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A new worm is targeting personal computers running the Linux operating system, and may also pose a threat to embedded devices such as home routers and set-top boxes, a security vendor reported this week.   Symantec said its researchers warned the malware, named Linux.Darlloz, spreads by exploiting a vulnerability in php-cgi that had been patched as early as May 2012.   "The worm is capable of attacking a range of small, Internet-enabled devices in addition to traditional computers. Variants exist for chip architectures usually found in devices such as home routers, set-top boxes and security cameras," researcher Kaoru Hayashi said...

Had it up to here with Windows? Can't take another "blue screen of death"? Another 10-minute wait for your laptop to boot? Another spyware or virus hassle? Heck, maybe you just think Microsoft got it so far wrong with Windows 8.1, it's time for a change.In fact, maybe it's time for Linux.The open-source operating system offers users a Windows-like alternative with a few key advantages: It's free.Most software for Linux: also free.It runs briskly with less horsepower under the hood, making it a good choice for older PCs.No viruses. No spyware. No adware.You can choose from a variety of user-interface...

The Tech Report crew seems to think that SteamOS and Mantle could ruin PC gaming. I'm not sure how they came to that conclusion but I'm sure you guys will have plenty to say on the topic. Now, all of a sudden, next year's gaming landscape looks to be shaping up very differently. Instead of three major platforms based on a common hardware architecture, game developers will face two monolithic platforms and a fragmented one—the PC—that will have two starkly different operating systems and three different APIs—Direct3D, OpenGL, and Mantle.

Give me Steam It looks like Valve’s announcement about its SteamOS has poked Nvidia and AMD to spruce up their Linux support. A day after Valve announced penguin flavoured SteamOS, AMD and Nvidia announced improvements to their driver support for the Linux. One of the things which prevented Linux from taking off in the gaming world, other than a lack of decent games, was a lack of drivers. AMD is active in the Linux community, but its open-source Linux drivers are not as good as its Windows drivers. It has been making efforts. It recently released 165 kernel patches...

International Business Machines Inc. plans to announce Tuesday that it will spent $1 billion over four or five years on Linux, The Wall Street Journal reported on its Digits blog.

New Orleans: If you've heard it once, you've heard it a million times: The reason why desktop Linux hasn't made it is because of its lack of games. Thanks to Gabe Newell, CEO of Valve and its Steam game platform, that's not true anymore. Linux gaming is ready to rumble and Valve expects it to win. As a keynote speaker at the Linux Foundation's 2013 North American Linuxcon, Newell explained that the old proprietary ways are no longer working for gaming companies. In no small part, that's because the economics of games are changing. Newell said, "Games are becoming nodes...

PengPod, a low-quantity Linux tablet vendor, released the PengPod 1040 tablet today that they claim will "transform the PC and Tablet world by merging both elegantly together to fit any lifestyle." But will it really pan out? The company claims their latest tablet will transform the PC and tablet worlds since it can effectively dual-boot between Android and Linaro/Ubuntu on ARM. This way, you can enjoy Android apps and then reboot and gain access to your normal Ubuntu (desktop-focused) apps -- not too different from Canonical's failed Ubuntu Edge campaign with a smart-phone dual-booting Ubuntu and Android. PengPod also...

There are literally hundreds of Linux desktop distributions. Here's how to find one that's right for you. On a regular basis I use five different Linux different distributions. Over the decades, I've used pretty every much every major Linux distribution out there... and I haven't even touched more than 10% of all available Linux distributions. If I, who've made something of a career of tracking Linux, can't keep up with all the distros how can you? Honestly, you can't. No one can. So how can you find the right Linux for you? This handy, dandy guide will help. But before...

Victory can be defined in countless ways, of course, but here in the Linux blogosphere, Microsoft's recent release of its core Office app for Android is a pretty good example. "Linus won a long time ago," said blogger Mike Stone. "Android is flying high, Linux is dominating on servers and supercomputers. Linux pretty much mops up every market it's in."What a difference a day makes, as the old saying goes -- or, perhaps more aptly here in the Linux community, what a difference an app makes.Which app, you may ask? Why that would be Microsoft Office for Android, of course...

After a steep – 33% – decline in unit shipments in the second calendar quarter of the year, Acer Group now wants to shrink its Microsoft Windows-based offerings and expand product lines that utilize operating systems from Google, such as Android or Chrome. The company seems to be serious about the plan as it wants to grow its “non-Windows” business as quick as possible. "We are trying to grow our non-Windows business as soon as possible. Android is very popular in smartphones and dominant in tablets. I also see a new market there for Chromebooks," said Jim Wang, the president...

Bloomberg has become the first major corporate backer of the Ubuntu Edge, pledging $80,000 towards the project to build a crowdfunded smartphone, but this is unlikely to be enough to help Canonical reach its ambitious funding goal of $32 million (£20.8m). Canonical says the pledge is a huge boost for the company and other backers who want to get their hands on the world’s first “truly converged computing device”, but at the time of writing, the Ubuntu Edge has achieved just $8,544,097 of its target with just 14 days of fund raising left. Bloomberg has signed up for the ‘Enterprise...

In the latest Top500 supercomputer rankings, 476 of the top 500 fastest supercomputers, 95.2 percent, in the world run Linux. Linux has ruled supercomputing for years. But, it wasn't always that way.First Unix, and now Linux for the last few years, has ruled supercomputing.When the first Top500 supercomputer list was compiled in June 1993, Linux was just gathering steam. Indeed, in 1993, the first successful Linux distributions, Slackware and Debian were only just getting off the ground.What happened next, as reported in The Linux Foundation's forthcoming report, 20 years of Top500.org Supercomputer Data Links Linux With Advances in Computing Performance, was that...

In the wake of the recent revelations that America's National Security Agency is spying on all and sundry, is it time for the Linux community to take another good, hard look at the NSA-developed Security Enhanced Linux?The NSA's Security Enhanced Linux comprises a kernel patch to add security features, and patches to applications to allow them to determine the security domain in which to run processes.The code was initially developed by the NSA and is under the GPLv2, the same licence as the kernel. Numerous individuals and companies have made contributions to the project.Recently, Cyanogenmod, one of the more popular...

The New Zealand authorities have formally called off the search for the sailing cruiser Nina, and say its seven-person crew, which includes Evi Nemeth who for the last 30 years has written the system administration handbooks for Unix and Linux, is now presumed lost at sea. Nemeth was sailing off the western coast of New Zealand in the missing 21-metre vintage wooden schooner with its owner David Dyche, 58; his wife, Rosemary, 60, and their son David, 17; Kyle Jackson, 27; Danielle Wright, 18, and Briton Matthew Wootton, 35. The boat was last heard from on June 4, when Nemeth...

The June 2013 Top500 supercomputer list is in, and 476 of the top 500 fastest supercomputers in the world run Linux. Whether you measure supercomputing by number of systems or overall performance, Linux rules. (Image: Top500)Is that good enough for you? While Linux fans and critics obsess about Linux's failure to sweep Windows off the desktop, they're ignoring that Linux is winning everywhere else, and that when it comes to the highest of high-end computing, Linux rules.Driving the point home, the top 10 fastest supercomputers all run Linux of one sort or the other. You have to go the way...

One of the most amazing things about Linux is how versatile it is. Let's face it - Windows and MacOS X are...boring. They look exactly how they look. When it comes to making your computer look and behave however you like, Linux is king. Let's take a stroll through some truly interesting, and beautiful, Linux Desktop Environments - the ones that many of us have never even seen.xmonad xmonad (all lower case) is a tiling window manager built in the Haskell programming language (which is interesting enough to qualify for inclusion in this list). So what is a “tiling...

"Computers aboard the International Space Station are to be switched from Windows XP to the Linux operating system in an attempt to improve stability and reliability.

Red Hat is renaming and rebuilding its open source JBoss application server. The new name is WildFly and with it will come a faster and more transparent development process. Ever since Red Hat acquired JBoss in April of 2006 for $350 million, there has been both an open source JBoss Application Server (AS) and a commercial JBoss Application Platform. After seven years of being in the market with those two technologies, Red Hat became concerned that there was some confusion about the two products and their relationship with each other. "The issue was that the JBoss AS naming was close...

Foxconn Signs License Agreement with Microsoft to Make Google Android- and Chrome-Based Devices.Microsoft and Foxconn Sign Patent Agreement For Android and Chrome DevicesMicrosoft Corp. and Hon Hai, the parent company of Foxconn, the world’s largest contract maker of electronics, signed a worldwide patent licensing agreement that provides broad coverage under Microsoft’s patent portfolio for devices running the Android and Chrome OS, including smartphones, tablets and televisions.

Chip-company Adapteva announced on April 15th at the Linux Collaboration Summit in San Francisco, California, that they've built their first Parallella parallel-processing board for Linux supercomputing, and that they'll be sending them to their 6,300 Kickstarter supporters and other customers by this summer. Say hi to Parallella, the $99 Linux-powered supercomputer. (Image: The Linux Foundation) Linux has long been the number one supercomputer operating system. But while you could build your own Linux supercomputer using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products, it wouldn't be terribly fast. You needed hardware that could support massively parallel computing — the cornerstone of modern supercomputing. What Adapteva has...