Ever wonder how popular Ubuntu is starting to become? Take a look at some interesting statistics when looking at search popularity. If one looks at the trend of the search volume associated with the keyword "linux" and compares it to the trend associated with the search for keyword "ubuntu" we start to see some interesting results.

The Open Source Census is collaborative project that attempts to collect and share quantitative data relating to the use of open source software in the enterprise.

The Open Source Census has a tool called OSS Discovery that scans individual machines and generate anonymous reports regarding what open source software that machine has installed. It is completely voluntary and any individual or company can participate in The Open Source Census.

If you're looking to transition from Windows to Linux but your users are not technically inclined you may want to evaluate Linux XP Desktop 2008. Linux XP tries to emulate the look and feel of Microsoft Windows. The goal being to make the transition to Linux easier for those used to Microsoft like operating systems.

Forget OpenSolaris, and hello to Ubuntu. In a bold move Sun seems to be adopting Ubuntu Linux and leaving behind OpenSolaris as well as some of the other major linux distros like RedHat and Suse.

In an interview with Reuters on April 2, Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth reinforced the "growing relations" between Sun and Ubuntu. This release comes just before the scheduled release of "Hardy Heron" Cononical's latest Ubuntu version due in late April.

Help solve the worlds problems by donating your unused CPU cycles to solve complex computational challenges. Known as grid or distributed computing it allows you to share your CPU to perform units of work when your PC is sitting idle. Most machines actually sit idle for a majority of the time. The idea is to take advantage of that idle time and scavenge cpu cycles.

Dell may soon go the way of the Dodo bird. All the signs are there. Some of their recent announcements are setting off warning signals.

These include:
1) Announcements of additional job cuts (5,600 more jobs in addition to the 3,200 already announced).

Hugh MacLeod posted a question on his site: If open source is such a phenomenon, where are all the open source billionaires? That is the premise of a recent Wired IT article.

Some would say that not all rewards are financial ones. Open source is motivated by community, social interactions, and peer recognition.

Here is an innovative way of using your web browser to run a fully functional unix shell. If you go to http://cb.vu you will actually be logging in to a shell terminal on a web server. You can define which commands "www" users will have access to run. For those of you from the Windows world this is like having your windows desktop available over a web browser without the need of any special clients

I believe this site actually launches a shell within a bunch of java scripts. A very nice use of a web browsers capabilities. This type of utility may have some good practical uses.

Computing infrastructures are growing rapidly. Hardware has become less expensive and their form factors smaller and smaller. With the advent of grid technologies, virtualization,and other distributed computing methods we need to find better ways to manage the the sheer number of resources being created.

Microblogging seems to be all the rage nowadays. We recently wrote about a popular microblogging platform called twitter.

Wouldn't it be nice to send a twitter post from your Linux command line. It seems to be the perfect application for command line folks.

Here are some instructions on how to create your own twitter script.

Step 1)
Make sure you have curl installed. If not download it and install.

Step 2)
Create a file

Example:

vi /home/bin/twitter

#Add the following lines

If you ever want to carry a functional linux distribution around on your keychain you may want to look at "Damn Small Linux" (DSL).

DSL was originally developed as an experiment to see how many usable desktop applications could fit inside a 50MB. It has since evolved to be a complete desktop system.

Some advantages of DSL include:
1) The ability to boot of USB or CD
2) Ability to boot DSL from within Windows or other OS's.
3) DSL can also transform into a full Debian install using a traditional hard drive.

Cfengine is an open source tool that allows system administrators to maintain 1 to thousands of unix based systems. It automates almost every aspect of system administration. Cfengine is a direct competitor to commercial software from Blade Logic and OPsware. Both of these commercial packages come with fancy GUIs and nice features, but they also come with hefty licensing fees (can get close to $1K per server managed + maintenance fees).

Grid computing has been around for over 12 years now and its advantages are many. Grid computing can be defined in many ways but for these discussions let's simply call it a way to execute compute jobs (e.g. perl scripts, database queries, etc.) across a distributed set of resources instead of one central resource. In the past most computing was done in silos or large SMP like boxes. Even today you'll still see companies perform calculations on large SMP boxes (e.g. E10K's, HP Superdomes).

EyeOS is trying to redefine the operating system. It is an open source initiative that aims to create an operating system that is accessible over over the web from anywhere around the world. OuterVillage in its top five strategic technologies for 2008 suggested the need for "enhanced web platforms that deliver applications over the web reducing the need for stand-alone OS's". That is what EyeOS seems to want to deliver on.

Unison announced at CeBit that it has launched what it claims is the best Linux based communications suite available. It combines IP telephony, e-mail, instant messaging, address book, capable of running on a single Linux server. It is available free as a public beta.