CIS 301: OS & Server Administration - Recently Updated Pages

Webmin

haydontm — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:11:08 CST

Webmin is an excellent tool for both novice and experienced system administrators. As a tool for novices, it can provide a means of getting involved in system administration in a very visual way. All of the options available are presented in a clear and complete fashion. For new users, seeing the possibilities laid out so plainly can be a very effective teaching tool, as well as a helpful safety net to avoid many common pitfalls.

See: http://www.linuxjunkies.org/adminstration%20Howto/webminguide/book1.htm

New Link: http://www.linuxjunkies.org/adminstration%20Howto/webminguide/index.html (this one should work)

Linux Architecture

Rick_Mathieu — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 10:46:40 CST

The purpose of this page is describe the Linux architecture. The layers to the Linux system consist of:

hardware (CPU, memory, storage, monitors, etc.)
Linux kernel (process management, file system, memory management, I/O, etc.)
standard utility programs (GNU core utilities) and standard C library
user interface (command line shell such as bash or a GUI such as Gnome, KDE or XWindows)
applications (such as Apache, MySQL and PhP) and networking (sshd and inetd)

- contains many of the basic tools such as cat, ls, and rm needed for Unix-like operating systems)

What is the Linux kernel?

"The kernel is the essential center of a computer operating system, the core that provides basic services for all other parts of the operating system. A synonym is nucleus. A kernel can be contrasted with a shell, the outermost part of an operating system that interacts with user commands. Kernel and shell are terms used more frequently in Unix operating systems than in IBM mainframe or Microsoft Windows systems." (Source: SearchEnterpriseLinux.com )

"Typically, a kernel (or any comparable center of an operating system) includes an interrupt handler that handles all requests or completed I/O operations that compete for the kernel’s services, a scheduler that determines which programs share the kernel’s processing time in what order, and a supervisor that actually gives use of the computer to each process when it is scheduled. A kernel may also include a manager of the operating system’s address spaces in memory or storage, sharing these among all components and other users of the kernel’s services. A kernel’s services are requested by other parts of the operating system or by application programs through a specified set of program interfaces sometimes known as system calls."

The Linux Kernel If any single aspect of a Linux distribution could be called "Linux," then it would be the kernel. So what is the kernel? Well, on the hard disk, it is represented by the file /vmlinuz. Just as a program like /bin/date is a collection of bytes that isn't very useful until it is loaded in memory and running, the same applies to /vmlinuz. However, once the /vmlinuz program is loaded into memory and starts its work, it becomes "the kernel" and has many responsibilities. Perhaps the two most important responsibilities are process management and file management. However, the kernel is responsible for many other things. One aspect is I/O management, which is essentially the accessing of all the peripheral devices. (source: the Linux Tutorial)

Importance of Open Source Software

haydontm — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:46:05 CST

What is the most popular open source software (OSS)? Why?

Some of the more prominent organizations involved in OSS development include the Apache Software Foundation, creators of the Apache web server; a loose affialiation of developers headed by Linus Torvalds, creators of the Linux operating system kernel; the Eclipse Foundation, home of the Eclipse software development platform; the Debian Project, creators of the influential Debian Linux distribution; and the Mozilla Foundation, home of the Firefox web browser. Several Open Source programs have become defining entries in their space, including the GIMP image editing system; Sun's Java programming language and environment; the MySQL database system; the FreeBSD Unix operating system; Sun's 2 OpenOffice.org office productivity suite; and the Wireshark network packet sniffer and protocol analyser Open Source development is often performed "live and in public", using services provided for free on the Internet, such as the Launchpad and SourceForge web sites, and using tools that are themselves Open Source, including the CVS and Subversion source control systems, and the GNU Compiler Collection.(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_software)

Best of Open Source Software Awards 2008 InfoWorld's 2008 Bossies recognize the top free and open products for business, IT, and personal productivity By Doug Dineley
August 04, 2008 If the phrase "open source software" continues to conjure images of impassioned programmers selflessly collaborating for the common good, it may be because, even as commercial interests are behind many of the most prominent projects, the results are no less inspired – and typically no less free. Yes, advanced functionality or maintenance and support may require writing a check, but freeloaders looking for high-quality software – of almost any kind – have never had it so good. Chosen by InfoWorld Test Center editors, analysts, and reviewers, InfoWorld’s annual Best of Open Source Software awards (or Bossies, for short) celebrate the best products that open source has to offer: the best free software on the planet for businesses, their IT staffs, and their employees’ workstations. Our 2008 winners include 60 products in eight categories: enterprise applications such as CRM, ERP, BI, and reporting; collaborative applications, including mail/calendar, wiki, and social networking; desktop productivity apps from office suites to 3-D modeling; platforms and middleware, including operating systems, databases, virtualization, and SOA integration; developer tools from AJAX and rich Internet apps to Web service testing and version control; networking, including server monitoring, routing, Wi-Fi scanning, and VoIP software; security software, including firewall, IDS, disk encryption, and security testing; and storage, including monitoring and administration, backup, and NAS. Some of our picks were easy. For office productivity suite, what else but OpenOffice.org? For network intrusion detection, what else but Snort? And for security log analysis, nothing beats Splunk. Even in areas where good options abound, sometimes one solution is head and shoulders above the rest: In CRM, Sugar; in content management, Alfresco; in IP telephony, Asterisk. But in most categories, stiff competition made the choice difficult. Would it be JasperSoft or Pentaho for BI? Scalix or Zimbra for groupware? Compiere or Openbravo for ERP? How to select the best JavaScript framework from among the likes of Dojo, Google Web Toolkit, Prototype, Yahoo User Interface, and so many others? Choosing often wasn’t easy, but we took a close look and made our call. http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/08/04/32TC-bossies-2008_1.html

10 Reasons the Linux Operating System so popular?

A Linux Distribution has thousands of dollars worth of software for no cost (or a couple of dollars if purchased on CD/DVD)
Linux is a complete operating system that is:
stable - the crash of an application is much less likely to bring down the operating system under Linux
reliable - Linux servers are often up for hundreds of days compared with the regular reboots required with a Windows system
extremely powerful
Comes with a complete development environment, including C, C++, Fortran compilers, toolkits such as Qt and scripting languages such as Perl, Awk and sed. A C compiler for Windows alone would set you back hundreds of dollars.
Excellent networking facilities: allowing you to share CPUs, share modems etc; all of which are not included or available with Windows 95.
The ideal environment to run servers such as a web server (e.g. Apache), or an FTP server.
A wide variety of commercial software is available if your needs aren't satisfied by the free software.
An operating system that is easily upgradeable. After any length of time a typical installation of Windows and software gets into a complete mess. Often the only way to clear out all the debris is to reformat the hard disk and start again. Linux, however, is much better for maintaining the system.
Supports multiple processors as standard.
True multi-tasking; the ability to run more than one program at the same time.
An excellent window system called X; the equivalent of Windows but much more flexible.

SOURCE: http://www.webpromo-inc.com/linuxsite/whypopular.asp

Is OSS secure?

The debate

There is an ongoing debate on whether open source software increases software security or is detrimental to its security. There are a variety of different benefits and drawbacks for both sides of the argument. There are also a variety of metrics and models to measure the effectiveness of the security.

Benefits of open source security

More people can inspect the source code to find and fix a possible vulnerability.

Proprietary software forces the user to accept the level of security that the software vendor is willing to deliver and to accept the rate that patches and updates are released.

The end-user of Open Source code has the ability to change and modify source to implement any extra "features" of security they may wish for a specific use, which can extend to the kernel level if they so wish.

It is assumed that any compiler that is used creates code that can be trusted, but it has been demonstrated by Ken Thompson that a compiler can be subverted using an eponymous Thompson hack to create faulty executables that are unwittingly produced by a well-intentioned developer. With access to the source code for the compiler, the developer has at least the ability to discover if there is any mal-intention.

Kerckhoffs' principle is based on the idea that an enemy can steal a secure military system and not be able to compromise the information. His ideas were the basis for many modern security practices, and followed that security through obscurity is a bad practice.

Government Findings

The most popular open-source software is also the most free of bugs, according to the first results of a U.S. government-sponsored effort to help make such software as secure as possible.

The so-called LAMP stack of open-source software has a lower bug density--the number of bugs per thousand lines of code--than a baseline of 32 open-source projects analyzed, Coverity, a maker of code analysis tools, announced Monday.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security awarded US$1.24 million in funding to Stanford University, Coverity and Symantec to hunt for security bugs in open-source software and to improve Coverity's commercial tool for source code analysis. The funding, announced in January, is for a three-year "Open Source Hardening Project."

In the analysis, more than 17.5 million lines of code from 32 open-source projects were scanned. On average, 0.434 bugs per 1,000 lines of code were found, Coverity said. The LAMP stack, however, "showed significantly better software quality," with an average of 0.29 defects per 1,000 lines of code, the technology company said.

There is one caveat: PHP, the popular programming language, is the only component in the LAMP stack that has a higher bug density than the baseline, Coverity said.

Of the other open-source projects scanned, Coverity found that the Amanda back-up tool had the highest number of bugs per 1,000 lines of code, with a bug density of 1.237. The lowest was the XMMS audio player, with 0.051 defects per 1,000 lines of code.

In absolute numbers, most defects were found in X, the low-level graphical interface software for Linux and Unix. Coverity found 1,681 defects in X, it said. With only six defects, XMMS also scored best in absolute numbers.

(Source: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/security/0,39044215,39315781,00.htm)

Drawbacks of open source security

All people have access to the source code, including potential attackers. Any unpatched vulnerability can be used by attackers.

Simply making source code available does not guarantee review. A good example of this occurring is when Marcus Ranum, an expert on security system design and implementation, released his first public firewall toolkit. At one point in time, there were over 2,000 sites using his toolkit, but only 10 people gave him any feedback or patches.

Having a large amount of eyes reviewing code can "lull a user into a false sense of security". Having many users look at source code does not guarantee that security flaws will be found and fixed.

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_software_security)

Caution on security

But just because open source software has a better track record than proprietary software doesn’t mean it’s 100 percent safe, said Ellen Libenson, vice president of marketing for Symark Software, which sells security management software for users of UNIX, Linux and Windows operating systems. Linux is a popular open source operating system.

While products like Linux are considered highly secure and backed by companies that can support users in need, some open source software programs are simply created by the community, meaning there is no support out there and nobody dedicated to ensuring the source code is not vulnerable to attack, Libenson said.

Before selecting open source software, users should do as much homework as they would with proprietary software, she said.

“Is there in fact a bona fide organization behind the product or is it just the wild, wild West of an open community of individuals of various skill sets?” Libenson said.

As with any vendor, agencies should be asking who the provider is, what is the quality of the staff and if they used security best practices, she said. (Source-Elise Castelli -- http://www.federaltimes.com/index.php?S=3781023 -- Oct 21, 2008) Open Source Software and Security Computer security is the process of balancing the security requirements of a computer system with requirements for price, usability, user training and reliability. When considering software, it is natural to ask what impact the adoption of open source software has on this balance. In and of itself, open source software is neither more nor less secure than closed source software. There are famously secure examples of both open source software and closed source software just as there are infamously insecure examples of both open source software and closed source software. Open source does affect the security balance in a number of ways, but the influence of these effects very much depends on the specific circumstances involved. The source code is available to all.The availability of source code is a defining characteristic of open source software, but is not an unalloyed blessing:

Attackers can examine the source code for vulnerabilities to exploit. This can also be an issue with closed source software whose code is sometimes leaked, as was the case with the illegal posting of Microsoft Windows 2000 source code. There is a long history of leaks of source code and algorithms, including the COMP128 encryption algorithm used in GSM mobile phones.
Defenders can examine the source code for vulnerabilities to fix. This commonly happens in one of two scenarios. The first—searching for a specific vulnerability that is being actively exploited—is relatively easy because the exploit can be reverse engineered and when the vulnerability is fixed and the exploit stops working it is clear that the vulnerability has been fixed. The second—searching for vulnerabilities that are not being actively exploited—is a much harder and more open ended task. Effort tends to focus on high-profile code with obvious security implications and these sections of code are normally secure, but a flaw in almost any part of the software can cause a vulnerability and finding these involves examining all of the source code, which may run to millions of lines of source code. Finding and fixing vulnerabilities is an effective way for open source contributors to gain the respect of their peers, so many contributors are motivated to look through sections of the code for vulnerabilities.

Anyone can contribute to the source code. Another defining feature of open source software, the ability of anyone, anywhere to contribute source code is a double edged sword:

Attackers can attempt to add vulnerabilities to the source code. To prevent this most open source projects accept contributions only from trusted contributors. All other contributors have to have their contributions approved by a trusted contributor. The process of becoming a trusted contributor varies, but often involves long-term commitment to a project and the exchange of cryptographic keys so that trusted contributors can communicate securely. The use of version control systems allows tracking of which contributor makes which changes, when and the reason they give. Should a contributor be found to have introduced a vulnerability, all of their contributions can be isolated, examined and, if necessary, purged.
Defenders can contribute fixes to vulnerabilities—the process of finding and fixing vulnerabilities is not limited to the resources and office hours of a single company, but the resources of the users of the software. A result of this is that fixes for known or actively exploited vulnerabilities tend to be issued substantially faster for open source software than for closed source software.

Malware writers target large pools of uniform, poorly maintained computers. Malware includes viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, rootkits and other software that have deliberately malicious effects or side effects.

Currently, open source applications and operating systems tend to be relatively diverse (one consequence of being able to modify the source code is that people do), relatively well maintained (because of the technical barriers to using much open source software it tends not to be the software of choice for complete beginners) and a relative minority (again because of the technical barriers); all these factors make it a poor target for the writers of malware.
The technical barriers to the use of open source are being lowered by better documentation and user interfaces, the diversity is being reduced through standardisation efforts and it is becoming widely used; these are progressively undermining the factors which make it unattractive to malware writers.
Acceptance of input from non-professionals and emphasis on skills development in open source communities is likely to lead to an increasing number of individuals with the skills to write malware but without the professional ties which might prevent them from writing and releasing malware. This may lead to a long-term increase in malware.

Patented and trade-secret algorithms are largely unavailable to open source projects. Patents and trade-secrets are used by companies to protect their place in a marketplace. They are viewed with distaste by the free and open source movement.

A number of important algorithms, particularly cryptographic algorithms, are patented or are trade-secret and thus unavailable to open source projects, since they are normally unable to meet even the most liberal licensing requirements. Patented algorithms eventually enter the public domain (as the widely-used RSA algorithm has), but trade-secret algorithms remain permanently unavailable.
Trade-secret cryptographic algorithms have a long history of being both weak and leaked to the public. The tendency to weakness is due to the fact that the only known reliable way to determine the strength of cryptographic algorithm is to have a large number of cryptographers examine it—which is not possible to do while keeping it a trade-secret.

Open source software may not be tested for security vulnerabilities. Formal testing programs are used to great effect by many companies as part of ‘quality programs’ to reduce software defects.

Open source projects rarely have the rigid infrastructure required for quality programs such as ISO 9000 implementation, but many of the methods used to implement ISO 9000 quality programs for software are amenable to automation. These include regression testing, unit testing and many compile-time code analysis tests. Most sufficiently large open source projects and several open source support sites (such as SourceForge) have automated methods for running such tests. In addition many open source projects have contributors who use the software in ISO 9000 contexts and perform checks within the context of their employer's organisation rather than the open source project, but feed bug fixes back to the project.

There are so many versions of open source software that making sure a bug is fixed in all of them is impossible. Anyone can make changes to and customisations of open source software and a sufficient number do that it can lead to confusion over which bugs affect which versions.

There can be a confusing number of versions of open source software, but generally distributors (who package open source software into usable systems) have tools that allow tracking of what software is installed and there is an automated or semi-automated update of the software when security updates appear.
The freedom to change also allows security specific customisation to be undertaken. Perhaps the best example of this is the Security Enhanced Linux project, undertaken by the USA's National Security Agency, which provides a significantly larger set of security features, at the price of significantly higher maintenance and operating overhead.
Similar issues are faced by commercial companies who support several products. This is especially true of hardware vendors, for whom continuous upgrade to the current versions is not an option.
The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures system, a vendor neutral system which provides a dictionary of vulnerability identifiers, effectively solves these problems for open source, closed source and mixed systems.

The above points show that open source is not a magic bullet for security but can directly influence security trade-offs in complex ways. (Source-http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/security.xml -- June 25, 2008)

Open Source Software A Security Risk, Study Claims Open source software is a significant security risk for corporations that use it because in many cases, the open source community fails to adhere to minimal security best practices, according a study released Monday.
The study, carried out by Fortify Software with help from consultant Larry Suto, evaluated 11 open source software packages and each community's response to security issues over the course of about three months. The goal was to find out if the community for each open source software package was responsive to security questions or vulnerability findings, published security guidelines and maintained a secure development process, for example.
Open source application server Tomcat scored the best in the study, titled "Open Source Study -- How Are Open Source Development Communities Embracing Security Best Practices?"
The remaining 10 open source application, tool and database packages -- Derby, Geronimo, Hibernate, Hipergate, JBoss, Jonas, OFBiz, OpenCMS, Resin and Struts -- had a dismal showing. Among these 10 packages, application server JBoss scored higher by providing a prominent link to security information on its Web site and easy access to security experts, but came up short for not having a specific e-mail alias for submission of security vulnerabilities.
"You don't want to report bugs to a general mailing list because it would go to the general public," says Jacob West, manager of Fortify's security research group. There needs to be a measure of confidentiality in reporting bugs so that the fix for them can be provided when the public is notified, so attackers don't get early information they can exploit.
But too often the open source communities that offer their software for free don't appear to be as mindful about security practices as their commercial counterparts, which charge for software and support, West says.
Fortify identified a total of 22,826 cross-site scripting and 15,612 SQL injection issues associated with multiple versions of the 11 open source software packages examined.
But when Fortify tried to reach out to the open-source software communities, with the primary point of contact a Web site and a general e-mail address, the security firm found that "in two-thirds of these cases, you didn't get a response at all," West says. "There are no phone numbers. Who do you go to ask for information? It's kind of hard to tell who these people are."

The report itself notes, "Open source packages often claim enterprise-class capabilities but are not adopting -- or even considering -- industry best practices. Only a few open source development teams are moving in the right direction."
West says Fortify did not conduct this study in order to condemn open source software, but rather to point out that the security practices need to improve because open source adoption by enterprises and governments is growing.
Howard Schmidt, former White House cybersecurity czar who's now a consultant, and also a board member at Fortify, says the study shows that when it comes to business adoption of open source software, "You've got to go into this with your eyes wide open."
The reality is that while open source software may appear more cost-effective and just as functional as commercial software in some instances, the question of maintenance must be examined very carefully.
"Who do you reach out to?" Schmidt asks. "What about the thousands of companies out there running Geronimo? And what about your supply-chain partners?"
The bottom line is that corporations may find they have to undertake remediation of open source packages on their own. "You are effectively on your own, absent your having an arrangement ahead of time," Schmidt says.
Government agencies and corporations need to decide if they're going to try to mitigate problems with open source software themselves, through risk assessment and code review, and whether they plan to give that information back to the open source community.
This is a fundamental question about the life-cycle development of the software, West says, adding that the study indicated to Fortify that the open source communities in these cases tended not to correct for indentified flaws in software versions over a period of time.

Source: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/072108-open-source-security-risk.html?page=2

What are different OSS licenses?

There are dozens of OSS/FS licenses, but nearly all OSS/FS software uses one of the four major licenses: the GNU General Public License (GPL), the GNU Lesser (or Library) General Public License (LGPL), the MIT (aka X11) license, and the BSD-new license. Indeed the Open Source Initiative refers to these four licenses as the classic open source licenses. The GPL and LGPL are termed ``copylefting'' licenses, that is, these licenses are designed to prevent the code from becoming proprietary. See Perens' paper for more information comparing these licenses. The GPL allows anyone to use the program and modify it, but prevents code from becoming proprietary once distributed and it also forbids proprietary programs from "linking" to it. The MIT and BSD-new licenses let anyone do almost anything with the code except sue the authors. One minor complication: there are actually two "BSD" licenses, sometimes called "BSD-old" and "BSD-new"; new programs should use BSD-new instead of BSD-old. The LGPL is a compromise between the GPL and MIT/BSD-new approaches and is primarily intended for code libraries; like the GPL, LGPL-licensed software cannot be changed and made proprietary, but the LGPL does permit proprietary programs to link to the library. The most popular OSS/FS license by far is the GPL. For example, Freshmeat.net reported on April 4, 2002 that 71.85% of the 25,286 software branches (packages) it tracked are GPL-licensed (the next two most popular were LGPL, 4.47%, and the BSD licenses, 4.17%). Sourceforge.net reported on April 4, 2002 that the GPL accounted for 73% of the 23,651 ``open source'' projects it hosted (next most popular were the LGPL, 10%, and the BSD licenses, 7%).
Source: http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_refs.html

Examples of Open Source Licenses by Category

.:: Licenses that are popular and widely used or with strong communities ::.

*Apache License, 2.0
*New and Simplified BSD licenses
*GNU General Public License (GPL)
*GNU Library or "Lesser" General Public License (LGPL)
*MIT license
*Mozilla Public License 1.1 (MPL)
*Common Development and Distribution License
*Common Public License 1.0
*Eclipse Public License

.:: Special purpose licenses ::.

*Educational Community License
*NASA Open Source Agreement 1.3
*Open Group Test Suite License

.:: Other/Miscellaneous licenses ::.

*Adaptive Public License
*Artistic license 2.0
*Open Software License

.:: Licenses that are redundant with more popular licenses ::.

*Academic Free License
*Attribution Assurance Licenses
*Eiffel Forum License V2.0

.:: Non-reusable licenses ::.

*Apple Public Source License
*Computer Associates Trusted Open Source License 1.1
*W3C License
*wxWindows Library License
*Zope Public License

.:: Superseded licenses ::.

*Apache Software License 1.1
*Artistic license 1.0
*Eiffel Forum License V1.0

.:: Licenses that have been voluntarily retired ::.

*Intel Open Source License
*Jabber Open Source License

.:: Uncategorized Licenses ::.

*Affero GNU Public License
*Boost Software License (BSL1.0)
*Common Public Attribution License 1.0 (CPAL)
*GNU General Public License version 3.0 (GPLv3)

Source (http://www.opensource.org/licenses/category)

Types of Open Source Licenses Open source licenses may be broadly categorized into the following types: (1) those that apply no restrictions on the distribution of derivative works (we will call these Non-Protective Licenses because they do not protect the code from being used in non-Open Source applications); and (2) those that do apply such restrictions (we will call these Protective Licenses because they ensure that the code will always remain open/free). To better appreciate the nature of these licenses, it is helpful to picture software licenses on a continuum based on the rights in copyright extended to the licensee. See Diagram 1 at the conclusion of this article. Software that has been placed in the public domain is free of all restrictions, all rights under copyright having been granted to the public at large. Licensors of Non-Protective Open Source licenses retain their copyright, but they grant all rights under copyright to the licensee. Licensors of Protective Open Source licenses retain their copyright, grant all rights under copyright to the licensee, but apply at least one restriction, typically that the redistribution of the software, whether modified or unmodified, must be under the same license. Licensors of propriety licenses retain their copyright and only grant a few rights under copyright, typically only the rights to perform and display. The following table, where the BSD license is used as an example of a Non-Protective Open Source license and the GNU General Public License as an example of a Protective Open Source license, displays these contrasts - see Diagram 2 at the conclusion of this article. Non-Protective Open Source licenses include: Academic Free License v.1.2; Apache Software License v.1.1; Artistic; Attribution Assurance license; BSD License; Eiffel Forum License; Intel Open Source License for CDSA/CSSM Implementation; MIT License; Open Group Test Suite License; Q Public License v.1.0; Sleepycat License; Sun Industry Standards Source License; University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License; Vovida Software License v.1.0; W3C Software Notice and License; X.Net, Inc. License; zlib/libpng License; and Zope Public License v.2.0. Protective Open Source licenses include: Apple Public Source License v.1.2; Artistic License; Common Public License v.1.0; GNU General Public License v.2.0; GNU Lesser General Public License v.2.1; IBM Public License v.1.0; Jabber Open Source License v.1.0; MITRE Collaborative Virtual Workspace License; Motosoto Open Source License v.0.9.1; Mozilla Public License v.1.0 and v.1.1; Nethack General Public License; Noika Open Source License v.1.0a; OCLC Research Public License v.1.0; Open Software License v.1.1; Python License; Python Software Foundation License v.2.1.1; Ricoh Source Code Public License v.1.0; and Sun Public License v.1.0. All of these, and additional new licenses, can be found on the Open Source Initiative website. Some Open Source licenses of both types include other provisions, such as restrictions on the use of trademarks, express grants of license with respect to applicable patents, disclaimers of warranties, indemnification of copyright holders in commercial distributions, and disclaimers of liability. However, none of these provisions are as fundamentally important as the obligations/restrictions that are imposed on redistribution rights under the Protective Open Source licenses, and it is with those restrictions on redistribution that we next focus.

Source: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20031231092027900

How is OSS developed?

The Open source software development method is very unstructured, because no clear development tools, phases, etc. have been defined like with development methods such as DSDM. Instead, every project has its own phases.
The phases specified here are derived from Sharma et al.[3]. A diagram displaying the process-data structure of Open source software development is placed on the right side. In this picture, the phases of Open source software development are displayed, along with the corresponding data elements. This diagram is made using the Meta-Modeling and Meta-Process Modeling techniques. In table 1, the activities displayed in the figure are explained. The process starts with a choice between the adopting of an existing project, or the starting of a new project. The difference between these two is explained in the section ‘New projects vs. existing projects’. If a new project is started, the process goes to the Initiation phase. If an existing project is adopted, the process goes directly to the Execution phase.

There are several ways in which work on an open source project can start:

An individual who senses the need for a project announces the intent to develop the project in public. The individual may receive offers of help from others. The group may then proceed to work on the code.
A developer working on a limited but working codebase, releases it to the public as the first version of an open-source program. The developer continues to work on improving it, and possibly is joined by other developers.
The source code of a mature project is released to the public, after being developed as proprietary software or inhouse software.
A well-established open-source project can be forked by an interested outside party. Several developers can then start a new project, whose source code then diverges from the original.

Eric Raymond observed in his famous essay "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" that announcing the intent for a project is usually inferior to releasing a working project to the public. It's a common mistake to start a project when contributing to an existing similar project would be more effective (NIH syndrome). To start a successful project it is very important to investigate what's already there.
It is hard to run an Open source project following a more traditional software development method like the Waterfall model, because in these traditional methods it is not allowed to go back to a previous phase. In Open source software development requirements are rarely gathered before the start of the project; instead they are based on early releases of the software product, as Robbins describes[4]. Besides requirements, often volunteer staff is attracted to help developing the software product based on the early releases of the software. This networking effect is essential according to Abrahamsson et al.[5]: “if the introduced prototype gathers enough attention, it will gradually start to attract more and more developers”. However, Abrahamsson et al. also point out that the community is very harsh, much like the business world of closed source software: “if you find the customers you survive, but without customers you die”. Alfonso Fuggetta mentions[6] that “rapid prototyping, incremental and evolutionary development, spiral lifecycle, rapid application development, and, recently, extreme programming and the agile software process can be equally applied to proprietary and open source software”. One Open source development method mentioned by Fuggetta is the Agile method Extreme Programming. All the Agile methods are in essence applicable to Open source software development, because of their iterative and incremental character. Another Agile method, Internet Speed Development, is also suitable for Open source software development in particular because of the distributed development principle it adopts. Internet-Speed Development used geographically distributed teams to ‘work around the clock’. This method is mostly adopted by large closed source firms like Microsoft, because only big software firms are able to create distributed development centers in different time zones. Of course if software is developed by a large group of volunteers in different countries, this is being achieved naturally and without the investment needed like with closed source software development.
source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_software_development)

What motivates OSS developers?
Without software developers who are motivated to start and contribute to OSS projects, OSS projects cannot succeed. Factors that affect motivation are both intrinsic (cognitive) and extrinsic (social). The precondition for motivating developers to get involved in OSS projects is that they must derive an intrinsic satisfaction in their involvement in OSS projects. Relying purely on altruism makes OSS unsustainable. Intrinsic motivation is positively reinforced and amplified when social structure and conventions of the community by recognizing and rewarding the contributions of its members. Although many developers get involved in OSS development due to the need for functionality, many OSSdevelopers are not motivated by utility only. For example, neither Kimball nor Mattis, who started the GIMP project, had any graphic arts needs. They did not start the project because they wanted to use it.

We argue that learning is one of the driving forces that motivates developers to get involved in OSS projects because it provides the intrinsic satisfaction for OSS developers, and the role transformation in OSS communities that go along with learning offering the extrinsic motivation. Software systems are cognitive artifacts whose creation is a process of knowledge construction that requires both creativity and a wide variety of knowledge about problem domains, logic, computer, and others. In this sense, software systems, like books, are a form of knowledge media. Many OSS systems come into existence as results of the learning efforts of their original developers who try to understand how to model, or to change, the world with computational systems. When the source code became accessible to users, the knowledge and creativity therein also become accessible, providing the initial learning resource that attracts users to form a community of practice around the system. By participating in the community, developers and users learn from the system, from each other, and share their learning with each other.

Learning by doing. In this form of learning, the learners want to deepen their understanding of a certain domain by actually engaging in practical tasks that allow them to apply their existing knowledge and to perfect their current skills. By definition, hackers, who are behind almost every OSS systems, are people who enjoy "exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities" through programming rather thantheorizing. Linns Torvalds started Linux partially because he wanted to learn more about the architecture of Intel 386, and the perfect way of doing so was to develop an operating system for it. Peter Mattis described his "original impetus for GTK was simply (his) wanting to understand how to write a UI toolkit"

The social fabric inherent in OSS communities reinforces the intrinsic motivation for participating in OSS projects as a form of learning. Only in a society where technical supremacy is highly appreciated can developers acquire good reputations among their peers by displaying their skills through free distribution, and often wider acceptance, of their systems. The good reputation attracts attention, trust, and cooperation from others and lays the foundation for advancing the original developers agenda and the establishment and development of OSS communities. Members close to the center of the community enjoy better visibility and reputations than do peripheral members. The road to the core has to be paved by contributing more to the project and interacting more with their members. As new members contribute to the system and the community, they are rewarded with higher recognition and trust in the community, and higher influence as well. In the GIMP community, most developers who have contributed a lot are given the right to directly contribute to the system. Some even become Core Members. Rewarding contributing members with higher recognition and more important roles is also important for the sustainability of the community and the system development because it is the way that the community reproduces itself. In the GIMP community, 29Active Developers have not been active for at least a year, but the community is still prospering because many new developers have become competent participants along the path of LPP. From the log of source code commitments, we have found that 25 developers started contributing code in the recent two years.

Yunwen , Kouichi, Ye , Kishida . "Toward an understanding of the motivation Open Source Software developers." ACM Digital Library (ACM). 2003. IEEE Computer Society. 19 Jan 2009 <http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=776816.776867&coll=&dl=ACM&CFID=18390230&CFTOKEN=23250907>

Report: Open-source developers command up to 40 percent premium

Want to make more money as an enterprise application developer? You're in luck--if you know open source. According to a recent report from Bluewolf Consulting, enterprises increasingly deploy open-source software, and look to specialized application development on top of it, to drive business value: The rise of open-source software in application development puts developers with a specialization in those technologies in a position to ask for a 30 (percent) or 40 percent pay increase, Kirven says. "We've gotten more requests from our permanent-placement division for open-source developers in the last six months than in the last five or six years combined," he says. "It's not as easy as getting free software; someone has to get it up and running. LAMP is everywhere now--these types of technologies no one heard of 18 months ago are all the sudden becoming a hot commodity." Indeed. Not only does open source bring developers more money, but it also apparently brings them more satisfaction. Jon Williams, chief technology officer of test preparation company Kaplan, made it very clear in an Infoworld podcast I recorded a month ago that open source is one of his best retention tools. Let people do interesting work, and they stick around. Make them mindlessly monitor that Windows machine, and they'll bolt. Update: It is also worth reading about how open source drives enterprise innovation.

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9882356-7.html

An Empirical analysis of open source software developers' motivations and continuance intentions

The set of possible motivators of OSS developers is extensive, containing both extrinsic and intrinsic aspects. Extrinsic motivators are environment factors brought by the organization to an individual, while intrinsic motivators or internal motivators are related to the needs satisfying the individual [27]. The set of all possible motivators is too extensive to include in one study. Therefore, we focused on those appeared to have the strongest effect: the intrinsic motivator helping and the extrinsic motivators enhancing human capital, career advancement, and personal needs.

2.1 Helping behavior

Many open source researchers have argued that altruism is the primary intrinsic incentive for participants. "Altruism... is a natural part of human nature [and]... is exhibited in some manner by everyone"[32]. Based on this viewpoint, developers make OSS contributions because they would like to lend a hand to others and simultaneously give something back to those who have assisted them [30]. In such a gift culture setting, given the abundance of resources, social status is determined not by one has but by what one gives away, such is the case in the OSS community [33].

2.2 Enhancing human capital

A number of economists and researchers regard enhancing human capital as one of several extrinsic incentives that motivate participants to engage in OSS projects. From the standpoint of labor economics, human capital as a determinant of productivity refers to personal skills, capabilities, and knowledge. Human capital involves the accumulation of investments in people through education and on-the-job training [28]. According to Ye and Kishida [42], OSS development provides examples of excellent programming to less skilled developers. However, the learning environment involves much more than the study of excellent craftsmanship. OSS communities posses the essential qualities that Wenger and Snyder [41] identified as "communities of practice," which are formed by people, mostly practitioners, who are "informally bound together by shared expertise and passion for a joint enterprise." As a result of sustained learning overtime, the members develop a shared repertoire of experience, tools and ways of addressing recurring problems. Consequently, less experienced open source participants can develop skills that are useful when they enter/reenter the labor market.

2.3 Career advancement

Lender and Tirole suggested that participation in OSS development may advance a person's career in two ways: by demonstrating (or signaling) their capabilities and skills to potential employers and by using OSS involvement to acquire access to venture capital, acquire shares in commercial open source-based companies, or to launch a business endeavor.

2.4 Satisfying personal needs

Many OSS projects start because the people promoting them have not been able to find a program needed to perform a particular function. They arise to satisfy a work-related demand: to "fill an unfilled market" [5]. In many cases, OSS developers have the ability to modify OSS to satisfy personal or business requirements or help by knowing how to incorporate OSS into other products. The software and the knowledge to utilize it provide extrinsic value to the developer.

Source (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL_udi=B6VD0-4MY0MHN-1&_user=650596&_coverDate=04%2F30%2F2007&_alid=854470531&_rdoc=17&_fmt=full&_orig=search&_cdi=5968&_sort=d&_st=4&_docanchor=&ct=46&_acct=C000035098&_version=1&_urlVerson=0&_userid=650596&md5=682489763ff41d9bc384778a59ab5b#secx2)

(Here are 2 blogs from 2 actual OSS developers on what motivates them)
arun Says:
October 1, 2006 at 18:33 Fun (to play around and modify the code as u like !) and Satisfaction (that your software will be used by millions !!) are in my opinion the best things a developer can gain out of opensource :) And of course there will be a nice developer ‘n’ user community with you..
liquidat Says:
October 1, 2006 at 21:51 The dissertation has these aspects in mind - fun is mentioned in the title! The reason why I stressed out the money is that too many people think OSS is only developed for fun - in the way of “just hobby, nothing professional”. And that’s wrong. OSS is a good example that you can earn money doing that what you like most.
(Source: http://liquidat.wordpress.com/2006/09/29/what-motivates-open-source-developers/)

Where can I get OSS?

Open source software is unlike commercial software as you do not go online or to a shop and order a box containing a CD. Open source software is usually obtained by downloading it from a website. Many of the desktop applications are quick and easy to install.

Some examples of sources from which OSS can be obtained include: Open Disc, Portable Apps and Sourgeforge.

OpenDisc (http://www.theopendisc.com/) is a collection of some of the best and most popular open source applications. The Disc is available to download as an ISO file [definition] that can be burnt on a CD. It is then straightforward to install the software from the CD onto your computer. The file size is approximately 700MB so download will require a reasonably fast internet connection or will take a very long time. OpenDisc contains a variety of software which will run on the Windows operating system, making it easy for you to try out the selected applications, including OpenOffice, Audacity, Firefox, Gimp and Inkscape.

Portable Apps are Open Source applications that can be downloaded and installed on portable media (such as a USB flash drive or an external disc) so you don't have to install anything on your computer. These programs can be carried around with you on a portable device and use on any Windows computer. When your USB flash drive, portable hard drive, iPod or other portable device is plugged in, you have access to your software and personal data just as you would on your own PC. And when you unplug the device, none of your personal data is left behind. (Source: http://portableapps.com/about/what_is_a_portable_app)

The software includes applications such as Inkscape, Audacity, GIMP and OpenOffice. From the download page http://portableapps.com/download select the suite to download. The instructions are on the site.
The concept is that portable apps installs an Open Source menu program onto your USB flash drive from which you can then choose and add a wide range of programs to your key. The applications are installed on the USB flash drive and so any computer that has the drive inserted into a usb port effectively has the software instantly installed but not onto its hard drive. Take out the USB flash drive and the applications are uninstalled. The installation wizard will guide you through the installation of portable apps – and detailed instructions are on the website. When you run portable apps you will see a full list of available applications.

To use launch one of the applications, click on the link and you will have the software running instantly. As with all Open Source software it is perfectly legal to copy all or some of the applications to other USB flash drives. Every child in the school could have one to use at home and at school contributing to social inclusion and bridging the digital divide. Since all the applications move with the drive, you can use them on any computer without having to install anything and without leaving any code behind when you finish.

Sourgeforge (http://sourceforge.net/) is the repository for over 100,000 open source projects. The site is aimed at developers and more technical users and contains open source applications in various stages of development. For a novice user, the Sourceforge site can be somewhat intimidating, but if you are looking for a particular open source application, you are likely to find it there.

(Source: http://opensourceschools.org.uk/obtaining-and-installing-open-source-software.html )

After going to these sites, I found them all very easy to navigate and to find programs and software I was interested in downloading. I especially liked the Portable Apps website because they just make everything very easy and they have alot of different software.

Are there other OSS operating systems besides Linux?

The "open source" label came out of a strategy session held in Palo Alto in reaction to Netscape's January 1998 announcement of a source code release for Navigator (as Mozilla).

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_software)

FreeBSD is a UNIX® like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution. While FreeBSD and Linux are commonly perceived as being very similar, there are differences:

Linux itself is a kernel. Distributions (e.g. Red Hat, Debian, Suse and others) provide the installer and the utilities available to the user. http://www.linux.org/dist lists well over 300 distinct distributions. While giving the user maximum flexibility, the existence of so many distributions also increases the difficulty of transferring one's skills from one distribution to another. Distributions don't just differ in ease-of install and available programs; they also differ in directory layout, available shells and window managers, and software installation and patching routines. FreeBSD is a complete operating system (kernel and userland) with a well-respected heritage grounded in the roots of Unix development.[1] Since both the kernel and the provided utilities are under the control of the same release engineering team, there is less likelihood of library incompatibilities. Security vulnerabilities can also be addressed quickly by the security team. When new utilities or kernel features are added, the user simply needs to read one file, the Release Notes, which is publicly available on the main page of the FreeBSD website.
FreeBSD has a large and well organized programming base which ensures changes are implemented quickly and in a controlled manner. There are several thousand programmers who contribute code on a regular basis but only about 300 of these have what is known as a commit bit and can actually commit changes to the kernel, utilities and official documentation. A release engineering team provides quality control and a security officer team is responsible for responding to security incidents. In addition, there is an elected core group of 8 senior committers who set the overall direction of the Project. In contrast, changes to the Linux kernel ultimately have to wait until they pass through the maintainer of kernel source, Linus Torvalds. How changes to distributions occur can vary widely, depending upon the size of each particular distribution's programming base and organizational method.
While both FreeBSD and Linux use an Open Source licensing model, the actual licenses used differ. The Linux kernel is under the GPL license while FreeBSD uses the BSD license. These, and other Open Source licenses, are described in more detail at the website of the Open Source Initiative. The driving philosophy behind the GPL is to ensure that code remains Open Source; it does this by placing restrictions on the distribution of GPLd code. In contrast, the BSD license places no such restrictions, which gives you the flexibility of keeping the code Open Source or closing the code for a proprietary commercial product.[2] Having stable and reliable code under the attractive BSD license means that many operating systems, such as Apple OS X are based on FreeBSD code. It also means that if you choose to use BSD licensed code in your own projects, you can do so without threat of future legal liability. (Source: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/linux-comparison/)

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Do Microsoft and Oracle believe in OSS?

Many IT professionals believe that Oracle's recent moves in the open source software (OSS) market -- including its purchase of open source stalwart Sleepycat Software Inc. -- were undertaken in an effort to destabilize Microsoft.

OSS users, consultants and other IT pros interviewed during the recentNew England Oracle Applications User Groupconference speculated that Oracle's major endorsement of the open source movement was also designed to help the company reach its goals of "offering everything under the sun" and eradicating the growing threat posed by rival database software maker MySQL.

"It's a brilliant strategy from Oracle's standpoint to go into the open source market because it doesn't hurt them," said Carl Rubin, a consultant with Monument Data Solutions in Needham, Mass. "[Oracle has purchased] complementary products, and it gives them entryways into new clients and new stuff."

Back in February, Oracle announced plans to purchase Lincoln, Mass.-based Sleepycat and its embeddableBerkeley DBdatabase management system (DBMS). At the time, Oracle cited International Data Corp. research which predicted that the embeddable database market would grow to $3.2 billion by 2009. Oracle says that with more than 200 million deployments, Berkeley DB -- which is distributed under a dual-license model -- is the most widely used open source database.

Last October, Oracle acquired Finland-based Innobase, the creator of InnoDB, a transactional database technology distributed as part of the open source MySQL database. MySQL competes directly with Oracle's flagship DBMS.

According to reports earlier in the year, Oracle also had acquisition discussions with at least two other open source firms, including Cupertino, Calif.-based Zend Technologies Inc. and Atlanta-based JBoss. Oracle is also said to be considering the possibility of creating its own version of the Linux operating system, according to published reports. Oracle has a long history of supporting Linux.

Rubin said that the purchase of Sleepycat gives Oracle the chance to take on Microsoft and SQL Server at the low end of the database market. With Berkeley DB, he said, Oracle can now offer an embeddable database at a lower price point than ever before, and that is bad news for Microsoft.

"Oracle has created a lower-price strategy by not using the [Oracle 9i Lite] database for this embedded thing," Rubin said. "It kills SQL Server because it's [aimed] at the bottom end of the market. SQL Server is at about $1,500 for five users, [but] you can buy Sleepycat for next to nothing and pay a small maintenance fee per year."

Despite Oracle's claims to the contrary, Rubin thinks the purchase of Innobase was clearly designed to disrupt MySQL's business over the long term.

"What that does is it cuts MySQL out of their marketplace and will knock them off their feet," Rubin said. "[MySQL does] not have another product to go in there and they probably will not have another product release for at least a year."

Myles Halsband, a consultant who also works for Monument Data Solutions, agreed that Oracle's Sleepycat purchase was aimed squarely at Microsoft.

"The biggest threat to Microsoft is Linux and open source software," Halsband said. "[Oracle is] hoping that by strengthening that sector, they might weaken Microsoft's essentially iron grip, on the desktop market especially."

Halsband said that Microsoft shouldn't take the growing threat from open source lightly. He keeps seeing the technology pop up in the companies he works with, especially at startups and older firms that are launching new ventures, and he says that open source is becoming the development methodology of choice for those companies because of its low total cost.

Halsband added that he does not see open source software gaining a foothold in the area of financial applications, where streamlined open source applications lose out to more fully featured proprietary offerings.

"I think that the financial side is driven by functionality," Halsband said. "And if I'm a CFO, I'm probably reluctant to invest resources and people in a product that has a very small user base."

Another conference attendee, a software manager who works for a Cumberland, R.I., firm, said that he thinks Oracle's open source buys and other acquisitions over the last few years prove that the company wants to enter into as many software markets as possible.

"They're just trying to cover as much ground as possible," he said. "Potentially, the sky's the limit if it's out there and it makes economic sense."

Despite Oracle's decision to cozy up to the open source market, no one seems to think that the firm will ever release an open source version of its namesake DBMS, which produces the bulk of its revenue.

Sridhar Bogelli, the founder and chief executive officer of Apps Associates, a Southborough, Mass.-based application development consultancy, said, "I can't see them being totally open because [they're very] proprietary and their strength and wealth is in their core."

source: http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/

Microsoft and its Relationship with Open Source Software

by William Hurley of BMC Software

I know popular opinion has Microsoft cursing open source at every turn, but what do the facts indicate? Do they really despise something they clearly benefit from? I don’t think so—the folks in Redmond aren’t that short-sighted. In fact, I’ll give you seven reasons I think Bill and Co. love open source:They include open source code in their products.Have you forgotten the first TCP/IP implementation in Windows? It was based on open source code that Windows XP still contains remnants of. Need proof? Point your favorite hex editor at ftp.exe. You’ll find the 1983 copyright statement from the Regents of the University of California.They support open source vendors.MySQL, SugarCRM, Jboss, and many other open source development efforts benefit from Microsoft’s support through programs created to test and verify open source applications on Microsoft platforms.They benefit from open source everyday.Two words: free press. Microsoft gets tons of press from their “battle” with open source. This month alone there are over 2000 articles related to “Microsoft and open source.” Add countless blogs like mine, and the value of this free chatter goes through the roof.They open source code.No, not shared source. I’m referring to Microsoft’s Unix tools for Windows; they provide the source code to most of these tools. Sure, we all wish they would do more, but we should acknowledge what they’ve done to date.They are adopting open source culture.The Mix conference is billed as a “72 hour conversation.” Remind anyone of BarCamp? There are other examples: the Microsoft Community Blogs, Channel 9, CodePlex, etc. They’re embracing openness.They aren’t threatened by open source.Open source is not the threat; Linux is. Don’t confuse the two. Open source is growing rapidly, but Linux has several distinguishing features that make it the real challenger. It’s more mature than other projects, it has a larger, more organized developer base, and it’s well financed. IBM has spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing, distributing, and advertising Linux, not open source. Microsoft doesn’t fear open source; it fears what the competition can do with it.They realize open source is their future.Sure, Microsoft sometimes makes it easy for us to hate them, but aren’t as disconnected from the pulse of the open source community as you may think. Linux is causing issues for them in the market, and they’re working hard to keep up. They didn’t build their empire by not planning ahead—even the most closed-minded executive in Redmond realizes open source is in their future.

source:http://talk.bmc.com/blogs/blog-whurley/whurley/seven-reasons-microsoft-loves-open-source

January 19, 2009 7:07 AM PST

Facts behind Microsoft's anti-Linux campaign Posted by Matt Asay

Back in 2002, Jim Allchin was co-president of Microsoft's Platforms and Services Division and was, in his own words, "scared" of the momentum behind Linux, as noted in an email [PDF] sent to several of his direct reports. Why scared? Because Windows was starting to lose to Linux:

My conclusion: We are not on a path to win against Linux. We must change some things and we must do it immediately. The current white papers, etc. are too high level and they are not going to cut it.

So what did Allchin do? As court documents in the Comes vs. Microsoft antitrust suit demonstrate, and as Roy Schestowitz pointed out on his blog Sunday, Allchin started to buy facts. Lots of facts. What facts? "Facts" about Windows alleged superiority as a preemptive kernel and asychronous I/O, facts that demonstrate that "Linux is old unix." Facts about Windows alleged security superiority over Linux. Facts that go to the heart of Red Hat and IBM's patent indemnification offerings and, frighteningly, Allchin seems to be foretelling Microsoft's later patent FUD against Linux:

We need to understand exactly the risk a customer is under if a patent lawsuit happens and Linux is challenged....There MUST be risks to customers that are being passed on. I want this understood precisely. We need to get the license from IBM given to customers and investigate.

To his credit, Allchin's e-mail constantly re-emphasizes that he's looking for facts, not tabloid marketing against Linux:

Bill [Veghte]/Brian [Valentine]: I need to ask you to take ownership of driving this ahead What I want to see is a package including ALL of these items that we can provide to the field within 2 months (MAX). I am scared....Please remember NO marketing. Facts. No anger toward Linux. Just facts.

But I have to wonder if in amid so much "fact" creation, the truth sometimes got lost. As reported in 2003 by The Register, among others, Microsoft's incessant drumbeat on "the facts" against Linux displayed a curious infatuation with Linux. If Microsoft truly were better, why spend so much ink (and cash) on building a case against it, at least, one based on "facts"? It seemed a perfect Hamlet moment, wherein Queen Gertrude pithily dismisses a character's comments with "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." The Register wrote in 2003 of Microsoft's fact-buying campaign:

The study is apparently to be used by Microsoft's new kinder, gentler and more fact-based GM for platform strategy Martin Taylor in his campaign to convince customers that nine out of ten cats who expressed a preference reckoned that Linux is pooh. And in this campaign, he has the best facts money can buy.

Did Microsoft cross the line with its "Get the Facts" campaign? Almost certainly. Even so, I'm impressed by Allchin's desire to avoid marketing and stick to facts. The problem is that it's hard to hold to facts when only one side is presenting (and buying) them. Microsoft eventually disbanded its much-maligned Get the Facts campaign. The former "Get the Facts" Web site is now a much happier place that invites customers to "compare" Linux and Windows, but is much softer in doing so. Have the facts changed? No. But Microsoft finally came to the realization that its customers weren't stupid and could separate fact from fiction. Sometimes Windows is cheaper. Sometimes it's more secure, is a better technical fit for an organization, etc. But those aren't The Facts. They're site-by-site facts for specific customers, and arguably don't reflect the broader reality, one that has seen rampant, massive uptake of Linux over the past six years since Allchin ordered a directive to find and market "the facts."http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10145332-16.html?tag=mncol

Can I start a company that sells or services OSS?

Like the original hackers of the free software movement (and they're often one and the same), open-source entrepreneurs are committed to the brand of the free - and have found it pays. Beyond the rewards of community building, they're tapping multiple revenue streams to bolster their bottom line.

So where's the money in free software? Everywhere from slapping logos on packaged code to developing hardware and selling support. Here's a list of the leading start-ups - from the latest to jump on the Linux bandwagon to the early adopters of the commercializing impulse - and the sources of their open-source gains.

Company

Employees

Founded

Shrink- wrapping and marketing open-source software

Developing new OSS

Developing new apps for open source

Developing and releasing enhancements to existing OSS

Developing new hardware that incorporates OSS

Customizing open-source software or systems

Providing consulting services for open-source users

Distributing non-English versions of OSS

Providing tech support for OSS developers

Providing tech support for OSS end users

Caldera Systems

Ranked third in worldwide shipments of Linux server and client systems; develops and markets a line of apps based on the operating system - including Internet/intranet servers and networking and desktop systems.

1998

x Xx

Linuxcare

A Linux-only organization providing 24/7 technical support (primarily to Fortune 4000 companies), as well as consulting and educational services. In February, the group received financing from the Sand Hill Group.

1998

Penguin Computing

Builds workstations and servers from the ground up for Linux systems; engineers provide consulting and training services.

1998

The Puffin Group

An open-source software developer and consultancy; struck a deal with Hewlett-Packard to port Linux to HP's PA-RISC architecture.

1998

Scriptics

Builds and markets development tools and offers consulting services for the open-source scripting language Tcl. Clients include Cisco, AOL, Lucent.

1998

AbiSource

Creates desktop productivity apps for Linux and Windows systems; sells tech support, consulting services. In the spirit of the open-source philosophy, its shrink-wrapped software can also be downloaded for free.

1997

Sendmail Inc.

Sprang from the ubiquitous email transfer agent sendmail. The code's creator, Eric Allman, founded the company to develop commercial tools for ISPs and email markets. Will release all enhancements as open source.

1997

Cobalt Networks

Leveraged Linux, Perl, Apache, and Samba to develop a line of scalable network server products, like the sub-$1,000 Cobalt Qube.

1996

Leverage Information Systems

Officially joined the open-source roster in January when it released the source code to Locomotive, its Web application server created to support clients building consumer Web sites. No commercial version is available.

1996

The Linux Mall

An online reseller, launched by WorkGroup Solutions, of software for the OS. The Amazon.com of open source, the clearinghouse promises the lowest prices and offers technical support on a paid basis.

1995

Lutris Technologies

A consultancy for Internet business development, Lutris released its Java applications server to the open-source community in January, with no plan to sell a commercial version. Offers free support via mailing list.

1995

Whistle Communications

Used open-source programs, including Apache, sendmail, Samba, and FreeBSD, to build its InterJet Net appliance suite, a plug-and-play networking system for small businesses.

1995

CITATION
Krueger, Patricia. "Tour de Source: A Guide to the Start-Ups ." Wired Issue 7.05(May 1999) 20 Jan 2009 <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.05/tour.html>.

Smaller Companies That Implement OSS for Business Solutions

There are many small consulting companies that distribute, set up, and troubleshoot various OSS programs to implement as cost effective business solutions. One popular program is Asterisk which is a telephone Private Branch Exchange (PBX) and VoIP software. Asterisk was developed in 1999 by Mark Spencer of Digium. Over the years the Asterisk community has helped troubleshoot and debug the software. Also many developers have added packages that will help with the useability of the software. The reason that companies outsource the running of the Asterisk software is because their IT personnel don't have to be retrained to operate the software and the consulting companies are much more efficient because they know exactly what to do with the code to manipulate the various aspects of its functionality. Many of these consulting firms offer "turnkey" asterisk servers which are preprogrammed for the environment in which they will be running so the installation is quick and effective. Asterisk was originally developed to run in the Linux environment but has been adapted by the Asterisk community to run in many environments including Mac OS X and Windows. Open WRT an open source firmware for access points has a Asterisk Package so that you can take basically any cheap access point and turn it into a PBX/VoIP server. Many of the people that work for the various Asterisk consulting firms also frequently post in the Asterisk troubleshooting forums and are always willing to help people get their software working correctly. A list of Asterisk Consulting firms organized by region can be found at www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=Asterisk+consultants+USA

Citation: "Asterisk (PBX)." Wikipedia. 19 Jan. 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterisk_PBX>

"VCs expect open source to be default option"
Open source software represents a better bet for venture capital firms than traditionally licensed software, according to representatives of three VC firms gathered at the recent Open Source Business Conference in London.

While all three firms had invested in open source before they insisted their likelihood to do so again was not based on favoritism, but rather an economic decision based on market realities."We fundamentally believe that open source is a new distribution model, but it is also a new software development model that is here to stay," said Bernard Dalle, general partner with Index Ventures. "We anticipate it's going to be very hard going forward to invest in closed source, because we don't think it's a good development model."Dalle said the company believes open source delivers better code, due to a broader level of QA testing, faster innovation, due to broader requests for new features, and a cheaper development model.Index is already a strong supporter of open source, having invested in open source business intelligence vendor Pentaho, services firm SourceLabs, PHP products provider Zend, database vendor MySQL, and embedded Linux specialist Trolltech.It is far from the only VC firm to get involved in open source software however. Computer Business Review recently noted that it had tracked over $500m invested in 40 open source vendors in recent years.Another funding firm at the OSBC event in London was the Mayfield Fund, which has investments in open source systems management vendor GroundWork Open Source Inc and content management provider Alfresco Software Inc."We don't see this as a space, we're not calling this a category. We think this is an integral part of the industry today," agreed Robin Vasan, managing director at the Mayfield Fund, explaining that the decision is based on the experience of customer purchasing demands for software. "Customers are saying 'I'm going to try it before I buy it, I'll try it and if it does what you say it should do, then we'll think about having a conversation about paying for it'," he said.Wellington Partners has already invested in the likes of Linux server vendor Collax Inc and security appliance and software vendor Astaro Corp, and is also convinced that open source will become pervasive for different reasons."We expect to invest in open source, but not because it is open source but because we expect it to be part of every software company in the future," said Frank Bohnke, general partner at Wellington.Bohnke sees the open source model being used by every company somewhere in their development process to save costs on common components. An example would be the consumer electronics industry, which currently has to rewrite the software for every device every time a new hardware version is introduced, he said."Just by open sourcing and reusing models, it makes the process more efficient," Bohnke said. He also had a word of warning for anyone expecting to be able to set up an open source company and be showered in VC cash, however."Ultimately these open source companies have to prove that they can build brands, they can sell, and they can build profitable companies. I don't think there are many companies yet who can do that and prove the theoretical benefits of open source," he said.Vasan also maintained that just being an open source vendor would not be enough to get funds and attract investor attention. "Your valuation is not going to be based on the size of your community and the number of downloads you have," he said, indicating VCs had learnt the lessons of the dot-com boom. "We're back to solid business basics."

CITATION:
BR Staff Writer, "VCs expect open source to be default option." CBR 04/07/2006 20 Jan 2009 <http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=288BD3F2-E55F-49CC-A284-43926C5F66A5>.

The former CEO of the Open Source Development Labs has started a company offering private "open-source" services. The Collaborative Software Initiative (CSI), headed by former OSDL chief Stuart Cohen, will match companies that are looking to pool resources as a way to decrease software costs and ensure standards compliance. The Portland, Ore.-based company has received funding from OVP Venture Partners. Its advisory council members include IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Novell, which will also help the company with performance testing and benchmarking to make sure applications are optimized for certain server configurations, Cohen said. Evan Bauer, the former chief technology officer of Credit Suisse First Boston, has partnered with Cohen as the CTO for the new initiative. "Because of the success of Linux and open-source software and the work Evan and I have done in it, in IT it's the right time to do this," Cohen said. CSI isn't something that's come out of the blue, Cohen said, but rather is being driven by industries like finance, insurance, government agencies and retailers that are interested in a collaborative model. "They need the services. They don't want to form a dot-org or a foundation," he said. The company's model is not a far reach from what the OSDL did under Cohen's stewardship. OSDL, which recently merged with the Free Standards Group to form the Linux Foundation, was a nonprofit organization that worked on improving and establishing standards for Linux in high-end servers, telecommunications equipment and desktop computers. OSDL coordinated efforts among developers from multiple sources including large companies. Similarly, CSI will hire and manage a core team of application developers to work on a single project for, say, a half-dozen companies that have a limited number of developers. The companies will each pay a percentage to cover the cost for developers and for CSI's management of the community project, which includes code development, testing and support. "They will pay substantially lower or about half the price of what it would cost them on their own to outsource, maybe even less, because there's a shared cost," Cohen said. CSI also will organize and manage developers from the participating companies or government agencies to work on a common goal as a community. "In most cases, the core collaborators will include a trade association. In a number of these compliance areas, a trade association has done the work to define the product or problem, so they will be a part of the project to make sure we have written to the documentations they have put in place," Cohen said. In addition, CSI will take care of licensing the software from community projects to other companies, through a hosted-software or open-source license, depending on the wishes of the collaborative companies involved. "Our intention is to use commercially available and commercially accepted licenses, and there are certainly plenty of licenses out there that would meet our needs," Cohen said. "We are not locked into a particular one."(SOURCE: http://news.cnet.com/Start-up-looks-to-open-source-as-business-model/2100-7344_3-6176496.html?tag=mncol )

Open Source In the U.S. Government
A review of the current government IT climate shows the extent to which Open Source software has already become popular within the federal government. This is in addition
to the fact that Open Source solutions were used to program and operate the two most recent NASA Mars rovers. Historically, Open Source technologies had been discouraged within the Department of Defense (DOD). In 2002, MITRE Corp. found that at least 115 applications of Open Source origin, with 251 examples of use, were routinely utilized within DOD. Moreover,
MITRE estimated that these findings represented just “the tip of the iceberg.” The applications in use ranged from 25 examples of PERL scripting language, to 22 uses of
Apache web server, to19 examples of Linux, to 3 examples of Red Hat™ Linux, to one example each of many other applications.The same study revealed several other surprises. MITRE found that many DOD intranets depend heavily on Open Source, as does the department’s software development. Open Source is used extensively in security applications, and
research uses Open Source for the exchange of ideas and shedding of costs. Since Open Source had been discouraged within the department, why then was it being used at all? First, but not always foremost, is cost. The high capability-to-cost ratios are a powerful attraction. Second, many Open Source solutions are highly responsive. Third, there is a broader range of support options, from third-party to in-house to a combination of the two, with in-house providing support for critical components only. Security of the propriety software was often a concern, since only one major software firm—the respective vendor/developer—provided only after-the fact security patches. This security model results in aweakness not being fixed until it has been exploited by a virus or a hacker. After reviewing the MITRE study, the Chief Information Officer of DOD put Open Source on equal footing with other commercial off-the-shelf products.“With the expansion of open source,
the current reality is that users have a true choice between a variety of possible solutions to best accomplish their computing and networking goals.” Source: USA Today, January 7, 2004 .Among federal agencies, the National Weather Service has deployed Linux on an estimated 2400 workstations and servers, resulting in savings of almost 75%, largely because the operating system
requires less maintenance. Moreover, the National Weather Service plans to convert to Linux by year-end their systems at more than 122 forecast offices. The Census Bureau has developed a system to help citizens retrieve data using a variety of Open Source software applications, including Linux, Apache Web server, MySQL, and Perl (commonly referred to as LAMP).
Other agencies that are actively seeking Open Source solutions are the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), the Department of Energy, the Department of Education, the Department of Justice, and nearly every department in between. While the floodgates may not be completely open, clearly the wheel is turning and gate has begun to rise.

The model of Open Source development combined with the scope of government IT needs results in several obvious benefits:.
1. Cost Savings - Licensing Fees
Perhaps the most obvious reason for replacing proprietary software with Open Source
applications is the potential for eliminating expensive licensing arrangements with firms
that have no incentive to negotiate rates, regardless of the client’s relative size.

2. Solutions vs Software
Organizations using Open Source solutions own the features and functionality of the software itself. This is the difference between buying a direct solution and a ready-made
piece of software. Users are not dependent on outside forces to dictate the form, fit, and functionality of the application. With Open Source programming, the application received is precisely what
the customer wants: nothing more and nothing less.

3. Speed to Deployment
Because the core elements of Open Source solutions are developed by a worldwide community of programmers and engineers working together, market deployment of these solutions is often quicker than proprietary business models. Open source developers working directly with consumers, in this case government agencies, can apply the best technology to meet the agency’s immediate needs. Occasionally, good "Open source has numerous benefits, including breaking the relentless hold of technology lock-in, and cost savings in acquisition and life-time support costs,"
Lou Agosta, Forrester Research “Ultimately open source will become mainstream, not just the domain of "the four pony-tailed guys in the corner."

4. Cost Savings - IT Investments
Because Open Source solutions are scalable and interoperable, they can make use of existing IT infrastructures. This flexibility allows for the deployment of solutions that are
designed to work with multiple or existing systems, and which will preclude the necessity for costly upgrades in the future.

Source:
http://www.oss-institute.org/newspdf/walker_oss_white_paper_2292004.pdf

What are different OSS licenses?

The following licenses have been approved by the OSI via the License Review Process.

These licenses show that a piece of software is OSS. Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria:

1. Free Redistribution

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

2. Source Code

The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed.

3. Derived Works

The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.

4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code

The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software.

5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups

The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.

6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

7. Distribution of License

The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties.

8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product

The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program's being part of a particular software distribution. If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or distributed within the terms of the program's license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original software distribution.

9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software

The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software.

10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral

No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface.

Source: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical and http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd

Current Events

January 22, 2009 8:07 AM PST

Obama wants to know: Why open source? Posted by Matt Asay

President Barack Obama is a smart guy. Where others zig, he zags. It's perhaps not surprising, then, that he's been asking around about the benefits of open source, according to Sun Chairman Scott McNealy, who has been asked by President Obama to author a white paper on the benefits the U.S. government can derive from open source. McNealy, cited in a BBC News story, wasn't shy in identifying them:

It's intuitively obvious open source is more cost effective and productive than proprietary software....The government ought to mandate open-source products based on open-source reference implementations to improve security, get higher-quality software, lower costs, higher reliability--all the benefits that come with open software.

While I agree with those benefits, I'm not a supporter of mandates. I wouldn't want the government mandating Microsoft software--why would I therefore seek an open-source mandate? Open source has done remarkably well in the U.S. federal government without mandates, and will continue to do so because of the benefits identified by McNealy. Will President Obama listen? I suspect he's more likely to do so. He'll get plenty of lobbyist cash from technology companies like Microsoft, but with few companies now solely dependent on proprietary software (indeed, I'd argue that there aren't any left), open source is going to be on everyone's agenda. For other positions on McNealy's open-source suggestions, see The 451 Group's Matt Aslett's blog and OStatic.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10147920-16.html?part=rss

Lab #1 - Linux Virtual Server Setup and Readings on Wikis

Rick_Mathieu — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 15:12:08 CST

The purpose of the first lab is to get the student set up and ready to go for the rest of the semester. This requires that the student set up their virtual Linux server and learn how to use the wiki that is associated with this class.

Please read the following material:

Please make sure that you have contributed to the following:

Importance of Open Source Software

Setup of Your Virtual Linux Server

Rick_Mathieu — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 14:41:22 CST

Virtual Server Architecture
Beginning Spring 2009, the JMU virtual server is running the Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution using the Xen open source virtual machine monitor that enables the execution of mutliple guest operating systems at the same time. You will administer the server as a stand alone machine. Each student will have a disk size of 8GB. The hardware for the virtual server is a Dell 2950 PowerEdge with two quadcore Intel Zeon processors. The server has 16 GB of RAM, two 36 GB of hard drive space (where the OS is mirrored on drive) and a RAID array containing four 73 GB storage devices.

Client - (PuTTY)

Telnet - An Internet protocol that allows the user to connect to a remote computer.

SSH – “Secure Shell" is a program to log into another computer over a network, to execute commands in a remote machine, and to move files from one machine to another. It provides strong authentication and secure communications over insecure channels. It is a replacement for rlogin, rsh, rcp, and rdist. SSH protects a network from attacks such as IP spoofing, IP source routing, and DNS spoofing

Server (Linux – RedHat; XEN – Virtual Server)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a Linux distribution produced by Red Hat and targeted toward the commercial market, including mainframes. Red Hat commits to supporting each version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for 7 years after its release. All of Red Hat's official support, all of Red Hat's training and the Red Hat Certification Program center on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is often abbreviated to RHEL.

Xen is an open source virtual machine monitor, developed by the University of Cambridge. It is intended to run up to 100 full featured OSs on a single computer. Operating systems must be explicitly modified ("ported") to run on Xen (although compatibility is maintained for user applications). This enables Xen to achieve high performance virtualization without special hardware support.

Connecting to Your Virtual Linux Server through PuTTY
PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 platforms, including an Xterm terminal emulator. It is written and maintained primarily by Simon Tatham. You will need to know the IP address for your virtual server, your user login and password. Instructions for download and installation of PuTTY can be found at:

Login for the First Time
When you first login to the server you login as root. "Root access is the power of the system administrator. The root user, also known as the superuser, has the authority to do anything, anywhere on the entire system. Root access allows you to make huge mistakes if you are careless. The general rule is 'don't login as root unless you need to'." [source: Linux System Administration by Stanfield and Smith]

One of the first things you will learn in creating and maintaining user accounts is to create an admin account and user accounts.

Importance of Virtual Computer Lab

Rick_Mathieu — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 14:27:05 CST

The modern computer information systems (CIS) professional requires hands-on server administration skills to complement traditional skills in software design and development. As the CIS profession moves into an era of enterprise computing, there is a demand for system developers that understand the operational and security demands of the code that they create. An estimated sixty percent of the overall IT budget is still devoted to the operations and maintenance of existing software applications, yet little is done in the typical university computing curriculum to prepare students to effectively install, operate and maintain a software application in a working environment. In addition, many universities are facing heightened concerns over computer security on the college campus. In particular, computing facilities for advanced security and server administration instruction can face quite a bit of scrutiny. There is a great need for software developers to understand the challenges with application deployment within the organization.

At James Madison University, the CIS faculty have worked to create a 24x7 remotely accessible ‘computer laboratory’, where students receive full server administration privileges in order to develop their server, networking, security and database administration skills using the Linux operating system.

a. System Administration Skills

Teaching server side development and administration presents some unique challenges. First, it is necessary to develop student proficiency in setting up the Linux operating system and needed technologies before any applications can be installed. This typically requires several weeks for the students to understand how operating systems are configured while becoming skilled with the ongoing maintenance activities such as updating the operating system and related packages as updates and bug fixes are released. All activities for maintaining the server operating systems are conducted using a command line interface requiring students to understand file structures and the commands needed to conduct routine administrative activities. Only after the student had become skilled with these routine activities of operating and maintaining the operating system, installing other programming technologies (such as a MySQL database, the PHP programming environment and the Apache web server) and understanding the variety of services that makeup the operating environment on the server were they ready to address software applications.

The LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) environment provides an ideal platform for teaching server-side development and administration. LAMP is typically considered the platform of choice for the development and deployment of high performance web applications. By default, the student learns the roles of system administrator and application developer when working with web-based software applications. After learning how to install and configure the Apache web server, students learned how to analyze traffic logs, set up a firewall and virtual hosting, create password-protected web pages and configure server side scripting. In addition, students were asked to register a domain name for their server, set pointers to the name server and set up an account on name server. In regard to database administration, students learned the basics of securing MySQL against attackers, defining access privileges, user account management, database backup and recovery and working with MySQL log files. No longer was it possible for the student software developer to “throw the application over the wall” to the system administrator for deployment. Rather, the student had to learn both roles and as a result developed a working knowledge of the interconnections between the ‘two sides of the house’.

Many courses teach only server side programming which only exposes students to one part of the server side environment. With each student having ownership over their own server, each is faced with the total set of issues and skills for doing server-side work. Those activities include experience with operating systems, programming environments, web servers, secured terminal emulation, and networking and firewall configuration. Without each student having administrative server access none of these essential elements to computing would be possible. After students become knowledgeable with maintaining the server environment then they begin application installation and configuration as well as server side programming.

b. Understanding Open Source Software
Open-source software is computer software whose source code is available under a copyright license that permits users to study, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified form.
Open source advocates point out that as of the early 2000s, at least 90 percent of computer programmers are employed not to produce software for direct sale, but rather to design and customize software for other purposes, such as in-house applications. According to advocates, this statistic implies that the value of software lies primarily in its usefulness to the developer or developing organization, rather than in its potential sale value—consequently, there is usually no compelling economic reason to keep source code secret from competitors. Open-source advocates further argue that corporations frequently over-protect software in ways actually damaging to their own interests, for reasons ranging from mere institutional habit through reflexive territoriality to a rational but incorrect evaluation of the tradeoffs between collecting secrecy rent and the quality and market payoff of openness.

Open source is a term that is applied to the entire concept that the creation and organization of knowledge is best created through open and cooperative efforts—this movement, variously called "open content" or "free culture," has been expressly endorsed by advocates of OSS, including Linus Torvalds who said "The future is 'open source everything.'"

See the following list of open source software packages. In addition Sourceforge and Freshmeat are two open source software repositories for open source software.

Home - Operating Systems and Server Adminstration

Rick_Mathieu — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 14:26:09 CST

This wiki is a supplement to CIS 301 - Operating Systems and Server Administration at James Madison University. CIS 301 is a required course in the Computer Information Systems major. This course is an introduction to operating systems and server administration in a business environment. Students learn the basic functions of an operating system through the hands-on use of Linux. Additional, students acquire hands-on server administration skills in order to better understand the operational and security demands of business applications. The LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) environment will be used to teach server-side administration.

Students in CIS 301 obtain a virtual computer lab (Linux-based) and learn how to build and secure their own web server. The benefits of such an approach are documented in an article in Computer (IEEE) by Rick Mathieu, Don Hardaway and Mark Hogan. (see attachment at bottom of page)

Students and alumni from CIS 301 at James Madison University are valued contributors to this wiki.

Lab #1 - Linux Virtual Server Setup and Readings on Wikis
Lab #2 - Operating Systems and the Linux File System
Lab #3 – Processes, the vim Editor and Footprinting in Linux
- An Operating System Manages Processes
- more - Linux Process Management
- The Vim editor
- Footprinting
Lab #4 - Webmin and Batch Processing
- Webmin
- Linux Batch Processing
Lab #5 - LAMP and the XAMPP Stack
- LAMP
- XAMPP
- Desktop Linux
  - PendriveLinux
Lab #6 - Apache, HTML, XML and MySQL DB Administration
- Apache Installation and Security
- HTML Basics
- XML Basics
- HTML vs. XML
- MySQL Administration
Lab #7 - Content Management Systems and Server Security
- Joomla
- Drupal
- WordPress

Multi-core Processors and the Future

dan_cartis — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 08:08:07 CDT

What does the future hold for multi-core processors? 16 cores? 32 cores? 128 cores?

A startup founded by Tilera try to build a 64-core Tile64 SoC (System-on-chip). It saved power and highly efficient,and Tilera claim that " Tile64 outperforms Intel's dual-core Xeon processor 10 times, while 30 times better performance per Watt. It has the ability to consolidate control- and data-plane functions on a single device, with 'solid-wall' processor boundaries reinforcing security and licensing containment barrier."
The reason to developed this new chip architecture is because "existing multicore technologies simply cannot scale."
(Henry Kingman http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8981295285.html )

The future for multi-core processors is bright, but let us take a step back for a moment. During the '90’s and the early part of this decade, it was believed that the best way to achieve optimum processor performance was to increase clock frequencies (i.e. The Pentium 4 ranged in speed (frequency) from 1.3 to 3.8 GHz). Producers were also able to reduce chip size and increase transistor density at the same time. As a result of the increased strain being placed on the processors, manufacturers where having to find new ways to reduce the level of heat dissipation across the chip as well as finding ways to reduce power consumption.

One of the theories that surfaced during that time was that of multi-core processing. Multi-core processing is not all that new of an idea actually. It has been used in specialized devices for some time now. However, users are demanding more processing power due in large part to the size and complexity of programs available for their systems. Therefore, companies such as Intel and AMD have been developing multi-core technology to be used in the desktop environment.

Today’s dual-core processors produce twice the processing power and an almost tenfold increase in bandwidth as well as a reduction in clock speeds (frequencies). All this being done while significantly reducing power consumption. “Some experts believe that 'by 2017 embedded processors could sport 4,096 cores, server CPUs might have 512 cores and desktop chips could use 128 cores.' This rate of growth is astounding considering that current desktop chips are on the cusp of using four cores and a single core has been used for the past 30 years.” (http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/multicore/review.pdf?SID=ul658kuv731fctg41mr6bbgbt5)

Startup ConSentry Networks Inc. is launching a Secure LAN Controller product capable of monitoring seven layers of data traffic at 10 Gbits/second. The system required development of a proprietary 128-core multithreaded control processor called LAN-shield, and subsidiary traffic manager ASICs called Accelerator and Visualizer. The system was designed as a single-box platform that sits between a wiring-closet switch and a primary corporate switch, said Faizel Lakhani, vice president of marketing at ConSentry (Milpitas, Calif.). Although the Secure LAN Controller is intended as an enterprise IT product, ConSentry says it has taken some requests from the managed-security service provider community. (http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=170704430)

With uniprocessor performance increases leveling off, and with the semiconductor industry moving towards multicore processors, novel ways of parallelizing the execution of a variety of computing applications will be needed. To be viable, a parallel execution model for future multicore architectures should not only mesh well with the programming styles that we expect in the future, but perhaps even leverage the characteristics of such programming styles. This talk will review proposed parallel execution models and present Program Demultiplexing (PD), an execution model that creates concurrency in sequential programs by 'demultiplexing' methods (functions or subroutines). Call sites of a demultiplexed method in the program are associated with handlers that allow the method to be separated from the sequential program and executed on an auxillary processor. The demultiplexed execution of a method (and its handler) is speculative and occurs when the inputs of the method are (speculatively) available, which is typically far in advance of when the method is actually called in the sequential execution. A trigger, composed of predicates that are based on program counters and memory write addresses, launches the (speculative) execution of the method on another processor. Results from our initial experience with a simulation model for PD will be presented. For eight integer benchmarks from the SPEC2000 suite, programs written in C with no explicit concurrency and/or motivation to create concurrency, we achieve a harmonic mean speedup of 1.8x on four processors. We believe that PD can achieve further speedup when opportunities for concurrency are exposed to programmers and/or on applications that use modern object-oriented languages. Given time, the talk will touch on some other hardware trends that are likely to have implications for how software is written in the future.( http://www.researchchannel.org/prog/displayevent.aspx?rID=4793&fID=1338)

Historically, designers achieved higher performance in each processor generation by packing greater numbers of smaller transistors into a given space and clocking them at increasing speeds. True to "Moore's Law," that design model drove an exponential performance curve for the past 30 years... But designers finally reached a technological brick wall where further pushing transistor count and clock speed result in a device that simply becomes too hot to cool, leaving the only path to higher performance being multi-core- the integration of two or more processing cores on a single chip. Power and heat are manageable in multi-core configurations because the individual cores can be run at reduced frequencies and voltages. Moving forward, performance will be gained by adding more cores rather than increasing frequency.
(http://communities.intel.com/openport/blogs/multicore/2008/06/03/multicore-processors-are-mainstream-for-embedded-applications)

Most microprocessor engineers will tell you that multi-core processors are the way of the future. This really isn't a new way of thinking. 'Moore's Law,' the theory that states that the power of today's microprocessors will continue to double every two years, is an idea that has been around for relatively a long time. Multi-core solves the problem of heat that has been slowing growthin the past. Now - engineers are saying that "by 2017 embedded processors could sport 4,096 cores, server CPUs might have 512 cores and desktop chips could use 128 cores." Considering that we're having a quad processor is a big deal these days - this is pretty crazy to think about! <http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206105179>

2. What current software applications take advantage of multi-core processors? Why?
"Network and video devices that require significant application processing, such as surveillance system, and firewall with deep packet inspection" can benefit from it . Because multi-core processor can "solved the fundamental challenges associated with multicore scalability." "It has a hypervisor enables each core to run its own instance of Linux, or other OSes and can eliminate the centralized bus intersection." "It is highly effiective and with no requirement for external northbridge and/pr spithbridge chips."
(Henry Kingman http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8981295285.html )

Applications intended for use mainly by consumers as opposed to commercial and enterprise-wide uses are much less likely to take advantage of multi-core processing because of the complexity of writing and debugging software that allows for multiple threads. "Programming truly multithreaded code often requires complex co-ordination of threads and can easily introduce subtle and difficult-to-find bugs due to the interleaving of processing on data shared between threads." ('http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-core_(computing)'). Some programs like virus protection software take advantage of concurrent multi-thread capabilities of mutli-core processors by "[creating] a new thread for the scan process, while the GUI thread waits for commands from the user." ('http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-core_(computing)')

Often times it is difficult for software to fully take advantage of the multi core processors because it is very challenging. Frequently you see programs where a single thread does the heavy work, while other threads do much less. For cpu's to equally share the work, it is a real challenge to the the software programmer to create such a program. (this information is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-core_(computing)#Disadvantages)

According to searchitchannel.techtarget.com, Compiere, Inc.utilizes multi-core technology within their stack. Compiere provides opens source enterprise resource management (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) software. At the back end of the stack, for example, relational database managers such as Oracle scale to the number of cores or processors on a given machine. On the front end, Compiere offers a Java Swing client. (http://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid96_gci1312322,00.html)

The limited optimization of software for multicore processors has become a limiting factor for the technology. Dell reprinted in the article "Planning Considerationgs for Multicore Processor Technology" that once the new software is developed and implemented, there will be no bounds for the technology, and all companies will be able to take advantage of the technology. <source: http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/power/ps2q05-20050103-Fruehe.pdf>

Current software applications that take advantage of multi-core processors include Commendo, Cilk++, Cmpware, among many others. Multi-core processors are being implemented by manufacturers such as Intel and AMD for their applications and systems. Multi-core designs allow for lowe manufacaturing costs and higher performance.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-core_(computing)#Commercial_incentives

Currently most common software does not take full advantage of the multi core processors used in today’s computers. Programs have to be specifically designed to parallel process and execute code in separate threads. This creates a problem for developers due to the time need to debug this code. When there is a break in the coding, it is much harder to find the error than in single-threaded. NI LabVIEW, a graphical programming language; QNX, a real time operating system; and Commendo, a voyager software service all take advantage of the multi core processor.

However, just because particular software is not designed to run on a multi core processor, doesn’t mean the user can not benefit. The ability to multitask improves dramatically. The processor is designed to automatically allocate each processor for current or background tasks. Though one program will utilize the entire part of one core, once the user switches tasks, he or she can now continue working using a fresh processor.

(Source: Microsoft Multicore & TechTarget)

3. Do business applications require multi-core processors? Why or why not?

The answer is not really and not yet. Many business applications are old and were not built to utilize multi-core processors. New applications are having trouble with some aspects of the multi-core environment.

"The requirements of a business application do not lend themselves to either grid or parallel environment (Cory Isaacson, "Using intelligent parallel processing in a service oriented architecture"). The three main reasons are:

Order of processing: Business logic must be performed in a particular sequence to ensure the integrity of a business process. Each transaction waits for the previous transaction to be completed before it gets processed. This order of processing is difficult to maintain in a parallel grid environment.
Centrally shared resources: Applications have a centralized resource throughout the application. This creates a bottleneck.
Unpredictable behavior and resource needs: The size and processing requirements of business processes vary through out the day or within a given hour. This makes the division of an application into equal-sized blocks difficult, as well as the allocation of resources."

http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid26_gci1252649,00.html
According to SmallBusinessComputing.com there is still debate about if small businesses should upgrade to the Quad-Core Processors. Although the advantages would be having greater processing ability, the ability to handle larger/growing amounts of data, and the processors ability to effectively handle more complex work environments, these processors still might not be the best option for small businesses. While these new processors might be “overkill” for some small businesses others might benefit from them. If the small businesses need high-performance systems or are very technical then they should consider looking into these processors. However, it is believe that over time that small businesses will switch over to these new processors. SmallBusinessComputing.com
According to Dell Small Business 360 some business applications do not require a multi-core processor, but others that have high-powered demands do need it. This article explains that although business applications do not require multi- core processors, they still should have they because that is what allows computers to do their job (to handle a variety of chores well, but workstations are typically designed for one purpose delivering high performance and reliability to users of intensely numeric and graphic applications). “Desktop computers are like Swiss Army knives – versatile, handy, multi-purpose tools that can handle a variety of applications,” explains Paige Darby, brand manager of Dell PrecisionTM Workstations. “Workstations are like precision surgical lasers. They are built specifically to perform challenging functions quickly and efficiently. Both have their place, but if you’re lying in the operating room, you don’t want your physician to pull out a pocket knife.” In Conclusion, no business applications do not require the multi-core processor, but in the long run if they want their software to run efficiently and effectively then they will decide to make it required. http://www1.ca.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/global/shared/bizportal/en/it_solutions/articles/high_powered?c=ca&cs=cabsdt1&l=en&s=bsd

4. Does the Linux OS take advantage of multi-core processing? Does Vista take advantage of multi-core processing?

No, according to Redmondmag.com Vista/XP did not take full advantage of multi-core processing, “neither one was ever designed specifically for the rigors of high-end multiprocessing, experts contend.“. One of the biggest drawbacks to Vista was that it did not introduce a new framework from the ground up to take advantage of multi-core processors. Only in November did MS begin to publicly talk about the technology. According to Doug Barney, it's a bit surprising that Microsoft didn't make its boldest multi-core client proclamation until November of last year. Even that announcement was a relatively subdued affair in which a Windows exec promised that Windows 7, the follow-on to Windows Vista, would be re-architected in order to exploit multi-core”. Not only MS, but other companies that release applications have been slow to introduce products that take full advantage of multi-cores. This has been quickly changing, “March of this year when Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, followed up that announcement by prophesizing that parallel computing will represent as big a change as the Internet or the invention of the PC itself. That same month, Microsoft and Intel Corp. pledged $20 million for parallel-computing research at the University of Illinois and the University of California, Berkeley.” (http://redmondmag.com/features/article.asp?editorialsid=2464)

Although patches to the Linux kernel that can enable multi-core processing exist, the Linux development community has been slow to develop solutions for utilizing the capacity. One such kernel extension is ASMP-LINUX (ASymmetric MultiProcessor Linux).
Sources: (http://bravo.ce.uniroma2.it/techreps/sprgtv_tr001.pdf
http://www.gcn.com/blogs/tech/45496.html)

5. Does virtualization software take advantage of multi-core processing?

Virtualizationsoftware does take advantage of multi-core processing because businesses and firms in the real world are already taking advantage of the multi-core processing environment in their every day work.

According an article inWindows in Financial Services, the article says that "firms usevirtualization technology to collapse multiple, overlapping operating system and application instances running on multiple, distributed servers onto fewer, larger systems. Using new dual and multi-core processor systems, administrators can more easily deploy OS instances to specific cores, effectively doubling capacity utilization. With additional virtualization technology, firms can save money on systems management and eliminate the need for costly and time-consuming ports of older applications to new operating platforms." (Posted by Julie Chiou)

Physical Multi-Core Not Required forVirtualization– Intel Corp.

Whiledual-coreand eventually multi-core processors can do a lot in terms of making multitasking and virtualization more-efficient, dual-core chips are not required for Intel’s forthcoming desktop virtualization technology called Vanderpool.

Intel Confirms Virtualization on Single-Core Chips

"There is nothing that technically speaks against havingVirtualization Technology (Vanderpool)implemented in a single core CPU. We will disclose further details on Vanderpool and in which products we will integrate it at a later point in time", an Intel Corp.’s official told X-bit labs on Friday.It is unclear whether VT-enabled chips have to support Hyper-Threading technology.Earlier on Friday a Japan-based web-sitePC Watchpublished a report claiming certain of Intel’s Pentium 4 600-series processors projected to be available in the second half of the year would support the virtualization technology called Vanderpool. Virtualization capability is also expected to be present onIntel’s dual-core processors code-namedSmithfieldand Presleras well as on single-core 65nm CedarMill central processing units.(See more onhttp://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20050129121035.html)(by Yang Yang)

According to the article "Multi-core Processors Fuel Virtualization Services", virtualization software thrives on the new mulit-core processors because the more CPU's that are available for the customer to use, the more virtual machines you can allocate to the physical hardware. For data centers that have multiple virtual host servers the new multi-core processors allow for more virtual machines to be placed on a server, while allowing for more green computing initiatives by increasing server density without boosting power and cooling capacity requirements. Source: http://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid96_gci1312322,00.html
(Posted by Michelle Miller)

According to the article, "Debugging Multicore Processors with Virtualized Software Development,"virtualizationsoftware dramatically increases the amount of time it takes to debug during the stages of software development. Paul McLellan writes, "Developers who are familiar with lower-level simulators such as Spice or Verilog might assume that simulation is too slow, but advances in virtualization technology, such as just-in-time compilation (JIT) and acceleration of idle time, coupled with fast and inexpensive workstations, mean that it is possible to simulate the complex systems at speeds measured in billions of simulated instructions per second — performance adequate for the edit-compile-debug loop that comprises a large part of a programmer’s daily work" In addition, "Today, the simulation technology underlying virtualized software development is so accurate that it can run production binaries unchanged and at very high performance." It accomplishes the increase in speed because it, "relies on a single global virtual time base that synchronizes all processors and other devices, making it possible to halt the whole system simulation when one part of the system is stopped. A single-step operation is the key to deterministic debugging. Since every system node is observable and traceable, and its state and behavior over virtual time can be logged, system tracing can be used to comprehensively profile the software and perform code coverage analysis." Virtualization software, utilized with multicore processing, is becoming a key factor in the field of software development. It allows the developers to create programs faster, and easier than ever. (by Frank Pleta)

Source:http://www.ecnmag.com/debugging-multicore-processors.aspx

According to Jerome Cheng, a technical specialist with CDW-Government, "The more CPUs that are available for the customer to use, the more virtual machines you can allocate to the physical hardware." (http://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid96_gci1312322,00.html)

6. Other?

Apple has just made a new OS for their multicore macs that allows for better application performance among the multicore processors. This new OS does a better job with allocating tasks among the different cores, so it spends less time allocating the tasks and more time performing computations helping the applications run better and faster. Instead of Apple trying to create more cores to increase the application performance they have created a new OS that works better with the multicore processors, which cuts the cost for people who want a computer with better application performance. Instead of them having to buy a brand new computer they can buy this new OS which will help run their mac better with the processor they already have. (Source: http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/multicore.html)

Benefits of Multi-Core Technology (http://www.broadberry.com/technology_definitions/multi-core_technology.htm)

Improved system efficiency and application performance for computers running multiple applications

Multi-core processors enable true multitasking. On single-core systems, multitasking can max out CPU utilization, resulting in decreased performance as operations have to wait to be processed. Each core has its own cache and operating system with sufficient resources to handle compute intensive tasks at the same time.

Enhanced performance for multi-threaded applications
Support for more users or tasks for transaction-intensive applications
Superior performance for compute-intensive applications
Simplified overall computing infrastructure requirements helping to save you money
Helps to eliminate thermal and environmental issues

Multiprocessor save on heat better than single core processors.Heat is a function of several factors, two of which are processor density and clock speed. According to Scalable Enterprises, Companiesusing a shared cache and low-clock-speed processors, multicore processors benefit administrators by minimizing heat while maintaining high overall performance. In traditional architectures, heatgenerated by each new generation of processors has increased at a greater rate than clock speed. Utility cost savings could help accelerate the movement to energy efficient industry standard platforms.

Benefits of multi core cpu for the every day ordinary user:
Often times an every day user will benefit from a multi core cpu when they try to multi task intense cpu processes. For example, watch a movie while running an automatic virus scan. If this were to happen the virus scan would be assigned to one processor while the movie would be playing on the other processor. This would eliminate any lag from the movie, that would definitly be present if it was not for the dual cpu's. (this information was found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-core_(computing)#Disadvantages) Overall, multi-core technology can improve system efficiency and application performance for computers running multiple applications at the same time.

CPU Benchmarking and Performance

John_Yeglinski — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:11:17 CDT

How can the system administrator improve the performance of the computer without adding new hardware?

There are many ways that a system administrator can improve the computers performance without adding new hardware. Over time computers get slower due to files becoming disorganized. Here are some of the ways that one can clean up and organize their hard disk.

1. Remove unused programs. This can be done by going into the control panel.
2. Do a disk cleanup and disk defragment.
3. Disconnect unused network connections.

There are numerous ways to improve a computers performance. A bigger list can be found here along with step by step directions on how to do it.

Types of benchmarks

Real program
- word processing software
- tool software of CDA
- user's application software (MIS)
Kernel
- contains key codes
- normally abstracted from actual program
- popular kernel: Livermore loop
- linpack benchmark (contains basic linear algebra subroutine written in FORTRAN language)
- results are represented in MFLOPS
Toy Benchmark/ micro-benchmark
- user can program it and use it to test computer's basic components
- automatic detection of computer's hardware parameters like number of registers, cache size, memory latency
Synthetic Benchmark
- Procedure for programming synthetic Bench mark
  - take statistics of all type of operations from plenty of application programs
  - get proportion of each operation
  - write a program based on the proportion above
- Types of Synthetic Benchmark are:
  - Whetstone
  - Dhrystone
- Its results are represented in KWIPS (kilo whetstone instructions per second). It is not suitable for measuring pipeline computers.
I/O benchmarks
Parallel benchmarks: used on machines with multiple processors or systems consisting of multiple machines.

[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benchmark_(computing)#Types_of_benchmarks]

Is CPU performance the ultimate factor in computer performance?

"It is obvious, that all major computer components such as CPU, memory and IO devices together affect computer's performance." (http://www.hitequest.com/Kiss/performance.htm)

The CPU is not the ultimate factor in determining system wide performance. A computer's overall speed is actually no faster than its slowest component. For example if you are trying to read a file from a CD, the slowest component will be the CDROM drive. Although you may have a fast CPU, RAM, system bus, etc. if your CDROM can only read the file at a certain rate, you will not get the data faster than that rate. Other performance factors are how many programs you are running and how much memory/CPU time(or cycles) they are taking.

While the CPU is a huge factor in a computer’s performance it isn’t the ultimate factor. Many components must work in sync with each other to provide the best working conditions. If one thing is off it can mess up the rest of the components. “All major computer components such as CPU, memory and IO devices together affect computer's performance. Slow RAM or hard disk is going to be a bottleneck for fast CPU.” more info here here

Another big factor in determing what the system is capable of is the motherboard. Motherboards can only support certain types of chips, memory, hard drives etc and everything is ultimately plugged into the motherboard. When upgrading a certain part of the system, such as the CPU, you need to make sure it is compatible with the motherboard and that the motherboard can actually handle the speed of the CPU. If it can't, the motherboard will need to be upgraded. (more info on motherboards here)

A computer's video card is also a large factor in determining system wide performance. If the users computer has only integrated graphics (meaning that the video memory needed is taken out of RAM) it causes lower throughput, which in turn decreases performance. If it is not integrated, the video card will have its own video memory which is called Video RAM or VRAM, which can drastically increase performance, due to the fact that video memory is not taken out of RAM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_card). If you're a Windows Vista user, the onboard video adapters in most systems aren’t powerful enough to run Vista properly, so purchasing a good video card could make Vista run much more efficiently (http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=200).

What are some of the other factors in determining the performance of a computer?

1. Buses -Circuitry that is used to move data between the microprocessor andother hardware (peripheral devices) in the computer. (crucial.com) (salvagedata.com) (wikipedia)

2. Memory Controller - A chip that manages the flow of data to and from the memory. (wikipedia)

3. Direct Memory Access -a transfer protocol where a peripheral device transfers information directly to or from memory, without the system processor being required to perform the transaction. (pcguide.com)

4. Multiprocessing - Can mean three things: The use of more than one CPU in one computer, the ability of a computer to support more than one CPU, or the ability for a CPU to execute multiple processes. (wikipedia)
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_architecture

Some other factors in determining the performance of a computer include the processor’s instruction set, clock speed, bandwidth, front side bus (FSB) speed, heat, and heat dissipation. According to Kitchen Table Computers “when processors run too hot, they can start doing funky things like cause errors, lock, freeze, or even burn up.” Before going out and buying a new computer or upgrade to a new processor make sure nothing is blocking the heat vents and the fan is working properly.

What are the benchmarking tests for different hardware components?

Component benchmarks measure the performance of specific parts of a computer system, such as a microprocessor or hard disk drive, while system benchmarks typically measure the performance of the entire computer system. More information on benchmarking can be found here.
There are many types of benchmarks available to test different hardware components. Here are several types and an example of each: Common Benchmarks– an "all-in-one" test – example is SiSoft Sandra XII, which was used in Assignment #3
CPU Benchmarks- these programs will test and identify your processor – example is SysID, which shows common information about your computer’s system including RAM, speed, and CPU Hard Disk Drive Benchmarks - tests your HDD or flash device – example is MHDD 4.6 which provides fast and informative low-level drive diagnostics
RAM Benchmarks – tests your memory – example is DocMemory, user friendly software designed to capture all possible memory failures in PC
Multimedia Benchmarks - programs to work with multimedia devices, such as CD, DVD, sound cards, etc. – example is Nero CD-DVD Speed, a CD-ROM benchmark which can test the most important features of a CD- and/or DVD-ROM drive
Monitor Benchmarks – programs to test and adjust your monitor – example is Monitors Matter CheckScreen, enables the user to perform the following tests: color, focus, geometry, power supply, streaking Network Benchmarks- network diagnostics – example is NetInfo, provides all the tools you need to help diagnose network problems and get information about users, hosts and networks on the Internet or on your Intranet. Video Benchmarks- video subsystem benchmarks – example is 3DMark06, focuses on testing 3D performance of modern 3D accelerators in a "real world" environment. Monitoring Benchmarks – system monitoring tools – example is HMonitor 4.4.0.1, this program monitors and displays hardware parameters collected by the several sensor chips, installed on certain motherboards. Program can monitor voltages, temperatures of CPU and motherboard and cooler fans RPMs. (Source: http://www.benchmarkhq.ru/be_main.html)

When trying to compare the speed and power of a particular component in a computer, different programs can be used that focus around on utilizing that particular part of the computer. In a benchmark, it is important that the performances is measureable, either number of seconds to complete or number of files processed, and that it can be done over and over again fairly easily. For the CPU, these tests can include the decompression of a 100 MB .rar file, the conversion of 50 4 minute .mp3 files to .wma files, the encoding the 24 second H.264 file, or a 115 page PowerPoint to PDF conversion.

The graphics card will usually utilize different programs that will revolve more around 3D rendering rather than the usage of the CPU. Using video games at different quality settings and resolutions and measuring the frames per second (fps) are a very popular ways of finding the performance of a video card. This can include Battlefield 2142 at 1920 x 1200 resolution, 4x AA, max detail, or Prey 1280,1024, 4x AA, max detail. Currently a very popular game that is being used is Crysis which is known to push even today’s top consumer computers to the limit. Typically for a games to be playable, a user wants the score to be above 30 fps on average.

Hard drives mostly have a slightly different way of being measured. When finding the read and write speed of a hard drive the minimum, average, and maximum speed are all fairly important to know since it fluctuates so much. Programs like HD Tach can easily measure the speed of the read and write performance, random access speed, or time can be just measured to find the time it take to boot Windows XP. Performance doesn’t have to be the only factor measured in a benchmark, price per gigabyte and price/performance are only types of benchmarks.

One benchmarking tool that can be used is the “Windows Experience Index” found in the Windows Vista Operating System. Basically the program measures the performance of the CPU, memory, 2D graphics, 3D graphics, and hard drive all-in-one and rates it on a scale between 1.0 to 5.9. Ideally you would want to have a score that is fairly even and consistent between all 5 benchmarks to ensure there are no bottlenecks. If one of these scores is lagging, a user may want to upgrade that particular component.
Sources: http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu_2007.html
http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2007.html
http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/12/19/amd_phenom_athlon_64_x2/
http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/01/28/ati_r680_the_rage_fury_maxx_2/
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/21/samsung_overtakes_with_a_bang/
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,128009-page,9/article.html#hw-1

How can the system administrator improve the performance of the computer without adding new hardware? In Linux? In Windows?

There are many ways to improve computer performance and speed without adding new hardware. For starters, try cleaning up free disk space by removing temporary Internet files, removing downloaded program files, emptying the Recycle Bin, and removing temporary files, components, and programs that you no longer use. In addition, defragment your computer to speed up access to data. The response time of the computer is significantly greater because the hard disk must be searched to put files back together. By defragmenting the computer the files are consolidated so that they are stored one after the other. In addition, be sure to monitor your hard drive for disk errors that are the result of bad sectors. Bad sectors make writing data difficult and should be repaired. Finally, protect your computer against spyware. Not only does spyware put confidential information at risk of being exposed but it also slows down your computer's performance. These guidelines were written from the perspective of a Windows environment however many of them are applicable in Linux as well. Source: http://www.microsoft.com/atwork/getstarted/speed.mspx

- One way to improve your computer's performance without upgrading hardware is to remove many of the programs that automatically start when you turn your computer on. A detailed guide can be found here.

- By installing firewalls to protect your computer from spyware and viruses, users can improve their computer's performance since these installations can add hidden processes. These unwanted programs will then alter(reduce) the priority of wanted programs, thus slowing down the performance of your computer.

-A common way to improve computer performance by not adding new hardware is actually altering your current hardware. Long used in the gaming world has been the idea of 'overclocking' your system. User be warned though, if not done right overclocking can seriously damage or ruin your hardware. More information can be found here.

-An easy way for administrators to speed up computer performance is to download available software such asPC Booster 1.0 that automatically configures the system to speed up start-up and shut-down times, application functionality, and show advanced views of the operating system tasks/functionality. Other software such as Cacheman 5.0 function as a tool to monitor and tweak system performance based upon optimizing memory usage in the cache, reaction time of the hard disk, and provide other speed focused improvements.

- There are many pieces of software available to speed up a machine. Of course, one would always be Power Defragmenter (Download Here), CCleaner (Cleans the registry, removes temp files, and really does a solid job), turning off unneccessary system services obvioulsy helps, and as always, KEEP UPDATED DRIVERS!

Software Applications Categories that can take advantage of Multi-Core Processors.

"Multi-core processors will solve many of the challenges currently facing software designers by delivering significant performance increases at a time when they need it most...." The article goes on to say that the multi-core processors will ease the burden on program compiling. As well as make developers working with Artificial Intelligence able to adapter to more intense versions of AI. Also processor intense software such as retinal and voice recognition may be attainable soon to the general public. The article didn't mention it but I am sure another application category that will become a benefactor is the gaming category.
http://multicore.amd.com/Resources/33211A_Multi-Core_WP_en.pdf -John_Yeglinski

Lab #2 - Operating Systems and the Linux File System

Rick_Mathieu — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 09:13:18 CDT

The purpose of this lab is to introduce the student to the basic concepts of an operating system and to understand how Linux handles the management of files and directories.

Introduction to Operating Systems

File systems and Linux

Windows vs Linux File System

Hints for Navigating in Linux

Linux Kernel

Hypervisors and Xen

Multi-core Processors and the Future

Linux versus Windows

AshleighKenion — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 07:09:00 CDT

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/assurance/default.aspx
I. Linux versus Windows Vista on the Desktop
"Windows is the most prominent proprietary operating system, while Linux is the most prominent operating system that is free software. " (source from Wiki)

According to the pie chart, we see that the majority of people are still using Windows. Perhaps this is because the Microsoft company is very strong in marketing. One of the difference between Windows and Linux perhaps is the purpose of their creation.
"According to a survey of Register readers, carried out by analysts Quocirca, reveals that despite all these well-publicized objections to Windows, many customers are still loath to leave Microsoft because of what they see as a lack of compatible open source software, user resistance to change, high training costs, high costs of porting bespoke applications and a dependence on Microsoft's Active Directory. 'The move to Linux should not be an emotional one' "(Source from: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/07/linux_windows_quocirca/).

"For some time, the folks at Ubuntu have attempted to build a Linux distribution that's easy to install, use, configure, and maintain -- one that's at least as easy as Windows, and whenever possible, even easier. As a result, Ubuntu is one of the Linux distributions that has been most directly touted as an alternative to Windows."(Source from: http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/linux/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199201179)

A key issue between Windows and Linux based operating systems is simplicity. "Ubuntu makes it far easier to deal with hardware than previous, less user-friendly versions of Linux did, but only up to a point. The most common types of hardware and usage scenarios are handled the best, but the further you drift from that, the more complicated it gets. At its worst, Ubuntu's way of dealing with hardware often involves manual hacking to accomplish things that ought to be trivial (and in Windows usually are). Vista's way of dealing with hardware is pretty centralized -- the Device Manager lets you browse all the installed hardware in a system, manage each device's driver and configuration, and so on. Ubuntu has a device manager, but it's just a static list, and can't be used for configuring devices per se. To do that, you often need to edit a configuration file, and the exact file to edit may depend on the type of device." (Source: http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/linux/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199201179&pgno=3&queryText=&isPrev=)

Being a college student we have to worry about the prices of things we are going to use, especially on our computers. I have found a few statistics about the different prices of the Linux and Windows operating systems and their softwares. On http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000575.htm it said that the Linux OS can be found for free or very cheap. However, Windows OS is priced between $50 - $150 per license copy. The software for Linux OS can be found for free or at a very low cost, while Windows software ranges from $20 - $200+ per copy. However, Windows does offer a few software programs for free, but not as many as Linux offers. Overall if you are trying to save money or are running low on cash, your best bet for an operating system and the software that goes with it are Linux products.
(Source: http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000575.htm)

II. Linux versus Windows Vista on a Laptop
It seems that Linux laptop is quite cheap compared with Windows. "An exciting new trend is the appearance of Linux pre-installed in many new lost-cost laptop computers.If I had to bet, I'd say that low cost Linux laptops will take off. The cost, simplicity and portability are likely to be the big appeal. Not to mention immunity from most malicious software and the lack of a normal disk that increases the battery life and makes the machine more rugged."(Source from: http://www.michaelhorowitz.com/Linux.vs.Windows.html)

In February 2008, Everex launched its Linux laptop, CloudBook, which became available for $399 at Wal-Mart and other online retailers. This was a defining moment for Linux, which was previously not available from any "mainstream" venues. It is predicted that Linux will not gain the same market share that Windows has, but "perhaps 1 percent to 3 percent of traditional PC users" (The VAR Guy, Feb 2008) will switch to Linux. Others companies have jumped on the bandwagon, and Dell will "continue to gradually expand their Ubuntu Linux offerings." (Source "http://www.thevarguy.com/2008/02/20/linux-laptops-reach-critical-mass")

IBM decided to preload their ThinkPad laptops with Linux instead of Windows. This decision was made because IBM believes Linux is a standard for computers of varying sizes and also because Linux could one day replace Windows. However, at this point IBM believes that their main client for these computers will be computer professionals. While there are many benefits to using Linux there are still some major concerns about not having Windows installed on the laptops. Most people perfer to use Microsoft Word and Excel which are not in the Linux format. Not having these applications on the ThinkPad might cause IBM a lot of customers. IBM could lose a lot of student customers. Students often have laptops because they are easy to bring with them to class and because they are always on the go. Due to the fact that students use these windows applications frequently IBM could definitly loose out on these customers. (Source: http://find.galegroup.com/ips/retrieve.do?contentSet=IAC-Documents&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29%3AFQE%3D%28ke%2CNone%2C5%29linux%3AAnd%3AFQE%3D%28ke%2CNone%2C7%29windows%3AAnd%3AFQE%3D%28ke%2CNone%2C7%29laptops%24&sgHitCountType=None&inPS=true&sort=DateDescend&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&tabID=T003&prodId=IPS&searchId=R1&currentPosition=1&userGroupName=viva_jmu&docId=A62858847&docType=IAC&contentSet=IAC-Documents)

Originally, users who wanted to install Linux as their operating system had to work "backwards." First choose the distribution of Linux, then find compatible hardware. This approach worked fine for desktop computers due to easily interchangeable cards and parts; however, in the world of laptops proprietary hardware and drivers made it difficult to work like this. In recent years, access to open source drivers has grown dramatically. An end-user can simply run a LiveCD to ensure compatibility, and within a short time be running their preferred OS. This has opened a world of options for mobile computer users. Additionally, Linux allows developers to create many, many different distrobutions. Older laptops that can't handle large OSs that eat up resources like Windows Vista or XP. Puppy Linux and DSL are two examples of great user-friendly environments that can render old, forgotten laptops useful again.  Source: DSL and Puppy Linux - Dan Cartis

III. Linux versus Windows on a Server
According to the statistic, " Microsoft 's Windows commands 65 to 70 percent of the server operating system market, while the Linux share stands at 15 to 20 percent. Currently, Linux server shipments represent the fastest-growing segment of the market. " (Source from: http://www.telecom-gear.com/Linux-vs-Windows-TCO-Comparison-article4014--1.htm)

"Linux is customizable in a way that Windows is not. For example, NASLite is a version of Linux that runs off a single floppy disk (since revised to also boot from a CD) and converts an old computer into a file server. This ultra small edition of Linux is capable of networking, file sharing and being a web server. " (Source from: http://www.michaelhorowitz.com/Linux.vs.Windows.html)

"For server use, Linux is very cheap compared to Windows. Microsoft allows a single copy of Windows to be used on only one computer. Starting with Windows XP, they use software to enforce this rule . In contrast, once you have purchased Linux, you can run it on any number of computers for no additional charge. "(Source from: http://www.michaelhorowitz.com/Linux.vs.Windows.html)

IV. Linux versus Windows - File Management
Windows:" expanding NTFS partitions is possible without problems, and on Vista it is possible to shrink partitions as well. Dynamic Disks provide dynamic partitioning. Third party tools are available that have more features than the built-in partitioning tools. Natively supported: NTFS, FAT, ISO 9660, UDF, and others; 3rd-party drivers available for ext2, ext3, reiserfs, HFS, and others ."(Source from Wikipedia )

Linux: "Some file system support resizing partitions without losing data. LVM and EVMS provide dynamic partitioning. All Linux distributions have bundled partitioning software such as fdisk or gparted. Natively supported: ext2, ext3, ext4, ReiserFS, FAT, ISO 9660, UDF, NFS, and others; many additional filesystems (including NTFS using NTFS-3g) are available using FUSE. " (Source from Wikipedia )

P.S. "Windows can read and write with Ext2 and Ext3 file systems with third-party drivers such as FS-driver or ext2fsd; and ReiserFS through rfstool and related programs." (Source from Wikipedia )

IV. Linux versus Windows Hosting
As we know it today there are many different OS that are being used by web servers, but the OS for Linux and Windows are two of the most widely used today for web hosting. Although Linux seems to be the most prominent form for hosting on the Web, both are used. (http://www.hostvoice.com/blog/linux-vs-windows-hosting)

Linux hosting allows many technologies to run on it all the while remaining to be an open source with an easily managed coding language. Because of this, Linux has the lower cost of the two, and it performs faster. (http://www.hostvoice.com/blog/linux-vs-windows-hosting) “It's typically found to be the most reliable, stable and efficient system and, as such, it's commonly used for the demanding environment of Web and mail servers.” (http://www.purohits.com/hosting/windows-vs-linux.htm) The disadvantage is that the Linux hosting does not support many Windows based applications and coding languages. (http://www.3essentials.com/articles/windowslinux-web-hosting.asp)

Windows hosting supports SQL server, programming frameworks, etc. The main advantage of the Window hosting is that it gives you the ease of compatibility with Microsoft based technologies. (http://www.hostvoice.com/blog/linux-vs-windows-hosting) Unfortunately, Windows is generally more expensive and Linux because of the licensing used in different technologies.

So ultimately, the main difference between the two is based on the technology they each support. Linux uses a scripting language, called PHP and Windows uses ASP. (http://www.3essentials.com/articles/windowslinux-web-hosting.asp) PHP is supported in the Windows environment but it works better in Linux, whereas Linux does not support ASP.

V. Linux versus Windows - Process Management

	Windows	Linux
Process Scheduling	NT-based versions of Windows use a CPU scheduler based on a multilevel feedback queue, with 32 priority levels defined. The kernel may change the priority level of a thread depending on its I/O and CPU usage and whether it is interactive (i.e. accepts and responds to input from humans), raising the priority of interactive and I/O bounded processes and lowering that of CPU bound processes, to increase the responsiveness of interactive applications.[42] The scheduler was modified in Windows Vista to use the cycle counter register of modern processors to keep track of exactly how many CPU cycles a thread has executed, rather than just using an interval-timer interrupt routine.[43]	Linux kernel 2.6 once used a scheduling algorithm favoring interactive processes. Here "interactive" is defined as a process has short bursts of CPU usage rather than long ones. It is said that a process without root privilege can take advantage of this to monopolize the CPU,[44] when the CPU time accounting precision is low. However, the new CFS, the completely fair scheduler, addresses this problem.
Memory Management/ Disk Paging	Windows NT and its variants employ a dynamically allocated pagefile for memory management. A pagefile is allocated on disk, for less frequently accessed objects in memory, leaving more RAM available to actively used objects. This scheme suffers from slow-downs due to disk fragmentation, which hampers the speed at which the objects can be brought back into memory when they are needed. Windows can be configured to place the pagefile on a separate partition; doing this negates the disk-fragmentation issues, but introduces an I/O slowdown due to the seek time involved in switching back and forth between the two partitions.[45] However, the main reason this is not done by default is that, if the pagefile is on a separate partition, then Windows cannot create a memory dump in the event of a Stop Error.[46] The ideal solution performance-wise is to have the pagefile on a separate hard drive to the primary one, which eliminates both defragmentation and I/O issues.	Most hard drive installations of Linux utilize a "swap partition", where the disk space allocated for paging is separate from general data, and is used strictly for paging operations. This reduces slowdown due to disk fragmentation from general use. As with Windows, for best performance the swap partition should be placed on a separate hard drive to the primary one.

Source from Wikipedia

VI. Linux versus Windows - Security

One of the weaknesses of Windows is that it is based on a single-user design and only recently has been adapted to work in a multi-user mode. According to 'The Security Report' by Nicholas Petreley, "Windows was originally designed to allow both users and applications free access to the entire system, which means anyone could tamper with a critical system program or file. It also means viruses, Trojans and other malware could tamper with any critical system program or file, because Windows did not isolate users or applications from these sensitive areas of the operating system." Many have argued that Microsoft Vista is the first version of Windows to truly take into account multi-user networks when designing the operating system security.

In attempt to compare Linux/Windows/Vista, I came across an article "Mac OS X vs. Linux - Red Hat vs. Windows 98 and Above Including Windows Vista" from KezNews.com. In this article it stated that "Red Hat was found to have the most number of vulnerabilities (633), with 99% (629 vulnerabilities) due to third-party components. Solaris, which had a total of 252 vulnerabilities, came next and had 80% (201) due to third-party components. Apple Mac OS X came third with 235, 62% (146) of which is due to third-party components. Fourth came Windows with 123, but with only 4% due to third-party software. Last came HP-UX with 75 vulnerabilities, 81% (61) of which are due to third-party software," Secunia revealed. See diagram below.

However, what was interesting, several people had posted comments below the article, debating the true interpretation of the surrey's results. I really agree with the following post from user sjc1963 who stated " the only reason which makes linux or mac more secure than windows is that more 90% of pc users around the world use windows. now if you are a spammer and write spamming codes, will you write a spam , a spyware or a virus, to strike the 10% of the pc users in the world that use mac and linux, or will you make your virus success chance by making it for 90% of the pc users since they use window? it's pure logic..."

In order to ensure that the creation of malware is discouraged and its impact is reduced, software should have a small user base, rapid updates to neutralize new threats, and a compartmentalized structure that isolates damaged sections. According to wikipedia, prior to the introduction of Windows Vista, "almost all Windows users were given a root account by default because lesser accounts were overly restrictive for most users." Linux user accounts, however, have "historically allowed greater control, precluding the need for all users to have root access. Without root, it becomes much more difficult for malware to spread."

The following chart offers further detail on the subject:

	Windows	Linux	Notes
Malware	According to Kaspersky Lab, more than 11,000 malware programs for Windows were discovered in the second half of 2005.[62] Botnets - networks of infected computers controlled by malicious persons - with more than one million computers have been witnessed.[63] Users are advised to install and run anti-malware program	More than 800 pieces of Linux malware have been discovered.[62] Some malware has propagated through the Internet.[64]
Open vs. Closed	Claims its platform is more secure because of a comprehensive approach to security using the Security Development Lifecycle.[65][66] However, due to the nature of closed source, only company programmers can fix bugs.	Claims its platform is more secure because all of its code is reviewed by so many people that bugs are detected (referred to as Linus's law).	Microsoft claims that Windows Vista is more secure than other operating systems.[67] However, security vulnerabilities have been found in Windows Vista.[68]
Response Speed	Claims closed source offers a faster and more effective response to security issues,[69] though critical bug fixes are only released once a month after extensive programming and testing[70][71] and certain bugs have been known to go unpatched for months.	Bugs can be fixed and rolled out within a day of being reported, though usually it takes a few weeks before the patch is available on all distributions.
User Accounts	In Windows Vista, all logged in sessions (even for those of "administrator" users) run with standard user permissions, preventing malicious programs from gaining total control of the system. Prior versions of Windows would assign administrator status to the first user account created during the setup process. The majority of users did not change to an account type with fewer rights[citation needed], meaning that malicious programs would have full control over the system.	Users typically run as limited accounts[citation needed], having created both administrator and user accounts during install, preventing malicious programs from gaining total control of the system.	A malicious program executed under a limited account in both Linux and Windows is limited to that users' data.

Source: wikipedia

The plain fact is that the Windows OS is used in such a high quantity there statistically are more viruses than any other OS. "There are about 60,000 viruses known for Windows, 40 or so for the Macintosh, about 5 for commercial Unix versions, and perhaps 40 for Linux. Most of the Windows viruses are not important, but many hundreds have caused widespread damage. Two or three of the Macintosh viruses were widespread enough to be of importance. None of the Unix or Linux viruses became widespread - most were confined to the laboratory." source: theRegister
Energy Consumption - Linux vs. Windows

In an independent test done in June 2008 by Tom Henderson and Rand Dvorak of the Network World Lab Alliance, it was found that Linux used up to 12% less power than Windows 2008 on identical hardware (http://www.networkworld.com/research/2008/060908-green-windows-linux.html?fsrc). Windows has power-management systems that the user can toggle between and choose to their own liking, but even with that, Windows at the highest-energy efficiency setting still uses slightly more energy consumption than the Linux platform. However, the tests run by Network World were under various distributions and hardware configurations, so Windows users might not experience as big of a decrease in power consumption when using Linux as the tests run may lead you to believe, but Phillip M., who wrote an article on Neoseeker, said that he could see a considerable difference in the battery life of his Linux OS laptop and his Windows Vista OS laptop.

Upon reading various articles, one I read said that a particular test has shown that Linux "eats up" more resources, but it does it at a much slower pace than Windows which adds to why Linux has better energy efficiency (article). Also, CNN reports that "switching from a Windows-operated computer to a Linux-operated one could slash computer-generated e-waste levels by 50%." It's no longer about software freedom. It's also about environmental responsibility. A UK government study in late 2004 reported that there were substantial green benefits to running a Linux open source operating system (OS) on computers instead of the ubiquitous Windows OS, owned by Microsoft. The main problem with Windows users was that they had to change their computer twice as many times as Linux users, on average, thereby effectively creating twice as much computer-generated e-waste." -Posted by Julie Chiou

One reason for Windows users having to change their computers is due to frequent major upgrades.

According to a report by the Department of Government Commerce about Open Source Software Trials in Government, open source software has lower hardware requirements and needs less frequent hardware refreshes. Compared to Microsoft Windows systems, the open source system is able to use a slower processor speed and less memory for the same functionality.

"The reduction in hardware demands brings environmental benefits, because it translates into lower energy requirements and less waste, reducing landfill requirements and costs arising from disposal of redundant equipment." (Source from: http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?newsid=8226).

VII: Linux vs Windows - GUI
Most Linux distributions let you choose between multiple GUIs. Linux users can even create their own GUIs. This means that if you don’t like the way your desktop functions, you can build a desktop to your liking. The standard GUI however is not very user friendly or as smooth as Windows. Windows users will find items similar to the “Start button” in one corner where you can launch programs, and a trash can icon on the desktop where you can find deleted files but that’s about it. Many Linux procedures still require the use of the command line, making it hard for those who aren't technologically savvy lost and confused. "If you fail to learn at least a smattering of Linux's intricacies, chances are good that you won't get much done." The simple (or lacking) Linux GUI makes it a perfect choice for users with computers running older systems. On older hardware, you can choose to run Linux with a customized GUI, a feature-light GUI, or without a GUI at all. “Windows is a one-GUI-fits-all system: No Windows applications--even the command-line tools--will run outside of Windows' bulky GUI, making XP unusable on older, slower systems." (Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/104693-13/linux_vs_windows_the_rematch.html)

Linux vs Windows- Security

According to Ed Sawicki, who is the President of the Accelerated Learning Center (ALC) and Tailored Computers. Linux differs greatly from Windows in firewall protection. "The Windows firewall is... minimalistic. It only filters inbound packets and the rules must be simple - generally too simple to be useful to an experienced administrator." Linux benefits network engineers by allowing most forms of NAT, port translation, and packet mangling. Which then allows such things as transparent proxies, sophisticated QoS and policy routers.

As it challenges simple to use user interfaces, the biggest problem with the Linux firewall is said to be figuring out how to configure it. Experienced Linux/UNIX administrators have less difficulty.

Biznix- Windows vs. Linux Security.
posted by: Megan Wolfrey

Application Imbalance - Security Vulnerabilities Between Windows and Linux

One factor that is often overlooked in the grand debate about the superiority of one operating system over another hinges on the fact that security vulnerabilities almost always revolve around applications. This presents a problem when comparing Windows to Linux, because the two are not at all equal with respect to application portability and availability. On the one hand, most of the popular Microsoft Windows applications are Microsoft applications, and they only run on Windows. When a flaw is found in Microsoft Exchange, one can be reasonably certain that this problem only affects Windows customers. Microsoft Exchange does not run on Linux, Solaris, or anything else but Windows. The Apache web server, on the other hand, may be most often associated with Linux, UNIX or other UNIX-like systems, but Apache does run on Windows, as well. So when one compares the overall security of Windows vs. Linux, is a flaw in Apache a blemish on Linux only? Or does it reflect negatively on both Linux and Windows? To complicate matters, there are several cases where a flaw in Apache poses little or no danger on Linux, but is a serious vulnerability on Windows. The reverse is rarely, if ever, the case. Should the overall security ranking of Windows suffer because it is more adversely affected than Linux when using software that is most commonly associated with Linux? One is obligated to question if any of these factors have been considered when comparing the security of Windows to Linux.
Source : http://www.theregister.co.uk/security/security_report_windows_vs_linux/

Midori

Midori is an operating system being developed by Microsoft to succeed the Microsoft Windows platform. Microsoft has continued to keep this project a secret by not having any public reports about it, but Microsoft does confirm that it exists. "Although Microsoft won't comment publicly on what Midori is, the company has confirmed that it exists. Several reports-- the most comprehensive to date published on Tuesday by Software Development Times-- have gone much further than that. That report paints Midori as an Internet-centric OS, based on the idea of connected systems, that largely eliminates the dependencies between local applications and the hardware they run on that exist with a typical OS today. The report claims Midori is an offshoot of Microsoft Research's Singularity OS, which creates "software-isolated processes" to reduce the dependencies between individual applications, and between the applications and the OS itself." Source: Yahoo News about Midori.

From Engadget, "The basis for the platform centers around research related to Microsoft's Singularity project, and envisions a distributed environment where applications, documents, and connectivity are blurred in a cloud-computing phantasmagoria which can be run natively or hosted across multiple systems. The researchers are working to create a concurrent / parallel distribution of resources, as well as a method of handling applications across separate machines -- religiously-dubbed the Asynchronous Promise Architecture -- which will set the stage for a backwards-compatible operating system built from the ground up, with networks of varying size in mind. Says the SD Times, "The Midori documents foresee applications running across a multitude of topologies, ranging from client-server and multi-tier deployments to peer-to-peer at the edge, and in the cloud data center. Those topologies form a heterogeneous mesh where capabilities can exist at separate places."" Source: Midori Posted by Zachary Schultz

Midori is the code name for a managed code operating system developed secretly by Microsoft . It has been reported to be a possible commercial successor to the Singularity operating system, a research project started in 2003 to build a highly-dependable operating system in which the kernel, device drivers, and applications are all written in managed code.
The code name Midori was first discovered through the PowerPoint presentation CHESS: A systematic testing tool for concurrent software.Midori has also been rumoured by some IT journalists as a possible replacement to Microsoft Windows.
Midori is meant to be unbound to the physical hardware of the computer and is assumed to be a much more virtual than it's precursors. It's also said that it assumes that the user will be online at all times. Midori will be easily moved between different environments without reinstallation.
Midori is also a distribution of Linux, started in 2001. "Midori Linux is an Open Source project for delivering system software on small devices"

(Source from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_(operating_system)#cite_note-0)

Midori, as stated above, is an operating system that is largely centered around the Singularity project. Supposedly, it assumes that the user will always be connected to the internet and will run its applications in a manner similar to that of the Singularity project which is described as follows in a white paper from Microsoft.
"Singularity is a new operating system being developed as a basis for more dependable
system and application software. Singularity exploits advances in programming languages
and tools to create an environment in which software is more likely to be built correctly, program
behavior is easier to verify, and run-time failures can be contained.
A key aspect of Singularity is an extension model based on Software-Isolated Processes
(SIPs), which encapsulate pieces of an application or a system and provide information hiding,
failure isolation, and strong interfaces. SIPs are used throughout the operating system and
application software. We believe that building a system on this abstraction will lead to more
dependable software." Source: ftp://ftp.research.microsoft.com/pub/tr/TR-2005-135.pdf

Midori Linux is the name of a new Microsoft operating system based on the Japanese word for the
color green (midori) to reflect its environmentally friendly aspects of the energy efficient Linux operating system.
It is a managed code operating system built as an Open Source project with a build system, a Linux kernel with
memory and storage conserving features. It is built to be unbound to the physical hardware of computers and
is assumed to be more virtual than its predecessors, along with the capability to be easily moved between
different environments without reinstallation.
Midori Linux is said to become the replacement for both the Singularity operating system and Microsoft Windows.
The vice chairman and chief technology officer of Transmeta Corporation that built the new software says
that “Midori Linux will be attractive for any application that can benefit from full Linux compatibility, low power,
low thermals and a small footprint”. Posted by: Michelle Miller
Source: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS6122668009.html

Midori is a new operating system that is being prepared by Microsoft that would move applications and data from desktops to the internet quickly. This idea is of giving up control of one's applications and data to a server farm hosted by a large company such as Microsoft of Google is called "cloud computing". Cloud computing is not only a technological change, but a cultural one as well. It is going to be a shift from the personal computer era, which moved computing power, data, and applications from the central mainframe onto the desktops, to going back towards the centralized server idea again. This concept has obviously created a lot of buzz. Many people are skeptical about losing control, risking the ownership of one's data, and relying on the quality of the provider for reliable service. Such concerns are being taken into consideration and being addressed. The argument given regarding security concerns is that the loss isn't very frequent or prominent when it does occur. And also that, "a large hosting facility like Google can do a far better job of backing up your data than you can." Also, regarding the service prover's quality, Microsoft is offering a "sort of hybrid" where users can work on desktop-based programs and applications when the server isn't connected, and once the cloud is restored, the can sync up to servers again, share their files, and collaborate with other users. Midori is still a new concept, however it is slowly gaining momentum and users are finding out more about cloud computing.
Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/149516/cloud_computing_is_midori_sour_or_sweet.html

Linux as a viable desktop OS for entry level users, Ubuntu

Linux currently runs on 13.4% of servers and is growing its market penetration almost 8 times the rate of Windows. Enterprise level companies have embraced it as a cost effective, secure, fact and fully functional server OS that can deliver. Linux has historically not been so successful in penetrating the home user OS community. Market research shows that Linux holds about 2% of the market in this segment. One of the largest complaints with Linux has been its learning curve for new users. Veteran users in the Linux community have a saying, “I'll believe Linux is ready for the desktop as soon as you can give me a Linux distribution that even my grandmother can run”. For most people, Vista/XP have been in use for many years and a lot of functionality of Windows needs to be adapted to the Linux environment before users can make the switch. One such distribution, Ubuntu, offers uses a very easy to use interface that mimics many of Windows features but retains the core Linux kernel in an easy to use environment.

Ubuntu is one of the most popular Linux Distributions. It currently controls 30% of the desktop installations for all Linux installations. The Ubuntu project started as an effort to bring simple, intuitive, easy to use OS with a GUI interface to mass appeal. Ubuntu has focused on making many of the functions of Ubuntu has similar to Windows as possible. Ubuntu is installed easily by Windows users. The current version, 8.04, has an easy to use live CD installer which helps users install Ubuntu like a normal application in windows. Many people in the Linux community are hoping that Ubuntu will help bring in new users to the Linux world and be a viable options for Vista users. (Source from http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/06/05/mobile-linux-at-23-percent-by-2013/1 , http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10027925-16.html , http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/linux/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199201179 ). Posted by Michael Bala

Linux vs. Windows - Security

One has to question whether the attacks occur so often on Windows because of its overwhelming market share, or because there are flaws in its design? There are several reasons for this.

First, Windows has only recently developed a true multi-user system with Windows Vista and even that is debatable. Prior to that, malicious software was able to penetrate critical system programs or files, because Windows did not limit user access from these parts of the operating system. It was not until the release of Windows XP that Microsoft showed real effort to address these security issues. Windows XP did offer significantly better access restrictions and memory protection. However, Windows set the Administrator account as the default account. Therefore, the user has to set up a standard account which had limited system privileges. Most users did not create a standard account, but instead choose to run under their Administrator account. Windows made more improvements with Windows Server 2003, but it was still plagued by security vulnerabilities.

Next, Windows is monolithic by design unlike Linux, which is modular. A monolithic architecture is where processing, data and the user interface all reside on the same system. Microsoft builds most features offered by competitors into its operating systems. While this makes it harder for rivals to compete with Microsoft, the integration of the operating system exposes the user’s system to significant risks. A monolithic system can be unstable. You can introduce many risks when even one piece of the system is changed (intentionally or not). This can create a domino effect with other system applications. In this environment, even something as simple as adding a patch or security update can fix one part of Windows, but cause problems in others.

Finally, Windows uses the RPC model too much. RPC stands for Remote Procedure Call. “Remote procedure call (RPC) is an Inter-process communication technology that allows a computer program to cause a subroutine or procedure to execute in another address space (commonly on another computer on a shared network) without the programmer explicitly coding the details for this remote interaction. That is, the programmer would write essentially the same code whether the subroutine is local to the executing program, or remote” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_procedure_call). This opens a network-connected computer to exploitation by another user who can tell your computer what to do. The problem is that RPC cannot be deactivated because Windows depends upon it whether you are connected to a network or not.

Linux systems have a history of being less vulnerable to infection from viruses, trojans and other malware than Windows systems. According to Evans Data's Summer 2004 Linux Development Survey, 92% percent of survey respondents indicated that their Linux systems have never been infected with a virus. Further, 78% of Linux developers say that their Linux systems have never been hacked and less than 7% were hacked three or more times. Of the 22% that have been hacked, 23% of the intrusions were by internal users with valid login ID’s (http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20040728005158&newsLang=en). There are several reasons the Linux operating system is less vulnerable.

First, Linux was developed as a multi-user system. Therefore users are isolated from applications, files and directories that could damage the operating system. Each user has their own directory where system configuration and data files are stored. Another user cannot access or change anything within these directories without administrative access. This results in greater protection from system penetration from viruses, trojans, malware, etc because only the users files can be damaged while the overall system remains protected.
Next, as mentioned above, Linux was designed as a modular operating system. This means that most parts of the operating system operate independently of one another. As a result, a vulnerability in one part of the operating system may not harm another application on that same system. This is because few applications depend on one another to operate effectively.

Finally, unlike Windows which uses the RPC model, most Linux based distributions of programs have their network access turned off by default when they are installed on the users system. If the user wants the application to access the network, the user must manually activate this feature. The user is then required to clearly define the users and machines allowed to access the system. Even when Linux applications are installed with network access turned on by default (as some are), they are usually set up to ignore any requests from other machines on the network unless they are clearly defined by the user as previously mentioned. Additionally, Linux gives the user the ability to disable nearly all network-related RPC services and still have a fully functional machine.

In the debate over security between Linux and Windows, Linux is a much safer OS because it was designed to minimize the affects of attacks.
"Myth Windows only gets attacked most because it's such a big target, and if Linux use (or indeed OS X use) grew then so would the number of attacks. Fact When it comes to web servers, the biggest target is Apache, the Internet's server of choice. Attacks on Apache are nevertheless far fewer in number, and cause less damage. And in some case Apache-related attacks have the most serious effect on Windows machines. Attacks are of course aimed at Windows because of the numbers of users, but its design makes it a much easier target, and much easier for an attack to wreak havoc. Windows' widespread (and often unnecessary) use of features such as RPC meanwhile adds vulnerabilities that really need not be there. Linux's design is not vulnerable in the same ways, and no matter how successful it eventually becomes it simply cannot experience attacks to similar levels, inflicting similar levels of damage, to Windows.Windows v Linux security: the real facts"

Linux Adoption

While as a whole Linux adoption is slow, both public and private sectors are noticing benefits of switching to the Open Source Operating System. "US government agencies such as the Department of Defense and the National Security Agency also have adopted Linux. The NSA has even created a “Security Enhanced Linux” that they have made available on their web site for users who have significant security requirements" (Source: http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hal/Papers/2004/linux-adoption-in-the-public-sector.pdf).

Linux adoption in the US is rather small when compared worldwide.  Asia and Europe individually have at least double the adoption rate of desktop Linux when compared to the US. The sizable difference may be somewhat attributed to a greater need for affordable software in emerging markets such as the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). Brazil intends to switch a vast majority of public computers over to the Linux platform in the near future (Source: http://www.trianglenug.org/downloads/0706/TheDiffusionandAdoptionofDesktopLinuxinGovernment.pdf). Furthermore, in 2004 QNB Intelligence released a report on behalf of Microsoft titled, Corporate Linux Adoption in Europe. The study interviewed 400 Senior IT decision makers from corporations in various European countries and found the following:

"75% more companies have formally evaluated Linux [2002 - 2003 comparison]
Attention varies more by geography than by company size
But formal evaluations tell just part of the story; Linux is also entering companies “under the radar”
Yet commitment remains piecemeal and spending plans are modest
The jury is still out on whether Linux is significantly cheaper; even amongst Linux adopters
61% of Senior IT Management are still not sure it’s worth the hassle"

(Source: http://kb.cospa-project.org/retrieve/3583/Microsoft.pdf)

Mac OS

According to Apple Inc, "Leopard is an Open Brand UNIX 03 Registered Product, conforming to the SUSv3 and POSIX 1003.1 specifications for the C API, Shell Utilities, and Threads. Since Leopard can compile and run all your existing UNIX code, you can deploy it in environments that demand full conformance — complete with hooks to maintain compatibility with existing software." Leopard is the most recent edition of Mac OS X to be released, and produced Apple Inc. Its construction was "built on technology that had been developed at NeXT through the second half of the 1980s until Apple purchased the company in early 1997." -- Posted by Frank Pleta

Sources: http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/unix.html, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X

Linux v. Windows--A List of Overall Comparison:

	Windows	Linux
Main Product Lines:	Win9x: Windows 9, 98, 98SE, and Me NT Class: Windows NT3, NT4, 2000, XP, and Vista	Countless distributions (distos). Main ones include: Linspire Red Hat Ubuntu SuSE
Procurement & Use of Hardware:	With each new creation of Windows, the extending hardware peripherals tend to be incompatible and must be replaced	Hardware vendors create more drivers for Windows than they do for Linux "The Linux community intentionally makes it difficult for hardware manufacturers to release binary-only drivers. This is mean to encourage hardware manufacturers to develop open-source device drivers." -->(http://people.freebsd.org/~murray/bsd_flier.html)
Market Facts:	Dominates the market for personal computers: 90% of the market's desktop share 66% of the market's server share 99.58%--Estimated desktop usage share	Powers 87% of the world's supercomputers "Powers five of the ten most reliable internet hosting companies, compared to Windows' two" 0.65%--Estimated desktop usage --> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Windows_and_Linux)
Comparable Office Software Products:	Microsoft Excel Microsoft Word Microsoft Access	Abacus AbiWord DCB & SQL Server
Software Costs:	Most cost somewhere in the range of prices, depending on the breadth of the software provided in the package. Software packages include: Office Standard 2007: $399.95 Office Professional 2007: $499.95 Office Ultimate 2007: $679.95	Most of the software available for Linux is freeware (no cost). Examples include: The Gimp (Microsoft equivalent: Microsoft Publisher) Open Office (Microsoft equilavent: Microsoft Office)

Sources:
(http://www.michaelhorowitz.com/Linux.vs.Windows.html)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Windows_and_Linux)
(http://www.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx)
(http://www.linux.org)

Wikis in Business and Education

TandylynTerry — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:17:14 CDT

Wikis are used in business settings to allow for users to communicate openly and freely. They are relatively informal and inexpensive and yet still give business-men and women a chance to share ideas in a professional setting. Wikis are a step beyond email, and just short of formal group software, thus allowing users to edit information and collaborate on ideas at their own convenience, without the need for any real technological expertise. SOURCE: New York Times

The simplest on-line system to track changes to documents and provide features and functions to accommodate concurrent work are wikis. A wiki, meaning "quick" in hawaiian (source: Business Week), is a shared knowledge base in which the content is contributed and managed by the wiki's users. When a user contributes to a wiki, the system tracks who created the entry and the date of creation. The first wiki was created in 1995 by Ward Cunningham (source: Department of Education and Training). Patrick Mueller also wrote another Wiki in 1995 rumored to be the first in 1995 using RexxLanaguage(Source: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiHistory). Wikis are so easy to use because they allow the user to edit them directly in their browser to make instant changes through a simplified markup language.

Version Management
According to Wikipedia, version management is defined as the management of revisions of the same unit of information. It is most commonly used in the engineering and software development fields. In wikis, version management allows for the ability to revert a page to a previous revision, which is critical for defending a public wiki against vandalism and spam, to allow legitimate users to correct their mistakes, and to allow groups of editors to track each other's edits. One of the most popular version management software programs used today is CVS (Concurrent Versions System). You can read more about CVS here.

Business as beginning to use wikis as a tool for knowledge management. One organization is using the wiki to reduce the amount of email that their employees must process. At Dresdner, a European-based investment bank, email volume has reduced by as much as 75% and meeting times have been cut in half. Another company, based out of Ann Arbor Michigan, uses wikis and has seen the amount of time needed to complete projects reduce by 50%. Research conducted by Gartner Group predicts that by 2009, half of all companies will be using collaboration tools.

Here is an example of how the Special Libraries Association (SLA) is using an enterprise wiki to share information among members.

At many universities, wikis are used mostly as a supplement to primary teaching tools like textbooks and labs. In one Boston College professor's classroom, however, wikis have become a primary learning tool, replacing textbooks and allowing improved collaboration among students. The wiki is even used to let students submit possible questions for examinations, many of which actually appear on tests. See this article in Computerworld.

Soon wikis could change the way we search the internet. The creator of wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, in conjunction with high-profile investors, will launch a for-profit search engine called Wikasari. It is hoped that human insight will replace Google's algorithms as the next popular internet destination for easy navigation. (source: Business Week). Jimmy Wales also recently anounced the creation of a wiki entitled "Campaigns Wikia" devoted to the hottest political issues in the U.S. The new wiki serves as a hotspot for political activists to discuss topics such as the upcoming Presidential Election, gay marriage, and environmental protection.

Reliability of Wiki Data
The reliability of information found in a wiki is sometimes questioned. Considering that just about anyone can publish on Wikipedia, false information has plagued the website and despite these facts, students are still using Wikipedia as a research reference. Here is an article written at Cornell about the issue. However, a recent study in tne British journal 'Nature' showed that the reliability of scientific information found in the Wikipedia is about as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Monday January 7, 2008 marked the launch of Wikia Search. It is the first alpha version of an open source search engine owned by Wikia, Inc. Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia and president of Wikia, Inc., created Wikia Search to compete with Google and Yahoo. He believes search engines should be open, transparent, participatory, and democratic.

The website, wikiscanner.virgil.gr, is a site that traces the edits to Wikipedia by cross-referencing the IP address of the editor's changes to the name of the network used. Many of the changes were made directly from within the corporation. Someone who had access to ExxonMobile's network modify an entry about the 1989 Exxon Valdex oil spill in Alaska to make the entry sound less harsh to the company's reputation. In 2006, there was a changed about Wal-Mart's employee compensation which was made by someone from the company. It seems that some employees from companies would make changes to Wikipedia to make their company more reputatble. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/technology/19wikipedia.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

As Stephen Colbert demonstrated back in 2006 any charismatic and well known persona can potentially destroy what was previously a factual Wikipedia article. After telling his viewers on The Colbert Report to change the Wikipedia article on elephants to say that the their population in Africa had tripled over the last 50 years Wikipedia was forced to restrict editing access to this article as a result of new users trying to log in and put in false information. Wikipedia could also be used for character assassination. In May 2005 John Seigenthaler Sr., a well-known writer and journalist, had a hoax Wikipedia article posted about him that perceived him to be 'directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby'. The ordeal was eventually resolved and John Segenthaler Sr. decided not to pursue legal action. There are still many people who believe that Wikipedia needs to be retooled however, and that it should not be used for academic purposes "without extensive corroboration."

Business Wiki's

"As a small-business manager, you need to harness the brainpower of everyone you can, collaborating freely while also staying organized. Here's how to put wikis to work for your company. Think of a wiki as a shared work space, a big user-friendly filing cabinet that contains the collective wisdom, captured in digital format, of your coworkers and, if you choose, your customers. You can use your wiki to ask questions, offer help, correct and add information to documents and presentations, brainstorm and scheme, and keep everyone on track and in touch about a particular project. 'People like sharing what they know if they get credited for their expertise,' Hammock, the owner of a small publishing firm in Nashville, TN says. 'That's the motivation for most people who share on a wiki.'" Source: http://www.cnet.com/4520-10192_1-6415671-1.html

Small businesses usually start up with a few people investing lots of time and money into projects that may or may not be successful. With small businesses being the “backbone” of America new technology is helping more businesses stay afloat. Use of small business wikis help other small business owners share, help, and advise newer startups. Larger wikis help the small business owners get access to the information easily. “The section of SmallBusiness.com that you are now reading is a part of a large-scale wiki project that allows readers like you to share your knowledge with others interested in topics related to managing a small business.” Source: http://www.smallbusiness.com/wiki/Wiki

Wikis in the business world are a useful tool for employees to “connect with more people, in more regions of the world, with less hassle and more enjoyment, than earlier generations of workplace technology." A good example of a business successfully using wikis is Geek Squad, which is a part of Best Buy. Geek Squad employees use wikis to "brainstorm new products and services, manage projects, swap service tips, and socialize with their peers. Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson says empowering employees to collaborate in unorthodox ways is all about 'unleashing the power of human capital.’" Source: http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/mar2007/id20070326_237620.htm

In addition, many companies encourage their employees to use Wiki's and blogs because of the connectivity aspect. Sun Micro Systems for example, has many wikis for its employees which can be used to ask questions and seek advice, in addition to the numerous chat rooms etc.. which share information. With thousands of employees, it can be difficult to form a congregation of ideas, but with a wiki it makes the process very simple. If you visit www.wikis.sun.com, you will notice thousands of wikis that are set up with a vast amount of information that can be searched through to find exactly what you are looking for. It is quiet clear, wiki's are the future and are leading the way to efficiency.

The success of wikis in a business environment lies in the ability for multiple users to update a single document. This is ideal for group projects that require brainstorming or frequent revisions. All too often, groups lose track of who has the most up-to-date version of a project or everyone ends up making revisions individually and they never come together. With a wiki changes are made instantaneously so all users have access to changes as they occur. As wikis increase in popularity, many companies may be tempted to start a wiki of their own. After all it works for companies like Kodak, Cingular, Disney, and Motorola. In addition, wikis are cheap—if not free—which makes them ideal for smaller companies. The success of these wikis is partially due to the fact that they are safely behind a firewall and protected from the abuse of the general public. Businesses that fail to limit the users that can make changes to their wikis often find that are misused and, as a result, must be taken down. Source: http://www.informationweek.com/industries/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=167600331&pgno=3&queryText=

Socialtext is a company that sells wiki software and is a pioneer of wikis in a business setting. Their software "allows everybody in a group or even a whole company to literally stay on the same page -- that is, on their shared Web pages. That speeds up everything that involves coordination, helping to cut costs." Source: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2004/tc20041019_0375_tc182.htm.

Benefits of Wikis in a Business Setting
Companies such as Socialtext and Australian-based Atlassian offer software and hosted wiki products that limit access and allow participants to edit them as easily as they would e-mail, notes Jeff Brainard, director of product marketing with Palo Alto-based Socialtext. In addition, wiki participants can track changes and/or receive e-mail notifying them when changes have been made. Brainard says their hosted product is the most popular, costing about $4-5 per user per month. Other good reasons to choose wikis include:

Time Savings. Wiki does mean “fast,” after all. Wikis have a collaborative advantage over e-mail and better tracking functions than Microsoft Word. “They can accelerate project cycle times by cutting down on meetings, conference calls and e-mail volleyball,” notes Brainard.
No More Memory Loss. The ability to tag wiki pages allows users to recall those great ideas from a co-worker, the kind that used to languish in the e-mail queue and die off after 60 days. Wikis are a way to “capture group memory,” says Brainard.
Reduces E-mail. The ability of groups to collectively edit and develop documents can save hundreds of back-and-forth posts.
Better Venue for Client Collaboration. Wikis allow companies to work more directly with their clients on developing a finished product.
Younger Workers Already Use Them. Workers under 30 have grown up with YouTube, MySpace, and other Web 2.0 communication tools. They are used to the wiki concept, and take to it easily, notes Matt Cain, vice president and lead e-mail analyst at Gartner.

Source: http://technology.inc.com/networking/articles/200712/wiki.html

Problems Using Wikis in a Business Setting
There are some disadvantages to using wikis in a business setting. One is that users can get into arguments on the wiki if they have different opinions on a certain subject. “When this occurs, the version history logs become less useful because of the flood of repetitive changes.” This problem can be controlled by only allowing only a certain number of changes a user can make within a 24 hour period. Another disadvantage is that in order for the wiki to be successful it requires participation. “A lone devotee cannot take advantage of the many features of the wiki; the group as a whole must be committed to using the site. In a small wiki supporting a cooperative group, a hierarchy may develop and one or two users may become the invisible autocrats of the wiki. With skill, these dedicated users may enhance usability of the overall wiki for the entire group, but they are also at risk of overpowering the rest of the team, or worse, making the wiki useful only for themselves.” Source: http://www.stc.org/ConfProceed/2005/PDFs/0045.pdf

Wikis and Productivity
Many businesses wonder if having wiki will actually lead to productivity in their organizations. A report done in the UK is September of 2007 helps put an end to those concerns. It was reported in their findings that 27.42% of people surveyed said the wiki helped them share new ideas, while another 21.07% said wikis helped them communicate more efficiently. Source: http://pennyedwards.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/final-report-september-2007.pdf\

History of Wikis
Wiki.org defines wiki as "the simplest online database that could possibly work." Inspired by Apple's HyperCard programming environment, the first wiki software was created in 1995 by Ward Cunningham as a way to manage the Portland Pattern Repository's site content. Named after wiki-wiki, the Hawaiian word for quick, wikis are essentially Web pages that anyone — or at least anyone with permission — can create or edit.

The most well-known example of a wiki is Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by, well, anybody who feels like it. Sound like utter chaos? Not so. It's a well-researched, well-written, and highly regarded source of information. If one person makes incorrect or inappropriate changes to an entry, others can roll the page back to the way it was before, or keep the changes and edit them further. Thousands of people police the site (or at least those areas in which they have expertise), fact-checking and editing as necessary, so the quality of the content generally remains high. Source http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=167600331

Windows vs Linux File System

james_davies — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:30:25 CDT

It is helpful for the Windows user to learn about the Linux file system through comparison. Much of the following content comes from an article written by Mayank Sarup (mayank@freeos.com) for the freeos.com web site. Here is a link to the article "The Linux Filesystem Explained".

1) In Linux there is a single hierarchical directory stucture. In Windows, there are typicallty many partitions with directories under these partitions. For example, the C drive and the D drive on a Window machine are two different directory structures with their own seperate directory structures. Linux places all partitions unders a single root directory by mounting them under specific directories. This is known as a unified file system.

2) unlike Windows, Linux is case sensitive!

3) it helps to know the function of the basic Linux directories:
/sbin - contains all binary files essential to the running of Linux
/bin - contains binaries of useful commands and shells
/boot - contains system.map file and Linux kernel
/dev - containes files that communicate with hardware
/ etc - contains system configuration files
/home - contains home directories for users
/lib - contains shared libraries (note: Windows equivilent is .dll files)
/lost+found - contains recovered files
/mnt - contains - mountpoints
/opt - contains software and add-on packages that are not part of default installation
/root - home directory of the root user
/tmp - files that are required temporarily
/usr - contains all user binaries including programs like telnet, ftp, etc.
/var - contains spooling data like mail

4) The Linux filesystem does things a lot more differently than the Windows filesystem.Let’s point out the differences and take you through the layout of the Linux filesystem.For starters, there is only a single hierarchal directory structure. Everything starts from the root directory, represented by '/', and then expands into sub-directories. Where DOS/Windows had various partitions and then directories under those partitions, Linux places all the partitions under the root directory by 'mounting' them under specific directories.

Closest to root under Windows would be c:. Under Windows, the various partitions are detected at boot and assigned a drive letter. Under Linux, unless you mount a partition or a device, the system does not know of the existence of that partition or device. This might not seem to be the easiest way to provide access to your partitions or devices but it offers great flexibility. This kind of layout, known as the unified filesystem, does offer several advantages over the approach that Windows uses. Let's take the example of the /usr directory. This directory off the root directory contains most of the system executables. With the Linux filesystem, you can choose to mount it off another partition or even off another machine over the network. The underlying system will not know the difference because /usr appears to be a local directory that is part of the local directory structure! How many times have you wished to move around executables and data under Windows,only to run into registry and system errors? Try moving c:windowssystem to another partition or drive. (Source: www.peynsaert.com)

5) Another point likely to confuse newbies is the use of the frontslash '/'
instead of the backslash '' as in DOS/Windows. So c: windows system would be /c/windows/system. Well, Linux is not going against convention here. Linux also chooses to be case sensitive.What this means that the case, whether in capitals or not, of the characters becomes very important. So this is not the same as THIS or ThIs for that matter. This one feature probably causes the most problems for newbies.

6) Let's not forget the biggest difference. LINUX IS FREE. Although Linux isn't as much as a "gooey" interface as windows, you can still get much of the same functionality out of a linux server. Both windows and Linux have their downsides. Most will agree that Linux is much less user friendly while Windows is much less stable. According to the article Comparison of Windows and Linux, "Linux and Windows differ in philosophy, cost, ease of use, versatility, and stability, with each seeking to improve in their perceived weak areas. Comparisons of the two tend to reflect the origins, historic user base and distribution model of each. Typically, some major areas of perceived weaknesses regularly cited have included the poor “out-of-box” usability of the Linux desktop for the mass-market and poor system stability for Windows. Both are areas of rapid development in both fields."

Knowledge from IBM Day (2/27/08)

Rick_Mathieu — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:20:58 CDT

Following is knowledge gained by CIS 301 students from IBM Day, February 27, 2008.

1. IBM Jobs and Internships
Shelley Smith the presenter decided on an informal presentation for the 5:00pm session. She told the group a little bit about her background. She graduated from JMU and has been with IBM for 13 years, in which she has moved around to different jobs within the company. Currently she is a Practice Operations Manager for the Public Sector. The interns she was looking for were those who are majoring in CIS, CS, or ISAT.

The young man I spoke to was a recent graduate of JMU. He had come from the ISAT major but knew they also hired from the CIS majors too. He told me that he works with web development and is enjoying it so far.
When I talked to Peter who was a JMU graduate from ISAT, he mentioned that IBM have a lot of training exercise and PowerPoint slide that could help student to get more of a background knowledge about What kind of job they do. As he mentioned IBM have a variety of different field which put there worker based there knowledge of that field.

IBM's internship program usually lasts for 8-9 weeks and is usually located in the Washington, DC area. The jobs of the interns can range widely depending on what technical skills the interns have as well as what type of job field the interns are interested in (programming, sales, network administration, etc). Internships at IBM are designed provide valuable, real-world experience that accelerates preparation for a professional career.

IBM offers an interesting compensation package to their employees. While all the standard things are there, the thing that stood out to me, and was mentioned by the person I talked to, was the 100% tuition reimbursement offered for accreditation.

I was able to speak to one of the presenters after the show and he was telling me about the IBM Extreme Internship Experience. Here's the basics of it: You form small project group and are given different tasks that are actually legitimate projects (not filing paper work and making coffee runs.) He said its very competitive but in the past, most members of these project teams are offered jobs because of how well they do.

I was able to get help on my resume from Shelley. Within my resume I had courses listed as "CIS 301: Information Technology Tools & Methods." She told me that listing relevant course was good but terms like "CIS 301" don't mean much to employer's and that I should make the listing more descriptive. This should include the knowledge obtained from the class. The ending outcome should be something like "Information Technology Tools: Linux (CentOS)"

Interviews with IBM typically last 90 minutes and are composed of three, thirty minute interviews - each with a different person. In my case, two of the interviews were with recent JMU Alum who were currently working with clients in the public sector and one Alum who was working as a manager for 1500 employees. After the completion of the interview, candidates are required to complete two online applications as well as an aptitude test.

The presenter for the informal presentation at 5:00pm was Shelly Smith. She talked briefly about IBM mentioning how they have 370,000 employees worldwide in over 100 countries. When asked about transitioning from IBM's private to public sector Miss Smith said IBM made the transition smooth and relatively easy.

At the 5:00 o'clock presentation the presenters talk a lot more about the actual job part about IBM. The presenter I talked to talked about how he had a agent of sorts that work for IBM and search for certain projects that he was suited for.
2. IBM Software Overview

3. SOA (Service Oriented Architecture)
SOA stands for Service Oriented Architecture. SOA enables a business to become more flexible, reduce costs, and gives the business investment protection. SOA addresses the problem that, complex application infrastructure is expensive to maintain and difficult to adapt to. SOA also allows for a business to consolidate multiple sources.

IBM has a student and faculty portal that is similar to what JMU has with Microsoft, the MSDN Alliance. Users are allowed to downloaded IBM products such as functionality tester, performance tester and the AIS application. The rational functional tester can work with multiple applications and it is based off Eclipse IDE. It reduce time on regression testing.

4. IBM in the Public Sector

IBM Operates under 5 public sector industries: Healthcare, Education, State and Local, Federal Defense, and Federal HLS + Civ. AIS, Application Innovation Services, is an area of practice within these public sector industries. AIS is concerned with the use of technology and the consulting needed in order to properly utilize technology.

IBM's revenue breakdown: 70% comes from software, services
remaining 30% comes from hardware

AIS (Application Innovation Services) is divided into four main career sections:
1) operation and maintenance:located at the bottom of the pyramid
Includes jobs in: infrastructures/data centers, applications,
solutions, communication/collaboration, help desks, and integrated technical solutions
2) building and integration: located above operation and maintenance
Includes jobs in: mission and technical solutions, custom
applications, portals, middleware services, data, infrastructures, and ITs
3) design: located above building and integration
Includes jobs in: architecture, systems engineering, networks, and security
4) management: located at the top of the pyramid
Includes jobs in: program management

Within each of these sectors, employees may work in a wide range of industries. The presenter, Shelley Smith stressed that while IBM is the one of the largest companies in the world, the focus on project groups allows it to have a much smaller and close-knit feel. All present agreed that it is an excellent place to launch a career as the training combined with the level of trust and personal responsibility enables new hires to discover their potential early on. Things to look forward to in the upcoming years: automated US Census.

IBM is the world's largest consulting organization and is ranked #1 service provider in consulting and systems integration. IBM has staff is in more than 160 countries and its client list includes 90% of the communications, retail, and electronic companies in the Fortune 500.

One of the organizations that uses IBM is the U.S. Census Bureau. The U.S Census Bureau receives 19 million visitors a year and 1.5 billion hits a year. That is approximately 4,000 a day!!! not so much compared to Google and stuff but still. This amount requires 98% uptime nonetheless.

5. Free IBM Services and Software

The Rational Functional Tester, which sounds way too much like that thing from Dude Where's My Car? provides a number of services that IBM employees develop, use themselves, and distribute. The RFT provides testers with automated capabilities for data driven testing, performs full functional testing, can test multiple applications such as Java and HTML simultaneously, and allows users to create and edit object oriented test scripts. It is used primarily for Regression testing, which means it tests to see if any new changes have been made since the most recently distributed packages were released. I don't know what any of this means.

6. Second Life and IBM

There was a presentation about IBM and Second Life software technology. Second Life (SL) is an Internet-based virtual world launched in 2003, developed by Linden Research, Inc (Linden Lab). The Second Life Viewer enables its users, called "Residents", to interact with each other through motional avatars, providing an advanced level of a social network service combined with general aspects of a metaverse. Residents can explore, meet other Residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, create and trade items (virtual property) and services from one another. The goal of Linden Lab is to create a metaverse world in which people can interact, play, do business, and otherwise communicate. IBM uses it to host virtual conferences.

7. IBM Competition

IBM's main competitors are EDI, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft. As of fiscal year-end 2006, IBM had exactly 355,766 employees worldwide and grossed sales of $91,424.0 (million) ranking it #15 in Fortune 500 and #31 in FT Global 500.

IBM hosted a bridge-building competition at 3:30. Andrew Mills and Travis Heeter represented CIS, but came in a disappointing 3rd place. The bridges were constructed using gum drops and uncooked spaghetti noodles. The categories of competition were height or length. The COB team competed in length.

8. IBM Background
IBM's first section was with Shelley Smith, the main recruitor for her sector of roughly 1500 employees. IBM has changed from a large hardware manufacturer to the worlds 7th largest corporation started as a hardware manufacturer but now 70% of its profits comes from services. The company has expanded worldwide and has approximately 300000 employees. Shelley Smith explained the importance of a large corporation to make thier employees feel as though they worked for a small, tight company even though the job flexibilty and variation and career advancement has that one one of the worlds largest corporations.

PhP

Rick_Mathieu — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 10:00:28 CST

Easiest way to see if PHP is loaded in Apache:

apachectl status

To verify php alone: php –v
Full details on the php: php –i | less

Lab #5 - LAMP and the XAMPP Stack

Rick_Mathieu — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 09:59:22 CST

Apache, MySQL and PhP need to be installed on your server. The easiest way is using XAMPP.

1) XAMPP
2) Apache
3) MySQL
4) PhP

Tar, RPM and Yum

Rick_Mathieu — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 20:25:57 CST

Tar
gz is a compressed file format similar to zip.

tar and TAR are Tape ARchives and were originally used on Unix systems for
backups. Tar itself does not do any compression but will append multiple
individual files into one archive file. Generally you use tar in conjunction
with gzip to create a compressed archive.

To untar files: tar xvzf file.tar.gz To tar files: tar cvzf file.tar.gz filedir1 filedir2 filedir2... Note: A .tgz file is the same as a .tar.gz file. Both are also often refered to as tarballs. The flags: z is for gzip, v is for verbose, c is for create, x is for extract, f is for file (default is to use a tape device).
see: http://linuxreviews.org/beginner/#toc19

RPM
RPM is a file format for distributing packages. It was originally used on Red
Hat but many other distributions have used the file format and is no longer
used by just RH. It is similar to *.deb files that Ubuntu and Debian use but
RPMs are not compatible with Debian/Ubuntu. There are tools that will convert an RPM to a DEB IIRC. I'd suggest however that instead of converting the RPM, you look in your repository manager (synaptic, adept, apt) and see if a DEB already exists for that package. In most cases Ubuntu will already have that package for you.

Yum
Yum stands for Yellow Dog Update Manager and is a tool that some rpm based
distributions use for updating packages. Yellow Dog is/was a distribution
that was based of off redhat.

yum is similar to apt but yum is used for rpms. You won't use it in ubuntu.

Computer Performance

pearcewf — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 14:35:11 CST

A computers overall performance is based on far more than just processing speed. That's not to say that having a faster processor won't definitely show positive results, but just not to the extent most people believe it will. Other important factors to overall system speed, performance, and reliability include processor cache (L1 L2 L3) as well as front side bus speed. Having a sufficient amount of RAM is always a big help in speeding up a slow system, as well as having a clean, organized disk. Running disk defragmenter, or better yet, scheduling it to run on its own when you're gone, can in some cases significantly improve performance, but is often overlooked. Disk cleanup is another good tool that comes with most computers to help clean up space on your computer. These are just a few tips to boosting a computer's overall performance.

Log Files in Linux

Rick_Mathieu — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 13:54:47 CST

Log files in Linux are critical to troubleshooting and maintaining your system. Linux logging is done to text files, so no proprietary tools are required to view the files. Text files are also easy to use with custom scripts and programs.
Logs are rotated to keep them from getting too large and to separate the current information from much older data. Log rotation is configurable.
Logging is highly configurable, and logs can even be stored on a separate system for security or backup purposes. You can generate system log messages out of your own scripts and programs that will be recognized and processed by the syslogd daemon.

Almost all logfiles are located under /var/log directory (and subdirectory). You can change to this directory using cd command but you need to be the root user. You can use less, more, cat or tail command to see the logs.

Go to /var/logs directory:# cd /var/logsView common log file /var/log/messages using any one of the following command:# tail -f /var/log/messages
# less /var/log/messages
# more -f /var/log/messages
# vi /var/log/messagesOutput: Jul 17 22:04:25 router dnsprobe[276]: dns query failed Jul 17 22:04:29 router last message repeated 2 times Jul 17 22:04:29 router dnsprobe[276]: Primary DNS server Is Down... Switching To Secondary DNS server Jul 17 22:05:08 router dnsprobe[276]: Switching Back To Primary DNS server Jul 17 22:26:11 debian -- MARK -- Jul 17 22:46:11 debian -- MARK -- Jul 17 22:47:36 router -- MARK -- Jul 17 22:47:36 router dnsprobe[276]: dns query failed Jul 17 22:47:38 debian kernel: rtc: lost some interrupts at 1024Hz. Jun 17 22:47:39 debian kernel: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:0f:ea:91:04:07:00:08:5c:00:00:01:08:00 SRC=61.4.218.24 DST=192.168.1.100 LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=46 ID=21599 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=59297 DPT=22 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 Common log files name and usage

/var/log/message: Genreal message and system releated stuff
/var/log/auth.log: Authenication logs
/var/log/kern.log: Kernel logs
/var/log/cron.log: Crond logs
/var/log/maillog: Mail logs
/var/log/qmail/ : Qmail log directory (more files inside this directory)
/var/log/httpd/: Apache access and error logs directory
/var/log/lighttpd: Lighttpd access and error logs directory
/var/log/boot.log : System boot log
/var/log/mysqld.log: MySQL database server log file
/var/log/secure: Authentication log
/var/log/utmp or /var/log/wtmp : Login records file
/var/log/yum.log: Yum log files

In short /var/log is the location where you should find all Linux logs file. However some applications such as httpd have a directory within /var/log/ for their own log files. You can roatate log file using logrotate software and monitor logs files using logwatch software. [source: http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-log-files-location-and-how-do-i-view-logs-files/]

There is freely available software that will analyze Linux log files. See: http://www.linux.org/apps/all/Administration/Log_Analyzers.html

Exercises related to Linux Log Files and Linux File Permissions:
http://linuxreviews.org/beginner/#toc19

Linux - File Permissions

Rick_Mathieu — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 13:36:57 CST

Linux is a proper multi-user environment. In a multi-user environment,
security of user and system data is very important. Access should be given
only to users who need to access the data. Since Linux is essentially a
server OS, good and efficient file security is built right into Linux.

Read the following article on Linux file permissions. Make sure that you understand:
r - Read permission. Whether the file may be read. In the case of a
directory, this would mean the ability to list the contents of the
directory.
w - Write permission. Whether the file may be written to or modified. For
a directory, this defines whether you can make any changes to the contents
of the directory. If write permission is not set then you will not be able
to delete, rename or create a file.
x - Execute permission. Whether the file may be executed. In the case of a
directory, this attribute decides whether you have permission to enter,
run a search through that directory or execute some program from that
directory.
Now that you can read file permissions, you should learn about how you can
set or modify permissions. You would use the chmod program for this. To
change file permissions, you need to be either the user or root. The
syntax of the chmod command is quite simple. File permissions may be
defined for users (u), groups (g) and others (o).
See: http://www.freeos.com/articles/3127/