Distributions

XtreemOS

Last November the XtreemOS project announced XtreemOS 2.0, the second public release of its Grid operating system; motto "Making Grid Computing Easier".

Grid computing is a form of distributed computing where computers are loosely coupled, heterogeneous, and may be geographically dispersed. In other words a grid consists of several different computers that may be located anywhere in the world. Clusters, on the other hand, are generally made up of several similar computers, co-located and on the same network.

XtreemOS 2.0 is based on Mandriva 2009.0 but includes the tools to create a grid with laptops, desktops and servers or to create clusters. According to the release notes "XtreemOS is a Linux-based operating system providing the basic functionalities that are expected in a Grid system: Application Execution Management, Data Management and Virtual Organization Management."

One unique feature of XtreemOS is its use of XtreemFS, a replicated and distributed object-based file system. According to the XtreemFS user guide, this file system is POSIX compliant, multi-platform, globally distributed, failure-tolerant, secure and customizable. XtreemFS 1.2 is the current version, announced last month.

While XtreemOS is aimed at grid computing, it can also be used to create clusters using Kerrighed clustering technology. "Kerrighed is a Single System Image operating system for clusters. Kerrighed offers the view of a unique SMP machine on top of a cluster of standard PCs." Kerrighed is implemented as a set of modules and kernel patches, so it can be used on other Linux systems, but like XtreemFS it is nicely integrated into XtreemOS.

Grid computing, at its simplest, could be a good collaboration tool, allowing you to distribute and replicate your files on a friend's computer or just use it to keep your laptop in sync with your desktop. Grid computing is certainly good for large computing tasks, but with XtreemOS you can easily play around with smaller grids.

If you are attending the EuroSys conference (in Paris next April), there will be a half-day tutorial about XtreemOS.

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Bits from the Lintian maintainers

Click below for some bits from the Debian Lintian maintainers. "The best news about Lintian is that Raphael Geissert has joined the team as an additional Lintian maintainer. Raphael has been making suggestions and contributing patches to Lintian since 2007 and has done a ton of work on as varying of areas as pedantic tag support, bashism detection, init script analysis, spelling checks, lintian.d.o archive area support, and the core checking infrastructure. Just merged for the next release is his refactoring of the unpacking of packages so that it can be better-managed by Lintian's internal ordering and dependency system." Also in these bits; Lintian 2.3.0 has been uploaded to Debian unstable.

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Reactivating automatic security announcements

Debian is reactivating automatic security announcements for testing (Squeeze). "Note that this does not mean that security support for testing will increase like during lenny's release cycle. Most of the security work done for the testing distribution during the last months has been through unstable and a few occasional DTSAs, because of the team being understaffed."

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Mandriva: nouveau now default NVIDIA driver

Mandriva has announced that Nouveau is now the default NVIDIA driver in Cooker (the development branch). "You can try nouveau by going to X Server settings in MCC (or running XFdrake), going to the graphics card list and selecting "nouveau" under "Xorg" (if you are up-to-date, selecting your card under "NVIDIA" and declining to use the proprietary driver has the same effect). You'll need to reboot or unload the nvidia kernel module."

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Call for votes: Ubuntu Developer Membership Board election

Voting is open for the newly established Developer Membership Board. "Voting has begun to determine who will hold the seats on the newly established Developer Membership Board, which is responsible for determining when, how and to whom to grant privileges related to Ubuntu development. In particular, the DMB will take over the membership functions previously held by the Technical Board and MOTU Council." The second call for votes has been announced. Voting ends January 18, 2010.

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Misc Debian developer news (#19)

This issue of Debian developer news covers GPG key signing coordination moved to wiki.debian.org, + Debian OpenSSH VCS changeover, and call for help, + Easier for customization on LXDE now, + WNPP BTS report now categorized, and + Update about "3.0 (quilt)" source format.

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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 335

The DistroWatch Weekly for January 4, 2010 is out. "We'll start the new year with a rather unusual review - a look at MINIX 3. An operating system that helped to inspire Linus Torvalds to create Linux (and whose creator, Andrew Tanenbaum, once famously described Linux as "obsolete" due to its monolithic design), continues to evolve in small steps, but is it still just a toy for students and those interested in operating systems design? Or has it finally become practical and usable for solving real-world problems? Read on to find out. The review is followed by a brief statistical look at the past year, where we'll highlight the winners and losers among the popular distributions. Then, in a more technical topic (although explained in a layman's language) we look at the possibilities of optimising 64-bit distributions with compiler flags. Finally, we are pleased to announce that the recipient of the December 2009 DistroWatch.com donation is the Krita project. Happy new year and happy reading!"

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Openmoko Community Updates

The Openmoko Community Updates for December 31, 2009 are available. Topics include QtMoko [15+16], Hackable:1, and more.

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openSUSE Weekly News/103

The openSUSE Weekly News for December 27, 2009 is out. Topics include openSUSE News: Linux for Education Updated, * The Geek Stuff/Sasikala: Unix Sed Tutorial: 6 Examples for Sed Branching Operation, * Ben Kevan: Blogilo - The Blog Gigolo - KDE 4.4, * openSUSE Forums: X Not Starting (11.2), and * h-online/Thorsten Leemhuis: Kernel Log: Linux 2.6.33 enters test phase.

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openSUSE Weekly News/104

The openSUSE Weekly News for January 2, 2010 is out. Topics include TooManyTabs - Saves Your Memory 1.1.0, * Alcaro Soliverez/kde.news: First KMyMoney Beta Version Available for KDE 4 Platform, * Joe Brockmeier: Put some meat on it: Writing release announcements, * Sharing a /home Directory between Linux and Windows, and * kde.news/Dario Freddi: KDE Extends Polkit Support to polkit-1.

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Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #174

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for January 2, 2010 is out. "In this issue we cover: Edubuntu Council Elections Results, Call for votes: Ubuntu Developer Membership Board election, New IRC Council Appointments, Ubuntu User Days Announcement, Ubuntu will be at Anime Boston 2010, 2010 Launchpad Release Calendar, Trying Out Launchpad Translations, The Planet: Amber, Daniel, Matthew, Steven, and Daniel, Full Circle Magazine #32, December Team Reports, and much, much more!"

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