Articles - Distributions

Creating an easy path to Linux deployment is a task that not every Linux vendor has managed to accomplish. Oracle has done a pretty good job reaching that goal--so much so that it has a stronger partner program and new virtualization tools to make deployment even easier than before. During last week's LinuxWorld Expo, Oracle announced that members of its Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) can now join the new Oracle Unbreakable Linux Product Focus Area.

It's easy to understand why compatibility between different operating systems is a complicated procedure.

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that Canonical has become a member of the Foundation.

A candid look at how one distribution is put together..."openSUSE 11.1 Beta3 is a bit later than expected (it should go out later today). Of course, this raised couple of questions why. So let me explain how a build of a Beta release works in general from release manager perspective and what are the reasons for the slip.

Every open source project must deal with the same problem: how do you package your application so that it installs and runs properly on all the major distributions? Use a package manager to bundle the application, configuration scripts and any necessary libraries into a single file. The two most popular methods of accomplishing this are the RPM Package Manager (RPM) and the Advanced Packaging Tool (APT).

"The most popular and stable GNU/Linux operating system Debain has turned 15 Saturday. There are many interesting facts about Debian which makes it even more adorable..."

"I’ve seen several requests for a simple set of instructions that test a distribution against the LSB..."

Red Hat had some good business news yesterday... a nice change in a troubled market... "Red Hat continues to impress. Coming off an already strong Q1 and raised guidance for its fiscal year 2009, today Red Hat announced 29 percent growth over Q2 2008 and 5 percent growth over Q1, with total revenue hitting $164.4 million. Both revenue and profit came in above analyst expectations.

Gentoo fans, take note, there won't be another release this year... "There was no Gentoo 2007.1 release that made it out last year, and we now know for sure that there will be no Gentoo 2008.1 release this year. The Gentoo Release Engineering Team has canceled the Gentoo 2008.1 release that would have otherwise been expected in the next three months. Due to spending increased time on Gentoo 2008.0 and having limited manpower, they've decided to call off Gentoo 2008.1 and future .1 releases.... [more]

Prison metaphors seem pretty fitting for proprietary operating systems... "As a director of the Linux Foundation and a Linux SCSI developer, James Bottomley opened the Linux-Kongress in Hamburg, Germany this week with a keynote investigating the commonalities and differences among the various Open Source operating systems. He describes Linux as the liveliest variant among them.