Red Hat announced a trio of virtualization initiatives today and staked out its own turf in the virtualization battle. Here’s a look at what these technologies mean to you, starting with the new Embedded Linux hypervisor.

Three strategic virtualization initiatives were the stars of the show as Linux powerhouse Red Hat opened its Red Hat Summit today in Boston. What do the Red Hat moves mean to you? More options in open source virtualization tools and a new open source effort around virtualization security, for starters.

The Red Hat move that will catch the eye of most users is the Embedded Linux Hypervisor, oVirt. This is a lightweight, embeddable hypervisor that currently lets you run Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Microsoft Windows VMs (virtual machines) on Linux. What makes this more interesting than just another virtualization announcement: you will be able to carry oVirt-customized VMs from PC to server to what-have-you in your pocket on a USB key drive, Red Hat says.

The open-source oVirt hypervisor, now available as a beta, is based on the KVM project. KVM, in turn, has been an integral part of the Linux kernel since February, 2007. In other words, this is not pie-in-the-sky technology. It’s founded on existing virtualization technologies.

At this point, followers and users of Red Hat Linux may be asking, “What about Xen?” (the best-known open-source hypervisor technology to date.) Red Hat, according to Red Hat executive VP Paul Cormier, will continue to support both Xen and KVM. But, because “KVM is now baked in to the Linux kernel, it’s very easy for both Red Hat and other developers to work with it,” Cormier says. For the time being, Xen will continue to be important, but, as time goes by, Red Hat sees KVM becoming the dominant virtualization technology, he says.

The key difference: while Xen works well with Linux, it’s an add-on. KVM, on the other hand, is an integral part of Linux. For now, Xen is the more mature of the technologies, but KVM is coming on fast and promises to be more useful for developers, Red Hat is betting.

At the end of the day, Red Hat sees KVM-based Linux distributions replacing operating system distributions, which don’t incorporate virtualization. In tomorrow’s Linux, Red Hat sees virtualization becoming simply another standard operating system feature.

While the idea of keeping a selection of virtual machines in your pocket is entertaining, Red Hat’s Virtual Infrastructure Management technology is more likely to grab a CIO’s attention.

This set of management technologies for x86-based Xen and KVM virtualization programs is also available at the oVirt Web site as a beta. Red Hat claims that this architecture enables customers to implement cloud, Software as a Service (SaaS), appliance and traditional server infrastructures across one management platform.

Last, but in the long run perhaps the most important of Red Hat’s new virtualization developments: Red Hat is offering virtualization security management technologies. In the rush to cut data center costs with virtualization, it’s only recently that some CIOs have become painfully aware that they needed management and security tools for their 21st century virtual servers.

Red Hat’s new work in virtualization security is perhaps the least mature of the trio of technologies. Still, Red Hat is working to make it possible for administrators to manage identity and policy, while simultaneously auditing system resources and application integrity. Want to know more about this project? Check into Red Hat’s newly launched FreeIPA project site. Red Hat will be more than happy to have open source community help in creating open-source solutions that could benefit every company that’s packing more and more work into fewer and fewer physical servers.

Looking ahead, Stephen O’Grady, principal analyst with the open-source analysis company RedMonk says, “Much as it has in the operating system and relational database markets, open source is poised to have a disruptive impact on the virtualization space, lowering costs for customers and offering alternatives to proprietary lock-in.”

Based on its announcements today, Red Hat intends to be a player in that disruption.

http://www.cio.com

IBM has obliterated the competition in the supercomputing stakes with the top 10 of the top 500 supercomputers in the world, but Microsoft has surprisingly scraped in at number 23 with its Windows HPC Server system. While Microsoft is an unlucky 13 numbers away from the top 10, does the wow start now?
Microsoft can’t claim any particular ‘wow’ with its results until it can wrest a top 10 position, let alone the No.1 position away from IBM, but 23 isn’t too bad when we’re talking about a list of 500.

But the real news isn’t about Microsoft, it’s about IBM’s stunning top 10 wipeout of the competition, starting with IBM’s super speedy RoadRunner and its PETAflop of performance and power at the top of the tree, and four of its venerable Blue Gene systems also making the top 10 list.

Other supercomputer heavyweights Sun, Cray, SGI (twice) and Hewlett-Packard have also figured on the leader board, as expected.

But it’s not just the USA that is home to the world’s five fastest computers – Germany, Indian and France can also claim the kudos of a top 10 placing.

Sadly for us Aussies, we’re completely absent from the Top 500 list, although we could well be in the running for a 2009 placing.

Why? Because next year, the University of Melbourne plans to “develop the most powerful supercomputer and leading computational biology facility dedicated to life sciences research in the world.”

The university’s vice-chancellor, Professor Glyn Davis, said “The far reaching vision and scale of this initiative will combine Victoria’s already globally competitive biomedical research capability with computational infrastructure specially designed for the life sciences, equal to the best in the world.”

But what was that about Windows HPC Server, and all that ‘wow’?

Well, even though the Windows HPC Server software hasn’t quite reached release candidate stage (which reminds us of the time it took Vista to come to market) it is used on the number 23 supercomputer.

What’s it loaded onto? The NCSA’s ‘Abe’ supercomputer, powered by a Dell PowerEdge cluster with a peak performance of 88.3 teraflops. It’s far, far from the one PETAflop of IBM power, but it’s still the 23rd most powerful computer in the world.

But to put that into perspective, it’s roughly one-quarter of the performance of the number 2 supercomputer (an IBM Blue Gene at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) and less than one-eleventh of Roadrunner’s.

So Microsoft still has a long way to go, but it’s also the actual hardware that’s important. Dell aren’t using the IBM Cell processor, after all.

And Abe isn’t exclusively running Windows either. While it is the fastest Windows cluster to date, Abe also runs Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4!

“Our experience with Windows HPC Server 2008 has been impressive,” said Robert Pennington, deputy director of the NCSA.

“Deploying it was much easier than we expected, and the performance results have surpassed our expectations. When we deployed Windows on our cluster, which has more than 1000 nodes, we went from bare metal to running the LINPACK benchmark programs in just four hours. The performance of Windows HPC Server 2008 has yielded efficiencies that are among the highest we’ve seen for this class of machine.”

Microsoft will also be happy to see that two other Windows HPC systems made the top 100.

Sweden’s Umea University runs its IBM BladeCenter cluster of 672 blade servers on Windows HPC, the first time the system software has been publicly run on IBM hardware.

Big Blue is enthusiastic: “By working closely together on Windows HPC Server 2008, our customers are already seeing improved efficiency rates,” said Dave Jursik, vice president of supercomputer sales at IBM.

“This industry partnership with Microsoft plays a vital role in achieving our goal to create powerful cluster solutions that address the growing needs of researchers such as the scientists at Umea.”

Of course, it’s easy for IBM to be so gracious when they otherwise wipe the floor with Microsoft’s efforts.

And just slipping in at number 100 is Germany’s Universitaet Aachen/RWTH with a Fujitsu Siemens Primergy cluster.

The release candidate of Windows HPC Server 2008 is to be made available for download in the last week of June.

If only you could get all those old 486 and Pentium machines out of your garage to give the HPC Server 2008 a go! But sadly that will be a firm no-go.

For any super-speedy hardware and performance, forget Microsoft – and look to acquiring a large stack of IBM Cell processors to make your own RoadRunner. Beep Beep!

http://www.itwire.com

Red Hat plans to announce Thursday that it is open-sourcing Red Hat Network (RHN), its Web-based Linux infrastructure management platform, according to CEO Jim Whitehurst.
“We think it will develop more quickly, and we’ll have an instant community of use,” Whitehurst said in an interview on Wednesday at the Red Hat Summit conference in Boston. “We’ll find bugs we didn’t know about and features will get added. We believe it’s a superior model for developing software.”

The move is important for keeping up the company’s image, he suggested.

“I think strategic clarity is important. We are open source, and everything we do is open source.”

Further details were not available Wednesday, but Red Hat is expected to reveal more during a press conference on Thursday.

http://www.linuxworld.com

For years now we have heard about Linux on the desktop and its need to make a concerted effort to illustrate its value to the end user and whatnot. The point of it all being is that if we expect Linux to become a household name, we must find away to get it into the minds of the typical user, like we have seen with Windows.

In this article, I’m going to challenge that line of thought in two folds.

First Fold: There’s No Spoon. There is no such thing as a Linux operating system. Well, at least not in the same way we might think of it that is. Because the Linux desktop is largely divided into Linux distributions, expecting Joe Public to fully wrap their minds around the concept has largely been left to Windows converts, looking at making a break from the proprietary side of the fence.

Yet in the mainstream market, we are continuing to see consumer breakthroughs like the various Everex offerings, and of course, the ASUS Eee. Obviously the real success will be when these products gain enough marketshare to warrant space in the local big box stores. Oh, that’s right, we are already half way there .

How Companies Can Make Linux A Success

Beginners Flocking to Eee. Unlike many other projects whereas companies have attempted to bring over a dumbed down version of Linux to the user, the Eee seems to be winning users over with a choice. Keep it simple with a simple mode or step out into the wild side with advanced mode.

There are also a number of new Linux converts feeling excited about the prospect of doing a little conf editing to achieve a working EVDO card action from within the Eeeuser.com forums. What is comical is that this is really not news, but it is pretty cool to see new users noticing that you can indeed take made for Windows technology and hack a solution together without too much effort for your favorite distribution.

With more people seeing the value of a Linux pre-installed computer, I suspect it will be only a matter of time before more big box stores get on board with the idea of more and more Linux notebooks making an appearance in the brick and mortar stores themselves.

Second Fold: The Community. Despite my love/hate relationship with much of the Linux community, there is no question whatsoever that without all of us working together to conquer the little bugs that pop-up, products like the ASUS Eee would never have ended up at BestBuy.com.

To date, most of the “Linux PR team” is coming from advanced users helping individuals new to the Linux desktop becoming more familiar with it. And even folks who have spent a number of years now answering questions via e-mail and over message boards whenever we get some free time. We each have our take on how Linux should be presented to the world, but I like to believe that at the end of the day, we are all interested in seeing one less Windows desktop as it is replaced by one Linux distribution or another.

http://www.madpenguin.org

The relationship of mutual benefit that exists between mobile device makers and the open source development community on which they increasingly depend presents a unique paradox. Specifically, advancing the development of free software sometimes necessitates compromises that limit software freedom, particularly when it comes to providing open-source support for technologies like DRM. Nokia open source director Ari Jaaksi shared some of his thoughts about this paradox at the Handsets World Conference in Berlin last week, where he argued in favor of finding a stronger middle-ground through communication.

Jaaksi notes that there are some important lessons that Nokia has learned from the open source community, such as the value of working upstream. Companies that are accustomed to proprietary development often tend to fork an open source project internally and then do a public code drop later in order to meet licensing obligations when they release a product. Working directly upstream with other contributors, he says, can prevent fragmentation and accelerate development.

Although he believes that companies need to adapt to and learn from the open source approach, he also thinks that the open source community should be more understanding of the challenges faced by companies and the reasons behind some their restrictive business practices.

“We want to educate open-source developers. There are certain business rules [developers] need to obey, such as DRM, IPR [intellectual property rights], SIM locks and subsidized business models,” Jaaksi said, according to BusinessWeek. “Why do we need closed vehicles? We do. Some of these things harm the industry but they’re here [as things stand]. These are touchy, emotional issues but this dialogue is very much needed. As an industry, we plan to use open-source technologies but we are not yet ready to play by the rules; but this needs to work the other way round too.”

He later clarified his position in a blog entry, in which he says that building a mutual understanding could lead to the discovery of less invasive or restrictive alternatives to current industry practices. “I think it would benefit everybody if people developing open source code would understand WHY certain things are made the way they are,” he wrote. “Maybe there are other reasons than stupidity and an evil mind? Trying to understand and learn would benefit both open source projects and corporate to come up with better solutions.”

In the long run, that kind of collaboration could potentially have a more positive impact than principled free software absolutism. Refusing to compromise could deter adoption, whereas accommodating some of the dubious practices of companies that want to use open source would increase adoption rates, accelerate development, and gradually enlighten companies about the advantages of open technology. On the other hand, developer accommodation of practices that are antithetical to open source principles might not sufficiently encourage companies to evolve in ways that are consistent with open source principles. In many ways, this debate mirrors the controversy over the use of proprietary graphics drivers on the Linux desktop and proprietary technologies like Flash on the Internet.

Another point that is missing from this debate is the part that is played by end users. Regardless of how Nokia and open source software developers view restrictive business practices, it is pressure from the consumer that will eventually make such practices untenable. Regular users are increasingly fighting back as they become aware of the hidden costs built into locks and DRM. These mechanisms are easily circumventable, and they cease to stay relevant when they are repeatedly cracked.

http://arstechnica.com

Mandriva Linux 2009 comes a step closer to reality today with the unveiling of the release schedule and the technical specifications. All this information can be found on the Mandriva Linux 2009 Development page on the Mandriva Wiki. The schedule includes two alphas, two betas, and two release candidates, prior to the final release in early October 2008. The first alpha release is scheduled for June 25th – just a week away. The technical specifications are based on input from both the community and Mandriva staff, with each item assigned to a specific maintainer and given a priority level. Some of the more significant items include:

* Improved boot time
* Optional automatic removal of ‘orphans’ (no longer required packages) in the package management tools
* The use of the increasingly popular and fast-maturing PackageKit and PolicyKit technologies
* Improvements to the Mandriva Windows migration and parental control tools
* A live distribution upgrade mode for MandrivaUpdate
* A new design for the installer
* Migration to KDE 4, OpenOffice.org 3, and Firefox 3

There’s many more planned additions too, so take a look through the specifications for yourself to see what you might be finding when the final Mandriva Linux 2009 is available this October!

http://club.mandriva.com

Despite CEO Steve Ballmer’s claims last year that Linux vendors are violating some 235 Microsoft patents, the company seems to be trying harder to learn to live with the open source world – and vice versa.

Redmond said Monday it will co-sponsor the Open Source Census (OSC), a project aimed at getting a handle on who uses which open source software (OSS). Statements on the group’s site, describe the OSC as “a global, collaborative project to collect and share quantitative data on the use of open source software in the enterprise.”

OSC invited Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) to participate because a lot of OSS runs on Windows. In fact, invitations to participate went out to more than just Microsoft.

“We reached out to the whole gamut of players [in the OSS community],” Kim Weins, OSC spokesperson and vice president of marketing and products at open source developer OpenLogic, told InternetNews.com. “They [Microsoft] need to participate in the open source ecosystem because so much open source software runs on Windows,” she added.
Microsoft officials confirmed that they’ve signed on as a sponsor.

“Our customers, partners and developers are working in increasingly heterogeneous environments, and our participation in industry projects like the [OSC] are relevant for the ecosystem in which we participate,” Sam Ramji, senior director of platform strategy at Microsoft, said in a statement that echoed Weins.

Ramji reeled off a list of other OSS projects Microsoft has participated in over the past year or two – “Apache, Firefox, and Eclipse; community development projects on Sourceforge and Codeplex; and partnerships with commercial open source vendors like JBoss, Zend (PHP), SugarCRM, and SpikeSource.” It also launched its own site for OSS, dubbed Port 25.

Additionally, in March, Microsoft promised to collaborate with the Eclipse foundation’s Standard Widget Toolkit development team to allow Eclipse to use the Windows Presentation Foundation, the graphics platform underlying Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.
That comes on the heels of Microsoft’s announcement in February that it will post thousands of pages of interoperability documentation on the Web in order for competitors – including OSS developers – to create products that work with Windows.

What’s the real agenda?

Still, it’s hard, even for long-term Microsoft watchers to discern where the company’s real motives lie.

“I don’t know what to make of it, whether it’s a p.r. stunt or more of a change in direction,” Dana Gardner, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions, told InternetNews.com.

Gardner did note Microsoft’s recent moves to try and make nice with the open source community. However, it may be easier to gather a census of what OSS products are in use than to get a clear read on Microsoft’s intentions.

After all, you can’t feel totally comfortable participating with a group of developers and companies whose goal is to make commercial software developers – especially Microsoft — obsolete.

“The primary goal of the [OSC] is to promote the use of more open source software in the enterprise …. [and it] will also help the open source community and open source vendors to quantify how much their software is deployed,” the OSC statement said.

That certainly sounds like a potential threat to Microsoft’s hegemony.
“It may be a case where they’re supporting OSS when it suits them [but] it does show they recognize that open source is not a ‘fringe’ element these days,” Gardner said.

In addition, Gardner noted that Microsoft has repeatedly said, particularly during its arguments regarding antitrust oversight, that OSS is a bigger threat to the company’s long term viability than even Google. So it’s hard to take Microsoft’s new-found affinity for open source without a grain of salt.

However, lingering questions and outright criticism are not limited to Microsoft.
Other observers note how few users have participated in the census to date – despite finding 230,000 OSS installations, they came from scanning just 1,300 computers — and criticize its value due to the size of the sample and the volunteer nature of the census.

Microsoft has come a little slower to the party than founding sponsors like IDC; CollabNet; Holme, Roberts & Owen LLP; Navica; Olliance Group; Open Solutions Alliance; Open Source Business Foundation; and Unisys. Yet, it’s not the only new sponsor announcing support for the OSC.

In fact, besides the software giant, other new sponsors include Oregon State University’s Open Source Lab, as well as ActiveState, EnterpriseDB, and OSAlt.com.

However, many observers as well as stakeholders such as OSS developers may still be caught in a quandary over whether they should trust Microsoft.
“Somebody needs to go to Microsoft and ask What is your open source software strategy? It’s time for them to really make it clear what they’re doing,” Gardner said.

http://www.internetnews.com

Last week I read the book small is possible. It’s a great read, and I heartily recommend it to anyone who enjoyed books like The Tipping Point, The Wisdom of Crowds, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and other books that powerfully explain the world from a new perspective.

From the back cover of the book:

Forget homeland security-meet the folks from Chatham County, North Carolina, who have discovered the meaning of “Hometown Security.” This fascinating, diverse group of people, unwilling to rely on government and big business, set about finding actual solutions to actual problems at their local level. They developed a thriving food co-op with sustainable farms to back it up, turned a backyard biodiesel venture into a full-tilt commercial plant, and created numerous enterprises, from music festivals to wireless networks along the way. The residents discovered it really is possible for a community to feed itself, fuel itself, heal itself and govern itself.

The parallels between this community effort and the communities I have seen arise in the world of open source share more than a few similarities. I myself started writing GNU software because I was more willing to rely on myself and other developers willing to treat me as an equal than I was to rely on proprietary software companies who saw me as only a customer if I paid and as a criminal if I did not. As articulated by Eric Raymond in The Cathedral & the Bazaar, the effect of developers finding actual solutions to their actual problems appeared to be a superior innovation model to the MBA-led marketing teams who spent their time and money dreaming up abstract features in the hopes of selling new licneses to customers that were not exactly getting value from the licenses they had already. And along the way we created a community, rich and thriving, that develops not only some of the finest software in the world, but has a lot of fun doing it, too! The open source community has boostrapped a sustainable, community-driven software model whereas the proprietary model appears to be headed toward collapse.

So I start reading the book as if it will be about doing the same thing, not with bits, but with atoms. And the writing is great. But when I got to page 53, I realized that open source does play a role, even in a community where most people are trying like heck to get off the grid. Here’s what the author said about my field of expertise (in the context of talking about how various people make money in Pittsboro, population 2,500):

One of the underpinnings of the Open Source movement is that the source code is available for free. Rather than buying a software package to complete your task, you simply fetch the open source equivalent you need for free.

Network monitoring is not free. It’s ungodly expensive. Which means that when Tarus [I told you the characters were colorful--mt] rented an office in Pittsboro to set up his “free” software enterprise, he was a bit of an anomaly. [...]

And so began my education in Open Source. Tarus brough his OpenNMS project into BLAST [the local network service that Lyle established--mt], and for awhile I was selling accounts for him. The only one I landed was the British Broadcasting Corporation[...]

He filled his space with highly paid experts who travel the world offering consulting, delivering code revisions, and upgrades based on free source code.

Talk about Small is Possible. The mightiest corporations on earth turn to a five person software company in Pittsboro for their network monitoring using OpenNMS.

I won’t type in the whole chapter (too lazy), but I will say that he goes on for four pages talking about how open source makes it possible for small people to do powerful things, and how, as it inevitably gets better through user-driven innovation, it is the model of a sustainable system. (He even quotes from CATB and explains how he, as a biodiesel farmer and producer, has seen the open source effect in action, applied it to his own way of working, and has profited from it.)

But really, if you have read this far, then stop reading my blog, get a copy of small is possible, and enjoy a friendly tour of what is possible when a community decides to approach the 21st century by making itself sustainable, open source software and all.

http://opensource.org

Beta version of PDF import extension for OpenOffice.org is now available online. Fully functional version, special features like importing layout of LaTeX PDF or import of complex vector graphics, will appear later. However even the preliminary version of this extension allows to open and edit PDF documents up to version 1.4. Files with restricted permissions are not yet supported.

The extension is available at OpenOffice.org extension repository. OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta or later is needed in order to run the PDF import tool. The extension can be installed via the extension manager in the tools menu of OpenOffice.org. In the extension repository you’ll find versions for Linux, Windows, MacOS X, Solaris x86, and Solaris Sparc, both for OpenOffice.org 3.0 and StarOffice 9.

PDF documents are imported in Draw and Impress to preserve the layout and to allow basic editing. It is possible to change parts of text, but PDF forms are not yet supported.

OpenOffice.org developers claim that next releases of the PDF import extension will focus mainly on edit capatibilities, and less on layout. This will allow to open and edit PDF documents using Writer. This is probably good idea. There are other tools which allow to split PDF documents, merge them or attach other files without changing the layout (Pdftk). Thus, I would like to use the OpenOffice PDF extension mainly to edit and copy some text, not bothering with the layout.

http://free-your-media.net

is concerned, the availability of the source code and open source solutions are an integral part of the same recipe. The Redmond company proved this point as it pulled down the Sandcastle project
from its open source project hosting web site: CodePlex. The move came following complaints indicating that Microsoft Sandcastle available for download via CodePlex under the Ms-PL license did not came completed with the source code, despite the fact that Sandcastle was listed as an open source project.

“This is unacceptable and represents a violation of Microsoft’s Open Source policy. I take it extremely seriously,” stated Sam Ramji, Director, Microsoft Open Source Software Lab. The Microsoft Permissive License was approved in the past by the Open Source Initiative as an open source license, and it automatically involves delivering access to the source code. Microsoft had failed to do so with Sandcastle.

“I apologize to the OSI on behalf of Microsoft for this mistake,” Ramji stated. Microsoft immediately took action, in order to resolve the issue. “I have directed the project to be unpublished from Codeplex immediately, including removal of the project’s use of the Ms-PL. If the team chooses to publish the source code and follow Microsoft policy, then the project may be re-published in the future. If not, we will remove all references to Sandcastle from Codeplex,” Ramji added.

At this point in time, the Sandcastle project is no longer available for download from Codeplex. According to Ramji, Microsoft is looking at two options. The company will either make available the source code along with Sandcastle, or will deliver the binaries for download, but not under the Ms-PL open source license.

“We are strengthening our controls on Codeplex projects and the governance process that we use for Microsoft-led external projects to ensure that this type of error does not happen again. Our policy regarding use of the term Open Source is clear: Open Source refers to projects using OSI-approved licenses,” Ramji concluded.

http://news.softpedia.com