularly unproductive response. It doesn’t move the conversation forward or get any work done.Don’t be a harborer or a sandbagger. Get things done instead of complaining about how you have to do them.
• Further, you’re only hurting yourself. You have to work with this guy or gal for days, months, and possibly years to come. Take a confrontational approach, and you’re going to get the same thing back. If anything, you’re going to perpetuate a painful experience every time you have to deal with that developer—and his colleagues who share the office grapevine.
• Beyond that, it’s your responsibility. System administrators have customers, internal and external. There aren’t many roles within IT or even within the enterprise where one person has such a wide array of responsibilities. When our customers are satisfied, we get a better reputation and we deliver that all important value that keeps us off the chopping block for a while.

Like it or not, the word “social” has become part of the sysadmin’s job description. We may be technical genuises, but now we need to become customer service experts. We need to refocus our metrics and rewards systems, from how many file systems we built, to whether we helped the people to whom we are responsible succeed. All this, while we maintain our technical proficiency.

We need to understand that relinquishing control may yield better or more creative output. System administrators must build bridges with developers, database analysts, and non-technical people we support, because at some point down the road, we’ll want to cross those bridges and we’ll depend on the kindnress of all those people we met along the way.

-----------------------------
BY Matt Frye
Source：Linux Magazine

© Linux Magazine 1999-2009 All rights reserved.

Red Hat releases Fedora 11, debuts Fedora Community

Fedora 11, the latest version of Red Hat's home user-oriented Linux distro, debuted today.
##CONTINUE##
Community is key with Fedora. As the free, open-source, home-oriented version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the Fedora Project relies on the developer and tester community to keep the operating system to its semiannual release schedule. A new version of the OS, Fedora 11, was released today and is available for download.

In terms of major upgrades, Fedora 11 has received several. PackageKit, the software management application introduced in Fedora 9, has been extended from automatically installing new codecs when they're needed to also include new fonts and Internet media types. Audio and video setup has been improved with Fedora 11, which now includes the PulseAudio sound server to simplify audio control; and the Kernel Modsetting feature (KMS) for expedited graphical boot has been expanded to include more graphics processors from Intel, Nvidia, and ATI.

Fingerprint scanning has been simplified into a single authentication mechanism, and package updating has been simplified with the inclusion of Presto, a yum plugin that lessens the amount of data that has to be downloaded for updates.

Fedora 11 also now uses ext4 as the default file system instead of ext3, and also includes improved virtual console, better support for Asian languages with the iBus input method, and the WinGW cross-compiler for developers.

Testing in beta for this release is the Fedora Community portal, which lets developers and contributors more closely interact with the community through a dashboard that tracks the latest contributions, conversations, and updates through a graphical front end.

-----------------------------
BY Tim Conneally
Source：betanews

© 1998-2009 Betanews, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

谷歌搅局 微软Windows 7或遭振荡

微软09年的日子的确有些“水深火热”，近日，欧盟反垄断监管机构欧盟委员会又开始向微软举起反垄断大棒，已向各大PC厂商发出了问卷，要求其回答微软是否曾向它们施压，以此求证微软垄断证据。凭以往微软应对欧盟的经验，这很有可能是一场马拉松式的拉锯战，暂时还构不成威胁。也许现在令微软坐卧不安的却是众多上网本厂商弃微软Windows，转战谷歌Android。
##CONTINUE##
早在去年末，华硕就已着手开发运行Android的上网本产品。而在上周于台北举行Computex大展上,宏基、明基两大台系厂商相继宣布将推出采用谷歌Android操作系统的上网本，台湾笔记本代工厂商广达、仁宝更是在展会期间和谷歌进行了接触，对Android上网本的技术细节展开交流。与此同时，惠普、戴尔、华硕等PC巨头正在酝酿推出Android上网本的消息也纷纷传出。

Android操作系统本是谷歌针对智能手机推出的一款操作系统，如今却成为PC厂商打破微软在上网本垄断的不二选择。其原因一是PC厂商面对上网本的白热化竞争，差异化成为厂商的竞争核心力，打破微软XP一统天下已成必然。此外另一个原因在于谷歌的Android操作系统在于不收取任何费用并且支持开放式源代码，进一步降低上网本的成本，为厂商提供利润空间，同时更方便厂商对上网本进行软件的个性化开发以制造差异化优势。

上网本已成为08、09年PC产业的一块极有诱惑力的肥肉，由于微软在上网本市场的缺位，导致了微软IE浏览器和Windows操作系统市场份额的下滑。而最具威胁的则是如果谷歌的Android成功占领上网本市场，对微软十月份即将推出的Windows7可谓是不小的打击，被微软寄于厚望的Windows7如果在市场大打折扣，则对微软的影响是不可小觑的。

据称Windows 7的市场零售价格将在下周公布。据美国电子零售巨头百思买透露的即将上市的Windows 7操作系统升级价格及其他早期计划分析，Windows 7的家庭高级版、商业升级版的价格则分别便宜了逾60%和50%。 如果按照该定价政策推算，Windows 7家庭高级版的价格将在99.99美元（同一版本为269.99美元)，而专业版的价格应为149美元(Vista为299美元)。

一向自大的微软也开始大打价格牌，不得不说市场是公平的上帝之手。

-----------------------------
文章出处：IT商业新闻网
作者：小月

Driving the Linux drivers

One of the great Linux myths is that it doesn't support modern hardware. What nonsense! I've been finding for years that it's the newer Windows desktops that don't support equipment.
##CONTINUE##
To make sure that Linux supports hardware, Greg Kroah-Hartman, a Linux kernel developer and an engineer at Novell, started a project, the LDP (Linux Driver Project), for open-source developers to create hardware drivers for free for companies. You don't even have to reveal your precious proprietary secrets to the world. The programmers will keep those secret.

It's been a very successful project. Last year, at the Linux Foundation conference, Kroah-Hartman said, "LDP) is alive and well, with over 300 developers wanting to participate, many drivers already written and accepted into the Linux kernel tree, and many more being currently developed. The main problem is a lack of projects. It turns out that there really isn't much hardware that Linux doesn't already support. Almost all new hardware produced is coming with a Linux driver already written by the company, or by the community with help from the company."

It's only gotten better since then. Kroah-Hartman released a report today in which he summed up where the project has been in the last year and where it's going.

First, "Goal one (write drivers) has been very successful. Myself and many other members of the LDP have written new drivers for a wide range of different hardware devices, and gotten them merged into the main kernel tree. Several more are currently under development and we are averaging about 2 queries a month for different drivers from different companies."

Next, "Goal two (educate people) has been reasonably successful. While working with many companies, we have helped them become maintainers of their own codebases within the kernel, integrating them into the main kernel development process, allowing themselves to control their drivers and direction for their Linux support much easier."

Finally, "Goal three (work in the open) has succeeded even better than I had expected. At the Linux Kernel Summit last year, the drivers/staging/ tree was created, allowing us a place within the main Linux kernel tree for drivers to be merged that were not yet of the high kernel quality standards. This has allowed many users the ability to use their hardware with Linux much earlier than previously possible, and it has allowed a common place for the community to contribute patches and fixes for these drivers. This has alleviated the need to hunt over the Internet for various drivers."

Kroah-Hartman added, "The staging tree has also provided a place for developers wishing to get into Linux kernel development to easily help out and start working on code." I'll add that if you're a programmer adding 'device driver developer' on your resume is always a win.

Looking forward, Kroah-Hartman plans simply to keep on keeping on.It's worked so far.

To be honest, device drivers, on any platform, are always moving targets. And, while you can get basic functionality from almost any device, getting the fancier stuff can be a real challenge.

In particular, all-in-one units that combine multiple functions into a single box, remain problem children. Getting any single function to work isn't a problem, co-coordinating all of them, that's not so easy. In no small part, that's because what people want isn't just a working fax/printer/scanner, they want the front-end software that lets you manage all that functionality.

That's a problem, which will only be solved when hardware companies start writing more programs for Linux desktop users. With the rise of Linux netbooks, though, this issue too will be addressed.

Before closing though let me say that this is not just a Linux problem. I, and many others, have endless troubles with multi-function devices on Macs and Windows PCs. In particular, I've found that a machine which will work great with one version of Windows will have fits with another version and I've found the same thing with Macs operating systems. Regardless of your operating system, we could really use better device support all-around from the vendors.

-----------------------------
BY Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
Source：COMPUTERWORLD

Copyright © 1994 - 2009 Computerworld Inc. All rights reserved.

Moblin Linux boosters go global

Intel continues to push the adoption of the open-source Moblin Version 2 mobile operating system, today using the Computex show in Taipei, Taiwan as its bully pulpit.
##CONTINUE##
At the mammoth trade show, Intel hosted a Moblin Executive Summit to trumpet "the growing ecosystem momentum behind Moblin and demonstrate the richness of the Moblin v2 beta environment." Joining Intel VP Doug Fisher were Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation, which took over hosting the Moblin effort from Intel in April, and Wu Ming-ji of Taiwan's Moblin Enabling Center, which was founded in the closing days of 2008 to promote the Linux-based Android competitor mobile operating system designed to run on Intel Atom processors.

Intel also released (PDF) a list of OSVs (operating system vendors) who have committed to Moblin. The global gathering comes from Europe, the US, South America, and Asia, and includes the Asianux Consortium and its founding company Red Flag, Canonical, CS2C, Good OS, Linpus, Mandriva, MontaVista, Novell, Pixart, TurboLinux, and Xandros.

Of that dozen, seven made their own announcements at Computex:

• Asianux will target its upcoming Midinux 3.0 at mobile internet devices (MIDs).
• Linpus plans to offer its Moblin V2 Linpus Linux Lite in two versions, one with a Linpus UI and one with Intel's UI.
• Canonical confirmed that it will release what it calls an "Ubuntu Moblin remix."
• MontaVista's Linux 6 Market Specific Distributions for the embedded market will be based on Mobilin Version 2.
• Novell is demoing its SUSE edition of Moblin Version 2 on Acer and MSI hardware at Computex.
• Red Flag will provide both the Asianux Midinux 3.0 and its own inMini2009 for netbooks, both based on Moblin Version 2.
• Xandros is demoing its "Xandros Moblin 2 solution" on an Asus Eee PC in Intel's booth at Computex.

Moblin is clearly gaining momentum - but so is Google's Android. While Microsoft Windows may be winning the netbook OS war, there's a whole brave new world of handhelds, MIDs, media pads, smartbooks, and the like to be conquered.

And although Google had the stage all to itself at its recent I/O developers conference, Computex is big enough for both it and Intel to strut their respective stuff.

And maybe the nascent low-power, low-cost, mobile-internet market will be big enough for both of them to play a significant role.

-----------------------------
BY Rik Myslewski in San Francisco
Source：The Register

© Copyright 1998–2009.

Moblin: A Netbook OS to Watch

Intel's Linux-based netbook operating system gives Windows a run for its money.
##CONTINUE##
The emergence of ultracheap netbook computers has been one of a few bright spots for the PC industry over recent months. Last year, some 14 million netbooks were sold against forecasts of 5.3 million, according to research company Gartner. And at this week's Computex industry conference in Taipei, Taiwan, computer makers and hardware manufacturers will demonstrate a host of new models and netbook-specific hardware.

But the battle to provide the software that runs these streamlined computer systems is becoming increasingly interesting. The first netbooks, released in 2007, provided a rare opportunity for the Linux operating system to reach a wider audience. Since then, however, Microsoft has reasserted its dominance, pushing Windows XP and its next major operating-system release, Windows 7, for netbook computers.

The latest version of a Linux-based netbook OS called Moblin could be set to challenge this dominance. Originally developed by Intel and optimized to run on its Atom netbook processors, Moblin version 2 beta was released last month.

Several lightweight Linux OSes exist already. One is Fluxbuntu, which features just a Web browser, media player, and word processor and runs efficiently even on older PCs. Another is Google's Android, a smart-phone OS that has already been ported to some netbooks.

The difference with Moblin is that it taps into the Atom processor used in many netbooks. It provides support for chip features including Streaming SIMD Extensions 3 (for smoother video playback), multithreading (for more-efficient programming), and power-management features.

In April, Intel handed over Moblin to the Linux Foundation, a careful move designed to boost the operating system's potential without souring Intel's relationship with Microsoft.

According to Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research, Intel does not want to be so stringently tied to using Windows. "Intel wants to free itself from the Microsoft monopoly," says Gottheil. "With most Intel processors coupled with the OS, Microsoft implicitly controls the total cost of the processor; as a result, the entry price for Intel-based systems is higher than it otherwise would be, and the market is therefore smaller."

So how does Moblin measure up?

We installed and tested Moblin on three netbooks: a Lenovo S10, an Acer AspireOne, and an Asus Eee 901. All three worked well and were snappy for most tasks.

The Lenovo S10 and Asus Eee 901 both ship with Windows XP preinstalled, while the Acer AspireOne comes preloaded with Windows Vista. Installing Moblin was, however, relatively simple: just download the latest image file and copy it to a USB key. All current netbooks support booting from a USB drive.

The Moblin V2 user interface is built on Clutter, an open-source software library that provides easy access to several Web services. This means that it's possible to update your Twitter status or send instant messages directly from the desktop. Moblin also has a browser built on Google Chrome, plus a rudimentary music, photo, and video player.

The user interface still needs some work, though. One glitch is that, whenever a tool with a data-entry field was started, the cursor did not automatically move to that field--the user had to click it first. The Web browser also crashed repeatedly on all three systems and could not process a script in Gmail, which would sometimes cause an all-out system failure. On the Acer AspireOne, there was another problem: the netbook just could not resume after going into a sleep state. The screen would flash and appear for a moment but then go blank again.

The desktop shows a network icon in a drop-down task bar so that a user can select between a wired or wireless network connection. For some reason, Moblin did not support Wi-Fi on the Lenovo S10. (Intel says that the company is investigating the matter.) None of the Moblin installs on the three systems could recognize its built-in webcam, but audio, photo, and video playback worked flawlessly on all three systems.

Moblin supports a data-sync service; you can use Funambol, Memotoo, ScheduleWorld, or Synthesis to back up data, sync your calendar, and store contacts. Moblin V2 beta also includes three simple games (none of which use 3-D graphics), a calculator, a file browser, a terminal app, and a text editor.

There are a few oddities that might surprise Windows users. For example, in Moblin you can't just minimize a window. Instead, a user has to move apps to "zones" and switch between them.

But despite a few quirks and issues, the beta shows great promise. It's extremely fast, and it's one of the most up-to-date Linux distributions out there. It's certainly a good match for the netbook market, and it could yet become a popular OS.

-----------------------------
BY John Brandon
Source：Technology Review

© 2009 Technology Review. All Rights Reserved.

Intel boosts Linux software efforts

Intel is pushing its Linux software efforts in a bid to break into the smartphone chip market. For the last couple of weeks Intel has been pushing its Moblin software which is a mobile version of Linux to the press.
##CONTINUE##
Moblin has a few tricks which makes it better than the other mobile operating systems out there. The first is that it can reach the internet in about seven seconds and then shows a list of appointments and favourite programs. Packed with animated icons and other quirky bits and pieces, Moblin looks different, especially compaired to the fairly stale Microsoft offerings. Intel says that smart phones and netbooks will be the target for the OS. Novell apparently has decided to offer a customised version of the OS.

So why is Intel so interested in an operating system that it can't make money from? Well the answer is that Moblin will help the sales of the Atom. Intel wants the Atom under the bonnet of every smart phone and netbook. However most mobile phones run on Arm chips or beasts of a different architecture.

By providing good mobile software for the Atom chip, it will encourage phone makers to buy them and the next thing you know your phone will have an Atom chip on board and Intel will be even richer.

-----------------------------
BY Nick Farrell
Source：h-online

Copyright Fudzilla 2007-2009, All rights reserved.

Linux vendors line up behind Moblin

At Computex, both Novell and Xandros have announced plans to base future operating systems for netbooks on Moblin 2, the Intel developed Linux for Atom processors, recently moved under the aegis of the Linux Foundation. There are also reports that Canonical will announce a Moblin 2 based Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Moblin 2, which was recently released as a "user experience" beta, has won praise for its user interface, based on work by Opened Hand (an Intel 2008 acquisition) and for its rapid boot times.
##CONTINUE##
Xandros says it is planning a new version of its distribution based on Moblin and targetted at the ASUS Eee PC. Xandros has supplied ASUS with its Linux distribution in the past, with Xandros' own simple launcher for applications. Novell, which teamed up with Intel on Moblin development last month, is demonstrating the SUSE edition of Moblin 2 at Computex on Acer and MSI devices. Novell says it will have a preview of the Moblin 2.0 UI running on openSUSE available on the openSUSE site soon. Currently there are only a number of screenshots and links to the previously announced Moblin 2 beta from Intel. Although a news announcement on openSUSE.org does point to openSUSE Moblin images.

What is currently unclear is how the companies plan to differentiate their editions of Moblin 2 from the Intel released version and what, if any, changes they will make. It may well be that the companies become support providers for the specific netbook manufacturers, while benefiting from the ability to share a cross-netbook user interface and code, reuniting the various disparate approaches to Linux netbook front ends.

The Moblin v2.0 beta itself is available to download as a live image from the Moblin web site.

-----------------------------
BY djwm
Source：h-online

Copyright © 2009 Heise Media UK Ltd.

RealPlayer for Mobile coming to Linux netbooks

Saying it will improve the netbook user experience on Linux, RealNetworks Inc. is licensing its RealPlayer for Mobile for the popular Ubuntu Linux distro running on x86 and coming ARM-based netbooks, as well as three up-and-coming "instant-on" Linux operating systems.
##CONTINUE##
Besides Canonical Inc.'s Ubuntu, RealNetworks has signed deals with Xandros Inc. for its Presto instant-on Linux desktop, DeviceVM for its similar Splashtop product, and Phoenix Technologies Inc. for its also similar HyperSpace Linux environment.

RealPlayer for Mobile will be able to support HD video, depending on the netbook hardware, said Rishi Mathew, a director at RealNetworks. It will also be able to support the majority of audio and video formats out there, with the glaring exceptions of Flash videos (.flv) used by YouTube and Hulu.com for their Web videos, and DVD video, said Mathew ahead of the Computex trade show.

Neither the video resolution nor the codec support is why Mathew claims RealPlayer will be better for consumers than other video players available for Linux netbooks today such as mPlayer or VLC.

"One of the reasons for the higher return rates of Linux netbooks is that they came with unfamiliar media players," Mathew said.

By contrast, RealPlayer has been widely available on PCs since 1995. And an earlier version of RealPlayer for Mobile has shipped on 430 million smartphones.

Mathew said the new RealPlayer for Mobile will be similar in capability to the full RealPlayer for Windows and Linux desktop and notebook PCs.

Adding DVD capability is not a priority to RealPlayer for Mobile, since few netbooks come with DVD drives, but Flash video is. "We are getting there," he said.

RealPlayer will be the first of the big three PC media player apps to be available on Linux. Neither Microsoft's Windows Media Player nor Apple Inc.'s QuickTime run on Linux.

Mathew says that Intel Atom N270 netbooks with Intel's 945 Express graphics chipset -- the most popular platform today -- running RealPlayer will be able to support hiccup-free video at full WVGA (800x480) resolution, which is slightly sharper than a standard-definition TV.

ARM-based netbooks using Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipset or Texas Instruments' similar 3430 platform should be able to match that quality, he said.

"Performance is pretty good, it's similar to what you would expect with any other netbook today," Mathew said.

To get up to 1080p (1920x1080) HD resolution, netbooks running RealPlayer will need to be using chips such as Intel's Atom Z530 CPU paired with an HD graphics accelerator, he said. Hewlett-Packard Co.'s just announced Mini 1101 offers 1080p.

The RealPlayer will have no advertising, apart from messages touting RealNetworks' own video and music services, he said. Sales from that will be shared with RealNetworks' partners.

-----------------------------
BY Eric Lai (Computerworld (US))
Source：CIO

Copyright 2009 IDG Communications. ABN 14 001 592 650. All rights reserved.

Ubuntu and Moblin Linux to work together

I knew there was going to be big Linux netbook news coming out of the Computex trade show in Taipei, Taiwan, but I didn't know it was going to be this big. Sources at Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, tell me that Canonical will be announcing new partnerships with Intel, SanDisk, and RealNetworks. To me, the biggest news is that Canonical will be demonstrating the Moblin version of the UNR (Ubuntu Netbook Remix).
##CONTINUE##
This demo is based on the current beta code from Intel. As far as I know, this version won't immediately be available to the public. However, Canonical will also be announcing that they'll develop a UNR based on the full release of Moblin 2. Canonical and Intel sources both say that the full version of Moblin 2 will be out by year's end.

UNR is a slimmed down version of Ubuntu 8.04, that's meant to get the most out of a netbook's limited hardware. Unlike most versions of Ubuntu, this one is meant only for OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), rather than users. It's meant to make it easy for them to ship Ubuntu-powered, Intel Atom-based netbooks. Specifically, UNR is designed to work with and Intel Atom processor, 512MBs of RAM and at a 4GB SSD (Solid State Drive) or hard disk.

There are a few netbooks already shipping with UNR, such as the SYLVANIA g netbook MESO. I'm currently using it myself with my Dell Mini 9 and I like it a lot.

Ubuntu Netbook Remix manages to fit Firefox, the Thunderbird e-mail client, and OpenOffice.org into small netbooks. It also includes the proprietary Adobe Flash; Adobe Acrobat Reader; and Sun's JVM (Java Virtual Machine). What sets it apart from plain-Jane Linux distros is that it also includes licensed audio and video decoders for MPEG4 (H.263); MP3; Apple's AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) and Windows Media.

What's different about the combination of UNR and Moblin is that in this mix, UNR will be using the Moblin interface by default instead of UNR's Launcher interface. Under the surface of both is the GNOME interface.

Canonical will also be announcing that they'll be releasing a version of UNR, tuned for a new Intel Classmate PC. Unlike previous editions of the Classmate, sources at Intel tell me that the new Classmate will be available for sale in the U.S.

You'll be able to use this new Classmate both as a conventional netbook and as a touch-screen tablet. I'm told that the next edition of Classmate will automatically support both portrait and landscape mode depending on how you have the screen orientated. UNR supports all these features. This system, and the UNR, that goes with it, is expected to be available sooner than Moblin 2.0. I won't be surprised to see it available by September 2009.

In addition, Canonical will be announcing the results of new work with SanDisk. The end result is that Ubuntu will run much faster on SSDs. In particular, you can expect any version of Ubuntu to soon be registering much faster seek speeds on SSDs compared to the same operations on the 5,400 RPM hard drives you find on most netbooks.

Last, but not least, RealNetworks will be announcing the availability of its Real Player or Mobile Devices for Ubuntu. This media player and codec pack will be available immediately to OEMs planning to ship Ubuntu on any machine type. This version of Real Player, however, will not be available for end-users to buy. You'll need to either buy it as part of your netbook software package or be content with the open-source version of Real Player, Helix Player.

-----------------------------
BY Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
Source：COMPUTERWORLD

Copyright © 1994 - 2009 Computerworld Inc. All rights reserved.

Canonical working on Android emulator for Ubuntu

Android enthusiasts, developers or just plain curious sorts might find this interesting. Canonical is working on an execution environment for Android software to run inside an Ubuntu system, bringing all its applications to the desktop. The increasingly-popular mobile platform has seen a lot of speculation regarding its future, including plans to bring it to netbooks or other non-phone devices, and this seems like a firm step in that direction.
##CONTINUE##

Eventually Canonical plans to publish the environment, along with its corresponding source code, for any Linux user to tinker with it. At such an early stage, they've produced little to note, but it makes you wonder if there are other developers working on similar projects behind closed doors. With the line between smartphones and desktops getting thinner, and given the open nature of Android, I can imagine a lot of people would find this interesting. Any increased awareness in Android is going to be beneficial from Google's perspective, and this is doubly true since the launch of their app store, which will need a lot of developer support to become strong.

-----------------------------
BY Justin Mann
Source：TechSpot.com

Copyright © 1998-2009 TechSpot.com
TechSpot is a registered trademark
Powered by StoryTeller
All Rights Reserved.

Intel’s Odd Role as a Lead Linux Promoter

Software makers large and small have spent years toiling away at the Linux desktop. So, it’s a bit odd to find Intel, a chip manufacturer, doing some of the more innovative work to make Linux appealing to the masses.
##CONTINUE##
In an article published Monday, I took a look at Moblin, Intel’s version of Linux aimed at netbooks today and at cellphones tomorrow, and the company’s software organization as a whole. Intel has turned to software as a means of drumming up support for its low-power Atom chip. Intel markets the Atom against rival products from the traditional cellphone chip makers.

If a company were to create a brand new, slick user interface for Linux capable of combating Windows, shouldn’t it be, say, Novell or Canonical? Both companies have server and desktop flavors of Linux, and Canonical, in particular, has talked a lot about developing a flashy user interface to help Linux fight Windows and Mac OS X.

But when it comes to netbooks and phones, these Linux mainstays are content to let the likes of Intel with Moblin and Google with Android lead the design charge.

Moblin, for example, boasts a new start-up menu that meshes a person’s calendar, recently used software, social networking updates, photos and other bits and pieces together. It’s a design that caters to the Web-addicted types buying netbooks and smartphones.

While Linux has certainly gone corporate, its open-source nature still leads to some kumbaya moments. For example, Novell has done some engineering work with Intel around Moblin and plans to offer its own version of the software directly to PC makers. Why should Novell spend a bunch of money making a netbook operating system when Intel is already doing the heavy lifting?

“Our current desktop didn’t have the right design principles for mobile computing,” said Ron Hovsepian, the chief executive of Novell. “Moblin is a bottoms-up, fresh approach at trying to do something completely different.”

Novell has set up a software lab in Taiwan to work on furthering mobile technology with local hardware makers.

Mark Shuttleworth, the chief executive of Canonical, said he’s more than happy to pick up pieces of Moblin that work and build them into Ubuntu, the company’s flagship version of Linux.

“If they have better ideas, then we would embrace them,” Mr. Shuttleworth said. “I think it would be a big mistake for us to stick to our baby just because it’s our baby. It would be vain not to embrace something that is better.”

Unless it undergoes some massive change in strategy, Intel is happy to stay in the background, letting folks like Novell and Canonical do with Moblin what they will. It’s a stance that ruffles Microsoft’s feathers a bit less and sticks close to Intel’s traditions as more or less a neutral party.

-----------------------------
BY Ashlee Vance
Source：The New York Times

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company.

Moblin netbook Linux preview

Intel's Moblin 2.0 Linux desktop for netbooks is really still too raw to be called a beta, but with a fresh take on what a desktop should be, it's showing great promise.
##CONTINUE##
When Intel announced that it was turning its Moblin mobile Linux project over to the Linux Foundation, I assumed that it had decided to walk away from the project. Then, Intel announced that it was partnering with Novell to bring pre-installed Moblin desktops to netbooks. At this point, I was really puzzled. But, then Intel released the new version of Moblin and their moves suddenly made sense.

Intel wants to compete with its long-time partner Microsoft in the operating system business. To do that, Intel wants broad support from the Linux community. Intel doesn't want Moblin to be 'Intel Moblin,' the company want it to be Linux's Moblin with support from everyone.

Thus, what we have is a Linux desktop that's built on top of a Fedora Linux framework; uses GNOME for its desktop and applications, and will rely on Novell/SUSE to get customized versions of the desktop pre-installed on the Taiwanese OEM (original equipment manufacturers) netbooks. Its main competition: Windows 7, but Google Android also looms as a desktop Linux challenger.

How does Moblin stack up? Well, the look is great, and it's not quite like any other desktop I've ever seen. The closest thing I've seen to it in recent memory is gOS, which puts Google applications on top of an Ubuntu Linux base.

Instead of giving you applications to choose from, Moblin gives you functions from a top menu bar that's hidden until you need it. So, for example, when you boot Moblin, you don't see a desktop full of icons or menus, you see your appointments and frequently used applications. The interface, called M-Zone is all about letting you get to your Internet functions as fast as possible.

Note I say, 'functions,' not applications. Intel tries to make the applications invisible. Instead of opening the Web browser, which is based on Firefox 3.0.10, to see what's happening on your Twitter and Facebook accounts, you can see what's what with you social network friends right from the M-Zone interface.

You see Moblin is all about letting you use what you already use on the Internet, and not letting either the operating system or the applications get in the way. I see Intel trying to do for the netbook desktop what Apple did with the PC desktop: get out of the user's way so they can do what they want to do with the minimum of interference.

For Linux power users, and I'm one of them, who want to control every last thing on my PC, this isn't that attractive a notion. But, I know that for many netbook users, who just want fast and easy Internet access, this could be a real winner.

So, if you want to IM a buddy, watch a video, what-ever, Moblin tries to make it as easy as possible. It does have some traditional applications, like a spreadsheet and word-processor, but they're not heavy-duty office suite tools. The word-processor, for example is GNOME's gedit, which no one will ever mistake for OpenOffice Writer.

Moblin also uses virtual desktops, called zones, but it has a different take on them. Instead of requiring you to create a virtual desktop, they're created on the fly when you need one. Want to keep all your Web activity in one zone, and work on a report in another, just assign it to another zone, and-pop!--the new zone is created and your word processor is already there.

Does that sound difficult? It's not. Moblin is all about providing an attractive, consistent look and ease of use. Sometimes that consistent look, for long time Linux users, will surprise you. For instance, some applications won't offer all the options you expect them to have.

Some of this has been done to keep the look and feel of the interface uniform, but it's also to make Moblin faster than fast. I've never seen any operating system, except for instant-on, embedded desktop Linuxes like SplashTop, boot so quickly.

Once up, the desktop felt incredibly fast. If I didn't know I was running it on 1.6GHz Aton equipped netbooks with 512MBs to 1 GB of RAM, I never would have guessed I was running it on such low-end hardware. Moblin is the anti-Vista. It runs great on minimal equipment instead of requiring the fastest possible hardware and still running at a snail's pace.

Still. at this early stage, Moblin doesn't work and play well on many platforms. For example, I, and many others, have found that it's default Wi-Fi drivers won't work with the Dell Mini 9's Wi-Fi chipset. It also has some holes in it. For example, although Flash is supposed to be already installed, it's not and there's no easy way to get Flash to work with it.

I can only recommend people who like living on technology's bleeding edge giving Moblin a try at this point. That said, if Intel, Novell and friends can get Moblin to deliver on the promise of its remarkably fast performance and function-based interface, I think we've got another real winner coming in what's already shaping up to be a great year for Linux netbooks.

-----------------------------
BY Cyber Cynic
Source：COMPUTERWORLD

Copyright © 1994 - 2009 Computerworld Inc. All rights reserved.

Survey: Even Linux-loving firms only deploy it to one-fifth of employees

Lower cost cited as chief reason for using Linux
##CONTINUE##
Half of the businesses that have deployed Linux on the desktop have rolled it out to less than 20% of their workers due to perceived and real obstacles, according to a survey released today by UK analyst firm, Freeform Dynamics.

Power-using office workers, mobile professionals and creative types such as graphic designers were the least likely to accept Linux on their PCs, according to Freeform.

On the other hand, one-fifth of Linux-adopting companies have rolled it out to 80% or more of their employees, according to the survey which is sponsored by longtime Linux supporter IBM.

Freeform surveyed 1,275 IT professionals in April, of whom 90% had first-hand experience rolling out Linux at a company. Because of its sample, Freeform cautions that its statistics do not represent most companies, nor do they imply any major gain by Linux on the desktop.

Linux's overall share of desktops remains about 1%, according to figures released last month by Net Applications.

IBM hopes to boost that. With Ubuntu Linux vendor Canonical Inc., it offers a "Microsoft-free" desktop package that includes its Lotus desktop applications.

According to the survey, 70% of those deploying Linux inside businesses cited lower cost as the main reason. Rather than the price of licensing Microsoft Corp.'s Windows for enterprises, more than half of respondents cited the ease of securing Linux PCs as the main reason for its lower cost relative to Windows.

Respondents also cited more flexible deployment of Linux as well as less need for support and administration.

But there are many obstacles to deploying Linux, according to respondents: internal politics, user resistance to switching from Windows, and the lack of compatible software for Linux were all cited as major roadblocks by more than half of those surveyed.

While employees "might occasionally moan and groan about Windows, it is an environment they are used to which largely does the job, and the fear is that any change will be painful and distracting," according to Freeform. "There is also the question of consistency between the work environment and the software used at home, which is overwhelmingly Windows based. Against this background, the Linux option is sometimes considered to be the 'techie' alternative which, even without any direct experience, is often dismissed as not being appropriate for normal users."

Freeform concludes that the best strategy is limited rollouts of Linux targeted at the employee populations most likely to accept the open-source operating system.

Which populations? Developers and IT pros can handle the transition to Linux the easiest, according to the surveyed, followed by general office workers.

For other employees, "be prepared, however, to find that it is simply not cost-effective to switch some users from Windows, either from an IT or business perspective," the firm wrote.

-----------------------------
BY Eric Lai
Source：COMPUTERWORLD

Copyright © 1994 - 2009 Computerworld Inc. All rights reserved.

Moblin v2.0 Beta: Linux Netbook’s Best Hope?

Can Intel’s Moblin revive the ailing Linux netbook market? The Moblin v2.0 beta release is giving it a try with a very slick update.
##CONTINUE##
On Tuesday Intel breathed some life its fledgling mobile operating system with the beta release of Moblin v2.0. Moblin (short for “Mobile Linux”) is an open source Linux distribution created by Intel and built specifically for netbooks, MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices), smartphones and up-and-coming platforms, such as the unfortunately named “In-Vehicle Infotainment systems.”

The Alpha version of Moblin — released back in January and looked very much like a rather pallid version of Ubuntu — was widely considered DOA based on it’s lack of innovative anything. Apparently, Intel just needed a little more time. With the beta of version 2.0, however, the company, along with the Linux Foundation and Novell, have steered the project in a much more promising direction.

Built specifically for Intel’s Atom processor, the new release incorporates a number of new features includes an enhanced boot process, better power management and a brand new UI dubbed M-Zone. Check out the video below.

All-in-all, it’s a very slick interface and looks as though they carefully considered how netbooks are being used.

Wild Ride So Far

There’s been a considerable amount of churn in the Moblin project’s short life.

• The distro core was switched from Ubuntu to Fedora.
• Novell signed on to help develop, brand and sell the operating system.
• Development was moved to the openSUSE Build Service.
• Ownership of the project was handed off to the Linux Foundation.
• XFCE was phased out and M-Zone was developed based on the work of a company called OpenedHand, which Intel acquired in 2008.

Given this much change, it’s really a credit to the parties involved that they were able to develop something as compelling as M-Zone as well as tackle the engineering challenge of a 2-second boot time.

Intel the Software Vendor?

So how serious is Intel about Linux? Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth thinks they are very committed to Linux. He was quoted on a WSJ blog as saying,

“Intel has assembled an excellent team–they’ve snapped up some of the best Linux talent out there,” Shuttleworth said Tuesday. “They have established a very bold vision.”

Putting together a great team of Linux developers to work on Moblin puts Intel in the position of competing with two of its biggest partners: Microsoft and Apple. And it also puts them square in the cross hairs of Google (also a large consumer of Intel processors) who’s Android OS has been widely considered to be the only serious Linux contender to the Apple iPhone.

These complex relationships may have been part of the reason why Intel moved ownership of the project to the Linux Foundation. But there is clearly a considerable amount of of Linux talent at Intel helping to drive the project.

Ups and Downs

The downside of the release of Moblin v2.0 Beta is that netbook and MID vendors are literally drowning in choices: Ubuntu Netbook Remix, LiMo, Android, geOS, and the list goes on.

The upside is that is that Moblin could bring some come clairty to the netbook space. For vendors frustrated by Linux device return rates, users that aren’t terribly engaged and far too many distro choices, Moblin represents a piece of software that is obviously well designed, backed by one of the biggest companies in the world and tightly integrated with the platform it is running on.

Can something as slick as Moblin’s interface push back against the coming Windows 7 crush? Can Intel and Google (should Android ever get off the ground) avoid confusing the market long enough to not send Linux’s netbook/MID ambitions into a death-spiral? Time will tell, but Moblin v2.0 has given everyone in the space something new to think about.

-----------------------------
BY Bryan Richard
Source：linux-mag.com

Bryan Richard is a writer and software developer, avid runner, pretty good cook, and has a habit of buying more books than he can read. He's also the VP of Editorial and Infrastructure for Linux Magazine.

© Linux Magazine 1999-2009 All rights reserved.

Microsoft, Linux join forces in software law debate

At issue: A legal document that advises judges on software law
##CONTINUE##
In an unusual twist, Microsoft and Linux have joined forces in a legal tussle.

The companies jointly sent a letter expressing their common disagreement with advice regarding software law that a group plans to send to judges.

The American Law Institute (ALI), an association that develops documents meant to help guide judges as they make decisions on complicated legal subjects, is presenting a final draft of its guidelines for software contracts on Tuesday during its annual meeting. The document has been in the works since 2004 and if it is approved it will be published.

Despite the differences that most often divide Microsoft, which relies on proprietary software sales for its lifeblood, and the Linux Foundation, which promotes open-source software, the two agree in this situation.

They urge the ALI specifically to clarify a section of its document that concerns warranties on defects in software. The document appears to absolve commercial open-source software from the types of warranties that would be applied to proprietary software. But because many open-source software providers make money, such as through advertising, it's unclear if such providers would be liable for defects according to the document.

"The principles outlined by the ALI interfere with the natural operation of open source licenses and commercial licenses as well by creating implied warranties that could result in a tremendous amount of unnecessary litigation, which would undermine the sharing of technology," Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, wrote in a blog post about the letter.

Microsoft and the Linux Foundation are writing and publishing the letter because it is essentially the only way for them to express their opinions about the ALI document. Only ALI members can participate in the process of drafting such documents and there is no public review prior to publication, Zemlin said.

The draft of the document is available for download for $45.

Microsoft and the Linux Foundation are asking the ALI to delay adoption of the principles to allow more time for input from interested parties.

They both recognize how unusual it is to be on the same side of such a debate. "The mere fact that the Linux Foundation and Microsoft are joining forces may be viewed by some as remarkable," wrote Horacio Gutierrez, deputy general counsel for Microsoft in a blog post. "But there is a wide range of issues that affect all software developers alike."

-----------------------------
BY Nancy Gohring
Source：COMPUTERWORLD

Copyright © 1994 - 2009 Computerworld Inc. All rights reserved.

The new Linux.com is open for business

The Linux Foundation has opened the doors on its new Linux.com, a new news, discussion and blogging site which looks a little like ZDNet.
##CONTINUE##
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Personally I’m flattered.

My point is that the new site goes well beyond simple discussions of Linux. It’s heavy into applications, even those which, like Firefox, are best known as Windows apps. It follows the news.

The Firefox story is actually a link from a Linux Magazine article by ZDNet’s own Joe Brockmeier. It’s a good article.

Zonker has been following the Linux.com story closely, quoting the Foundation’s promises in March to make the new site a “community resource… for the community, by the community.”

Question. Which community?

The answer can be drawn either narrowly or broadly. Narrowly, it’s about the Linux operating system and applications that run on Linux. Broadly, it’s also about open source, the community ethos arising from it, the values of those communities, and the future of the Internet.

These are questions publishers, editors and writers are constantly fussing over. The editor’s answer is it depends on what the readers want. The publisher’s answer is it depends on what the advertiser wants, what the market the site seeks to serve wants.

It will be fun to see how the Linux Foundation, a non-profit consortium, answers that question over the next weeks, months and years. Y’all are a publisher now.

-----------------------------
BY Dana Blankenhorn
Source：ZDNet

Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

Linux clusters made easy

Administering large Linux scale-out clusters like Web farms can be intimidating and time consuming. But it doesn't have to be.
##CONTINUE##
Egan Ford, Linux cluster architect for advanced technical support with Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM Corp., said a systems administrator with a proactive, inquisitive attitude can run big Linux clusters with confidence in the results, provided the system is well designed and tested and he/she takes advantage of the excellent open source tools available.

"Work smarter, not harder," is the main theme in "Lazy Linux: 11 secrets for lazy cluster admins," which Ford co-authored with IBM colleague Vallard Benincosa based on a decade of building Web and HPC clusters for IBM. "We're all engineers and we know how to solve problems. A lot of it is just common sense," Ford said.

The key to success is an upfront investment of time and learning that ultimately will result in a reliable, automated Linux cluster that will require less maintenance and manual intervention later on, the report advises.

"The point [of the Lazy Linux paper] is to reach out to someone with small-scale cluster experience now working on a large system and help them take the right steps to be sure that it actually will work," Ford said. "The probability of failure is much larger in a big system. Everything from design to testing has to be planned," and the operation must be tested against benchmarks, he said.

Administrator role is key
According to the Lazy Linux whitepaper, a successful Linux cluster administrator must have not only a combination of networking, operating systems and architecture skills but a passion for open source, using it wherever possible. The best admins are constantly researching Linux sites for information to avoid wasting time on a problem that has already been solved. And when they do develop a cool shortcut or remedy, they contribute their results back to the open source community.

Top admins also automate everything possible with command line scripts, which reduces typing and provides documentation for future reconstruction. For example, an operating system image, whether stateless or stateful, is simple to recreate if scripts have been written to document each step in the process. Another key step in automation is creating parallel commands and procedures so that all instructions to nodes are implemented with a single keystroke.

To optimize communication and minimize work for the cluster staff, administrators should create a cluster wiki that is up-to-date, easy to edit and centrally accessible rather than store data in static Word or Excel documents. The wiki should include data such as a cluster inventory, a log of changes, links to open support tickets and documentation for common tasks.

In addition, admins should prevent direct user access to the system because performance problems often are caused by competing user demands for the same CPU rather than deficiencies with the machine. All job requests instead should be routed through a queuing scheduler which assigns tasks among the nodes.

Design Linux clusters for scale
The white paper advises that beyond good administrative practices, a well-run Linux cluster must be designed for scale at the get-go. This means maximizing automation and minimizing management.

"Management is the No. 1 problem," Ford said. "If you can't maintain the system, you will waste efficiency and money and you won't meet your business goals."

A cluster must be structured with the flexibility to deploy, provision or alter thousands or tens of thousands of nodes quickly to meet changing business requirements, he said.

Bottlenecks are a huge problem for large, scale-out clusters, but they can be minimized with proper planning. For example, reliability will be improved by isolating the TFTP and DHCP provisioning servers on a separate network interface controller. Performance also will be boosted by dividing clusters into sub-clusters or scalable units, each with their own service nodes and broadcast domains. To avoid service degradation, designers should avoid overloading the network with more nodes than it can handle.

In addition, cluster admins should strongly advocate the addition of remote power controls and a remote viewing console for the detection and resolution of boot up problems from other locations.

Linux cluster use management and monitoring tools
Finally, Linux cluster admins should take advantage of the many excellent open source management tools that have been developed over the last decade to automate tasks, improve control and save time. Before the tools existed, it took six IBM engineers two nights to assemble and provision a 34-node HPC cluster for the first LinuxWorld show, a task that a single person now can do a decade later in 10 minutes, Ford said.

The most popular open source cluster management tools include the OSCAR system imager, Rocks, Perceus and xCAT, a toolkit that performs imaging, kickstarts and stateless installs for nearly any Linux distro, Ford said.

Open source monitoring tools also are excellent but there is no single best solution for all cluster systems and sometimes a combination of downloadable and customized tools are needed to get the job done.

In addition, monitoring options sometimes require admins to choose between uptime or performance. For example, data collection monitoring agents can prevent the nodes from overload but, on the other hand, they sap memory, CPU and application performance. Typically, large cluster shops use Nagios for alerts and Ganglia for monitoring. Cacti, Zenoss and CluMon also are popular monitoring tools.

Final advice, trends
A final point: vendors often rush to get a system up and running and hand it over to the customer but each system should be tested against industry benchmarks for memory, CPU, disk and network components to ensure the cluster will yield consistent, accurate results.

Of all the administrative suggestions, Ford said the most important step is to design the system right in the first place, making it easy to manage. His favorite tool is xCAT, which he said is a best-of-breed tool for large-scale, automated hardware control.

"I can be sitting in a chair, discover new machines and replace others, check energy efficiency, and much more, all remotely, all in an automated, scalable fashion," Ford said.

Looking to the future, Ford foresees three cluster computing shifts: greater adoption of liquid cooling due to energy savings; increasing use of adaptive management, with the scheduler provisioning nodes on demand, and an accelerated move to stateless cluster computing.

"Just turn the system on and make one change to the central image," he said. "People will be moving more and more to stateless systems."

-----------------------------
BY Pam Derringer, News Contributor
Source：TechTarget

All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2003 - 2009, TechTarget.