There is no Substitute for #1. Fedora 21 Workstation. Linux Done Right.

There is no substitute for #1.  Fedora 21 Workstation is Linux done right.

You can take this message however you want.

Anyone hoping that Ubuntu Linux will reach critical mass adoption is in for a surprise.  Under the governance of Canonical Ltd. a corporate structure to receive IOUs from one Mr. Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu Linux is moving sideways.  It has been a boat without an anchor and no clear charted course.

The good news is that one Distro has overtaken it.  Yes, I've been showing my bias for quite some time.  Most of my readership know that.  But it must be said.

Quietly, industriously, cooperatively, success is here for a true champion Linux on the Desktop.  It is with the arrival of Fedora 21 Workstation I officially see a product with fit and finish that goes beyond what Unity on Ubuntu can ever offer.  Ubuntu lacks critical leadership to be truly successful on a global scale.  It has moved in different directions yet not with the best interests of the Linux Community.  Unity has driven a wedge into the community and has become an island on which no other Distro wants to set foot.  There is no broad support for Unity from the Linux Communiity.

Fedora 21 Workstation integrates, with close direct participation and involvement in design, GNOME Shell 3.14.  Red Hat has taken The GNOME Project under her wing, providing direct infrastructure support for all GNOME-related websites.

This is a turning point.  Fedora 21 Workstation is on a footing to take the mantle and prestige away from Ubuntu.  It succeeds where Ubuntu does not.  Fedora moves forward with clear, published, pragmatic planning and the full support of its community and has traction.  Ubuntu is spinning her wheels and by mere association with Debian will continue to suffer as dependence slows progress by default.

There is no substitute for #1.  Fedora 21 Workstation is truly Linux done right.  -- Dietrich

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Google: Don't try to change the law. ENCRYPT GMAIL/DRIVE!

by Dietrich Schmitz

Okay so Google are pushing today for changes to be made to Internet request for access to their data infrastructure by third party entities, namely, our Government.

I think this is the wrong way to go about it, and I won't sign their petition (below). (Image credit: zeroknowledgeprivacy.org)

If Google can encrypt their 'Google Cloud' product, then they should apply the same standard for the general consumer (public) of their Gmail/Drive services.

If software vendors like SpiderOak, Wuala, and now Microsoft and Yahoo can muster the requisite technology to facilitate encrypting all of consumers' private data, there is no excuse for Google not following suit.

Do the right thing Google.  ENCRYPT GMAIL/DRIVE with Zero Knowledge Encryption technology.  -- Dietrich

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Linux Containers and Why They Matter

by Dietrich Schmitz

Until recently FreeBSD Jails and SUN Solaris Containers were the only other Virtualized Environment (VE) technology players offering such capabilities.  Now, enter the newest kid on the block: Linux Containers (LXC).

LXC is chroot 'on steroids' and lets not only applications run in isolation but also entire operating systems, even raw image virtual machines.  While not true Virtual Machines, these virtual environments, or containers, can run as multiple instances each in full isolation on a single host.

With the advent of a relatively new technology which became available in Linux Kernel 2.6.24, CGroups (short for Control Groups) was devised and allows the host CPU to better partition memory allocation into 'Namespaces'.  CGroups provide the ability to create Linux Containers with isolation, resource limiting, prioritization, accounting, and control.

So, great.  Now Linux has LXC.  Why does this matter?

For one, LXC is not as resource intensive as traditional Virtual Machines (VMs) in that there is no up-front preload of emulation management software.  Thus, the application spawned in a container is running with no added overhead aside from LXC initialization.  The implication is that aside from the small memory software shim, LXC will have bare metal performance characteristics.  The advantages are clear and the deployment is relatively easy.

In terms of disadvantages, and, unlike VMs however, there is no live-migration capability and other sophisticated management console nicities the likes of which vendors Citrix, VMware and Amazon Web Services offer to users of their cloud 'high availability' Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).  And there aren't (yet) things like AWS Market Place, where one can pick ready-made virtual-machines fully provisioned and just a matter of minutes away from deploying and having up on your subnet.  No, LXC does demand some manual work, but still, it's not so much as to become burdensome.  It is really worth the effort.

Still, LXC is slowly coming into maturity on Linux with feature API inclusion in OpenStack and Stackato IaaS offerings, for example.

Now present in Fedora 18, one can utilize libvirtd-sandbox, so LXC containers can be easily configured as application sandboxes with a high-degree of security and with minimal effort required as compared to setting up a chroot environment or more labor intensive and difficult to manage sandbox solution such as SELinux.

LXC comes with your Linux Distro's kernel for free.  Competing solution OpenVZ requires a special compiled kernel to create its own container solution.

Taking LXC to the next level is seen in a new product called Docker.

As the above Youtube video suggests and as more software developers employ LXC, you'll see more creative ways of wrapping LXC in generic objects such as Python Go programming language based Docker to facilitate even easier flexible configurability and deployment.

So, there it is.  LXC, yet one more great resource for Linux Developers and Systems Administrators to avail themselves to.  Study up!  It won't be a wasted effort.

-- Dietrich

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