Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Linux. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Linux. Sort by date Show all posts

Linux Kernel 3.0



Last week began with speculation about a new kernel version number that ultimately resulted in the first big number change for Linux in more than a decade. Along the way, we also saw new Linux distribution releases, including Fedora 15 and the first beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7.

1. Linux 3.0

Make no mistake about it, after two decades of being the leader of the Linux community, Linus Torvalds still makes the big decisions.
This week, Torvalds made the huge decision of starting a new numbered version of Linux, advancing the kernel to Linux 3.0, with a first release candidate debuting early Sunday. The Linux 3.0 kernel came after a week of discussion, which began with Torvalds first mentioning that he was considering advancing the number to Linux 2.8, instead of having a Linux 2.6.40 kernel release. "The voices in my head also tell me that the numbers are getting too big," Torvalds wrote in a mailing list posting. By the end of the week, Torvalds was advocating for a 3.0 release, as Linux is now entering its third decade. While big number version changes can often represent binary compatibility or big feature change issue with a software project, that's not the case with Linux 3.0. The 3.0 nameplate is a time-based thing, and it isn't about new features. Considering Linux 2.0 came out in 1996 and the more recent 2.6 branch began in 2003, the big number change is a long time coming for Linux. While some software projects, like Google's Chrome, change major version numbers every three months, Linux has iterated on the 2.6.x branch for more than seven years. The change to 3.0 may seem a bit arbitrary, but it makes sense on many levels. The time has come for a number change as Linux enters its third decade.

2. Fedora 15

This past week also marked the debut of Fedora 15, codenamed 'Lovelock.' While Linux 3.0 isn't about new features, Fedora 15 is about features, most notably the GNOME 3.0 desktop. Fedora 15 is the first of the big Linux distributions to integrate GNOME 3 and its associated GNOME Shell user interface. Fedora 15's GNOME 3 desktop stands in contrast to the Unity desktop that rival distribution Ubuntu debuted in April. While Fedora is a big backer of GNOME Shell, the project also realizes it's not for everyone and includes fallback mechanisms for older hardware as well as other desktop options, including KDE, Xfce and LXDE. Time will tell whether users prefer GNOME Shell to Unity or if they end up rejecting both desktops in favor of something else.

3. Linux Mint 11

For Ubuntu users that don't want Unity and don't want to move to Fedora (or something else), there is Linux Mint. Over the past couple of years, Mint has emerged as a community favorite alternative to Ubuntu. Based on Ubuntu, Mint takes the best of Ubuntu and aims to make it even easier to use. For GNOME users, Mint has elected not to use either GNOME shell or Unity, providing users with a more traditional user interface. Given the backlash in some corners against Unity on Ubuntu, it's likely that Linux Mint 11 will attract more than its fair share of Ubuntu 11.04 refugees. Will those former Ubuntu users stick with Mint over time? Considering Mint is based on Ubuntu, that's a bet that doesn't carry too much risk.

4. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7

No, it's not a major new version number of Red Hat's Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but RHEL 5.7 is still an important release. This past week, Red Hat released the first beta of RHEL 5.7 with new driver and stability updates. RHEL 5.0 first came out in 2007 and has since been superseded by RHEL 6, which came out at the end of 2010. There is a class of users that don't magically switch overnight to major new releases (if ever) and that's why RHEL 5.7 is important. Looking beyond the usual set of driver updates, Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) also packed in at least one new feature too. RHEL 5.7 supports OpenSCAP, which is an open source implementation of the Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) framework for creating a standardized approach for maintaining secure systems. While RHEL 5.7 isn't a major new release, for Red Hat's RHEL 5 customer base, it's a solid update that will refresh their installed servers.

5. Puppy Linux

Linux users come in all shapes and sizes. While big vendors like Red Hat target mission-critical enterprise systems, other distros, like Puppy Linux, serve a different audience. Wary Puppy Linux is a minimal Linux distributions that requires less hardware resources than other distros. This makes it ideal for older hardware that other distros (and any other OS) would deem to be obsolete. This past week Wary Puppy Linux 5.1.2 was released with the promise of even better support for older hardware.


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Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.2 Released



After RHEL 6.2 Beta now Red Hat the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2. With this milestone, Red Hat includes many enhancements that deliver benefits spanning multiple areas, including performance and scalability. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 operating system achieved the largest multi-core Linux configuration results certified to-date on the two-tier SAP® Sales and Distribution (SD) standard application benchmark.1 Proven to perform and scale, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 effectively supports large, mission-critical enterprise computing environments.
Vice President and General Manager, Platform Business Unit at Red Hat, said, “The exciting features in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 with new impressive SAP® benchmark results allow our enterprise customers to have increased confidence that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 can run their enterprise workloads with high performance across physical, virtual and cloud computing environments.”
Enterprises can confidently migrate to the latest multi-core technology with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. On the latest two-tier SAP SD standard application benchmark, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 achieved more than 22,000 SAP SD benchmark users on a single system. On this same benchmark, the HP DL980 G7 system running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 fully utilized all 80 cores and 160 threads in the 8-processor system running MaxDB 7.8 and the SAP enhancement package 4 for the SAP ERP 6.0 application. This is the largest Linux result submitted to SAP to-date. The results demonstrate the capabilities of the HP ProLiant DL980 G7 8-processor system’s PREMA architecture and smart CPU caching technology. Results are as of December 2, 2011, certification number 2011052.
“Clients need solutions to automate, scale-up or virtualize their environments to best fit their business requirements,” said Martin Whittaker, vice president, Systems and Solutions Engineering, Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking at HP. “Optimizing Red Hat Enterprise Linux on HP ProLiant DL980 systems extends the power of open source to HP Converged Infrastructure, delivering uptime, increased capacity and faster processing speeds.”
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 delivers significant improvements in resource management and high availability, as well as new features aimed at storage and file system performance and identity management. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 provides additional capabilities to manage system resources. For service providers or internal IT organizations that deliver applications or hosted services via multi-tenant environments, maximums can be set for CPU time associated with a given application, business process or a virtual machine. This allows for more efficient management of SLAs and enables the ability to implement service priorities, similar to those associated with network Quality of Service (QoS).

When an enterprise deploys its applications to run in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 guest hosted by VMware, the applications can now be utilized for High Availability (HA) Add-Ons. This also includes full support for use of GFS2 shared storage file system by the virtual machines. The result is additional deployment flexibility for customers requiring HA within a portion of their virtualized environment, as well as full support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the VMware hypervisor.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 adds enhancements to storage and file system features including full support of iSCSI extension for RDMA. Now, benefits of low latency and high throughput through a standard SAN implementation based on 10Gb Ethernet are available to even the most demanding storage environments. This allows customers to opt out of expensive Infiniband hardware or other dedicated interconnect fabrics. Other enhancements around file system include delayed meta data logging, asynchronous and parallel file system writes, as well as support for multiple active instances of Samba in a cluster which improves overall throughput and increases availability for large Samba clustered deployments.

Identity Management:-
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 provides the administrative tools to quickly install, configure and manage server authentication and authorization in Linux/Unix enterprise environments, while still providing the option to interoperate with Microsoft Active Directory. This enables enterprises to manage Linux infrastructure easily and cost-effectively. Centralized identity management and host-based access control can reduce administrative overhead, streamlines provisioning and improves security.

Performance:- 
Is key to all customers. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 continues to put an emphasis on accelerating I/O such as network traffic steering to improve network throughput by as much as 30 percent in performance tests conducted by Red Hat and delivering numerous file system enhancements that reduce read-write times and boost overall system utilization.

Red Hat expects to deliver the beta for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.8 later this month. Also fully underway is development for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, the next major release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Red Hat received an outstanding response from all Red Hat subscribers – users and partners – for requested features coming from the recent Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Ideas discussion group posted on the Red Hat customer portal. This important feedback allows Red Hat to continue to make Red Hat Enterprise Linux a computing foundation for the next generation of operating system platforms.

For More Information, New Technical Features and Benefits document Click Here



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Seven key to get sucess in Linux

The Linux operating system materialized through the work of Linus Torvalds, a Finnish student who introduced the first release in 1991 as an open source version of UNIX for x86 PCs. Although it wasn't the first open source version of UNIX, the unique advantages of Linux soon attracted a following, and it quickly emerged as a viable operating system alternative. The combination of x86-based virtualization and the widespread adoption of Linux eventually opened the door to a new era of business computing, fueling major changes to today's business information technology landscape.

Seven keys to success:
  1. Define business level objectives.
  2. Survey the application landscape.
  3. Develop a scalable infrastructure blueprint.
  4. Identify the right project.
  5. Conduct pilot studies.
  6. Start the production rollout.
  7. Transition to continuous process improvement.

Today almost every organization has open source technology somewhere in their IT environment, usually in the form of Linux. For example, Linux provides the underlying plumbing for much of the Internet and World Wide Web. In short, Linux has arrived as a mainstream operating system for organizations everywhere and it now plays an integral role in business computing.
While Linux has become a mainstream business technology, it's not foolproof. Successful Linux migrations should be well planned and deliberately executed. Although there's no real substitute for qualified and experienced Linux professionals - with basic IT competency your organization can follow these steps for a successful Linux migration.
1. Define Business-Level Objectives
To begin, you should understand your organization's business strategy. Find a pragmatic balance between the applications that represent parity services for your organization and those that serve your business strategy and provide a competitive advantage. From there, you can define your business-level objective and align your business needs with your IT capabilities and expected workloads. Doing this work at the outset helps you to ensure flexibility, stability, and sufficient performance to meet your business objectives at the lowest cost of ownership while avoiding vendor lock-in.
2. Survey the Application Landscape
Next, survey your application landscape. At one time, not every application could be moved to Linux, so you didn't have the option of skipping this step. However, virtually all applications today run on Linux or have suitable Linux equivalents. Nevertheless, this important step lets you rationalize your application environment: separate the applications that perform useful work from the applications that consume resources but are never or rarely used - also known as "shelfware."
In addition to eliminating shelfware, you want to cull overlapping and redundant applications. Again, they take resources without advancing your business-level objectives. Finally, this gives you an opportunity to identify and document the interrelationships between applications and systems so you understand the various dependencies between them, such as applications that require data processed by other applications.
3. Develop a Scalable Infrastructure Blueprint
If, after you examine your current application environment, you find that you can directly apply Linux and open source to your business and its computing requirements, you should begin developing an appropriate Linux infrastructure blueprint. Because Linux and open source have spawned new approaches and methods for deploying your application infrastructures, you have a surprising number of choices. At this point, you want two things from your infrastructure: a solid, reliable base on which to run your applications and - since every business intends to grow - a scalable, flexible, extensible, and dynamic platform that can grow and change with your business.
4. Identify the Right Project
This step is more complicated than merely choosing one of the applications from the first step. For this, you'll need your financial analysis and management skills. To move forward, secure management commitment and executive-level sponsorship from the outset. You don't want to start this level of infrastructure change without support from top management and a specific, named champion at the top. Generally, it's easiest for you to secure this level of management support through an objective financial analysis that documents proper validation and justification for the business-level objectives you identified in the first step. You'll need to identify the business drivers and assess the return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO) considerations and implications, making sure to document both the hard and soft dollars involved.
5. Conduct Pilot Studies
Next you'll begin the technical work. Surprisingly, the success of the migration rollout depends not only on the organization's understanding of the importance of Linux and open source but also on all the ramifications of the technical changes facing the company. To that end, you'll want to conduct pilot studies and build appropriate interoperability labs that will provide the necessary training, usability studies, and technical validation to ensure project success. This is your first chance to discover the technical and operational issues that could delay or derail the project. (If your migration project is destined to be delayed or canceled completely, it's best that you discover it during the pilot study before you commit to the full expenditure.) To reduce the likelihood of problems leading to delay or failure, you'll also want to set up and test ongoing project management and risk management processes. This includes assembling your application testing labs, refining your change management processes, and initiating training and team building efforts.

To move forward, secure management commitment and executive-level sponsorship from the outset. You don't want to start this level of infrastructure change without support from top management and a specific named champion at the top. Linux and open source adoption requires forethought on how to manage logistics such as scheduling servers and data to be migrated, notifying users of planned outages, responding to user inquiries, and having processes to resolve reported software problems and errors.

6. Start the Production Rollout
Once you have the pilots and labs working and generating feedback, it's time to start the production rollout. You have a couple of options. You could try a "Big Bang" rollout, in which your company attempts to do it all at once, but experts don't generally recommend that approach. Instead try a staged, controlled, and well-managed rollout. Linux and open source adoption requires forethought on how to manage logistics, such as scheduling servers and data to be migrated, notifying users of planned outages, responding to user inquiries, and having processes to resolve reported software problems and errors. You may still encounter some problems, although you should already have caught most of them in the previous step. In addition, you'll want to automate as much of the rollout as possible. You can do this by using standard application and system configurations, plus a standard operating environment, which should be your selected Linux distribution. In some cases, you might choose to run the new and old systems in parallel, although this requires more effort and entails some increased risk, particularly the risk of inconsistent data.
7. Transition to Continuous Process Improvement
After you deploy, you'll transition to continuous process improvement and consistent management and operational processes. Both the business and technology groups must take all reasonable steps to use established methods of success, accurate financial analysis, and process improvement and controls. That means identifying process improvements, practicing consistent management, and applying proven best practices.
Finally, don't forget the "Golden Rule of Infrastructure Management" - simple and well-designed infrastructures shouldn't require extensive management tools. Don't try to compensate for a poor design and implementation with extensive management tools, because even the best management tools can't simplify a poorly designed infrastructure.
Linux Offers Choice
In the end, a Linux migration and adoption is a journey, not a destination. And although it may seem that transitioning away from your current computing environment is too daunting, this is truly an opportunity to build a better application infrastructure for your organization's long-term success. However, Linux and open source won't magically create a self-governing computing infrastructure. You should still make every effort to enforce the management controls and processes that allow open source computing to thrive. Adopting industry standards increases your ability to take advantage of future innovations. By using industry standards as a basis for selecting the best solution for your environment, you will find that those solutions will provide the right balance between cutting-edge innovation and proven industry approaches and strategies.
Finally, Linux and open source adoption is not an all-or-nothing proposition. The goal of adopting Linux and open source is to optimize the organization's computing infrastructure in the most economic way possible. This might mean having a mix of Linux and non-Linux solutions. That's part of having choice, and in the end it's what Linux and open source are all about - having choices.
Advantages of Linux
Open source technology licensing is neither new nor radical. It has been part of computer science programs since the 1960s, offering organizations everywhere access to a worldwide software development community - not captive to any one entity - thereby sharing global expertise and continuous innovation and enhancement. As open source technology, Linux is freely accessible - though not necessarily free. Popular versions of Linux typically entail fees of one sort or another.
Even so, its low cost is the primary benefit for many people. Linux radically reduces the cost of computing through its low cost for deployment, better price/performance, and lack of dependence on any single vendor. Companies can rack up substantial savings in terms of hardware costs alone, since organizations can deploy Linux across inexpensive commodity hardware, such as cheap x86 machines. As a result, implementation and maintenance costs can be much less than the total cost of ownership associated with some proprietary technology.
 

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Red Hat Inc Announced The General Availability Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.5

Red Hat Inc Announced The General Availability Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.5 

The RHEL 6x series get another important update as Red Hat Inc, the world's leading provider of open source solutions announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5, the latest version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. According to the official press release of Red Hat -RHEL 6.5 expands Red Hat’s vision of providing an enterprise platform that has the stability to free IT to take on major infrastructure challenges and the flexibility to handle future requirements, with an extensive partner and support ecosystem. 
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 is mainly designed for those who build and manage large, complex IT projects, especially enterprises that require an open hybrid cloud. From security and networking to virtualization, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 provides the capabilities needed to manage these environments, such as tools that aid in quickly tuning the system to run SAP applications based on published best practices from SAP.“Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 provides the innovation expected from the industry’s leading enterprise Linux operating system while also delivering a mature platform for business operations, be it standardizing operating environments or supporting critical applications. The newest version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 forms the building blocks of the entire Red Hat portfolio, including OpenShift and OpenStack, making it a perfect foundation for enterprises looking to explore the open hybrid cloud.”-said Jim Totton, vice president and general manager of Red Hat Inc. Now lets take a closer look to the main highlights of RHEL 6.5 : 

Securing the Next-Generation Enterprise
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 continues the push for integrated security functionality that combines ease-of-use and up-to-date security standards into the platform. The addition of a centralized certificate trust store enables standardized certificate access for security services. Also included are tools that meet leading security standards, including OpenSCAP 2.1, which implements the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST’s) Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) 1.2 standard. With these additions, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 provides a secure platform upon which to build mission-critical services and applications.

Networking – When Every (Micro)Second Matters
In the financial services and trading-related industries, application latency is measured in microseconds, not seconds. Now, the latest version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 fully supports sub-microsecond clock accuracy over the local area network (LAN) using the Precision Time Protocol (PTP). Precision time synchronization is a key enabler for delivering better performance for high-speed, low latency applications. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 can now be used to track time on trading transactions, improving time stamp accuracy on archived data or precisely synchronizing time locally or globally. Thanks to other networking enhancements in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5, system administrators now have a more comprehensive view of network activity. These new capabilities enable sysadmins to inspect IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol) data to list multicast router ports, multicast groups with active subscribers and their associated interfaces, all of which are important to many modern networking scenarios, including streaming media.

Virtualization Enhancements
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 continues Red Hat’s commitment to improving the overall virtualization experience and includes several improvements that make it a compelling choice for running in virtualized environments. Sysadmins can now dynamically enable or disable virtual processors (vCPUs) in active guests, making it an ideal choice for elastic workloads. The handling of memory intensive applications as Red Hat Enterprise Linux guests has also been improved, with configurations supported for up to 4TB of memory on the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor. The KVM hypervisor also integrates with GlusterFS volumes to provide direct access to the distributed storage platform, improving performance when accessing Red Hat Storage or GlusterFS volumes. Finally, guest drivers have been updated to improve performance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 running as a guest on supported third-party hypervisors.

Evolving Ease-of-Use, Storage, and More
As application deployment options grow, portability becomes increasingly important. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 enables customers to deploy application images in containers created using Docker in their environment of choice: physical, virtual, or cloud. Docker is an open source project to package and run lightweight, self-sufficient containers; containers save developers time by eliminating integration and infrastructure design tasks. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 stays current with the advancements in Solid-State Drive (SSD) controller interface, introducing support for NVM Express (NVMe)-based SSDs. The NVMe specification aims to standardize the interface for PCIe-based SSDs and its inclusion in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 positions the platform to support an expanding range of future NVMe-based devices.

Improvements have also been added to improve enterprise storage scalability within Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5. It is now possible to configure more than 255 LUNs connected to a single iSCSI target. In addition, control and recovery from SAN for iSCSI and Fibre Channel has been enhanced, and updates to the kexec/kdump mechanism now make it possible to create debug (dump) files on systems configured with very large memory (e.g. 6TB).

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 makes it easier to track and manage subscription consumption across the enterprise, integrating subscription tracking into existing business workflow. Usability enhancements include support for remote access to Windows clients and servers that use a newer version of the RDP protocol, including Windows 7 and 8 desktops and Windows Server 2012

To Download Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 Click Here


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'Kali Linux' The Most Advanced & Stable Penetration Testing Distribution

From The Makers of BackTrack We Got 'Kali Linux' The Most AdvancedStable Penetration Testing Distribution 

Fans of world famous penetration testing distribution 'BackTrack' can now taste another flavor as the developer at BackTrack and Offensive Security has introduced a new Linux distribution targets enterprise security, offering a suite of helpful tools for rigorous testing calling it "Kali Linux." In the official release note Offensive-Security claimed that Kali Linux is the most advanced, robust, and stable penetration testing distribution to date. From that note we also came to know that this new distribution is a product of seven years long knowledge and experience which make Kali Linux the “next generation” penetration testing distribution. Now lets look at the main features of Kali Linux at a glance: 

Kali Linux Features:-

Kali is a complete re-build of BackTrack Linux, adhering completely to Debian development standards. All-new infrastructure has been put in place, all tools were reviewed and packaged, and we use Git for our VCS.
  • More than 300 penetration testing tools: After reviewing every tool that was included in BackTrack, we eliminated a great number of tools that either did not work or had other tools available that provided similar functionality.
  • Free and always will be: Kali Linux, like its predecessor, is completely free and always will be. You will never, ever have to pay for Kali Linux.
  • Open source Git tree: We are huge proponents of open source software and ourdevelopment tree is available for all to see and all sources are available for those who wish to tweak and rebuild packages.
  • FHS compliant: Kali has been developed to adhere to the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, allowing all Linux users to easily locate binaries, support files, libraries, etc.
  • Vast wireless device support: We have built Kali Linux to support as many wireless devices as we possibly can, allowing it to run properly on a wide variety of hardware and making it compatible with numerous USB and other wireless devices.
  • Custom kernel patched for injection: As penetration testers, the development team often needs to do wireless assessments so our kernel has the latest injection patches included.
  • Secure development environment: The Kali Linux team is made up of a small group of trusted individuals who can only commit packages and interact with the repositories while using multiple secure protocols.
  • GPG signed packages and repos: All Kali packages are signed by each individual developer when they are built and committed and the repositories subsequently sign the packages as well.
  • Multi-language: Although pentesting tools tend to be written in English, we have ensured that Kali has true multilingual support, allowing more users to operate in their native language and locate the tools they need for the job.
  • Completely customizable: We completely understand that not everyone will agree with our design decisions so we have made it as easy as possible for our more adventurous users tocustomize Kali Linux to their liking, all the way down to the kernel.
  • ARMEL and ARMHF support: Since ARM-based systems are becoming more and more prevalent and inexpensive, we knew that Kali’s ARM support would need to be as robust as we could manage, resulting in working installations for both ARMEL and ARMHF systems. Kali Linux has ARM repositories integrated with the mainline distribution so tools for ARM will be updated in conjunction with the rest of the distribution. Kali is currently available for the following ARM devices:
Kali is specifically tailored to penetration testing and therefore, all documentation on this site assumes prior knowledge of the Linux operating system. For more information, I would like to request you to visit the official website of Kali Linux. 




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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Beta Arrives! Download Now And You Can Win $500

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7 Arrived With Expanded Container Support, Performance Profiles, XFS As the Default Filesystem & Many More. 
We have just spent a less than a month time after the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 made available globally, yet again the American multinational software company, leading the world for open-source software has announced the availability of a first public beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 7. Based on Fedora 19 and the upstream Linux 3.10 kernel, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 will provide users with powerful new capabilities that streamline and automate installation and deployment, simplify management, and enhance ease-of-use, all while delivering the stability that enterprises have come to expect from Red Hat. This further solidifies Red Hat Enterprise Linux's place as the world's leading Linux platform and a standard for the enterprise of the future. Whether rolling out new applications, virtualizing environments or scaling the business with cloud, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 delivers the keystone to IT success. The beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 adds value to new and existing IT projects across industries by adding key capabilities to improve critical but often cumbersome IT tasks like virtualization and storage while offering a clear pathway to the open hybrid cloudIn their official Red Hat Enterprise Linux YouTube channel, Red Hat posted a short video where you can hear what the team at Red Hat has to say about the next-generation of the world’s leading Linux platform.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Beta showcases hundreds of new features and enhancements, including: 
  • Linux Containers - Enabling applications to be created and deployed in isolated environments with allocated resources and permissions.
  • Performance Management – Using built in tools, you can optimize performance out-of-the-box.
  • Physical and Hosted In-place Upgrades - In-place upgrades for common server deployment types are now supported. Additionally, virtual machine migration from a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 host to a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 host is possible, without virtual machine modification or downtime.
  • File Systems – File systems continue to be a major focus of development and innovation.
    • XFS is now the default file system, supporting file systems up to 500TB
    • ext4 file systems are now supported to 50TB and include block sizes up to 1MB
    • btrfs file systems are now available to test
  • Networking – Enhanced networking configuration and operation. Added support for some of the latest networking standards, including:
    • 40Gb Ethernet support
    • Improved channel bonding
    • TCP performance improvements
    • Low latency socket poll support
  • Storage – Expanded support for enterprise level storage arrays. Improved scalable storage stack for deployments that are less disk intensive. Improved storage management for heterogeneous storage environments.
  • Windows Interoperability – Bridge Windows™ and Linux infrastructure by integrating SAMBA 4.1 with existing Microsoft Active Directory domains. Or, deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux Identity Management in a parallel trust zone with Active Directory.
  • Subsystem Management – Simplified configuration and administration with uniform management tools for networking, storage, file systems, performance, identities and security. Leveraging the OpenLMI framework, enables use of scripts and APIs to automate management.
To know deeply about the hot features and enhancement of RHEL 7 beta 1, click hereI am quite sure that, after going through with the above description, all of you are very much excited to grab this brand new beta of RHEL 7. Like the previous beta release, this time also The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 beta has been made available to Red Hat customers, partners, and members of the public. For further information and to access the beta click here. Last but not least, with this release Red Hat also calls for an very interesting competition, where you can participate & win $500 while telling Red Hat, what interests you most in RHEL 7 beta. So what are you waiting for, lets download RHEL 7 and explore it. 



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Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.3 Released & Globally Available

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.3 Released & Globally Available

Only six months after the release of RHEL 6.2. Red Hat officially announced the global availability of the next minor release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3. Couple of months ago we got the Beta of RHEL 6.3 and with this final release Red Hat has tweaked the enterprise grade Linux distribution to add new capabilities in storage, virtualization, security, developer tools, file systems, scalability and performance.

Highlighted Features :-
  • Developer Tools: In addition to OpenJDK6 support in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, the newly introduced OpenJDK7 allows customers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3 to develop and test with the latest version of open source Java. The Red Hat Developer Day is scheduled for June 26th at the 2012 Red Hat Summit & JBoss World. More about this and other capabilities will be presented, including the Red Hat Enterprise Linux toolset (updated GCC), performance optimization, thread programming and NUMA. For more information about developer day, please visit here.
  • Virtualization: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3 helps smooth migration to a virtualized environment. This is achieved with the help of new Virt-P2V tools that can easily convert a Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Microsoft Windows system running on physical hardware to run as KVM guests. This release implements a more robust mechanism to protect data associated with defunct virtual machines. The method by which virtual disk images are securely wiped has been enhanced to allow greater security and stronger compliance with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI-DSS).
  • Security: Users can now use two-factor authentication for securely accessing their Red Hat Enterprise Linux environment. This type of authentication mechanism is more secure than simple password based authentication. Two-factor authentication is being adopted into enterprise environments and is often referenced in industry standards. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3 also includes advanced encryption capabilities so data blocks can be encrypted in parallel by taking advantage of underlying multi-processor capabilities. This is supported by the introduction of AES-CTR (Advanced Encryption Standard Counter Mode) cipher for OpenSSH. AES-CTR is well suited for high-speed networking environments.
  • Scalability: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3 continues to test the outer bounds of scalability for an operating system platform by increasing the maximum number of virtual CPUs (vCPUs) per guest to 160 from 64. This is significantly higher than the 32 vCPU per guest limit for VMware ESX 5.0. The maximum supported memory configuration for KVM guests has also been increased from 512GB to 2TB.
  • File Systems: File system improvements include O_DIRECT support in FUSE (File system in user space). When enabled, all FUSE reads and writes go directly to storage, bypassing the server cache. This capability can lead to more consistent response times and predictable access to data by multiple accessors for certain use-cases, including database writes and deduplication. GFS2 (shared storage file system) can now read and write data to the disks faster than in previous releases for certain use-cases. In addition, file system check utilities for GFS2 can now be used to check the integrity of the older GFS1 file system.
  • Storage: The Logical Volume Manager (LVM) now provides support for RAID levels 4, 5, and 6 to simplify overall storage administration by consolidating all management functions, such as creating and re-sizing volumes, deploying RAID, and taking snapshots into a single interface. It is now possible to deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 as a FCoE based storage target server providing the high level of reliability and performance available with native Fibre Channel but at a significantly lower cost. This feature complements the FCoE Initiator support that was delivered in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0.
  • Subscription Management: With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3, by default customers can use Red Hat Subscription Management (SAM), an enhanced subscription management capability using X.509 certificates that allows customers to effectively manage subscriptions locally and report on subscription distribution and utilization. This helps facilitate compliance, upgrades, and long-term planning. Customers register their systems using Red Hat Subscription Manager to the Red Hat award-winning customer portal or an instance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux SAM. Customers who used RHN Classic subscription management with prior releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, can continue to use it or migrate to Red Hat Subscription Management.



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Kaspersky Releases Linux Mail Security With Anti-malware, Anti-spam & Content Filtering

Kaspersky Releases Linux Mail Security With Anti-malware, Anti-spam & Content Filtering 

Russian anti virus firm & security giant  Kaspersky Lab has released an anti-spam and anti-malware application called Linux Mail Security which can be integrated into different type of Linux-based mail server to fight spam and block malicious attachments. The latest spam-fighting features – including Reputation Filtering and Enforced Anti-Spam Updates Service  help to filter out zero-hour spam, while our new ZetaShield technology helps to shield businesses from zero-day and targeted attacks. Designed for integration with a range of Linux-based mail systems, Kaspersky Linux Mail Security delivers the security, flexibility and ease of management that businesses and ISPs demand. 

Key Features:- 
  • Advanced antivirus engine- Kaspersky Linux Mail Security includes the latest version of Kaspersky Lab’s award-winning antivirus engine – with behaviour stream signatures – to help detect and remove malicious attachments from incoming emails.

  • Zero-Day Exploit and Targeted Attack (ZETA) Shield- Kaspersky’s ZetaShield offers protection against unknown malware and exploits – to defend you from zero-day and zero-hour attacks and APTs (Advanced Persistent Threats).

Powerful Anti-Spam Engine- Kaspersky Linux Mail Security provides the latest version of Kaspersky’s anti-spam engine – including two powerful new technologies:
  • Enforced Anti-Spam Updates Service – uses push technology, directly from the Kaspersky cloud, to deliver real-time updates. By reducing the ‘update window’ from 20 minutes to approximately 1 minute, the Enforced Anti-Spam Updates Service helps to defend businesses against zero-hour spam and spam epidemics.
  • Cloud-assisted Reputation Filtering – fights against unknown spam, to enhance the spam capture rate and reduce the number of false positives.

Kaspersky Security Network -The cloud-based Kaspersky Security Network (KSN) gathers data from millions of participating users’ systems around the world to help defend your system from the very latest viruses and malware attacks. Potential threats are monitored and analysed – in real-time – to help block dangerous actions, before harm is caused.
Attachment filtering- The new Format Recogniser feature can filter attachments – using information about file type, name and message size. This helps businesses to enforce their email usage policy and can help to address corporate liability issues that can arise when users try to distribute illegal music or video files via the corporate email system.
Improved!Global Blacklists and Whitelists- In addition to creating corporate blacklists or whitelists, administrators can manage ‘allowed’ or ‘denied’ senders email – using IPv4 and IPv6, wildcards and regular expressions.
Personal Blacklists and Whitelists- Users also can create their own blacklists and whitelists.
Backup and personal backup with flexible search -Blocked email is quarantined in a backup system. If the system uses Microsoft Active Directory or OpenLDAP, individual users can access their personal backup via the web so they’re less likely to need to call your helpdesk.
Integration with most popular MTAs (Postfix, Sendmail, Exim, qmail and CommunigatePro)- Kaspersky Linux Mail Security lets you select the method of integration, depending on your choice of Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) – so you can integrate as a filter or using a Milter API.
Antivirus command line file scanner- The Kaspersky Anti-Virus On-Demand Scanner can be used for on-demand virus checking of objects – which can include directories, regular files and devices such as hard drives, flash drives and DVD-ROMs.
Amavisd-new- Kaspersky Linux Mail Security supports integration with Linux mail systems using the high-performance AMaViS interface.
Monitoring and Reporting features- 

  • SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) support – any type of event can be monitored using SNMP events and traps
  • A new dashboard gives an at-a-glance view of status and monitoring
  • Detailed, flexible reporting in PDF format – for customisable reports that help in the monitoring and analysis of security and policies
  • Notification system – informs administrators and document owners about policy violation incidents
  • Detailed logs – on all product actions, to help in identifying problems

Easy to deploy, maintain and manage- 

  • System administrators can run manual updates or set the rules for fully automatic updates of antivirus, anti-spam and ZetaShield
  • Integration with Active Directory and OpenLDAP
  • Rich email traffic management rules – administrators can create rules according to corporate security policies
  • IPv6 support
  • Scalable architecture – the entire system can be easily migrated from a test server to a production environment
Kaspersky Linux Mail Security will support the following Linux distributions - Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 Server, Fedora 16, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP2, Debian GNU/Linux 6.0.4 Squeeze, CentOS 6.2, openSUSE Linux 12.1, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS; 12.04 LTS, Mandriva Enterprise Server 5.2, FreeBSD 8.3, 9.0, Canaima 3.0, Asianux 4 SP1. 


For Detailed Information Click Here



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Embedded Linux Conference Europe (ELCE)

The Linux Foundation and CE Linux Forum announced a schedule for the Embedded Linux Conference Europe (ELCE), set to take place Oct. 26-28 in Prague. Co-located with LinuxCon Europe, ELCE 2011 offers 50 presentations on Linux and Android -- including projects such as Genivi, Yocto, Linaro, and possibly Tizen -- plus speakers ranging from Linus Torvalds to Intel's Dirk Hohndel.
This year's Embedded Linux Conference Europe conference is the second ELCE event since the CE Linux Forum (CELF) forum merged into the Linux Foundation (LF) as a working group in Oct. 2010. (The first post-LF event occurred the same week the merger was announced last October in Cambridge, U.K.)  CELF also sponsors the U.S. ELC show, which this year was held in April in San Francisco. Merging with the LF brings some benefits to CELF's conference attendees, in that ELC/ELCE registrations also provide free passes to co-located LF conferences. In Prague, for example, ELCE attendees can also attend the world debut of LinuxCon Europe, which will be held at the same venue during the same three-day Oct. 26-28 period. A GStreamer conference is also co-located with the events.
ELCE will start off Oct. 26 with an address from LF Executive Director Jim Zemlin, who will "imagine a world without Linux." This will be followed by a Kernel Developer Panel that features a star-studded cast including Linux creator Linus Torvalds (pictured at right), real-time Linux pioneer Thomas Gleixner, Intel's Alan Cox, and IBM's Paul McKenney. The Oct. 27 keynotes, meanwhile, include Ixonos President of Global Solutions Antti Aumo discussing the "Cloud Phone," which may or may not refer to his company's announced support for the HTML5-focused Tizen spin-off of MeeGo and LiMo. Aumo's address will be followed by Intel Chief Linux and Open Source Technologist Dirk Hondel (pictured at left) offering a "Reflection on 20 years of Linux." Perhaps Dirk, too, can help the somewhat skeptical Linux community understand how Tizen will do any better than MeeGo and LiMo.

Further information:-
The Embedded Linux Conference Europe (ELCE) will be held October 26-28, Clarion Congress Hotel, in Prague, Czech Republic. Combined registration for ELCE and the collocated LinuxCon Europe, costs $550, with discounts available for students and "hobbyists."

Registration specifics may be found on this ELCE Europe registration page.
More general information and session details may be found on the ELCE Europe site.


-News Source (ELCE, Linux Foundation)

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Microsoft Gets Recognition Among Top 20 Linux Kernel Contributors

Microsoft Gets Recognition Among Top 20 Linux Kernel Contributors

The Linux Foundation announced the top Linux kernel development contributors, with Microsoft getting on the list for the first time. The top 10 contributors to the Linux kernel in this latest report include "Red Hat, Intel, Novell, IBM, Texas Instruments, Broadcom, Nokia, Samsung, Oracle and Google," according to the report. For the first time, Microsoft has made the list of the top 20 contributors to the Linux kernel. Microsoft placed at No. 17 among companies that have contributed the most toward developing the Linux OS's kernel. As the Linux Foundation's announcement pointed out, it represents quite a change from the time when Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called Linux "a cancer" is now working within the collaborative development model to support its virtualization efforts and its customers. Because Linux has reached a state of ubiquity, in which both the enterprise and mobile computing markets are relying on the operating system, Microsoft is clearly working to adapt. In other words, some might recall the old adage: "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.". The foundation suggested that Microsoft is "clearly working to adapt" in a world where Linux is used across enterprise and mobile environments.
The foundation's latest report, "Linux Kernel Development: How Fast It is Going, Who is Doing It, What They are Doing and Who is Sponsoring It," covers work completed through the Linux kernel 3.2 release, with an emphasis on the releases made since the last update to this report in December 2010 (2.6.36 to 3.2). 

Since 2005, there have been more than 7,800 developers contributing to the Linux kernel, according to the announcement. The foundation also claimed that "75 percent" of Linux kernel developers get paid for doing it. The full report, "Linux Kernel Development: How Fast It is Going. To Download the full report click Here



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Security Breach on The Linux Foundation, Linux.com & their Subdomains


Dig a the history and go back into the previous week I hope you can surely remember  the attack on Linuxkernel.org. Now The Linux foundation is under cyber attack. the Linux Foundation has pulled its websites from the web to clean up from a “security breach.”
A notice posted on the Linux Foundation said the entire infrastructure including LinuxFoundation.org, Linux.com, and their sub domains are down for maintenance due to a security breach that was discovered on September 8, 2011.
“The LinuxFoundation made this decision in the interest of extreme caution and security best practices. We believe this breach was connected to the intrusion on kernel.org,” the group said.


Official Notice By The Linux Foundation is posted on their website and that is:- 

"Linux Foundation infrastructure including LinuxFoundation.org, Linux.com, and their subdomains are down for maintenance due to a security breach that was discovered on September 8, 2011. The Linux Foundation made this decision in the interest of extreme caution and security best practices. We believe this breach was connected to the intrusion on kernel.org.
We are in the process of restoring services in a secure manner as quickly as possible. As with any intrusion and as a matter of caution, you should consider the passwords and SSH keys that you have used on these sites compromised. If you have reused these passwords on other sites, please change them immediately. We are currently auditing all systems and will update this statement when we have more information.
We apologize for the inconvenience. We are taking this matter seriously and appreciate your patience. The Linux Foundation infrastructure houses a variety of services and programs including Linux.com, Open Printing, Linux Mark, Linux Foundation events and others, but does not include the Linux kernel or its code repositories.
Please contact us at info@linuxfoundation.org with questions about this matter."

For More Information Click Here


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Red Hat Announced Beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.3

Red Hat Announced Beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3
Just over four months after the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.2, developer at RedHat has made a beta of version of RHEL 6.3 available. This beta includes a broad set of updates to the existing feature set and also provides rich new functionality particularly in the areas of virtualization, scalability, storage, file systems, and security. As always, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3 beta delivers new hardware enablement made possible by our strong relationships with our strategic hardware partners. This beta release has been designed for optimized performance, scalability, and reliability to cater to the diverse workloads running in physical, virtual and cloud environments.

Key Features in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3 Beta:-
Virtualization-
  • A new tool called Virt-P2V that facilitates the conversion of physical Windows or Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems into virtual images to be deployed as KVM guests inside Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization.
  • Stronger compliance with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI-DSS), including the ability to perform secure wipes of virtual machine disks.
  • The ability to perform live volume resizing, improving the overall availability of virtualized guests.
Scalability-
  • The maximum number of virtual CPUs (vCPUs) has been increased from 64 to 160, which lets you run larger CPU-intensive workloads on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform. VMware ESX 5.0 currently support 32 vCPUs.
  • The maximum supported memory configuration for KVM guests has been increased from 512GB to 2TB.
File Systems-
  • GFS2 enhancements that create faster read-write capabilities for specific use cases.
  • Support of O_Direct in FUSE (Filesystem in User Space), which can provide improved performance for certain workloads.
  • Simplified configuration and administration for the file system. Integration of automount capability with System Security Services Daemon (SSSD) provides centralized management of configuration data and the ability to improve performance through caching and load balancing. (This feature is a Technology Preview.)
Storage-
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3 provides full support for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) Target. This feature, which was previously provided as a Technology Preview, allows customers to present their Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers as FCoE storage devices. This feature complements the FCoE Initiator support that was delivered in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0.
  • The Logical Volume Manager (LVM) now provides support for RAID levels 4, 5, and 6. (Previously, support for these RAID levels was provided through the MD subsystem.) This expanded LVM RAID support simplifies overall storage administration by consolidating all management functions, such as creating volumes, resizing volumes, deploying RAID, taking snapshots, etc., into a single interface. (This feature is a Technology Preview.)
  • The LVM now provides the ability to create thin provisioned logical volumes. Previously, storage was allocated when the volume was created, and needed to be monitored for space consumption and expanded manually. In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3, storage is allocated as required, allowing volumes to expand up to the requested size on demand without intervention. (This feature is a Technology Preview.)
Security-
  • Availability of a two-factor authentication mechanism, enhancing the overall security available to lock down Red Hat Enterprise Linux environments and enabling compliance with industry standards such as PCI-DSS.
  • Expansion of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) to provide particular benefits for system performance on multi-processor machines.
Identity Management-
  • With native support for netgroups and the services map in System Security Services Daemon (SSSD), Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers can be integrated into centralized systems -- such as Active Directory -- to manage system users.
  • The addition of an automembership plug-in streamlines the administration of new users and hosts when they are added into the Identity Management system by automatically placing them into a predefined set of groups, speeding user and host provisioning.
  • Performance improvements through session data caching, which lowers the overall load on authentication servers.
Hardware Enablement-
  • Software bandwidth management for USB 3.0 for select Intel platforms is now available.
  • Compiler optimization for Intel Xeon E5 processor family, which improves the result of string operations, is now included.
  • Improvements to memory and I/O breakpoint execution operations within compiler tools are now included.
Developer Tools-
  • With the introduction of OpenJDK 7, customers can develop and test with the latest version of open source Java.
To Download Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3 Click Here

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