Unbreakable Linux - Free DVD from Oracle

First it was Ubuntu and now it is Oracle's turn. That is right; here is a wonderful chance to get yourself a DVD set of Oracle's Unbreakable Linux. Essentially Unbreakable Linux is Red Hat Enterprise Linux sans the Red Hat trademarks.

Oracle claims Unbreakable Linux delivers enterprise-class support for Linux with premier backports, comprehensive management, cluster software, indemnification, testing and more, all at significantly lower cost.

To order your Free DVD of Oracle Unbreakable Linux with free shipping and all, visit this page and click the "Register Now" button. If this is your first visit to the Oracle website, you will have to create an Oracle account. Next enter your shipping address which is the address to which you would like to receive the DVD set and press "Submit". That is it. Oracle will ship you a brand new DVD set of Unbreakable Linux.

Potrace: Raster to Vectore conversion

Potrace(TM) is a utility for tracing a bitmap, which means, transforming a bitmap into a smooth, scalable image. The input is a bitmap (PBM, PGM, PPM, or BMP format), and the default output is an encapsulated PostScript file (EPS). A typical use is to create EPS files from scanned data, such as company or university logos, handwritten notes, etc. The resulting image is not "jaggy" like a bitmap, but smooth. It can then be rendered at any resolution. Potrace can currently produce the following output formats: EPS, PostScript, PDF, SVG (scalable vector graphics), Xfig, Gimppath, and PGM (for easy antialiasing). Additional backends might be added in the future

Fedora 9 Sulphur released

It is yet time for another major release of Fedora Linux. The latest avatar of Fedora namely version 9 is code named Sulphur. If you are piqued by the strange names of Fedora, then you should read this article to get a better perspective. So what is in store for all Fedora fans out there ? Quite a few things really.

For starters, Fedora has got what is known as PackageKit. This is a cross distribution package management solution which has a complete Yum backend. Then Fedora ships with the latest and greatest Gnome Desktop namely version 2.22. KDE 4.0.3 is also in the repository and can be installed by the hard core KDE fans. But the greatest news is that Fedora now ships with the Sun's Java as Sun has released Java under an open source license. To know the full set of features, read this article which explains all the features in more detail.

And after reading through the features, if you are excited enough (which you will be), then visit the download page and start downloading your favorite Linux distribution aka Fedora 9 Sulphur.

Linux: A Search Engine's View

In May’s issue of Linux Journal, their segment “LJ Index” featured some tidbits or trends about which countries are actually Googling “Linux.” It is always interesting where Linux is gaining public interest, which countries are falling behind. (Source: Google Trends)

• Russia claimed the top spot
• India came in second
• Number of Asian countries in the top ten: 3
• Number of European countries in the top ten: 7
• Number of North American countries in the top ten: 0
• Position of Russian among all languages: 1

.

I then decided to play around with Google trends on my own, here are some interesting results:

• Recently, the two terms “Ubuntu” and “Linux” became almost at par:

• Norway leads in searching “Ubuntu”:

• Over the years “Microsoft” and “Linux” are almost at par; with a slight edge for Microsoft since 2005:

• Ubuntu is trailing behind Mac and Vista:

Unix Tool Box

A unix/linux/BSD commands and tools nicely written and maintained by Colin Barschel. ... its a must for system admins and contains frequently use commands and utilities.....

Here is the .xhtml version

for pdf version use .pdf instead of .xhtml
and for booklet version use .book.pdf

Virtual linux console that can be used online for practice specially for beginners

Miniature Linux Pc targets military apps

Mercury Computer Systems announced a Linux-based engineering development kit (EDK) for a 7-10 pound computer that targets small ground, naval, and air vehicles. The "ruggedized" PowerBlock 50 (pictured at left) supports multiple processors to provide "well over 100 GFLOPS of processing power," according to Mercury.

Linuxdevices.com has the full scoop on this story.

Guide to adding a new partition or drive to an existing system

Suppose you are required to create a 10 GB partition on you running Linux, you have got two options namely.

• Create a partition from the unpartitioned space on your machine or
• Add a new drive.
  

If you are opting for the latter then it is a simple thing of plugging in the new drive, letting the system detect it, using a partitioning tool to create the requisite partition, formating the newly created partition and finally mounting it. But if it is the former namely, creating a partition from unpartitioned space, then the task gets a bit trickier.

Joey Prestia explains the exact steps needed to add a new partition to an existing system. The task can be broken down into the following steps :

1. Determine what partitions need to be created and where.
2. Create the partitions (I use 'fdisk' here but any Linux disk partitioning tool should work)
3. Re-read the partition table either with 'partprobe' or by a reboot
4. Make a filesystem on the partition, label it, and create the necessary mount points
5. Add the appropriate entries to '/etc/fstab' so the partitions are mounted upon reboot
   

Check out Joey's notes to know the exact commands used to accomplish the above task.