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RIP: Dennis Ritchie Dead At 70

Vivek Gite — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 09:57:24 +0000

Dennis Ritchie died at home this weekend after a long illness. I'm sure every "Unix" and "C" user will miss him.He was the key developer of the Unix and original developer of the C programming language.

Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie was an American computer scientist notable for developing C and for having influence on other programming languages, as well as operating systems such as Multics and Unix. He received the Turing Award in 1983 and the National Medal of Technology 1998 on April 21, 1999. Ritchie was the head of Lucent Technologies System Software Research Department when he retired in 2007.

Download Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) CD ISO / DVD Images

Vivek Gite — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 09:31:28 +0000

The latest version of the popular Linux desktop distribution Ubuntu 11.04 has been released and available from the official project web site. This new version uses the Unity user interface instead of GNOME Shell as default desktop (user can switch back to classic Gnome desktop any time). New features since Ubuntu 10.10 includes - Banshee as the default music player, Mozilla Firefox 4, LibreOffice, Linux kernel v2.6.38.2, gcc 4.5, Python 2.7, dpkg 1.16.0, Upstart 0.9, X.org 1.10.1, Mesa 7.10.2, Shotwell 0.9.2, and Evolution 2.32.2.

Google Public DNS Servers Launched

Vivek Gite — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:43:55 +0000

Today, Google has announced the launch of their free DNS resolution service. Many ISPs and 3rd party provider such as OpenDNS snoops around or send traffic to ad servers. However, Google promises not to play with end users and send the exact response his or her computer expects without performing any blocking, filtering, or redirection that may hamper a user's browsing experience. In other words Google will not hijacking your traffic on non-existent domain name and it will follow strict RFC standard.

nixCraft FAQ PDF Collection Now Available To All

Vivek Gite — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:37:16 +0000

The nixCraft FAQ collection is now available to anyone who wants to browse it off-line in a PDF format. This tar ball contains 1530 Linux, *BSD, UNIX, Perl, Bash and scripting related faqs, mini-howtos, and tutorials compiled and written by nixCraft.

FreeBSD 8.0 Review: Enterprise Ready Server Operating System

Vivek Gite — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:50:11 +0000

The FreeBSD Project is one of the oldest and successful project. FreeBSD is well known for its reliability, robustness, and performance.

A new version of the FreeBSD 8 is scheduled for release this week. A RC3 was made available for download few weeks ago for final round of testing before the official launch. nixCraft takes you for an in-depth look at the new features and major architectural changes in FreeBSD v8.0.

Download Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic koala) CD ISO Images

Vivek Gite — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:43:27 +0000

The latest version of the popular Linux desktop distribution Ubuntu 9.10 has been released and available from the official project web site. New features since Ubuntu 9.04 includes - Firefox 3.5, GNOME 2.28, an enforcing AppArmor profile, Linux kernel 2.6.31, ext4 file system (default), Empathy instant messenger instead of Pidgin, the Ubuntu One client, which interfaces with Canonical's new on-line storage system. It also includes a new application called the Ubuntu Software Center. A quick screen-shot tour of new features available here on our website.

BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones: Not Happy With Ubuntu Linux

Vivek Gite — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:17:03 +0000

BBC's blogger Rory Cellan-Jones took Ubuntu Karmic Koala for 24 hours test drive and predicated that - "... Ubuntu will remain a very niche product - but it's Google's Android which could bring open-source to the mass consumer market...".

The Upcoming Version of Linux Shell Scripting Tutorial v2.0

Vivek Gite — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:31:40 +0000

I've been working on the Linux Shell Scripting Tutorial v.2.0 for some time and now the updated version licensed under "Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 Unported" of the same available in wiki format. It will contain a few significant changes from the previous versions of the tutorial, which includes a new topics, grammar & typo fixing and new sys admin related scripts.

How To: Upgrade Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 to v5.4

Vivek Gite — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:22:59 +0000

Red Hat Enterprise Linux v5.4 has been released and available via RHN for immediate update. The new version includes the kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) virtualization, next generation of developer features and tools including GCC 4.4, a new malloc(). Also included clustered, high-availability filesystem to support Microsoft Windows storage needs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Dell Says Linux Netbook Returns A Non-Issue

Vivek Gite — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 06:59:43 +0000

Microsoft chief operating officer Kevin Turner recently talked about netbook and claimed that retailers experiencing higher return rates as compare to MS-Windows operating systems:

And the reason that we were able to make so much traction - because this is the first real test of the value of Windows - the reason we were able to make so much traction on this particular space is because we went to retailers and said, "Hey, what are your return rates on these Linux netbooks that you are getting?" And they said, "Oh, gosh, they're, like, four or five times higher than what we're seeing on other PCs that have Windows." I said, "Exactly." So let's do the TCO story. Let's talk to customers. And you can't find a retailer - I challenge you to find a retailer who wants to sell Linux on these netbooks, because the returns are bad. The customer complaints are bad. And our ability to really showcase the value proposition with Windows has never been greater and was never tested more than it was with this particular product. But we've made great progress there, but the up-sell opportunities with Windows 7, because it runs so well on these low-end laptops, is going to be tremendous for us.

Google Announces Linux Kernel Based Chrome OS

Vivek Gite — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:49:05 +0000

Google has announced Google Chrome OS, which should be available mid-2010. This is a direct challenge to MS Windows operating systems. This is excellent news and it is going to tied tightly to its Chrome Web browser. Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS - said Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management, in a blog post.

Download Of the Day: Firefox 3.5 For Windows, Linux, Mac OS X

Vivek Gite — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:25:00 +0000

Firefox version 3.5 has been released and available for download. Firefox 3.5 is the fastest web browser. It is twice as fast as Firefox 3. As a result javascript and multimedia enabled web apps loads faster. Firefox is the first browser to support open video and audio formats, allowing practically limitless new ways for sites to display rich content. This is based upon the open formats (HTML 5) which allow displaying media without a plug-in and/or proprietary software.

Slowloris DoS Tool: It Can Bring Down Apache 1.x/2.x

Vivek Gite — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:50:39 +0000

Apache Security Update - a flaw In Apache can be used to carry out DoS. Slowloris is a new Apache DoS tool which can use slow Internet links to bring down Apache servers, rather than flooding networks. Most D/DoS tool requires faster net connections but this tool works with minimal bandwidth. This tool can lead to a DoS attack on Apache 1.x, 2.x, dhttpd, GoAhead WebServer, and Squid, while MS IIS6.0, IIS7.0, and lighttpd are confirmed not vulnerable to this attack.

FreeBSD 7.2 Review: Improved Virtualization

Vivek Gite — Sat, 02 May 2009 08:40:26 +0000

FreeBSD is just plain old good UNIX with rock solid networking stack. It is quite popular amongst hosting companies, ISPs, portals (such as Yahoo) and a few large financial institutions because of its reliability, robustness and performance.

A new version of the FreeBSD is scheduled for release next week (4-May-2009). A beta 2 was made available for download few weeks ago for final round of testing before the official launch.

Oracle To Purchase Sun Microsystems for $7.4b

Vivek Gite — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:10:39 +0000

Look like combined company will give a tough time to both IBM and HP. Sun Microsystems and Oracle Corporation announced yesterday that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire Sun common stock for a total of $7.4 billion or $5.6 billion net of Sun's cash and debt.

Dealing with Recession – Saving Money With Free and Open Source Software

Vivek Gite — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:49:03 +0000

According to wikipedia - "An economy which grows over a period of time tends to slow down the growth as a part of the normal economic cycle. An economy typically expands for 6-10 years and tends to go into a recession for about six months to 2 years". The current defaults on homeloan have led to a major crisis in the US. Once recession started consumers lose confidence in the growth of the economy and spend less including technology and software. Is free and open source software (FOSS) a way to cut business costs? As concern about recession - even depression - deepens, more and more companies are asking this question. However, many have trouble knowing how to begin to find an answer.

Humor: On Feb, Friday 13, 2009 Unix time Will Be 1234567890

Vivek Gite — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:54:55 +0000

Unix time (POSIX time) is a system for describing points in time, defined as the number of seconds elapsed since midnight Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) of January 1, 1970, not counting leap seconds.

News Round Up Feb-07, 2009

Vivek Gite — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 00:13:40 +0000

It's been over 10 days since I've blogged. I was busy with workload so I could not update the blog. I missed lots of news worthy stuff. Here is a quick news roundup:

a] A new custom version of Ubuntu aimed at netbooks and based on 8.04 Hardy Heron has been released by HP.

b] Open source Exchange server replacement only a year away.

c] Scripting SSH access and file transfers with Python can be frustrating - but the Paramiko module solves that in a powerful way.

d] Amazon offering 3 Full Version Games for a Limited period of time.

e] cyberciti.biz / nixcraft.com is now IPv6 enabled.

FreeBSD 7.2RC Released

Vivek Gite — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 15:08:30 +0000

The second of two planned Release Candidates for the FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE cycle is now available. ISO images for Tier-1 architectures are now available on most of the FreeBSD mirror sites. The freebsd-update(8) utility supports binary upgrades of i386 and amd64 systems running earlier FreeBSD releases. Systems running 7.0-RELEASE, 7.1-RELEASE, 7.2-BETA1, or 7.2-RC1 can upgrade as [...]

Google Chrome 2.0 Early Access Version Is Here

Vivek Gite — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 18:31:38 +0000

Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google and based on the WebKit layout engine and application framework. On January 08, 2009 Google introduced a new release channels system, and now there are three distinct release channels - Stable channel, Beta channel, and Developer preview channel.

Google has released Chrome 1.0 on Dec - 2008, and now the company is all set to release version 2.0 (pre - beta version) of its web browser. From the release notes:

New version of WebKit. WebKit is the open source code Google Chrome uses to render web pages (HTML and CSS). 1.0.154.36 used basically the same version of WebKit as Safari 3.1, but the WebKit team has made a lot of improvements since that was released. 156.1 uses WebKit version 528.8 or, more precisely, revision 39410 from the WebKit source tree. In addition to fixing bugs and enabling features like full-page zoom and autoscroll, the new version also enables some nifty CSS features. New network code. Google Chrome now has its own implementation of the HTTP network protocol (we were using the WinHTTP library on Windows, but need common code for Mac and Linux). We fixed a few bugs in HTTP authentication and made Google Chrome more compatible with servers that reply with invalid HTTP responses. We need feedback on anything that's currently broken, particularly with proxy servers, secure (https) sites, and sites that require log in.

Look like the Mac and Linux versions of Chrome are getting closer. Are you going to switch to Google Chrome under Linux?