http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/blog311962.html I am a techie, a Linux evangelist, and an activist of sorts. I am also a DaniWeb Staff Writer/Blogger, a Linux Feature Writer and Columnist. You can see my work in Systems Management News (www.sysmannews.com) or in Linux Magazine (www.linux-mag.com). Hit my website at www.kenhess.com to find out more. http://www.daniweb.com/forums/dani-images/misc/dani/logo.gif http://www.daniweb.com http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2817.html Welcome to Crystal Ball Sunday #8! Today's discussion focuses on Virtual Appliances which are small virtual machines designed for a very specific purpose. There are Virtual Appliance Email servers, VPN servers, Firewalls, Routers, Dial-in servers, DNS servers, CMS application servers, and the list goes on and on. I had this Crystal Ball vision while writing the virtual networking and storage chapter of my upcoming book, Practical Virtualization Solutions (Pearson/Prentice Hall). In this chapter, I was explaining how to create a VPN server virtual machine using Windows 2003 Server when I had... Tech Talk Sun, 20 Jul 2008 12:37:41 CDT khess http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2817.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2816.html Round Rock, Texas-based Dell, Inc. announced Friday that it is now offering the latest Ubuntu (8.04 Hardy Heron) released in April of this year on some of their popular consumer grade laptops and desktop models. Currently available in the United States, France, Germany, Spain, Canada, United Kingdom, Mexico and Colombia. You may purchase the following computers with Ubuntu 8.04: XPS M1330N, the Inspiron 1525N notebooks, and the Inspiron 530N desktop. Ubuntu is an easy-to-use Linux distribution with superb hardware detection and Linux stability. A boxed version of Ubuntu is available... IT Water Cooler Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:16:36 CDT khess http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2816.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2802.html Netbook's, or mini-laptops as they are known, popularity, low price, portability, and solid state technology make them prime targets for innovation. Companies like Cyberlink, a multi-media software developer, want in. Their PowerCinema Linux, a custom Linux distribution bundling media software including photo, music, video and a DVD player, may be one of several new choices given to Netbook buyers. The small notebook computers already come standard with Xandros, Linpus Lite, or Windows XP. The Asus Eee PC and Acer Aspire One are the best-known examples of the Netbook PCs. One of Cyberlink's... IT Water Cooler Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:46:55 CDT khess http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2802.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2777.html BestBuy is now offering Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) in a shrink-wrapped box for $19.99. This is the only packaged Linux that BestBuy currently sells. I haven't seen the package or visited my local BestBuy store in several months but I am happy about this decision. Shelf space is at a premium in retail stores so it says something for the Zeitgeist of the future of Linux. And sure, there have been shrink-wrapped Linux CDs before and you can usually get a CD or DVD of the latest version of some distribution attached to one of the glossy Linux magazines at a bookstore but this is different. It... IT Water Cooler Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:05:23 CDT khess http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2777.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2750.html Welcome back to another Crystal Ball Sunday. Those of you who celebrate freedom on July 4 hopefully have had a safe and enjoyable holiday. Freedom comes in packages of all shapes and sizes and this week's Crystal Ball Sunday is about freedom in small packages: Embedded Devices. Embedded device refers to a piece of hardware that has limited resources (memory, power, range) and usually has a very specific function--sometimes a singular function. This means that the operating system that the device uses must have a very small footprint and be energy efficient. Embedded devices are as diverse... IT Water Cooler Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:54:20 CDT khess http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2750.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2738.html Xandros, Inc. announced July 3 that they have acquired the Linspire and Freespire desktop operating systems. This will further enhance their desktop operating system offerings and their "one stop shop" status for all things Linux. The Click'N'Run (CNR) software distribution facility was also acquired by Xandros. CNR technology allows users to install software with a single mouse click. Xandros is best known for its mixed-environment BridgeWays management tools and intuitive Linux solutions including SMB and enterprise servers, consumer and business desktops, OEM products, and... IT Water Cooler Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:14:05 CDT khess http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2738.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2720.html Yesterday, NetGear released the long-awaited open source wireless router WGR614L--a high-performance, full-featured, wireless router with 4-port switch running, you guessed it, Linux. The router currently supports the free open source Linux-based Tomato and DD-WRT firmware and will soon support OpenWRT. From a hardware perspective, the WGR614L sports a 240 MHz MIPS32® CPU core with 16 KB of instruction cache, 16 KB of data cache, 1 KB of pre-fetch cache, and incorporates 4 MB of flash memory and 16 MB of RAM. In addition to an external 2 dBi antenna, the WGR614L integrates a second... Tech Talk Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:25:03 CDT khess http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2720.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2697.html Red Hat announced a new bare-metal hypervisor technology last week at the Red Hat Summit in Boston. It is based on KVM (Kernel-Based Virtual Machine) technology and actually has been included in Linux kernel version 2.6.20 and up. This announcement has some Red Hat and virtualization proponents wondering why Red Hat is throwing its support behind this solution when it already includes Xen technology. Xen is true hypervisor virtualization; KVM is not. KVM is hosted virtualization that employs QEMU for virtual machines. Red Hat may be pushing this KVM solution to allow more users to try an... Tech Talk Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:10:22 CDT khess http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2697.html