Linux becoming a threat to Windows in the enterprise

The Linux Foundation released a report today that shows Linux implementations growing within large companies over the next five years. According to PC World, the full report included data from 1900 respondents. Among the full set of 1900 companies, 76% said that they would be adding more Linux servers in the coming year. Only 41% claimed that they would be increasing their Windows server implementations. If that isn’t impressive enough, the five-year view looks even better for the open source operating system. While 79% of the surveyed said that they would be adding Linux servers over the next five years, only 21% are going with Windows. Of the companies growing their Linux infrastructure, 37% of them would be migrations from Windows products.

Before everyone jumps on the obvious sample bias argument – it is The Linux Foundation, after all – Amanda MacPherson, VP of marketing and developer programs at The Linux Foundation, believes that the open source nature of Linux helps provide a data set that isn’t marred by sales data. Since Linux can be slapped on a server free of charge, you can’t link OS adoption data to server sales. It therefore gives a clearer view of what companies are really looking for in their server software.

Surprisingly enough, the aforementioned lack of price has not been a key factor in the growth evidenced by the survey. The main reason companies are looking to Linux is technical superiority. Cost came in second, and security came in third. 

While Linux may not be as popular on the desktop these days, this survey confirms that Linux in the enterprise is growing, and it doesn’t seem to be stopping any time soon.

Linux Integration Services v2.1 Now Available

We are really excited to announce the availability of the Hyper-V Linux Integration Services for Linux Version 2.1. This release marks yet another milestone in providing a comprehensive virtualization platform to our customers. Customers who have a heterogeneous operating system environment desire their virtualization platform to provide support for all operating systems that they have in their datacenters.

Driver support for synthetic devices: Linux Integration Services supports the synthetic network controller and the synthetic storage controller that were developed specifically for Hyper-V.

Fastpath Boot Support for Hyper-V: Boot devices take advantage of the block Virtualization Service Client (VSC) to provide enhanced performance.

Timesync: The clock inside the virtual machine will remain synchronized with the clock on the host.

Integrated Shutdown: Virtual machines running Linux can be gracefully shut down from either Hyper-V Manager or System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) Support: Supported Linux distributions can use up to 4 virtual processors (VP) per virtual machine.

Heartbeat: Allows the host to detect whether the guest is running and responsive.

Pluggable Time Source: A pluggable clock source module is included to provide a more accurate time source to the guest.

Download here

Google ditching Windows for Linux and Mac

Google is currently phasing out Windows-based PCs, and switching over to Mac and Linux operating systems, according to the Financial Times.  Since the Google China attacks back in January, shortly after Google said it would end censorship in China, Google is removing Windows from its computers.

Google is no longer offering new hires the option to run Windows-based PCs, without the approval of a CIO, and instead offering employees Mac computers or PCs running Linux operating system.  Google was still allowing new hires to install Windows on their laptops, back in January, but not on their desktops.

“We're not doing any more Windows. It is a security effort,” said an employee at Google.  “Linux is open source and we feel good about it,” said the employee. “Microsoft we don't feel so good about.”

Long-term employees who wanted to remain using Windows on their machines required approval from “quite senior levels,” an employee at Google said.

Employees at Google have also mentioned that Google is in the process of switching employees to run their own products, including Google Chrome OS, Google Chrome browser and a variety of other essential products. 

Google was attacked back in January, using a remote code execution (RCE) security flaw found in Internet Explorer 6 running on Windows XP.  The exploit could be used to run unauthorized software on a compromised computer by tricking the user into visiting a webpage with maliciously code on it.

Google would not comment on its policies.

RedHat Fedora 13 Final

Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is open and anyone is welcome to join. The Fedora Project is out front for you, leading the advancement of free, open software and content.

The operating system is Fedora. It comes out twice a year or so. It's completely free, and we're committed to keeping it that way. It's the best combination of robust and latest software that exists in the free software world. The mindset is doing the right thing. To us, that means providing free and open software and content, at no cost, freely usable, modifiable, redistributable, and unencumbered by software patents.

The Fedora Project is a Red Hat sponsored and community supported open source project. Its goal is the rapid progress of free and open source software and content. The Fedora Project makes use of public forums, open processes, rapid innovation, meritocracy, and transparency in pursuit of the best operating system and platform that free and open source software can provide.

Download : RedHat Fedora 13 Final (x86 & x64)

Windows 7 Market Share Twice That of OS X, 10 Times That of Linux

At the end of March 2010, there were twice as many computers running Windows 7 as machines with Mac OS X installed, although the latest iteration of the Windows client was released to the market just five months ago. According to statistics from Net Applications, Windows 7 currently accounts for no less than 10.23% of the OS market, having grown from 8.92% at the end of February 2010. The data provided by the Internet metrics company also indicates that Windows 7’s market share is tenfold that of all Linux distributions put together. The Linux market share grew from 0.98% to 1.03% in the past two months, that of Mac OS X from 5.02% to 5.33%.

Both Linux and OS X suffered decreases in their respective share of the OS market between January and February, the first time in almost half a year when the overall share of Windows grew. Fact is that both the adoption rates of Mac OS X and Linux have been dwarfed by the explosive uptake of Windows 7. And, provided that sales of the latest version of Windows continue at the same pace, Windows 7 will gallop past its predecessor soon enough.

Windows Vista is currently down to just 16.01%, almost at the same level as in February 2009, two entire years after the operating system hit the store shelves. Vista did not hit the 10% market share milestone until May 2008, a whole 15 months after GA. A simple comparison reveals that Windows 7 adoption is three times that of Vista. But while Vista dropped from 16.51% to 16.01%, Windows XP’s loss was a tad more steep. XP is currently down to just 64.46% from 65.49% in February 2010.

A recent report by Forrester Research indicates that the vast majority of customers that have upgraded to Windows 7 are very satisfied with the move they made. Microsoft is also doing its part, and is allowing IT professionals in particular, but all users essentially, to download a free copy of Windows 7 Enterprise and test it for free for a 90-day trial period. The availability of the free edition of Windows 7 was prolonged until December 31st, 2010.
“People move to a new OS one of two ways: either by buying a new PC or upgrading an existing PC. In the past, most people simply purchased a new PC to get a new version of Windows. With Windows 7, the data in the [Forrester] reports show that upgrading existing PCs was a much stronger trend with Windows 7. In the end, the reports show that early adopters who upgraded to Windows 7 were quite satisfied. Exciting to see the progress,” Brandon LeBlanc, Windows communications manager on the Windows Client Communications Team, revealed.

Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Images are available for download here.

Microsoft Windows 7 90-Day Eval VHD is available for download here.

Another Windows 7 RTM Enterprise 90-Day Evaluation is available for download

here.

Download Linux Integration Components for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V R2

With the landmark alliance inked with Novell in 2006, Microsoft stepped up its game of supporting customers with heterogeneous environments in which Windows and Linux were running side by side. The Microsoft and Novell Windows and Linux interoperability and support broad collaboration agreement covered Windows Server and SUSE Linux, but since them the Redmond company has also worked to support Red Hat customers. The Linux Integration Components for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V R2 are designed to provide a collection of drivers designed to enable synthetic device support in Linux OS virtual machines running under the software giant’s hypervisor role in Windows Server 2008 R2.

“We are excited to announce the availability of Linux integration components for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL 5.2, 5.3, and 5.4) which provides synthetic network and storage drivers enabling RHEL to work with the optimized devices provided by Hyper-V. We’ve already submitted these drivers to the upstream Linux kernel in July 2009, and are looking forward to these being integrated with a future version of RHEL,” revealed Mike Sterling, Hyper-V program manager, Microsoft.

According to Sterling, Hyper-V customers that rely on virtual machines with open source platforms from both Novell and Red Hat will be able to enjoy the same level of performance for Red Hat Enterprise Linux guests, as for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. The Integration Components need to be installed on the virtualized copy of Linux running in Hyper-V.

The Linux Integration Components for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V R2 come with support for the following Hyper-V versions as host platforms: Windows Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter (64-bit versions only); Hyper-V Server 2008; Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V RTM (Build 7600) Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter and Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 RTM (Build 7600). At the same time, the components support the following guest operating systems: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP2 x86 and x64 (1 vCPU); SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 x86 and x64 (1 vCPU); and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2, 5.3, and 5.4 x86 and x64 (1 vCPU).

“Microsoft will provide full support for these drivers. Red Hat provides best effort support for these components. Customers interested in understanding how these are supported by Red Hat prior to their inclusion natively into to their distribution can read the details at the Red Hat Knowledge Base article,” Sterling added.

The Linux Integration Components for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V R2 are available for download here.

The 'year of the Linux desktop' has passed

For those still waiting for the year of the Linux "desktop," I regret to inform you that it has already come and gone.

Through the efforts of the open-source community, in conjunction with independent hardware and software vendors, as well as Web developers, Linux is well beyond its toddler years and is almost past its rebellious teenage years. Did you notice?

For many people, the answer is "no." I, for example, have been a Mac user since 2002 and haven't touched Windows for more than five minutes at a time since then. I've also not necessarily been the biggest advocate for desktop Linux over the years, with RedMonk analyst Stephen O'Grady pummeling me for my ignorance.

But in my new role at Canonical, I've switched to using Ubuntu on my Lenovo ThinkPad X200s and have found Linux comfortably routine. Like my Mac, it just works--no drama with day-to-day Internet activities like e-mail, Web browsing, IM, Twitter. It lets me do all the things I used to do, and still largely with the same applications I used on my Mac.

So, to the extent that "the year of the Linux desktop" means "the year that Linux is apples-to-apples comparable with Windows," we're there. But if we mean "the year that Linux surpasses Windows in market share," we have years to go, but we also have some reasons to believe that we're on track.

You see, a funny thing--the Web--happened on the way to the Linux desktop, making most of today's computing experience as accessible on Linux as it is on Windows or Mac OS X. With Firefox, my Linux browsing/application experience is the same as it was on the Mac, thanks to the Firefox add-ons and the fantastic Weave service. (I am even able to access tabs I left open on my Mac from my Linux machine through Weave.)

Other barriers to Linux adoption, including compatibility with popular software such as Apple's iTunes, are crumbling too, with rumors swirling that Google may build a competitive, cloud-based offering, and other services like Rhythmbox vying to fill the void.

The other thing that happened to the Linux experience is that savvy software vendors started to offer Linux support out of the box, rather than through painful kluges. Examples: TweetDeck and Skype. Yes, you can choose to use free-software alternatives to these (such as Gwibber for Twitter), but you don't have to do so.

Hardware support is also improving, with Dell taking the lead on Linux support and others, including Lenovo, Acer, and Hewlett-Packard, following suit. (My particular Lenovo model isn't officially supported, but I have yet to encounter a problem with driver support. Even add-on peripherals like my Plantronics headset worked perfectly out of the box.)

I could go on, but the point is that the desktop battle is largely over for Linux. There's really no reason not to use it, other than habit. Habits, of course, are hard to break, especially those that don't really qualify as "bad habits," in the traditional sense.

So what can the Linux world do to create the magic that will make people want to go Linux? After all, if someone already has Windows installed, why bother uninstalling it? (Keep in mind that most users aren't hung up about freedom--they just want their computers to work.)

Well, one obvious answer is that Linux can help to break open emerging markets such as India. As Gartner Vice President Brian Prentice suggests, entirely new open-source ecosystems have the potential to form in markets like India that are rich in people but poor in desire to pay Western software prices.

India is probably best positioned to figure out the "magic" that it needs in a desktop. Linux offers India and other emerging markets the chance to build an operating system in their own images.

Another answer is that we'll see more of the magic happening in the cloud, much of which will either favor open-source platforms or at least treat them equally. Twitter is just the latest company to parade its affection for open source, and it has been hiring open-source developers such as Michi Busch (Lucene committer). Such developers aren't likely to confine their code to Windows or Mac.

Add this growing collection of Linux-friendly cloud services with a rise in Netbooks and other alternative computing form factors, and I believe that we'll see more hardware vendors opt for the flexibility of Linux, even as Microsoft tries to hold the line on pricing and configurations.

We'll also see more appliance-like models of Linux "desktop" development, including Amazon.com's Kindle and new Android-based tablets. It might not be Canonical or Google or Novell or Red Hat with its name on the package, but that's the point: with Linux, it doesn't have to be.

Don't get me wrong; the Linux development community has a lot of work to do. But today, it's a matter of innovating beyond Microsoft and Apple, not one of replicating them. The drudgery of following is over. It's time to lead.

So stop waiting for Linux to arrive on the desktop and other personal-computing devices. It has already happened, and the trend is gathering speed.

75% of Linux code is written by paid developers

The Linux world makes much of its community roots, but when it comes to developing the kernel of the operating system, it’s less a case of “volunteers ahoy!” and more a case of “where’s my pay?”

During a presentation at Linux.conf.au 2010 in Wellington, LWN.net founder and kernel contributor Jonathan Corbet offered an analysis of the code contributed to the Linux kernel between December 24 2008 and January 10 2010. (The kernel serves as a basis from which individual distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian or Red Hat are developed, though these will often add or remove specific features.)

A massive amount of coding went on in that period: 2.8 million lines of code and 55,000 major changes were contributed to the kernel, which evolved from version 2.6.28 to 2.6.32 over that time. “The development process is clearly quite alive and quite active,” Corbet said, noting that this amount to more than 7,000 lines of code added every day

The most striking aspect of the analysis, however, was where those lines of code originated from. 18% of contributions to the kernel were made without a specific corporate affiliation, suggesting true volunteer efforts.

An additional 7% weren’t classified. The remainder were from people working for specific companies in roles where developing that code was a major requirement. “75% of the code comes from people paid to do it,” Corbet said.

Goodbye Fedora 10

Fedora 10 was officially released a year ago, on November 25th, 2008. It was dubbed Cambridge and it offered the latest stable version of GNOME 2.24 and KDE 4.1 desktop environments, faster boot experience (powered by Plymouth), better printing, better webcam support, improved wireless network connection sharing, better software maintenance and update (powered by PackageKit and RPM 4.6), virtualization storage, a new security tool for IDS (Intrusion Detection System) called SecTool and a brand new theme called Solar. Fedora 10 was also the first release to bring the lightweight LXDE desktop environment.

Today, we are sorry to announce the end of life for Fedora 10 (Cambridge) on December 17th, 2009. This means that, starting two days ago, users of Fedora 10 will no longer receive security/critical fixes and software updates. Therefore, all Fedora 10 users are urged to upgrade to the most recent version, Fedora 12, as soon as possible.

"As planned, last update pushes to Fedora 10 were made in advance of this date, to accommodate the move of some Fedora infrastructure. Fedora 11 will continue to receive updates until approximately one month after the release of Fedora 13." - was stated in the release announcement.

What is Fedora?
The Fedora Project is a Red-Hat-sponsored and community-supported open-source project. Fedora Linux is an operating system based on the Linux kernel, which focuses on wide access, distribution and free modification. It's built by a worldwide community (the Fedora Project), which grants access to anyone wishing to further advance the development of open-source software. Fedora 10 is available as GNOME and KDE Live CD editions for 32bit and 64bit platforms, and the usual CDs/DVD edition for x86, x86_64 and PPC architectures.

If you haven't upgraded yet to Fedora 12, you can grab the GNOME or KDE Live CDs from Softpedia, here and here. The Fedora 12 installable only DVD is also available for download from Softpedia.

Major improvements with Fedora 12

In the wake of Ubuntu’s 9.10 release, many distributions were forgotten. But one distribution, in particular, keeps getting better and better under the radar. That distribution? Fedora. Just this week Fedora 12 was released, brining some serious improvements not only to the cutting edge distribution, but to Linux in general.

Upon installation you might not immediately notice the improvements. They are there and eventually these improvements will impress you. So instead of you having to wade through the distribution to witness these improvements, I will highlight those that will have certain impact on the user…whether directly or indirectly.

Bluetooth Support

You might be wondering why I am starting with a feature that isn’t used by everyone. The main reason is because this is the update that might excite users (at least mobile users) the most. With the latest release not only has bluetooth support matured, but tethering support has become almost foolproof! So now that laptop can tether to your cell via usb. But the improvements don’t end there. One of the issues, prior to 12, that plagued Linux bluetooth users was battery drain. Now bluetooth services are run “on demand” so that thirty seconds after the last bluetooth device was used, the service is suspended.

Network manager improvements

Another large step forward is with the Network Manager. Although this is the best of the best Linux network management tools, it still had room for improvement. What has been improved is:

• IpV6 support.
• Better shared, static, and system-wide connection support.
• Easy to configure bluetooth tethering

Out of the box tablet support

This will come to the surprise of anyone that has had to get tablet support working with Linux. Fedora 12 will work without having to muck around with xorg.conf! Tablet pressure sensitivity, handwriting recognition, and many more features will work, out of the box! This is big news for anyone who wants to use a tablet PC with Linux.

Updates improvements

For those of you who grow more and more frustrated with the constant barrage of updates with a Fedora distribution, you will be happy to know that Fedora has made some serious improvements. First RPM now uses XZ compression (instead of gzip), so packages are smaller. Also, the Presto plugin is now enabled by default. Presto uses RPM deltas which only use files that have changed. Between XZ and deltas file downloads are considerably smaller and updating is noticeably faster.

Bug reporting

One thing to keep in mind is that Fedora is a cutting edge distribution, so bug reporting should be a task most Fedora users follow through with. Fedora 12 makes this task very simple. When an application crashes data is automatically collected (without the user having to run back traces and such). With the help of the new Abrt tool, reporting bugs is about as simple as possible. The user doesn’t even have to go to Bugzilla to report a bug!

Graphics

There have been a number of improvements for graphics with Fedora 12. One of the more important updates is the experimental drivers that give 3D support for graphics cards without the use of proprietary drivers.

Clustered Samba

Another exciting addition is the GFS2 Fedora 12 Samba allows you to  have multiple instances of smbd across different nodes of a cluster. With this you can export a gfs2 filesystem through one or more nodes in the cluster. Clustered Samba will provide high-availablity of the Samba service.

Final thoughts

This is just a taste of what Fedora 12 is brining to the Linux table. There is a veritable plethora of new features available with Fedora 12. For a complete list, take a look at this Wiki page for an all encompassing  look at the feature list.

Fedora 12 Available for Download

The final release of Fedora's 12th edition, code-named Constantine, is available for download. Want much better Bluetooth, the latest network and chat apps, and CPU and graphics efficiencies? Grab a live CD or USB image and give it a go.

The full list of changes, upgrades, fixes, and new apps is similar to what we saw in the beta, but if you need more specifics, Fedora's got a whole lot of custom-formatted documentation.

Download: http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora