Novell strengthens commitment to Mono

LINK :: Novell strengthens commitment to Mono

Good news all around the Linux Community today.

“As part of the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Ca. today, Novell announced the availability of MonoDevelop 2.0 and Mono 2.4. MonoDevelop 2.0 is an open source integrated development environment for programming with C# and other languages. Mono 2.4 is the latest release of the open source, cross-platform .NET application framework that powers the SUSE Linux Enterprise Mono Extension.”

IBM should really think about buying Novell. They are in bed with them right now and it would make the most sense.

Want List :: Lenovo releases new Linux Laptop

LINK :: Lenovo X41 Laptop with Linux

The X41 is small and light, weighing around 2.7 lbs with the 4-cell battery it came with. It uses a 1.50 GHz Pentium M processor with the Intel 915GM chipset. Other specs include: Intel PRO wifi chipset (fully supported by Linux out of the box), Intel graphics card, a 12.1″ XGA TFT screen, 512 MB RAM (Geeks sent us a 1 GB RAM upgrade too, reaching the overall RAM of 1.5 GB), fingerprint reader, a 1.8″ 60GB drive at 4200RPM. It features a modem port, an ethernet port, headphone/line-out, external microphone, infrared, expansion bus for IBM laptops, VGA-out, 1 PCMCIA slot, 1 SD slot, two generic USB 2.0 ports, and 1 IBM “USB” port (not compatible with most gadgets).

French Police save MILLION of EUROs with Ubuntu Linux

Now the French are not liked globally for whatever reason you like. I for one think it’s a fine country with some odd politics. Love or hate them the Linux community is absolutely in love with them right now. The French Police have moved to using Linux and are saving huge amounts of EURO CASH!

“A recent report has revealed that France’s national police force has saved an estimated 50 million euros since 2004 by adopting open source software and migrating a portion of the organization’s workstations to Ubuntu Linux. They plan to roll out the Linux distro to all 90,000 of their workstations by 2015.”

With Windows XP now being well over 9 years old and nothing decent coming from Microsoft it’s the only option some places may have. While there is nothing wrong with XP, it’s still working, at some point we have to move forward. Only issue is now we are in a bit of a lurch, Vista is, in my opinion, a total flop and should be sent to the same place ME was sent to. Vista is still at least 1 to 2 years from being ready, and will take even  longer to be accepted by IT departments globally. Then there is the pricing. WIth so many decent Desktop, and Office Suite option available to us right now for FREE, it’s hard to make a case to keep going down the Windows desktop/office path.

I applaud the French Police and hope we see a flurry of information about how the upgrades are going, how they are making it happen and I really want to know the minute Microsoft calls them and offers them all the Microsoft core products for FREE to just say they have replaced Linux again…..

C’est superbe! l A France magnifique! l A Linux magnifique!

DragonFlyBSD 2.2 is out

For those of you who are wondering…why is David talking about BSD? I am a closet BSD Fan. I am just in love with it. While the rest of the world is out lov’in on Linux and Ubuntu ( I do love them too..) and I one who would rather see BSD make it into Enterpise IT and more widley accepted.

The Developers at DragonFlyBSD are working hard to get this out and working. Hope you enjoy the new release. I know I can’t wait to get home.

LINK :: DragonFlyBSD 2.2 is out and ready for Download

DragonFly Release 2.2 - 17 February 2009

The DragonFly 2.2 release is here! The HAMMER filesystem is considered production-ready in this release; It was first released in July 2008. The 2.2 release represents major stability improvements across the board, new drivers, much better pkgsrc support and integration, and a brand new release infrastructure with multiple target options.

Three release options are now available: Our bare-bones CD ISO, a DVD ISO which includes a fully operational X environment, and a bare-bones bootable USB disk-key image (less than 512M).

AiX Most Secure UNIX & MacOSX is the least secure

“Me Sad!” as my rough and tumble nephew in Colorado would say.

Well I am kind of sad and kind of happy in that AiX, which is an IBM product, is the most secure. I would have thought OpenBSD would have been the top pick.

LINK :: OSNews - IBM: ‘AIX Most Secure, Mac OS X Least Secure’

“It’s time for another security report. You know, those reports that tally vulnerabilities, and then plot or graph them in such a way that their benefactors or clients come out most favourably. Ok, that might be a bit cynical, but fact remains that there is usually something wrong with such reports. The one that’s making its rounds across the internet today is certainly one of them. According to IBM, AIX is the most secure operating system, and Mac OS X the least secure. Not only is the report rather slim on details when it comes to operating system vulnerabilities, it seems like most websites reporting on this story have misunderstood what it was about.”

Trip down memory lane for Linux users

I found Linux in the fall of 1997. I was in the Best Buy in Savannah, GA looking for something to buy and saw a red box, I hd heard of Linux, and knew about UNIX, plus at that point I was a pretty decent AS/400 user and admin. So I read the box, labeled REDHAT 5.1, and took it to the check out. That day was a very pivotal point in my geek life. I then spent the next few months trying to understand what I had stumbled on. I nevr could get it installed like the back of the box displayed, but it didn’t stop me. When I started working for IBM in Atlanta, there were some Linux users there and they had a mini-convention. I picked up a copy of SuSE Linux 2 or 3. That was when SuSE waqs still owned by the Germans and they were at the convention too.

So here is a LINK to the throw back site. I still have many of the Distros in my office and didn’t like each on for whatever reason, but never gave up the idea of running Linux instead of Windows.

David Vasta - Linux for IBM i: Commands and terminology - PART 2

I hear Linux is hard, and is for geeks… I am not a geek, so is it still for me?

Of course you’re not…

Now that we have cleared that up let’s get into how we’re going to “talk” to Linux. Linux talks to us people using a shell. It’s that green or text-based screen that we i users are familiar seeing. I, of course like the shell sometimes much more then I do some GUI application, but have been known to use a GUI and smile at times. The shell is just a layer that is between you the user or administrator and the kernel.

LINK :: Linux for IBM i: Commands and terminology

David Vasta - Linux for IBM i: Introducing Linux to IBM i people-PART 1

The IBM i is a great platform. Not many of you out there will argue that point. It’s solid, robust and very powerful. Part of that power is just that power or the hardware that we now call Power. The operating system (OS) is nothing unless it has rock-solid hardware to run on. So part of the IBM i’s stability is the hardware. Another fine example of a powerful OS that runs on Power is AIX. The problem is that not everything needs an IBM i or an AIX partition. Sometimes, you just need a file and print server or maybe a DNS or mail router. Of course you could do this all on Windows, but that gets really expensive and it does not run on Power. So, what do you do? Linux on Power: It’s easy, cheap and very powerful, much like its AIX cousin.

The next hurdle is the OS and how it works. If you have never seen Unix or Linux, your first few weeks can be painful. So lets take this one step at a time and talk about Linux, you the Administrator and what to do with your new best friend.

LINK :: Linux for IBM i: Introducing Linux to IBM i people

David Vasta :: Linux for the IBM i Authorities & Permissions - PART 3

I wrote a little something for Search400.com, this is PART 3 of the Linux for the IBM i Admin Series.

Link:: Linux for IBM i: Authorities and permissions

Please Donate to the FreeBSD Foundation

They are $100K short of the goal for 2008, they need your help. Please donate if you can.

LINK :: FreeBSD Foundation