As previously blogged, openSUSE 10.2 will have a redesigned KDE start menu created by the KDE and usability team at SUSE, after doing usability testing with other start menus. We now have a working prototype, code-named ‘Kickoff’ (started during world soccer championship, obviously), which is currently being tested with real users in the SUSE usability lab.
Don’t forget to visit the Start Menu Research talk at aKademy 2006 in Dublin, Ireland.
It’s a question that crops up with depressing regularity: Why don’t Linux filesystems need to be defragmented?. Here’s my attempt at giving a simple, non-technical answer as to why some filesystems suffer more from fragmenting than others.
Rather than simply stumble through lots of dry technical explanations, I’m opting to consider that an ASCII picture is worth a thousand words. Here, therefore, is the picture I shall be using to explain the whole thing: >>>>
By now, you’ve probably heard that Intel has a new chip out that went by the code-name “Conroe” but now goes by the names Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme. So while you may have read about how great these chips are under Windows, I bet you have heard little to no news about Linux performance or even Linux support. As usual, this is where Linux Hardware comes in to fill in the gaps. I have each of these top two new processors from Intel as well as some DDR2-800 and a new NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT. I’ll walk you through the features of this new core processor technology from Intel, take you through support and performance, and end up with a discussion on power, heat, cost, and availability. There’s a lot to cover here, so let’s get going.
AppArmor is a product that Novell acquired when they bought the company Immunix in May 2005. It provides an interesting alternative to traditional security measures. AppArmor works by profiling the applications that it is protecting. A profile records the files that an application needs to access, and the capabilities it needs to exercise, during normal, “good” operation. Subsequently, a profile can be “enforced”; that is, attempts by the application to access resources not explicitly permitted by the profile are denied. Properly configured, AppArmor ensures that each profiled application is allowed to do what it is supposed to do, and nothing else.
This article is excerpted from the newly published book SUSE Linux Copyright © 2006 O’Reilly Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission from the publisher. Available from booksellers or direct from O’Reilly Media.
The documentation uses the metaphor of “immunizing” the applications, but the product does not actually prevent an application from being infected or compromised. Rather, it limits the damage that an application can do if this should happen.
If we must have a medical metaphor, “quarantine” might be better, or you might think of it as offering the program a large white handkerchief to sneeze into to prevent it from spreading germs.
AppArmor was originally a closed-source product, but became open source in January 2006. It is included with SUSE Linux 10.1 and with SLES9 SP3. It was also included with SUSE Linux 10.0, but the profiling tool was deliberately restricted in scope and required the purchase of a license file to become fully functional. >>>>
DesktopLinux.com launched its 2006 Desktop Linux survey on August 21, asking users of Linux desktops to identify what distributions they use, as well as their choice of windowing environment (KDE, GNOME, etc.), web browsers, email clients, and Windows-on-Linux solutions.
Participants are asked to refrain from promoting or advertising the survey to mailing lists, or encouraging friends or co-workers to vote for specific software, in order to ensure that the survey represents a broad sample of Linux desktop users rather than being used to advance a particular open-source software cause.
As usual, DesktopLinux.com will publish the results of the survey following its conclusion.
Click here to participate:
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