RedHat’s loss, Ubuntu’s Win

The Linux world was almost shell-shocked last week over Red Hat’s announcement that the company won’t be focusing on the desktop market.

Here’s the meat of the announcement:

It’s worth pointing out what’s missing in the list above: we have no plans to create a traditional desktop product for the consumer market in the foreseeable future.

An explanation: as a public, for-profit company, Red Hat must create products and technologies with an eye on the bottom line, and with desktops this is much harder to do than with servers. The desktop market suffers from having one dominant vendor, and some people still perceive that today’s Linux desktops simply don’t provide a practical alternative. Of course, a growing number of technically savvy users and companies have discovered that today’s Linux desktop is indeed a practical alternative. Nevertheless, building a sustainable business around the Linux desktop is tough, and history is littered with example efforts that have either failed outright, are stalled or are run as charities. But there’s good news too. Technical developments that have become available over the past year or two are accelerating the spread of the Linux Desktop.

But I have been thinking, why would RH want to do this? Over the years, RedHat was *the* brand that was almost synonymous with Linux which has support. Corporates and businesses when asked the techies “who will support open source” almost always got some pointers in RedHat’s direction. And then this!

What is Red Hat really scared of - Microsoft? But this exit of RedHat will announce in no uncertain terms the victory of Ubuntu too! Today, if XP etc rule the desktop market, Ubuntu has slowly got the mindshare of the Linux users and is the most dominant Linux distribution today.

Does Red Hat’s exit now leave the desktop Linux field open to Ubuntu? I would say, yes!

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RedHat giving out  statements of un-profitability and un-viability of Linux for Desktop has not been the end of the world. This has reinforced the determination of some of the other players! Check this out - $549 Eee PC 900 is ready to hit the US market on May 12 ($549 is the list price for the new ultralight notebook).

The Eee PC 900, which the Taipei-based computer maker unveiled last Tuesday, can be configured with either Microsoft Corp.’s Windows XP Home or the open-source Linux. The price for both configurations, said an Asustek spokesman, is identical: $549.

But there are differences. Users who purchase an Eee PC 900 with Linux, however, receive a laptop that boasts 20GB of flash memory-based storage space. Customers who opt for Windows XP, meanwhile, end up with a machine equipped with only 12GB of solid-state storage.

When asked why the two models pack different quantities of storage space — and whether the lesser amount was stuck in the XP version because of the licensing fees Asustek must pay to Microsoft — Asustek spokesman Charlton Ho called it a “strategic decision.”

“Cost would be one of the reasons, but not the main one,” Ho said in an e-mail. He then proceeded to trumpet the Linux-based system. “Also, [the] Linux version is our main Eee PC model with our unique interface, so the consumer not only can get the great and easy-to-use interface on the Linux version but extra storage space,” Ho added.

Both Windows and Linux models pack an 8.9-in. screen, 1GB of system memory, a 1.3-megapixel camera and an Apple MacBook Air-style multi-touch trackpad.

This is the second ultralight line from Asustek that offers XP as an option; it currently sells a Eee PC with a 7-in. display in the U.S. for $399.

Window XP, which is to disappear as an option on most new computers after June 30, was granted a reprieve of sorts two weeks ago, when Microsoft said it would allow OEMs building what it called ultra low-cost PC (ULCPC) laptops to pre-install XP Home until the end of June 2010.

The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the Release Candidate for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Long-Term Support) on desktop and server. Codenamed “Hardy Heron”, 8.04 LTS continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.

We consider this release candidate to be complete, stable, and suitable for testing by any user.

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition features incremental improvements to familiar applications, with an emphasis on stability for this second Ubuntu long-term support release, and is easier than ever to try out with the new Wubi installer.

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition follows in the footsteps of Ubuntu 7.10 with even more virtualization support and security enhancements - enabling AppArmor for more applications by default, improving protection of kernel memory against attacks, and supporting KVM and iSCSI technologies out of the
box.

The Ubuntu 8.04 LTS family of variants, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, UbuntuStudio, and Mythbuntu, also reach RC status today. The final release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS is scheduled for 24 April 2008 and will be supported for three years on the desktop and five years on the server.

Source: ubuntu list

Recently, both Novell and Red Hat went on record as dismissing the idea that the consumer Linux desktop is going to be taking off anytime soon. It’s not? Has anyone told Asus and Xandros? Everex and gOS? How about Dell and Ubuntu? They’re all doing great with consumer Linux desktops.

Novell actually isn’t taking an extreme position on the consumer Linux desktop. Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian on April 15th in India, according to an InfoWorld report, simply said that the consumer market is taking longer to develop than the business market and that “The market for the desktop for the next three to five years is mainly enterprise-related.”

OK, fair enough. I think the consumer Linux desktop is growing faster than he does, but he’s certainly right when he says that the Linux desktop is going to grow faster still in business. I mean, there must be some enterprises moving to Microsoft Vista, I just don’t happen to know of any.

For businesses that want a desktop upgrade and get ill at the very thought of dealing with Vista’s woes, SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) 10 SP1 deserves serious consideration. That’s especially true since businesses can now buy SLED pre-installed on Lenovo ThinkPads and the HP Mini.

Red Hat, though, in their announcement that they were giving up on their consumer Linux desktop plans went overboard. In their blog post, the Red Hat desktop team declared, “The desktop market suffers from having one dominant vendor, and some people still perceive that today’s Linux desktops simply don’t provide a practical alternative.”

And this is news how? Linux, not just the desktop, but the now popular server, still suffered from fools that don’t realize it’s a mature, business and home ready operating system. If Red Hat had started out with a similar attitude when the company started that Microsoft and the Unix companies had too strong a hold on servers and that people didn’t understand Linux could work for them, Red Hat would be long dead. If you don’t believe in your product, how can you expect anyone else to?

The Red Hat desktop team then went on, “Of course, a growing number of technically savvy users and companies have discovered that today’s Linux desktop is indeed a practical alternative. Nevertheless, building a sustainable business around the Linux desktop is tough, and history is littered with example efforts that have either failed outright, are stalled or are run as charities.”

Sure, it’s tough. Selling anything new is always tough. Most businesses, whether it’s selling pizzas or operating systems fail. If you can’t deal with it, go get a job flipping burgers.

But, here’s the point Red Hat, there are businesses working with the Linux desktop that have not failed, not stalled and, frankly, I’m not even what you’re talking about when you mention charities. OLPC (One Laptop per Child)? The project is meant to do good, but it’s also meant to pay for its own. The OLPC sells XO laptops, it doesn’t give them away.

In fact, if you follow what’s been happening with the Linux desktop, you’ll see it’s doing great. Asus sold 300-thousand of its Eee PC series running Xandros Linux last year. This year, the Taiwanese company expects to sell 2-million of them. Sounds to me like desktop Linux is doing pretty darn good for them.

Everex hasn’t released numbers for its gOS-powered gPCs, but from all reports this Google-oriented Linux PC is doing quite well. Dell’s been selling some of its PCs with Ubuntu Linux for closing in on a year now. While, Dell won’t give out sales numbers either, as Todd Weiss reports in ComputerWorld, Dell spokesperson Anne Camden said, A [sales] number is not going to validate it as much as our actions to date.” Those actions have been to continue to add new Ubuntu-powered models like the Dell Inspiron 1525 and updating their systems with Ubuntu 7.10 and the ability to play DVDs..

Those are just the big success stories. You also have major retailers like Amazon, Best Buy and Sears now selling pre-installed Linux PCs. And, thanks to the Vista flop, Windows PC sales are actually declining.

Put it all together and what do you get? You get the best time ever for the consumer Linux desktop to gain customers’ attention. So, why is Novell lukewarm and Red Hat downright cool about home Linux?

Part of it is simply their business plans. Novell wants the business Linux server and desktop market. Red Hat is focusing on its servers and JBoss. But, you know what? I think some of this, especially from Red Hat’s tone, is simple, good old-fashioned jealousy.

Consumer Linux is now a success. But, it’s not Red Hat’s success. It’s the success of gOS, a distribution that came out of the blue late last year. It’s the success of Xandros, the oldest desktop Linux distribution but one that has never been that popular. And, last but perhaps most tellingly, it’s the success of Ubuntu.

There was a time when if you said Linux, people immediately thought of Red Hat. Now, except in server circles, if you say Linux chance are your listeners will be thinking of Ubuntu. Oh, and have I mentioned that Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu is targeting servers now? Could Red Hat be getting just a wee-bit jealous of the little people-friendly Linux that could? I think they just might be.

Concurrent, a supplier of Linux for driving time critical applications - such as intercepting ballistic missiles - released RedHawk Linux 5.1, its latest “real-time” operating system distribution.

Concurrent is a Linux distributor specializing in real-time technologies that can be utilized by some very serious businesses. For example, Concurrent is the key supplier of RedHawk Linux for the US Navy’s Aegis cruisers, which are equipped with anti-air, anti-surface, and anti-submarine weapons systems.

The company’s trademark architecture relies on the presence of multiple processors, and the ability to schedule threading between CPUs and cores to ensure higher reliability for user tasks, as opposed to hardware-specific tasks. One way it does this is through a mechanism Concurrent calls processor shielding, which grants higher priorities to selected cores that run user applications…such as anti-submarine algorithmic operations.”When the worst-case time measured for either executing a code segment or response to an interrupt is significantly different than the typical case, the application’s performance is said to be experiencing jitter. Because of computer architecture features such as memory caches and because of contention for shared resources, there will always be some amount of jitter in measurements of execution times,” reads a Concurrent white paper on the subject (PDF available here).

“Real-time applications are defined by the fact that they must respond to real world events within a predetermined deadline. Computations that are completed after this deadline are considered incorrect. This means that the worst-case jitter the operating system allows determines whether that operating system is suitable for hosting a given real-time application. Each real-time application must define the amount of jitter that is acceptable to that application.”

As the white paper goes on, high-priority tasks are granted to shielded CPUs, while hardware interrupts are assigned to the others.

In the multi-core era, it becomes possible to segment processor resources and architecture more granularly. So the most noteworthy new features of RedHawk Linux 5.1 is Intel and AMD quad-core processor support, plus support for non-uniform memory architecture (NUMA) used by AMD processors.

NUMA enables separate cores to access different segments of memory without having to utilize the same stream. Real-time processes are able to work faster using NUMA because all processes are local to a particular node and will not be shared or interrupted by another page trying to use the same node.

NUMA is more important for companies using real-time Linux operating systems because they need reliable access to time-critical environment situations that may not be met by a regular Linux OS. NUMA is used by AMD processors today, and will being integrated into the next generation of 45 nm Intel CPUs. Previous Intel Xeon and Pentium processors used a shared pool of memory that each processor was forced to access using a memory controller hub or front-side bus.

Source: BetaNews

Kees Cook of the Ubuntu Security Team has discovered a security hole in Xpdf and libraries and applications based on it, via which attackers can inject and execute malicious code using crafted PDF files. The hole can be exploited merely by opening the PDF file.

The problem is caused by inadequate checking while typefaces embedded in PDF files are being processed, but no further details are known as yet. When manipulated PDF files are opened, injected code can be executed with the user’s rights. An entry has already been added to the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database, but it gives no further details.

In addition to Xpdf, affected software includes the poppler project and, in some Linux distributions, also KOffice, if code from Xpdf is statically linked in, as is the case with Ubuntu. Several Linux distributors are already issuing updated Xpdf, poppler and KOffice packages that fix the problem. Administrators should install these updates without delay.

See also:

• New xpdf packages fix arbitrary code execution, vulnerability report by the Debian developers
• poppler vulnerability, vulnerability report by Kees Cook of the Ubuntu Security Team
• KOffice vulnerability, vulnerability report by Kees Cook of the Ubuntu Security Team

Source: heise-online.co.uk

“It’s been long promised, but there it is now,” began Linux creator Linus Torvalds, announcing the 2.6.25 Linux kernel. He continued, “special thanks to Ingo who found and fixed a nasty-looking regression that turned out to not be a regression at all, but an old bug that just had not been triggering as reliably before. That said, that was just the last particular regression fix I was holding things up for, and it’s not like there weren’t a lot of other fixes too, they just didn’t end up being the final things that triggered my particular worries.” Linus added:

“The full changelog from 2.6.24 is 7.5M, with a 12MB compressed patch. Tons and tons has changed, but if you’ve been following the -rc releases, you’ll already know about the big things. The changes from the last rc (-rc9) are fairly small and mostly pretty trivial, and the shortlog is appended. So it’s mostly one-liners, with some updates to drivers (net and usb) and to networking that are a bit larger (although a number of the driver updates are things like just new ID’s etc).”

More information about the latest release can be found on the KernelNewbies Linux 2.6.25 wiki page.

It’s been long promised, but there it is now. Special thanks to Ingo who
found and fixed a nasty-looking regression that turned out to not be a
regression at all, but an old bug that just had not been triggering as
reliably before.

That said, that was just the last particular regression fix I was holding
things up for, and it’s not like there weren’t a lot of other fixes too,
they just didn’t end up being the final things that triggered my
particular worries.

The full changelog from 2.6.24 is 7.5M, with a 12MB compressed patch. Tons
and tons has changed, but if you’ve been following the -rc releases,
you’ll already know about the big things. The changes from the last rc
(-rc9) are fairly small and mostly pretty trivial, and the shortlog is
appended.

So it’s mostly one-liners, with some updates to drivers (net and usb) and
to networking that are a bit larger (although a number of the driver
updates are things like just new ID’s etc).

For those of you who haven’t followed -rc’s, and want the more readable
overview of what has changed since 2.6.24, I’d suggest the usual sites,
notably http://kernelnewbies.org/.

And a reminder for git users: while the _full_ changelogs are huge and
unwieldly and you easily lose sight of the big picture from just bring
overwhelmed by the details, if you’re interested in some particular
subsystem, using “gitk v2.6.24.. <path-limiter>” is a good way to see what
has changed in that particular area.

Linus

It is heartening to read Computerworld talk of Linux going mainstream with Ubuntu.

“If there is a single complaint that is laid at the feet of Linux time and time again, it’s that the operating system is too complicated and arcane for casual computer users to tolerate. You can’t ask newbies to install device drivers or recompile the kernel, naysayers argue.

Of course, many of those criticisms date back to the bad old days, but Ubuntu, the user-friendly distribution sponsored by Mark Shuttleworth’s Canonical Ltd., has made a mission out of dispelling such complaints entirely.”

…

“One of the killer features of Ubuntu is that the installation media is also a “live CD.” This means that you can boot it off the CD and try it out first before installing it. (You can also set Ubuntu up to boot off a USB drive.) In other words, you can make sure that all your hardware will work correctly and that you’re happy with the look and feel of the operating system before committing yourself to anything permanent. You can also carry it around and use it to boot up a friend’s computer under Ubuntu.

And when you do install it, you’ll be asked a minimum of questions, and none of them are in the least challenging to anyone who has ever installed Windows. The install is even smart enough to help you resize an existing Windows partition (even Vista!) to set up a dual-boot system and set the boot menu to handle it.”

Aha! But how many of the “casual computer users” install Windows in the first place (and why are we comparing that anyway)? Ubuntu may make installation easy - but the “casual computer users” who is used to the mouse and file-manager to do all things, would you even want to talk of shell scripts?

Is (was) Linux targeted towards the “casual computer users” in the first place?

Not too sure about that. If you look at how Linux interfaces looked 10 years back, definitely no. I remember I used to hack around the *vms and make the desktop look as bright as other OSs. Things definitely have changed, but the reputation has lingered. Linux still remains an enigma to the masses. It always was like that. Windows for masses. Mac for the passionates. *nix for the programmers.

I do wish that Ubuntu or the latest flavours of Linux makes that dent in the casual users minds. Ubuntu is ready for the millions of office workers and people who only do e-mail, word processing, and web browsing. People don’t need to know that there is a Linux kernel underneath, though the Software Update application will remind them occasionally.

For someone who wants to do more, they have to learn a lot to get things done, unlike Windows or Mac OS X. Either commercial software has to arrive or free software has to evolve past a programmer’s paradise.