Qubes OS 1.0

Joanna Rutkowska has announced the release of Qubes OS 1.0, a Fedora-based security distribution for the desktop with a number of isolated domains implemented as lightweight virtual machines running under Xen: "After nearly three years of work, I have a pleasure to announce that Qubes OS 1.0 has finally been released. Qubes OS is an advanced tool for implementing security by isolation on your desktop, using domains implemented as lightweight Xen virtual machines. It tries to marry two contradictory goals: how to make the isolation between domains as strong as possible, mainly due to clever architecture that minimizes the amount of trusted code, and how to make this isolation as seamless and easy as possible. Again, how the user is going to take advantage of this isolation is totally left up to the user." Read the release announcement and visit the project's security goals page to learn more. Download: Qubes-R1-x86_64-DVD.iso (1,668MB, torrent).

SystemRescueCd 3.0.0

François Dupoux has announced the release of SystemRescueCd 3.0.0, a live CD containing a large number of data rescue and disk management utilities, based on Gentoo Linux. What's new? "Added support for loading extra SRM module files (System Rescue Modules); added support for UEFI booting from the CD-ROM on x86_64 using GRUB 2.00 (efi.img); updated standard kernels to long-term supported Linux kernel 3.2.28 (rescuecd + rescue64); updated alternative kernels to long-term supported Linux kernel 3.4.9 (altker32 + altker64); the rescuecd kernel image has been renamed rescue32 for better consistency; configured isolinux to automatically use the 64-bit kernel if CPU is capable; automatically use 64-bit version of FSArchiver and memtester if CPU is capable; reorganized and updated isolinux configuration and help messages; updated e2fsprogs to 1.42.5, GParted to 0.13.1, Partclone to 0.2.50." Here is the complete changelog. Download: systemrescuecd-x86-3.0.0.iso (347MB, MD5).

New Chromium Stable And Development PPAs For Ubuntu 12.04

A quick tip for Chromium users who are using Ubuntu 12.04: the Chromium PPAs (Stable, Beta, Dev and Daily) haven't been updated since Chromium 18 but if you want to use the latest Chromium browser in Ubuntu, there are two new PPAs you can use, thanks to Alex Shkop.

The two Chromium PPAs are for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin only for now, one for the latest stable Chromium (version 21) and one for the development builds (version 23 at the time I'm writing this post).

Add the stable PPA and install Chromium in Ubuntu 12.04 using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:a-v-shkop/chromium
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

Or, if you want the latest dev builds in Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin, use the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:a-v-shkop/chromium-dev
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

 

Demand for Linux hosting servers increased in Q2 despite the downfall of the whole server market

According to the recent report published by IDC this week,  worldwide server market revenues decreased 4.8 percent year-over-year in Q2 2012. This is the third consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue declines for the server market. The market is "working its way through a number of technology transitions impacting customer demand for x86, Unix and mainframe-class systems," said Matt Eastwood, group vice president and general manager for enterprise platforms at IDC, in a released statement. "Economic uncertainty is weighing on the market and the sales cycle is lengthening."

Unix hosting servers and non-x86 servers had the poorest showing this quarter. Unix hosting  server revenue declined 20.3 percent year over year. Non-x86 server revenue declined 19.4 percent year over year. However, bladed hosting servers and Linux dedicated servers saw improved demand. IDC attributes the increase of Linux hardware revenue (a 1.7 percent year-over-year gain) to the growing demands of high-performance computing and cloud infrastructure deployments. Bladed server factory revenue was up 6.3 percent year over year, as were bladed server shipment numbers (up 4.1 percent from Q2 2011).

Hewlett-Packard Co. and IBM Corp. shared the No. 1 spot for factory revenue share this quarter, although both companies saw year-over-year factory revenue declines (of 5 percent and 8.2 percent, respectively). Dell Inc. took third place in factory revenue share, helped by a 5.9 percent revenue increase compared with Q2 2011.