Ubuntu Linux 12.04 'Precise Pangolin' Reaches Final Beta

With just a few weeks remaining before the final release of Ubuntu Linux 12.04 “Precise Pangolin,” Canonical on Thursday released the second and final beta version of the free and open source operating system.

Version 12.04 of Canonical's popular Linux distribution is a notable one for several reasons, including not just the fact that it's a Long Term Support (LTS) release and thus a particularly suitable choice for businesses, but also that it's the first to feature Canonical's new Head-Up Display (HUD) interface.

We already got a taste of HUD in the first beta version, which debuted earlier this month. Now, this second beta release adds a few more features while fixing numerous bugs, according to the official announcement from Ubuntu Release Manager Kate Stewart.

For more, click the link below:

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/252916/ubuntu_linux_1204_precise_pangolin_reaches_final_beta.html#tk.nl_bdx_h_crawl

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Powers the Globe’s Stock Exchanges

March 23, 2012

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux Team

An enjoyable and important part about celebrating the decade of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is recognizing and honoring our customers that have collaborated with us and relied on Red Hat to run their mission-critical enterprise applications. This collaboration has contributed significantly to Red Hat Enterprise Linux industry leadership.

The worldwide financial services industry is a prominent example of our leadership. Customers in this sector quickly realized the value of open source software and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Stock exchanges around the world – from NYSE Euronext to the Tokyo Stock Exchange – deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux because of its reliability, scalability and performance. Today, 28 stock exchanges across 24 countries run Red Hat Enterprise Linux to handle more than 50 percent of the world’s trading volume.

Red Hat takes our commitment to meeting the security needs of our customers seriously because we know that security is a key evaluation criterion for our customers running high-intensity, mission-critical stock exchange environments. NYSE Euronext turned to Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a high-speed, cost-effective platform that offers freedom from vendor lock-in and strong security capabilities. Our Asia Pacific stock exchange customers – currently 12 – use Red Hat Enterprise Linux and its SELinux technology.

Through our community-powered approach and partner ecosystem strength, we continuously connect with technology leaders to bring proven, high-performing Linux solutions to our joint customers. For our worldwide financial institution customers, we recently partnered with Arkelis, a fully-owned subsidiary of SWIFT, to port the Arkelis Advanced Messaging Hub (AMH) to Red Hat Enterprise Linux to effectively manage the significant volumes of their incoming and outgoing messaging traffic.

As we mark the 10th year of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we celebrate the collaboration we have had with our customers and look forward to our continued innovation. Don’t miss the sessions and panels featuring our customers and partners at the upcoming Red Hat Summit and JBoss World in June, where we’ll also honor the winners of the Red Hat Innovation Awards, our annual recognition program honoring the individuals, companies and partners that have forged new ground by implementing Red Hat solutions.

Find out more about Red Hat Enterprise Linux applications in the largest stock exchanges around the globehere. Check out our customer success videos here. For more information about the Red Hat Innovation Awards, visit here.

News Release from Oracle - Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2

Oracle Announces Production Release of Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 for Oracle Linux

Fastest Linux Kernel for Transaction Processing Now Generally Available

Redwood Shores, Calif. – March 13, 2012

News Facts

Oracle today announced the general availability of the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 for Oracle Linux.

Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 includes performance and scalability enhancements that allowed Oracle to achieve record database benchmark results(1,2).

Based on the 3.0.16 mainline kernel, Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 also includes improved memory and resource management, and is optimized to be deployed as a virtual guest.

The Btrfs file system is now production-ready with this release. Standard in Oracle Linux, Btrfs supports data stores of up to 16 exabyte, is optimized for solid state disks, is easy to administer, and includes built-in data integrity.

In addition, Oracle is offering technology previews of the very popular dynamic tracing mechanism, DTrace, and a powerful instance isolation capability, Linux Containers, to Oracle Linux support subscribers.

Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 is included with Oracle Linux 5 and 6.

To learn more, join the Oracle Linux Online Forum, March 27th.

Record-Setting Linux Performance Plus the Most Modern Feature Set

Highlights of Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 (R2) include:

Performance Improvements: to the scheduler, memory management, file system layer and networking stack, all lend to performance advantages on any size system.

Performance Benchmarks: Oracle Linux with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel R2 has recently delivered two record breaking TPC-C benchmark results, on a small and a largesystem (1,2).

Btrfs: the “next generation file system” for Linux. With btrfs included, Oracle Linux can support large files and file systems, snapshots and checksums for data and meta-data, provides integrated RAID and volume management, and simplifies administration.

Transparent Hugepages: automatically organizes memory in larger units to reduce memory management overhead and improve stability for memory-intensive workloads.

Optimized for deployment as a virtual guest: the same Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel R2 kernel image, with full support for the Xen hypervisor included, can be used to run both in hardware virtualized and paravirtualized modes.

Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel R2 also includes the following technology previews:

Built-in virtualization: Linux Containers allow multiple isolated Linux instances (containers) to run on the same host. Processes running in containers can have their own private view of the operating system, file system structure and network interfaces, and their use of server resources can be tightly controlled.

DTrace: provides a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework that is designed to quickly identify the root cause of system performance problems without rebooting the kernel and recompiling—or even restarting—applications.

Running Oracle Linux with Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel R2 fully maintains existing userspace application compatibility and certification without any modification.

Oracle Linux with Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel is extensively tested with the most demanding workloads, both on third-party servers and Oracle’s, including Engineered Systems such as Oracle Exadata Database Machine, Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine and Oracle Big Data Appliance – to help ensure superior performance and reliability.

With Oracle Linux Premier Support, customers can implement zero downtime kernel updates for Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel R2 with Ksplice technology.

Oracle Linux is open source with a public git source code repository and compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Supporting Quote

“Oracle Linux continues to deliver timely Linux innovations, backed by real-world testing, providing users a modern, scalable and reliable platform for their business critical workload demands,” said Wim Coekaerts, senior vice president of Linux and Virtualization Engineering, Oracle. “Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 further demonstrates Oracle’s investment in Linux technology and the community, and delivers on our goal to make Linux better for everyone.”

Supporting Resources

Oracle and Linux

Oracle Linux Customers

Wim Coekaerts Blog

Oracle Linux Online Forum, March 27th

New Innovations in Oracle Linux Webcast

Visit Oracle Linux on Blog, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube

News Release from Oracle

Oracle Offers Free Trial of Innovative Ksplice Zero-Downtime Updates to Red Hat Customers

Also Makes Ksplice Zero-Downtime Updates Available for Oracle’s Red Hat Compatible Kernel

Redwood Shores, Calif. – February 22, 2012

News Facts

Oracle today introduced a 30-day free trial of Oracle’s Ksplice zero-downtime kernel update technology for Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers.

Oracle is the only enterprise Linux provider that can offer zero-downtime updates that enable customers to apply security updates, diagnostic patches and critical bug fixes without rebooting.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers can experience the benefit of Ksplice zero-downtime kernel updates for the kernels they have installed today without any system reconfiguration.

Access the 30-day free Ksplice trial here. Terms, conditions and restrictions apply.

Oracle also announced that Ksplice zero-downtime kernel updates for Oracle’s Red Hat Compatible Kernel are now available to Oracle Linux Premier Support customers. Zero-downtime updates for Oracle’s Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel have been available since September 2011.

Additionally, Oracle extended the support lifecycle for Oracle Linux from eight to ten years, further enhancing the industry’s most comprehensive and low-cost Linux support program.

Oracle’s Linux support program has distinguished itself from the start by offering more value to customers through lifetime support policies, premier backporting, comprehensive legal indemnification, best practices for deployment, and lower cost.

Supporting Quote

"From day one, Oracle has been focused on offering the best Linux for enterprise computing, both from a product and support perspective,” said Wim Coekaerts, Oracle senior vice president, Linux and Virtualization Engineering. “With the innovative zero-downtime update capabilities delivered through Ksplice, and the extended support lifecycle for Oracle Linux, Oracle continues to set the industry standard for Linux in the enterprise.”

Supporting Resources

30-day Ksplice trial for RHEL customers

Oracle Linux

Oracle Linux Support

Oracle and Ksplice

Oracle Linux Blog, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube

Dell OEM Partners with SUSE

News release from Dell:

Dell OEM Solutions Makes Available SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to Customers

SUSE is the First Linux Vendor to Join the Dell OEM Technology Partner Program

Date : 1/24/2012

Dell and SUSE today announced the Dell OEM Solutions division will offer customizable, integrated systems based on SUSE Linux Enterprise with services and support for customers worldwide. Now, Dell OEM Solutions customers can customize any Dell-standard hardware within its extensive portfolio and utilize the versatility, performance, reliability and security of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, helping reduce cost and time to market.

   Gartner conducted a primary research survey of 547 IT leaders in organizations (excluding technology and service providers) in 11 countries in the second half of 2010. More than half the organizations surveyed have adopted OSS solutions as part of their IT strategy, with nearly one-third citing benefits of flexibility, increased innovation, shorter development times and faster procurement processes. Lower total cost of ownership was a key driver.*

"Enterprises are increasingly using Linux in integrated systems, ranging from consumer electronics, to industrial control, aerospace and military technologies," said Nils Brauckmann, president and general manager, SUSE.

"This partnership marks another milestone in our ongoing relationship with Dell. It combines Dell's OEM product, industry standard hardware and global services capabilities, with SUSE's flexible, reliable and cost-effective operating system and tools, to meet the specific needs of the embedded and OEM markets."

Dell will use SUSE Studio, a powerful image customization and provisioning tool, to build and deploy application stacks based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server onto Dell OEM Solutions’ embedded, built-to-order and customized solutions. Using SUSE Studio, Dell can help its OEM customers reduce the complexity and overhead costs associated with bringing integrated systems to market.

“We are pleased to welcome SUSE as the first Linux vendor to the Dell OEM Technology Partner Program. By partnering with SUSE, we are broadening and strengthening our solutions for the embedded and OEM markets,” said Ron Pugh, executive director and general manager, Dell OEM Solutions, Americas. “Our customers that use Dell OEM Solutions with SUSE Enterprise Linux Server for product design can help accelerate their time to market and cut operational costs.”

More information about the Dell OEM and SUSE partnership can be found on the Dell OEM Technology Partner website.

* Gartner, Inc., Survey Analysis: Overview of Preferences and Practices in the Adoption and Usage of Open-Source Software, Laurie F. Wurster, Bob Igou, Zeynep Babat, January 24, 2011