Ubuntu
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.
Ubuntu’s rich set of tools make system
administration a snap
Have an old PC or three? Turn those aging hunks of
silicon into refurbished Linux
workhorses.
Ubuntu is the best Linux distro out there. Here’s how to make it even better.
If you’ve never tried Ubuntu Linux, you’re missing a real treat. Here’s how to get started with the absolute best free desktop Linux.
SUSE
Make your fonts go pop!
Novell has been involved with Linux for just a short time — it made its major acquisitions in the area only a few years ago — but the company seems to be trying to make up for lost time. Its deal with Microsoft is controversial, but the company’s new CEO says that customers stand to benefit greatly. Here’s an inside look at how Novell sells Linux.
Debian
To make Debian a real success, its many advocates and vendors must pool resources. But columnist Jason Perlow says that makes too much sense to actually happen.
Commercial Linux distributions have come and gone, but through it all, the non-commercial Debian project has forged ahead. Here's a look at where it's been and where it's going.
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Scott Granneman referees a technological cage match between Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) and Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).
CNET has a look at Red Hat "clone" distributions like CentOS and White Box Linux, and how that helps and hurts Red Hat.
It's a pretty brief overview of the Red Hat alternatives that are available, without much detail on the relative quality of the other distributions. I reviewed CentOS a few weeks ago, and found it to be a pretty good distribution — certainly worth a look if Red Hat Enterprise Linux is out of your price range.
One of Linux's greatest strengths is that it's easily customized. Although most distributions ship with a variety of standard tools for specific purposes (such as sendmail as a mail server or Vixie Cron to handle repeated jobs), alternative tools are readily available. You can rip out just about any component, either removing it entirely or replacing it with something else. Linux lets you remove or replace more components than most operating systems, allowing the savvy administrator to customize a Linux installation for specific purposes.
It took five years, 10,000 employees, and (allegedly) billions of dollars. It contains some 50 million lines of code. Yes, it's Windows Vista, and it's finally here. And guess what? In some ways, Vista has Linux beat.
The latest and greatest gadgets and gizmos for your pal, the Penguin.
Calls Solaris "a more strategic alternative to commercial Linux distributions" but the company's own Linux shipments exceed Solaris.
Solaris 10 blooms into the open.
Last month's column introduced the powerful Grand Unified Boot Loader (GRUB), a utility that enables you to boot one of many operating systems when you start your computer. That column looked at basic GRUB configuration, including setting up GRUB on a floppy disk to boot Linux.
Red Hat
Two years in the making, RHEL 5 is finally ready. The result? With Xen, SELinux, the Red Hat Global File System, and more, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 raises the bar for commercial Linux. We break down the new features and walk you through creating your first virtual machine.
Last beta before first of the release candidates go live.
CEO says they won't drop prices.
Wall Street took a pound of flesh from the Linux vendor this week. However, they may have jumped to their conclusions a bit too soon.
At the end of April 2004, Red Hat will discontinue its support and maintenance of Red Hat Linux, leaving a good number of users in a lurch. While some users will likely switch to SUSE or Debian or others, the Fedora Project promises to take up where Red Hat's left off. But is Fedora a viable option? Here's a hands-on trial of Fedora Core 1.
Don't call it the next Microsoft. If things go Bob Young's way, people will think of Red Hat as the Wal-Mart of the open source world.
Solaris
Solaris 10 blooms into the open.
Calls Solaris "a more strategic alternative to commercial Linux distributions" but the company's own Linux shipments exceed Solaris.
eWeek has reviews of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and Solaris 10, providing a fairly balanced view of both operating systems. Both OSes score well according to eWeek's criteria, with Solaris 10 coming out about even with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. A good executive summary of both OSes.
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