Creating a simple application debug tool out of an App Widget

We have to face it. Linux isn't going to win the desktop war any time soon, but perhaps we don't need to. With products like MeeGo and Android, Linux is going to complete its domination of the embedded space, and find itself in every single home.

It's common knowledge that Linux has a fair number of file systems. Some of these are unappreciated and can be very useful outside their "comfort zone". OCFS2 is a clustered file system initially contributed by Oracle and can be a great back-end file system for general, shared storage needs.

The R statical language is more than a plotting tool.

Userspace file systems are one of the coolest storage options in Linux. They allow really creative file systems to be developed without having to go through the kernel gauntlet. This article presents one of them, SSHFS, that allows you to remotely mount a file system using ssh (sftp).

Having file systems in the kernel has its pros and cons. Being able to write file systems in user-space also has some pros and cons, but FUSE (File System in Userspace) allows you to create some pretty amazing results. This article takes a very brief look at user-space file systems and FUSE.

Have you been looking for open-source storage management tools that are easy to use and provide a graphical representation of your storage. Alas, there are no comprehensive tools but there are graphical tools that you can pair with command-line wizardry, particularly LVM.

A recent paper by Intel provides some hard data on CPU vs GP-GPU speed-up numbers.

Building on what we already know about Android development, we take a look at adding App Widget functionality for your phone's "desktop."

Disk space is always at a premium but how do you handle it when you have a disk or filesystem that's full? After today, you'll know how to boldly go into that dark realm.

Flock has undergone a major evolution in the last year. From the Swiss-Army knife of social media to a slimmed down browser that tackles Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube only. Even more shocking, the project has dumped Firefox for Chromium. Was the switch worth it?

When you install the Ubuntu Netbook Edition in October, don't look for Firefox on the desktop — it won't be there. Chromium, Chrome's open source cousin, is going to be taking its place. After years of desktop dominance on Linux, is Firefox losing its foothold or is this an anomaly?

The Linux desktop has come a long way, but are there still improvements to be made? At least one group of dedicated hackers thinks so, and is working with Ubuntu to improve it.

Has the big multi-core Xeon and Opteron server jumped the HPC shark?

Passing data with Handlers, Messages and the ProgressDialog

If something doesn't work, try something else. That's a lesson that the FSF needs to embrace, if it wants to succeed with a mainstream audience. Being the Party of Gno, and trying to tell users to just avoid Windows, Cloud Computing, iPads, and proprietary software isn't cutting it. It's time to come up with credible alternatives or be satisfied with remaining irrelevant to the majority of users.

Red Hat is the king of commercial Linux support, no doubt about it. Canonical has entered the market and with some refined support products could present a very compelling alternative. Is it enough to make the company profitable long term, though?

You'll always know what time it is with swatch, a real time monitoring tool for your logs.

iPhone is becoming the standard-bearer, but Android is more versatile

Take some of the headaches out of managing sever farms with Cfengine 3. Use this automation introduction to save time, money and spare yourself crippling manual mistakes.

If you blinked you might have missed the announcement of the new 2.6.34 kernel. Things have been happening very quickly around file systems and storage in the recent kernels so it's probably a good idea to review the kernels from 2.6.30 to 2.6.34 and see what developments have transpired.

The low power Intel Atom offers some interesting possibilities for HPC. Does it make sense to try this approach?