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Linux-powered software is growing quickly in emerging industries, as depicted in this CNN infographic from MBAOnline.com ************************EXCERPT*****************************************************STORY HIGHLIGHTS Linux, the free software platform, was conceived 20 years ago In phones, ATMs, airplane consoles and other machines, Linux is pervasive Linux, the brand and the desktop operating system, failed to go mainstream

ONE MIDSUMMER'S NIGHT, a student at the University of Helsinki posted a query to the newsgroup comp.os.minix asking, "What would you like to see most in minix?" The student's name was Linus Torvalds, and that Usenet post was the beginning of the Linux operating system (OS). The date was 25 August 1991, exactly 20 years ago today. Pictured-used-and-licensed-under-the-GNU-Free-Distribution-License-by-linuxmag-com-Martin-StreicherIn 1991 Unix had existed for about 20 years since the early 1970s, Apple had come out with its Mac OS in 1984, and Microsoft had been flogging Windows since 1985. Torvalds' ambitions for his "new (free) operating system" were modest. It was...

Editors' Note: 20 years ago today, it all began. "From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: What would you like to see most in minix? Summary: small poll for my new operating system Message-ID: <1991Aug25.205708.9541@klaava.Helsinki.FI> Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT Organization: University of Helsinki Hello everybody out there using minix - I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback onthings people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat...

Where is the Linux desktop going, and where should it go? This is a hot topic, and an important one. Unfortunately the discussion usually starts from the wrong premise, that the Linux desktop has only recently achieved parity with its Mac OS X and Windows cousins. Not so! The Linux desktop has been superior since its early days, and would have to go backwards to achieve parity. Now which Linux desktop are we talking about? That's a good question, and that is superior item #1: multiple desktop environments and window managers to choose from.A Mighty Power Tool The PC has...

It seems Matt Rosoff is having a little bit of snark over Microsoft apparently disregarding Linux as a threat to its desktop business. The schadenfreude stems from a tweet from Wes Miller, Research VP at Directions on Microsoft, which points out that Microsoft's boilerplate from its last two annual SEC filings has some interesting revisions, as seen here.  Predictably, Rosoff pours salt on the wound by off-handedly cackling about Jim Zemlin's comments earlier this year that taking on Microsoft would be like "kicking a puppy."To be fair, Rosoff did a little digging in the same SEC filings and discovered that Linux...

Years ago, I was a reasonably content Windows desktop user. Then something remarkable took place that changed everything: I began stumbling upon various open source projects that I found to be nothing short of amazing.The first open source application I happened upon was a project called "Firebird." Destined to become what we today refer to as the Firefox Web browser, Firebird offered me a whole new way to look at software.Even back in the early days of the Firebird/Firefox browser, I knew it was going to take off like crazy as development began to pickup. As time went on, I...

Long before the leading Linux desktop environment GNOME arrived in a 3.0 version in April, long-time GNOME users have been grumbling about the radical changes. The dissatisfaction only increased since GNOME 3.0's debut in the beta of Fedora 15 and continued with the Fedora 15 final. We mention Fedora because no other major Linux distro has yet to make the switch. To avoid it, Canonical gambled on its own controversial Unity UI layer in Ubuntu 11.04, and the Ubuntu-flavored Linux Mint 11 opted for the earlier GNOME 2.32.1. Now Linux creator and kernel overseer Linus Torvalds (pictured), has stepped in...

Two different graphs. Both happen to be published at Ars Technica, with one of them coming from a different source. Seemingly completely unrelated, but when you ponder the waterfall of recent lawsuit-related news, these two graphs suddenly tell all there is to tell. These two innocent little graphs illustrate why Apple is attacking Android so ferociously. Let's start with the first graph. Based on Apple's recent quarterly results, it shows where, exactly, Apple's revenue is coming from. It's not iPods, it's not iTunes, it's not even Macs; no, 68% of Apple's revenue in the past quarter has come from the...

Raving Luni, aka Ron of Linux-Universe has contributed this interesting analysis of the current battle raging against Open Source, and by extension, Freedom in general. Sun is behind it too, very much. The Unholy Trinity shares one common issue: "Open Source software is eating into their profits". So they all support this action in a desperate attempt to save their business model. Here are the patients: SCO is in critical condition, so they go first. Sun is in serious condition, they will come too, more forcefully if they don't find a successful business arround OSS first. So they play both...

So there it is. Gone are the 2.6.<bignum> days, and 3.0 is out. This obviously also opens the merge window for the next kernel, whichwill be 3.1. The stable team will take the third digit, so 3.0.1 willbe the first stable release based on 3.0. As already mentioned several times, there are no special landmarkfeatures or incompatibilities related to the version number change,it's simply a way to drop an inconvenient numbering system in honor oftwenty years of Linux. In fact, the 3.0 merge window was calmer thanmost, and apart from some excitement from RCU I'd have called itreally smooth. Which...

According to database pioneer Michael Stonebraker, Facebook is operating a huge, complex MySQL implementation equivalent to “a fate worse than death,” and the only way out is “bite the bullet and rewrite everything.” Not that it’s necessarily Facebook’s fault, though. Stonebraker says the social network’s predicament is all too common among web startups that start small and grow to epic proportions. During an interview this week, Stonebraker explained to me that Facebook has split its MySQL database into 4,000 shards in order to handle the site’s massive data volume, and is running 9,000 instances of memcached in order to keep...

Looking for Linux alternatives to Windows software? Here are twenty choice Linux apps you might want to consider.  1- LibreOffice: Some might point out that Oracle's own Open Office is still very much an option, but the fact is that Linux distributions are or have already migrated to LibreOffice in its stead. Unlike the proprietary-friendly Microsoft Office, LibreOffice offers the end-user much of the same functionality without the added cost of proprietary licensing. However, the biggest downside to LibreOffice has to be the lack of proper formatting support when opening a Microsoft docx document. While the document may be supported,...

Just three months after Mozilla pushed out what was its final big beast of a browser release in the form of the long-awaited Firefox 4, the next iteration of its popular surfing tool is now available online. Firefox 5, as it has been sensibly named, can be downloaded for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android platforms. Few major tweaks have been slotted into this release, which is hardly surprising given the fast, splatter-gun style of updating Mozilla code. The iterate-big-or-die cultural shift inside the open source browser outfit's Towers comes in clear acknowledgement of Google's Chrome schedule. It may be mirroring...

I was directed to a recent mailing list post by Linus Torvalds on linux-fsdevel in which he derided the concept of user-space filesystems. Not a particular implementation, mind you, but the very concept of it. Jeff Darcy, of Red Hat and CloudFS fame, wrote a wonderful response, which you should read first before continuing further.From my perspective, as the creator of GlusterFS, Linus is rather blinkered on this issue. The fact is, user space advantages far outweigh kernel space advantages. You’ll notice that Linus pointed to no benchmarks or studies confirming his opinion, he merely presented his bias as if...

The desktop wars may be finally ending, but not quite the way we may have expected. Take the GNOME Shell interface, which reviewers admire for its general direction but have some issues with the actual execution within GNOME 3. Meanwhile, Ubuntu's Unity continues to be a strong influencer in the interface arena, seeking that mobile device sweet spot. Over on the KDE side of the house, the interface is doing just fine, but everyone is wondering what the fate of the Qt libraries will be given Nokia's ever-growing commitment to Microsoft Windows Phone 7. This guy thinks that with the...

I want to preface this entry by stating something very important to me and my world. I am a writer. Not just a writer of technical documentation, how-tos, and other sundry articles, but a writer of fiction. I currently have three published books (you can find them in both paperback and ebook format on Amazon and Barnes & Noble) and, I get the argument on both sides of the DRM fence. What’s DRM? Simple. Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a term for access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders to limit the use of digital content and devices. In other...

Say Hello To Linux 3.0; Linus Just Tagged 3.0-rc1 Posted by Michael Larabel on May 29, 2011 For anyone that was doubting Linus Torvalds would finally part ways with the Linux 2.6 kernel series, you lost your bets. On the eve of Memorial Day in the United States and his departure to Japan for LinuxCon, Linus Torvalds just tagged Linux 3.0-rc1 in Git. It was just one week ago that Linus Torvalds brought up the matter of whether its time to end the Linux 2.6 kernel series with there already being 39 major releases and its development period having lasted...

Fedora 15 has just been released! Fedora 15 is the first major Linux distribution shipping with the GNOME 3.0 Shell by default, and as usual, has a host of other Linux innovations. Some of the other "fun stuff" about Fedora 15 is support for Btrfs as a file-system installation option (without needing any extra parameters or special settings), better crash reporting, higher compression of live images using XZ compression, improved power management, and much more.

Ï€ Raspberry Pi Foundation The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK registered charity (Registration Number 1129409) which exists to promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level, and to put the fun back into learning computing. We plan to develop, manufacture and distribute an ultra-low-cost computer, for use in teaching computer programming to children. We expect this computer to have many other applications both in the developed and the developing world. Our first product is about the size of a USB key, and is designed to plug into a TV or be combined with a...

I was on the road in Boston late last week, and thus was unable to easily write something up on the April 15 jury finding in the case of Bedrock Computer Technologies, LLC v. Softlayer Technologies, Inc. et al. That's the catchy name for the patent infringement lawsuit launched in 2009 by Tyler, Texas-based Bedrock against Softlayer and CitiWare Technology Solutions, LLC, two Texas-based software companies, and a few firms that are decidedly not from Texas: Google Inc., Yahoo! Inc., MySpace Inc., Amazon.com Inc., PayPal Inc., Match.com, Inc., AOL LLC and CME Group Inc. The suit alleges that a patent...