Distro

Since the free, online Wikipedia user-created encyclopedia began in 2001, the Linux-based IT infrastructure behind it has been expanded and lassoed together to keep up with the demands of the popular Web site.

A surge in demand for netbooks is helping drive business for Linux, as the devices are designed to be low-cost with smaller storage, according to Novell's chief technology and strategy officer for Linux.

Expanding Linux adoption beyond key vertical markets is an important driver for Red Hat's growth, which remains steady even as one of its strongest customer sectors, financial services, is getting hit hard by the U.S. crisis, the company's CEO, Jim Whitehurst, said Tuesday.

Red Hat Wednesday slightly topped analysts' estimates by posting revenue for the fiscal-2009 second quarter of US$164.4 million

Life just got easier for users of the downloadable or boxed retail versions of the Ubuntu Linux 8.04 operating system who want easy and cheap ways of adding DVD playback and improved audio capabilities to their machines.

With all the people out there willing to offer help on Linux, getting started should be pretty easy. But with many options in introductory books and easy-to-install distributions, choosing a place to start can be the hard part.

A half-year after becoming president and CEO of Linux vendor Red Hat, Jim Whitehurst was in Boston last week for the annual Red Hat Summit. The former COO of Delta Air Lines sat down with Network World's Jon Brodkin to discuss open source, a new patent settlement, and Red Hat's moves in virtualization.

When Matthew Szulik left Red Hat abruptly for family health reasons in December, many people were scratching their heads over the company's new choice of CEO - a young executive from Delta Airlines, Jim Whitehurst. But Whitehurst's chief operating officer title at Delta and position outside of the technology industry are misleading; a peek into his past reveals a computer science degree and a passion for open-source technology, not to mention a smooth operator who helped bring a struggling airline out of bankruptcy.

Since being acquired by Linux vendor Red Hat in mid-2006, open-source middleware vendor JBoss has been a company in transition. It was well-known for its open-source middleware line that could be used by large businesses to better tie together their divergent applications.

With the recent release of version 4.0, the KDE open source project has garnered a lot of international attention. One of KDE's lead developers, and best known personality, Aaron J Seigo is in Australia to speak at this year's Linux.conf.au on his vision for better desktop computing. Computerworld spoke with Seigo, a native of Calgary, Canada, about his view of the world and how a little bit of innovation will permanently change how people interact with software.

We hear from SourceForge and SourceForge.net Marketplace Vice President Mike Rudolph about the world's largest Open Source software development web site, which, as of today, claims 162,855 registered projects and 1,732,552 registered users.

Reports of data losses and system breaches are almost becoming passe but from time to time events happen that take on a life of their own and have effects far beyond what the initial breach would normally represent.

If you are running a Debian-based Linux system and haven't already caught up with the announcement [1] that there was a major flaw with the generation of SSH, OpenVPN, DNSSEC, SSL/TLS session keys and X.509 certificate key material, you might want to update your system to address the problem.

The beta of the next version of Ubuntu Linux has arrived, though judging by its stability and polish you'd be hard pressed to tell it's a testing release. Ubuntu 8.04, code-named "Hardy Heron," is scheduled to be an LTS (Long Term Support) edition, and you can tell its developers have worked diligently to make it worthy of the title.

Earlier this year, it looked like The SCO Group was going down for the count. It had lost a key decision in its suit against Novell, declared bankruptcy and was quickly running out of money.

First, let me say I am a big fan of One Laptop Per Child, at least as a concept. Connecting the developing world's children to the Internet in a seamless and low-cost way is a great idea.