TechVirtuoso

Fedora 14 released, brings polish and feature updates

November 6th, 2010 at 5:28 PM  No Comments


Linux distribution Fedora released their latest version this week. Fedora 14 was released Tuesday and brings along with it some new interesting features.

  • Framework software for Spice, a rapidly advancing infrastructure for desktop virtualization
  • New debugging features for developers, such as support for dynamic/unplanned memory usage tracking and faster launch thanks to pre-generated indexes
  • Powerful remote and out-of-band management capabilities with Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) support
  • Updated tech preview of the GNOME shell environment, part of the upcoming GNOME 3.0 release
  • A subset of new and innovative software from the MeeGo™ community for an enhanced experience on netbooks and small devices
  • OpenSCAP, an open-source framework for the Security Content Automation Protocol, which provides a framework and approach to maintaining system security backed by NIST standards
  • Support for emergent programming languages like D, and refreshed versions of popular languages such as Python 2.7, Erlang R14, and the Rakudo Star implementation of Perl 6

While not as popular as Ubuntu, Fedora is still one of the more popular distributions, targeted more towards system administrators and developers than Ubuntu. RedHat says there are approximatively 25 million Fedora users.

Also updated was the fedoraproject.org website, which now is a little more user friendly and provides more information about the release. You can download the release at the project website.

First the death of Xserve and now the X server

November 5th, 2010 at 10:19 AM  1 Comment

First Apple decides to discontinue their Xserve lineup and now Ubuntu is planning to ditch their X server too.

Confused?

X is the underlying display server in the Ubuntu Linux distro. In an announcement today by Mark Shuttleworth, in the future Ubuntu will be ditching X.org and moving to Wayland display server.

The next major transition for Unity will be to deliver it on Wayland, the OpenGL-based display management system. We’d like to embrace Wayland early, as much of the work we’re doing on uTouch and other input systems will be relevant for Wayland and it’s an area we can make a useful contribution to the project.

Ubuntu is setting out to change the look and feel (and performance) of Linux. The upcoming Ubuntu 11.04 will ditch the GNOME interface for their new Unity styling, but there is no specific timeline for the departure of X.org in Ubuntu. Due to the integration of X into nearly all of Linux it’s possible it could take years to rip it all out in favor of Wayland.

Also, Wayland is still an extremely immature codebase compared to X.org, which is used in nearly every Linux distribution and was first released in 2004 (and was forked from XFree86 which was released in 1991.) In contrast Wayland hasn’t been used in any major Linux distro yet.

via Digitzor

Ubuntu to feature Unity interface for desktop version 11.04

October 25th, 2010 at 9:06 PM  2 Comments

In a move likely to irritate as many people as it satisfies, Mark Shuttleworth announced today that the next version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, due in April of 2011, will dump GNOME as the default desktop manager in favor of their Unity interface. The Unity interface is currently the interface used by the Netbook specific Ubuntu distribution, present since version 10.04 LTS.

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TV Guide for May 3

May 3rd, 2010 at 3:21 PM  4 Comments

Microsoft will be adding a plethora of interesting features to Hotmail this summer. Chief among them is support for Exchange ActiveSync. This will allow users of any mobile device with ActiveSync support to receive push email, as well as synchronize calendar and contact information. Previously this feature was only available on Windows Mobile phones, and only in a limited fashion. Also coming soon is full SSL encryption on the Hotmail website, instead of just the Live authentication process. Microsoft is also expected to add conversation view, think Exchange/Outlook 2010, but in Hotmail. All of these features are things that Google has offered on Gmail for a while now and that Microsoft needs to play catchup with power users.

Microsoft has also announced that it will be providing full support for HTML5 video in Internet Explorer 9, and will be doing so using the H.264 protocol. Recently Apple has also been throwing support behind H.264 as the HTML5 video codec of choice for Safari. Apple has somewhat famously taken on Adobe in recent weeks saying Flash video is no longer the preferred option for Internet users going forward. Awkwardly, Microsoft agreed.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS was released on April 29. The latest version is a long term support release, meaning updates will be published for 3 years on the desktop and 5 years on the server versions, compared to only 18 months with standard Ubuntu releases. This makes LTS a great platform for business deployments where doing full release upgrades every 6 to 12 months can be a major hassle. The latest version is lighter on features than normal Ubuntu releases are, but still sports the latest stable and public versions of GNOME, X.org and the Linux kernel. It also features a refreshed theme, ditching the brown and orange for a purple and black theme. There is also a new optional “lighter” theme that has a hint of brown instead of the standard Ubuntu color scheme. Boot times, especially on SSD drives have also been dramatically improved.

Palm is dead. Well, actually, HP purchased Palm for $1.2 billion.  The only hope for the WebOS platform now rests with HP and their commitment to “double down” and release new and improved hardware. Pending regulatory approvals, the deal is expected to close rather quickly in July of this year. Hopefully we’ll start seeing some HP branded WebOS devices starting this fall or winter.

TV Guide for March 30

March 30th, 2010 at 11:01 AM  1 Comment

This is the introduction post to the TechVirtuoso Guide, what we hope will become a daily breakdown of important IT tidbits from the previous day, and what we expect to happen that day.

Yet again, someone has come forward with another rumor that a CDMA iPhone is coming this summer. This time, it comes from the Wall Street Journal. The new iPhone would work on Verizon Wireless, as well as Sprint Nextel in the United States and a handful of carriers in other countries including South Korea and Japan. The current iPhone is designed to work on the vast majority of carriers world-wide, including AT&T and T-Mobile in the US, using a signaling technology called GSM.

It would seem that SSL isn’t as secure as once thought. The problem isn’t the encryption, but the certificate providers. Ars has a breakdown of how governments are working with the CAs to “subvert the entire system to allow them to spy on anyone they wish to keep tabs on.”

Apple has released a major update to OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” — fixes in version 10.6.3 include enhancements to USB, OpenGL, DNS, QuickTime X, AirPort, iCal, Mail, MobileMe, Time Machine, and numerous other areas of the operating system. Choose Software Update from the Apple menu to check for the latest Apple software via the Internet, including this update.

Future versions of the Ubuntu Linux operating system will change the way units are measured in the operating system and enforced throughout applications used in the OS. Starting in Ubuntu 10.10, coming this October, SI prefixes (base-10) will denote 1 kB as 1000 bytes, 1 MB as 1000 kB, 1 GB as 1000 MB, and so on. This is similar to the way OS X started measuring data in Snow Leopard. Neowin has a full breakdown of the measuring guidelines.

You will soon be able to jailbreak an iPhone over the air, instead of having it tethered to a computer. Your move Apple.

Need help running Linux as a guest OS in Microsoft Hyper-V? Sounds strange, but Microsoft has released a best practices guide to do just that. Download it off their website. Don’t blame us if you create a black hole in your datacenter though. In related news, Hypervizor.net has a great article on anti-virus exemptions in Hyper-V. Proper configuration of your antivirus can prevent performance issues, but also keep your VMs from being eaten alive by an aggressive scanning engine.