Sandra Henry-Stocker
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Sandra Henry-Stocker
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Ubuntu’s Cosmic Cuttlefish brings performance improvements and more
Canonical has just recently announced that Ubuntu 18.10, code named 'Cosmic Cuttlefish', is ready for downloading at the Ubuntu release site. Some of the features of this new release include: the latest version of kubernetes with improved security and scalability access to 4,100 snaps better support for gaming graphics and hardware including support for the extremely fast Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 fingerprint unlocking for compatible systems (e.g., Ubuntu phones) The new theme The Yaru Community theme -- the theme for Ubuntu 10.18 -- is included with Ubuntu 18.10 along with a new desktop wallpaper that displays an artistic rendition of a cuttlefish (a marine animal related to squid, octopuses, and nautiluses).To read this article in full, please click here
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Using nmap on your home network
Nmap, the "network mapper" has long been used on corporate networks to collect information on desktop systems and servers. The tool provides information on the systems and services that are running (i.e., open ports). It can also help to identify rogue systems and vulnerabilities. Nmap makes it easy to detect changes as well as new systems on the network. Typical uses include: host discovery -- probing by IP address and providing information on the systems that respond port scanning -- identifying services that are available for use version detection -- identifying applications and their versions OS detection -- determining the operating system along with some hardware characteristics Sysadmins have been installing nmap on Linux for more than 20 years. Originally released in 1997, nmap has since that time become available for Windows and other Unix variants as well. In fact, it's considered a standard security tool and is a free and open source security scanner. It's typically used in corporate settings for collecting information on systems and doing security analysis.To read this article in full, please click here
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Red Hat underpins the growing importance of Linux and open source
While you may not spend a lot of time thinking about this, the role Linux plays in the technology that we all use everyday is growing quite significantly. In an effort to more fully appreciate this, I had an opportunity to speak with the new vice resident and general manager of Red Hat's RHEL Business Unit — Dr. Stefanie Chiras — and ask about her vision for RHEL and Linux in general. She was very enthusiastic — not just for Red Hat, but for the open source movement overall and the rising importance of Linux.Chiras started with Red Hat in July — not quite four months ago — and already describes herself as a “true Red Hatter.” She explained that she has had a serious focus on Linux for the last six years or more. As she points out, we all do development differently these days because of the open source movement. The changes in just the last five years have moved us to very different ways of doing things whether we're working on public or private clouds, containers, or bare metal.To read this article in full, please click here
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Making better use of your Linux logs
Linux systems maintain quite a collection of log files, many of which you are probably rarely tempted to view. Some of these log files are quite valuable though and options for exploring them might be more interesting and varied than you imagine. Let's look at some system logs and get a handle on some of the ways in which log data might be easier to probe.Log file rotation First, there's the issue of log rotation. Some Linux log files are “rotated”. In other words, the system stores more than one "generation" of these files, mostly to keep them from using too much disk space. The older logs are then compressed, but left available for a while. Eventually, the oldest in a series of rotated log files will be automatically deleted in the log rotation process, but you’ll still have access to a number of the older logs so that you can examine log entries that were added in the last few days or weeks when and if you need to look a little further back into some issue you're tracking.To read this article in full, please click here
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The future of networking: Open networking is the ‘new norm’
If you weren’t in Amsterdam last week, you missed an extremely exciting conference – the Open Networking Summit Europe 2018. This Linux Foundation event drew more than 700 networking, development and operations leaders and enterprise users from open source service providers, cloud companies, and more.Chief among the conference themes was the idea that open networking is the "new norm," with lots of vendors attesting to how this theme is playing out in the IT industry. The conference drew both business and technical leaders focused on networking beyond software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) with deep technical tracks and opportunities for attendees to learn from peers across the industry.To read this article in full, please click here
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The future of networking: Open networking is the ‘new norm’
If you weren’t in Amsterdam last week, you missed an extremely exciting conference – the Open Networking Summit Europe 2018. This Linux Foundation event drew more than 700 networking, development and operations leaders and enterprise users from open source service providers, cloud companies, and more.Chief among the conference themes was the idea that open networking is the "new norm," with lots of vendors attesting to how this theme is playing out in the IT industry. The conference drew both business and technical leaders focused on networking beyond software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) with deep technical tracks and opportunities for attendees to learn from peers across the industry.To read this article in full, please click here
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The future of networking: Open source networking is the ‘new norm’
If you weren’t in Amsterdam last week, you missed an extremely exciting conference – the Open Networking Summit Europe 2018. This Linux Foundation event drew more than 700 networking, development and operations leaders and enterprise users from open source service providers, cloud companies, and more.Chief among the conference themes was the idea that open source networking is the "new norm," with lots of vendors attesting to how this theme is playing out in the IT industry. Dan Kohn who leads the Linux Foundation's Cloud Native Computing Foundation cites cost savings, improved resilience and higher development velocity for both bug fixes and the rolling out of new features for this change. Arpit Joshipura, General Manager of Networking at The Linux Foundation used the term "open-sourcification" in his keynote.To read this article in full, please click here
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The future of networking: Open source networking is the ‘new norm’
If you weren’t in Amsterdam last week, you missed an extremely exciting conference – the Open Networking Summit Europe 2018. This Linux Foundation event drew more than 700 networking, development and operations leaders and enterprise users from open source service providers, cloud companies, and more.Chief among the conference themes was the idea that open source networking is the "new norm," with lots of vendors attesting to how this theme is playing out in the IT industry. Dan Kohn who leads the Linux Foundation's Cloud Native Computing Foundation cites cost savings, improved resilience and higher development velocity for both bug fixes and the rolling out of new features for this change. Arpit Joshipura, General Manager of Networking at The Linux Foundation used the term "open-sourcification" in his keynote.To read this article in full, please click here
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Fedora 29 beta announced today
The Fedora Project today announced the beta availability of Fedora 29 — the latest version of the free and open-source Fedora OS. The major additions to this release include: Modularity support across all editions, allowing multiple versions of the same software (e.g., node.js) to be selected on a per-system basis and then deployed through containers Better performance and reliability for ARM single boards (such as Pi) given enhanced ZRAM support for swap on ARMv7 and aarch64 The "freeze" (moving Fedora 29 out of the "beta" stage) is expected on October 9, 2018.To read this article in full, please click here
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Fedora Project announces availability of Fedora 29 beta
The Fedora Project says the Fedora 29 beta is now availalbe — the latest version of the free and open-source Fedora OS. The major additions to this release include: Modularity support across all editions, allowing multiple versions of the same software (e.g., node.js) to be selected on a per-system basis and then deployed through containers Better performance and reliability for ARM single boards (such as Pi) given enhanced ZRAM support for swap on ARMv7 and aarch64 The "freeze" (moving Fedora 29 out of the "beta" stage) is expected on October 9.To read this article in full, please click here
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Why Linux users should try Rust
Rust is a fairly young and modern programming language with a lot of features that make it incredibly flexible and very secure. It's also becoming quite popular, having won first place for the "most loved programming language" in the Stack Overflow Developer Survey three years in a row — 2016, 2017, and 2018.To read this article in full, please click here
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How to list repositories on Linux
A Linux repository is a storage location from which your system retrieves and installs OS updates and applications. Each repository is a collection of software hosted on a remote server and intended to be used for installing and updating software packages on Linux systems. When you run commands such as “sudo apt update” or “sudo apt upgrade”, you may be pulling package information and package updates from a number of repositories.Repositories contain thousands of programs. Standard repositories provide a high degree of security, since the software included is thoroughly tested and built to be compatible with a particular distribution and version. So, you can expect the updates to occur with no unexpected "side effects."To read this article in full, please click here
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Linux tricks that even you can love
Good Linux command line tricks don’t only save you time and trouble. They also help you remember and reuse complex commands, making it easier for you to focus on what you need to do, not how you should go about doing it. In this post, we’ll look at some handy command line tricks that you might come to appreciate.Editing your commands When making changes to a command that you're about to run on the command line, you can move your cursor to the beginning or the end of the command line to facilitate your changes using the ^a (control key plus “a”) and ^e (control key plus “e”) sequences.You can also fix and rerun a previously entered command with an easy text substitution by putting your before and after strings between ^ characters -- as in ^before^after^.To read this article in full, please click here
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Linux tricks that can save you time and trouble
Good Linux command line tricks don’t only save you time and trouble. They also help you remember and reuse complex commands, making it easier for you to focus on what you need to do, not how you should go about doing it. In this post, we’ll look at some handy command line tricks that you might come to appreciate.Editing your commands When making changes to a command that you're about to run on the command line, you can move your cursor to the beginning or the end of the command line to facilitate your changes using the ^a (control key plus “a”) and ^e (control key plus “e”) sequences.You can also fix and rerun a previously entered command with an easy text substitution by putting your before and after strings between ^ characters -- as in ^before^after^.To read this article in full, please click here
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How to pin a pile of addresses onto a Google map
Turning a list of names, addresses and related information into a Google map is a lot easier than you might think. The effort required depends, as you might imagine, on the information that you starting with. But if the format is fairly consistent, it’s relatively easy to massage the information into a form that can be uploaded into a format that works.First, what you can expect Once you’ve loaded a list of names and addresses into a Google map, you will be able view the location of each person and set up your map such that clicking on any of the map markers displays the information collected for that address.To read this article in full, please click here
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Linux kernel 4.18: Better security, leaner code
The recent release of Linux kernel 4.18 followed closely by the releases of 4.18.1, 4.18.2, 4.18.3, 4.18.4, and 4.18.5 brings some important changes to the Linux landscape along with a boatload of tweaks, fixes, and improvements.While many of the more significant changes might knock the socks off developers who have been aiming at these advancements for quite some time, the bulk of them are likely to go unnoticed by the broad expanse of Linux users. Here we take a look at some of the things this new kernel brings to our systems that might just make your something-to-get-a-little-excited-about list.[ Also read: Invaluable tips and tricks for troubleshooting Linux ] Code Cleanup For one thing, the 4.18 kernel has brought about the surprising removal of nearly 100,000 lines of outdated code. That's a lot of code! Does this mean that any of your favorite features may have been ripped out? That is not very likely. This code cleanup does means that a lot of code deadwood has been carefully expunged from the kernel along with one significant chunk. As a result, the new kernel should take up less memory, Continue reading
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Is the Linux 4.18 kernel heading your way?
How soon the 4.18 kernel lands on your system or network depends a lot on which Linux distributions you use. It may be heading your way or you may already be using it.If you have ever wondered whether the same kernel is used in all Linux distributions, the answer is that all Linux distributions use the same kernel more or less but there are several big considerations that make that "more or less" quite significant. Most distributions add or remove code to make the kernel work best for them. Some of these changes might eventually work their way back to the top of the code heap where they will be merged into the mainstream, but they'll make the distribution's kernel unique -- at least for a while. Some releases intentionally hold back and don't use the very latest version of the kernel in order to ensure a more predictable and stable environment. This is particularly true of versions that are targeted for commercial distribution. For example, RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Edition) will not be nearly as aggressively updated as Fedora. Some distributions use a fork called Linux-libre, which is Linux without any proprietary drivers built in. It omits software Continue reading
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How the L1 Terminal Fault vulnerability affects Linux systems
Announced just yesterday in security advisories from Intel, Microsoft and Red Hat, a newly discovered vulnerability affecting Intel processors (and, thus, Linux) called L1TF or “L1 Terminal Fault” is grabbing the attention of Linux users and admins. Exactly what is this vulnerability and who should be worrying about it?L1TF, L1 Terminal Fault, and Foreshadow The processor vulnerability goes by any of those names. Researchers who discovered the problem back in January and reported it to Intel called it "Foreshadow". It is similar to vulnerabilities discovered in the past (such as Spectre).This vulnerability is Intel-specific. Other processors are not affected. And like some other vulnerabilities, it exists because of design choices that were implemented to optimize kernel processing speed but exposed data in ways that allowed access by other processes.To read this article in full, please click here
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How the L1 Terminal Fault vulnerability affects Linux systems
Announced just yesterday in security advisories from Intel, Microsoft and Red Hat, a newly discovered vulnerability affecting Intel processors (and, thus, Linux) called L1TF or “L1 Terminal Fault” is grabbing the attention of Linux users and admins. Exactly what is this vulnerability and who should be worrying about it?L1TF, L1 Terminal Fault, and Foreshadow The processor vulnerability goes by L1TF, L1 Terminal Fault, and Foreshadow. Researchers who discovered the problem back in January and reported it to Intel called it "Foreshadow". It is similar to vulnerabilities discovered in the past (such as Spectre).This vulnerability is Intel-specific. Other processors are not affected. And like some other vulnerabilities, it exists because of design choices that were implemented to optimize kernel processing speed but exposed data in ways that allowed access by other processes.To read this article in full, please click here
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How the L1 Terminal Fault vulnerability affects Linux systems
Announced just yesterday in security advisories from Intel, Microsoft and Red Hat, a newly discovered vulnerability affecting Intel processors (and, thus, Linux) called L1TF or “L1 Terminal Fault” is grabbing the attention of Linux users and admins. Exactly what is this vulnerability and who should be worrying about it?L1TF, L1 Terminal Fault, and Foreshadow The processor vulnerability goes by L1TF, L1 Terminal Fault, and Foreshadow. Researchers who discovered the problem back in January and reported it to Intel called it "Foreshadow". It is similar to vulnerabilities discovered in the past (such as Spectre).This vulnerability is Intel-specific. Other processors are not affected. And like some other vulnerabilities, it exists because of design choices that were implemented to optimize kernel processing speed but exposed data in ways that allowed access by other processes.To read this article in full, please click here