AMD will deliver open graphics drivers

AMD will soon deliver open graphics drivers, said Henri Richard just a few minutes ago, and the audience at the opening keynote of the Red Hat Summit broke into applause and cheers. Richard, AMD’s executive vice president of sales and marketing, promised: “I’m here to commit to you that it’s going to get done.” He also promised that AMD is “going to be very proactive in changing way we interface with the Linux community.”

The open sourcing of graphics drivers will indeed be good news, but it’s not a big surprise. After AMD acquired graphics driver maker ATI last year,  an announcement that AMD would be opening up graphics drivers has been anticipated. The other shoe has dropped, and the folks at the Summit in San Diego are very happy. Now, the new question is “when?” Richard didn’t say.

Well, in a webcast last week Richard told the world that AMD would be delivering Vista drivers, too, and supporting it with gusto. According to the blog, istartedsomething.com:

“First Henri announced that AMD will be rolling out a gold master image of Windows Vista for deployment throughout the company as a sign of their confidence over the stability and performance of Windows Vista with a combination of their hardware and software support.”

AMD’s got a lot of supporting to do.

Enterprise Linux recap, week of April 30

One last recap before the Red Hat Summit festivities begin tomorrow in San Diego…

Dell to offer Ubuntu Linux desktops and laptops
After months of speculation, Dell Inc. officially announced it will sell pre-installed, 100% certified Ubuntu Linux on its laptop and desktop computers.

Five ways SELinux may surprise you
OPINION – In the column that follows, author and SELinux expert Frank Mayer will walk you through five of the ways that this venerable Linux security technology may surprise you.

Unix to Linux migration considerations: Clustering, virtualization, support and more
TIP – Unix-to-Linux migration expert Ken Milberg describes how virtualization, support, clustering and more fit into the migration of an IT infrastructure from Unix.

Dell connects with Microsoft, Novell on collaboration deal
Dell has partnered up with Microsoft and Novell in a deal that will see the Texas-based systems provider purchasing SUSE Linux Enterprise Server certificates.

Our SELinux column has done especially well this week. Seems like people are interested in where that powerful — but sometimes a bit strict — technology is headed.

Red Hat Summit 2007 coverage this week

It’s that time again… the Red Hat Summit approaches and SearchEnterpriseLinux.com editors and writers will be there in full effect bringing you all the news and views. If you’re going to be in San Diego this week, track us down and you could find yourself in a pithy blog entry or in-depth article on Red Hat, virtualization, or whatever. Completely pain-free, I promise.

Surf’s up!

Using VMware ESX or VI3? Better know Linux!

Question authority, yes; but, more importantly, question your vendors. This advice is critically important if you’re a Windows shop migrating to VMware ESX or VI3. said Andrew Kutz, former University of Texas systems analyst and now a Burton Group analyst. Kutz offered this advice during a session at last week’s Server Blade Summit in Anaheim.

“Although VMware sales representatives pitch the idea that IT professionals do not need to know Linux to run ESX, this is a fallacy. It would behoove any shop thinking of running VI3 to have a good understanding of ESX’s console operating system (OS), and it is Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0.”

Linux users have an advantage in the virtualization market, because they’re probably more familiar with using online mailing lists and forums for tech support, says Kutz. Online resources and the peer support available there will be life savers during virtualization implementations.

“It seems to be the case that the technology has out-paced the vendors’ ability to support it. There have been instances of 5-month long open support tickets that the vendor is never able to solve. Rely on forums, your own wits, but not vendors.”

Top 7 Things System Administrators Forget to Do

The O’Reilly SysAdmin Network has an interesting list up today regarding the Top 7 Things Systems Administrators Forget to do that I think is worth a look. Just to give you a taste, here are the subject headlines:

1. Forgetting to Delete a Former User’s Account
2. Forgetting to Regularly Search for Rootkits
3. Forgetting to Use a Trouble Ticket Tracking System
4. Forgetting to Set Up Technical Documentation and Creating a Knowledge Base
5. Forgetting the Risks of Flash Memory Drives
6. Forgetting to Manage Partial Root Access
7. Forgetting Courtesy

To find the details for each of these, go check out O’Reilly’s Top 7 Things Systems Administrators Forget to do.

Oracle, IBM, NEC to market Linux in Japan

Some international Linux-related news for you this afternoon:

Major information technology firms, including Oracle Corp., IBM Corp. and NEC Corp., will set up a consortium to sell servers and systems running the Linux operating system in Japan, a financial daily said on Thursday.

It would be the first time in the world that major IT firms join hands to market equipment running the free software, the Nikkei newspaper said.

The move is being spearheaded by Oracle and will launch as early as June, Nikkei reported. Apparently, this is all in response to a Japanese government procurement guideline that promotes the use of the Linux operating system within the government starting in July. Roughly 78% of servers in Japan run Windows; 14% run Linux. The latter number is bound to change with today’s news, however.

Take IBM’s System p for a Linux test drive

Mike Dolan, an IBM guy and someone we like to link to here on the ‘Log, has a cool blog post up today about a new IBM program that allows users to test drive System p hardware running Linux or AIX much in the same way Sun Microsystems has done with its “try and buy” program.

Here’s how the Program works:

1. Choose a product.
2. Fill out the contact information. You will be contacted within 24 hours to clarify and validate the information.
3. If approved, an IBM Business Partner or IBM Sales Representative will then contact you to arrange shipment and extend a trial agreement to you. Our program goal is to have the machine arrive at your location no later than 2 weeks after signing the trial agreement.
4. Should you decide not to keep the machine at the conclusion of the 60 day trial, please notify the IBM Business Partner or IBM Sales Representative, pack the machine in the original packing material, and return it to the address specified by the IBM Business Partner or IBM Sales Representative.

Some interesting trivia from Mike as well regarding virtualization: “These servers have the quad-core POWER 5+ processors in them with simultaneous multithreading. You can also leverage Advanced POWER Virtualization (APV) which won last year’s LinuxWorld award for Best Virtualization Solution (yes, it beat out Xen, Virtuozzo and VMWare).”

Database market is exploding, but how about MySQL?

James Governor over at MonkChips (a RedMonk blog)is waxing critically at some IDC numbers and a fellow blogger today. Specifically, he takes issue with a recent analysis that said the Big Three in databases — IBM, Oracle and Microsoft — are running away with the market.

Not so fast, he says, because what about MySQL? Rick Sherman, the blogger in question and analytics nut over at the Data Doghouse, opines that while open source databases will continue to grow the market, the IDC numbers show the Big Three are going to be stealing the database show again and again for the time being. “The rich get richer,” he says.

Governor disagrees:

He is unfortunately completely missing what’s really going on out there. MySQL usage is exploding. In many cases its being used as a bucket of bits, rather than a relational database management system. But check out 95% of Web 2.0 Services (that number is plucked out of thin air, feel free to challenge it) and they are using MySQL. Then look at look at companies socialized to open source. MySQL is everywhere. Would IBM really be running MySQL alongside DB2 if they weren’t seeing exponential growth across the open source platform? No. Way.

I’m inclined to agree. Not necessarily because Governor knows infinitely more about this area of the industry than me, which he does, but because it’s what I’ve seen in my reporting over the past few years. IDC numbers are great to a point, but the real world experiences and case studies I’ve read and written are the royal flush to their full house (played some poker this weekend, can you tell?).

Last Ubuntu post for a while, I swear

This Ubuntu image just went up over at Dell.

Response to the Dell/Ubuntu partnership

Some news heard ’round the Web today regarding yesterday’s big Ubuntu Linux on Dell computers announcement:

“We applaud Dell for offering its customers true choice in desktop operating systems. By directly listening to its customers, Dell heard that desktop Linux is more than ready for the masses. While there is still work to be done, I think even the most cynical would agree that this is yet another sign that the days of the desktop monopoly are over.” — Amanda McPherson, director, The Linux Foundation.

Red Hat’s Scott Crenshaw:

The second question is: why Ubuntu and not Red Hat?

Frankly, I think this question misses a major point. There’s a big market out there for open source and with it comes a diversity of vendors. Our focus at Red Hat is encouraging the growth of free and open source software. We think it creates better software, better communities and better value. We think we do it well, for the customers we seek to serve. Energy should be directed to helping people take advantage of these benefits, but because the question is being asked, I’ll share some perspective.

From time to time we receive proposals from hardware vendors to preload software onto desktop or laptop computers. When the arrangement makes appropriate financial and strategic sense, we pursue it. When it doesn’t make sense, we don’t pursue it. Buying market share is an easy way to get headlines, but doesn’t build a sustainable business model which allows continued support or investment, remember our goal is to completely change the paradigm.

That doesn’t mean we only pursue opportunities if there’s money involved. Fedora is the most popular Linux distribution in the world — each release is installed by millions, perhaps tens of millions, of people at no charge. Additionally, Red Hat has offered its resources to design and develop the user interface for the global One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project to help create a borderless online world.

Justin Steinman, Novell’s director of marketing for Linux and open source, told eWEEK today that the move is just one more proof point in the continued growth of Linux.

“As proponents of open source and Linux, we’re happy to see Linux being preloaded onto consumer desktops.”

But Steinman then downplayed its significance. “I wouldn’t necessarily refer to the Dell-Ubuntu deal as ‘major.’ Dell is only going to load Ubuntu on three machines targeted at the technical consumer market, and the only support option available will be through online technical self-help forums, which will be monitored by the community,” he said.

So, Ubuntu Linux on Dell is the second coming for everyone but the major Linux distributors. Sounds about right to me .