Author Archive

Mozilla is at it again. Not content to slug it out on the desktop, the Moz folks are taking a run at the mobile market with Fennec. The betas released last week suggest that they’re on the right track.

Opera has stepped up the browser heat with Unite. The fledgling technology launched on top of the Opera 10 beta is an interesting collaboration tool that might just change the way users look at the Web browser.

By releasing Safari on Windows, Apple is doing more than providing a rich browser experience for Mac users — it’s making a land grab for the Internet, and may pose a threat to Firefox as it attempts to displace IE. Does Safari 4 measure up to Firefox 3.5, and should the Moz folks be worried?

Opera has done well with mobile, but can it take the desktop by storm? Opera 10 beta 1 was released last week, and Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier takes a look at Opera 10 to see if it can make some noise next to Firefox, IE, Safari, and Chrome.

One of Firefox’s great advantages is the ability for users to create custom extensions. While add-ons have historically been non-trivial to write, Mozilla Labs is looking to make this considerably easier with JetPack.

As you spend more-and-more of your time on the Internet and connecting with others, Flock can help to streamline repetitive social activities.

Mozilla Labs continues to turn out interesting projects. Prism, a single-serving browser for web apps, extends and protects your online applications.

The latest Firefox may still be in beta but it boasts a number of behind-the-scenes features that will make developing for the web easier as well as end-user changes that add new functionality, like private browsing and support for drag and drop.

With Firefox marketshare now above 20% and rising fast, can the KDE Project’s browser, Konqueror, compete? Recently I started running KDE 4.2.2 and decided to use Konqueror in place of my default browser — Firefox. Let’s see how Konqueror stacks up.

One of Firefox’s greatest strengths is that it can be extended to provide additional functionality to the end user. However, the vast number of extensions available for Firefox can be a bit overwhelming. We look at that top 10 Firefox add-ons that can improve your productivity on Linux.

Disruptive technologies meet staid businesses. Stuart Cohen is bringing the open source development model together with big business, and finding it to be a perfect fit. Joe Brockmeier talks to Cohen about the Collaborative Software Initiative’s first year, and where it’s going from here.

Likewise CEO Barry Crist talks about the importance of interoperability, the differences between the corporate and open source communities, and what’s ahead for Linux.

So, now that the dust is starting to settle from the news that Sun is buying MySQL for a staggering $1 billion pricetag, let’s take a look at the larger picture– how is consolidation going to affect the open source ecosystem? MySQL was the first project in 2008 to be absorbed this way, but it certainly won’t be the last.

This week we spent some time talking to Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon, and External Projects Developer Liaison Jorge Castro, about the Ubuntu community, Personal Package Archives, and where Linux is headed in 2008.

In this podcast, Ted Ts’o, the Linux Foundation’s newly appointed Chief Platform Strategist, takes a few minutes to talk to Linux Magazine about his new role with the Linux Foundation, the status of Ext4, the Linux Standard Base, and more.

I’ve often wondered why Apple maintains a server OS and product line. From what I can see, they don’t seem at all serious about the server market.

No doubt you’ve heard the prediction before — “this is going to be the year of the Linux desktop.” At the risk of being repetitive, though, I’m going to go ahead and say it: 2008 really could be the year of the Linux desktop.

After months of media-built hype, the mythical “gPhone” was unveiled this week as Android, a Linux-based software stack for building mobile phones. Despite the disappointment, Android might be just what the market needs, if the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) can actually get an open stack shipping on real devices.

Once again, the Linux Foundation Desktop Linux (DTL) workgroup is polling users to find out what desktop Linux really needs. While the foundation folks conduct the poll (and I’d encourage Linux Magazine readers to participate), let me share my top three priorities for the Linux desktop in 2008: Applications, multimedia, and polish.

IT Jungle reports on some of the Shorty’s compelling features, including its suitability for deployment in normal office environments:

As the Mozilla folks start making plans to plan for the Mozilla 2 codebase, Matt Gertner over at the AllPeers blog has a radical suggestion: Dump the Gecko rendering engine and embrace WebKit.

Every year, Linux Magazine starts the new year off with a look at the top 20 companies that we think will be particularly influential in the world of open source software. Our editorial crew has some strong opinions in this area, but we’re also looking to Linux Magazine readers to sound off and tell us what companies will lead the way in 2008.

VMware made announcements yesterday that might spell an end to one of the biggest problems facing Linux: Hardware compatibility. If you think you missed the hardware compatibility announcement yesterday, don’t worry: The answer lies in VMware’s ESX 3i, the Open Virtual Machine Tools announcement, and the announcement of a draft specification for a portable virtual machine format.

Linux Magazine is looking to find out a little bit about your organization’s IT infrastructure. Do you use virtualization? Is green computing a priority? Is your organization adopting multi-core CPUs or taking a wait-and-see approach to upgrades? What applications are the most important for your organization?

 

If you need to run multiple distros at the same time, test out new kernels, or just want to test new software in a ’sandbox,’ User Mode Linux is perfect for the job. Here’s how to get started.

If you use Linux on your desktop, you may wonder if you’re susceptible to those pesky software infections known as viruses, worms, and trojans. Well, like the doctor says, “There’s good news, and there’s bad news.” Read this feature to learn your prognosis.

Imagine this scenario: you have twenty servers under your care, some running Red Hat Linux, some running Solaris, and a few machines running Debian. You want to make sure that all of the systems have the same network configuration, but you don’t want to log in to each machine and make the changes by hand. Unfortunately, you also know that it won’t be easy to write a simple shell script to automate the task because each system’s layout is a little bit different. Making simple changes to all machines on your network, without automation, can be quite a hassle. Happily, that’s what Cfengine is for.

Linux has always offered lots of tools that make it easy to work remotely over a network. However, many of those tools were highly insecure. OpenSSH changes that and keeps your communications secure.

There are Linux User Groups just about

Whether you enjoy building your own system