Encryption

Five of the Best Free Linux Disk Encryption Tools 135

Posted by Roblimo from the some-things-are-best-kept-out-of-public-view dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Disk encryption uses software to encrypt the entire hard disk. The onus is therefore not on the user to determine what data should be encrypted, or to remember to manually encrypt files. By encrypting the entire disk, temporary files, which may reveal important confidential data, are also protected. Security is enhanced further when disk encryption is combined with filesystem-level encryption. To provide an insight into the open source software that is available, we have compiled a list of five notable disk encryption tools. Hopefully, there will be something of interest here for anyone who wants easy-to-use data encryption and security."
Security

Submission + - 5 of the Best Free Linux Disk Encryption Tools (linuxlinks.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The importance of security should never be underestimated. The consequences of losing data can be disastrous for any organisation. For example, the loss of a single unencrypted laptop may have huge repercussions. This could include breaching data protection legislation with the risk of a significant fine, a loss in the confidence of an organisation, as well as the risk that sensitive data may fall into the hands of a competitor or third party with malicious intent.

Disk encryption uses disk encryption software to encrypt the entire hard disk. The onus is therefore not on the user to determine what data should be encrypted, or to remember to manually encrypt files. By encrypting the entire disk, temporary files, which may reveal important confidential data, are also protected. Security is enhanced further when disk encryption is combined with filesystem-level encryption.

To provide an insight into the open source software that is available, we have compiled a list of 5 notable disk encryption tools. Hopefully, there will be something of interest here for anyone who wants easy-to-use data encryption and security.
GNOME

Submission + - ALS sufferer used legs to contribute last patch (gnome.org) 1

Submitted by
krkhan
krkhan writes: "This is a little old but seeing as it didn't make it to /. at the time I think it deserves a headline now. Adrian Hands was suffering from ALS and had lost motor skills when he used his legs to type in Morse code and fix a 9 year old bug in Gnome. The patch was submitted three days before he passed away."
Portables

92,000 LEGO Robots To Take Over Peruvian Schools Alongside OLPC 56

Posted by Soulskill from the resistance-is-futile dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The president of Peru, Alan Garcia, decided to celebrate the 500,000th One Laptop Per Child XO laptop in that country in style, announcing orders for half a million more and 20,000 additional Lego education WeDo robot kits for public schools, bringing the total number of kits for distribution up to 92,000. The latest OLPC laptop, the XO-1.75, has the lowest power draw ever thanks to a Marvell Armada 600 ARM processor and runs Fedora GNU/Linux with dual desktops Sugar (in Spanish, Aymara, and Quechua) and GNOME. For the first time, the XOs will be manufactured locally; the previous 2 million, including the blue high school variant with grownup keyboard, were all made by Quanta Computer. Meanwhile, parallel development continues on the upcoming XO-3 tablet; OLPC's New Technologies director is exploring software paths including GTK3 for Sugar, Android and Chrome. I, for one, salute our new plastic Peruvian overlords."
Linux

Celebrating 20 Years of Linux 193

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the dirty-gnu-hippies dept.
dmbkiwi writes "2011 is the 20th anniversary of the first release of the Linux kernel by Linus Torvalds. Since that time, the Linux kernel, together with the GNU tools and a whole host of software has been developed by enthusiasts and professional programmers into an operating system that runs on tiny embedded systems right up to the world's fastest supercomputers." The Linux Foundation is hosting a celebratory gala at this year's LinuxCon.
GNOME

GNOME 3 Released 353

Posted by samzenpus from the check-it-out dept.
Blacklaw writes "The GNOME Desktop team has sent its latest creation into the wild, officially launching GNOME 3.0 — the biggest redesign the project has enjoyed in around nine years. 'We've taken a pretty different approach in the GNOME 3 design that focuses on the desired experience and lets the interface design follow from that,' designer Jon McCann explained during the launch. 'With any luck you will feel more focused, aware, effective, capable, respected, delighted, and at ease.'"
GNU is Not Unix

Bashing MS 'Like Kicking a Puppy,' Says Jim Zemlin 648

Posted by timothy from the audacity-of-hope dept.
jbrodkin writes "Two decades after Linus Torvalds developed his famous operating system kernel, the battle between Linux and Microsoft is over and Linux has won, says Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin. With the one glaring exception of the desktop computer, Linux has outpaced Microsoft in nearly every market, including server-side computing and mobile, Zemlin claims. 'I think we just don't care that much [about Microsoft] anymore,' Zemlin said. 'They used to be our big rival, but now it's kind of like kicking a puppy.' From Android and the Amazon Kindle to embedded devices, consumer electronics and the world's largest websites and supercomputers, 'Linux has come to dominate almost every category of computing, with the exception of the desktop,' Zemlin argues as Linux approaches its 20th anniversary."
GNOME

GNOME vs. KDE: the Latest Round 344

Posted by Soulskill from the keep-it-above-the-belt dept.
jammag writes "The debate about whether KDE or GNOME is the better Linux desktop is longstanding. Yet as Linux pundit Bruce Byfield discusses, it has entered a fresh chapter now that both desktop environments have versions that are radically different from their incarnations just a few years back. Moreover, 'the differences in KDE 4.6 and GNOME 3 (the latest releases) are greater than they have ever been,' he writes. Casting aside his usual diplomacy, Byfield acknowledges that he's heard rave reviews about GNOME 3, but disagrees: 'I suspect that the majority of users are more likely to be satisfied with KDE 4.6 than GNOME 3.'"
GNOME

Submission + - GNOME vs. KDE: The Latest Round (earthweb.com)

Submitted by
jammag
jammag writes: "The debate about whether KDE or GNOME is the better Linux desktop is longstanding. Yet as Linux pundit Bruce Byfield discusses, it has entered a fresh chapter now that both desktop have versions that are radically different from their incarnations just a few years back. Moreover, "the differences in KDE 4.6 and GNOME 3 (the latest releases) are greater than they have ever been," he writes. Casting aside his usual diplomacy, Byfield acknowledges that he's heard rave reviews about GNOME 3, but disagrees: "I suspect that the majority of users are more likely to be satisfied with KDE 4.6 than GNOME 3.""
Debian

Debian, OpenSUSE, Arch, Gentoo and Grml Merge 117

Posted by Soulskill from the simplifying-and-streamlining dept.
tomhudson writes "debian, arch linux, opensuse, grml, and gentoo are merging to create a new distro: 'We are to announce the birth of the Canterbury distribution. Canterbury is a merge of the efforts of the community formerly known as Debian, Gentoo, Grml, openSUSE and Arch Linux to produce a really unified effort and be able to stand up in a combined effort against operating systems, to show off that the Free Software community is actually able to work together for a common instead of creating more diversity. Canterbury will be as technologically simple as Arch, as stable as Debian, malleable as Gentoo, have a solid Live framework as Grml, and be as open minded as openSUSE.' Arch Linux developer Pierre Schmitz explained: 'Arch Linux has always been about keeping its as simple as possible. Combining efforts into one single distribution will dramatically reduce complexity for developers, users and of course upstream . Canterbury will be the next evolutionary step of Linux distributions.' This will without a doubt put on Ubuntu."
Debian

Submission + - Debian, openSUSE, Arch, Gentoo and Grml merge (opensuse.org) 2

Submitted by
tomhudson
tomhudson writes: "debian, arch linux, opensuse, grml, and gentoo are merging to create a new distro:

We are pleased to announce the birth of the Canterbury distribution. Canterbury is a merge of the efforts of the community distributions formerly known as Debian, Gentoo, Grml, openSUSE and Arch Linux to produce a really unified effort and be able to stand up in a combined effort against proprietary operating systems, to show off that the Free Software community is actually able to work together for a common goal instead of creating more diversity.

Canterbury will be as technologically simple as Arch, as stable as Debian, malleable as Gentoo, have a solid Live framework as Grml, and be as open minded as openSUSE..

Arch Linux developer Pierre Schmitz explained:

Arch Linux has always been about keeping its technology as simple as possible. Combining efforts into one single distribution will dramatically reduce complexity for developers, users and of course upstream projects. Canterbury will be the next evolutionary step of Linux distributions.

This will without a doubt put pressure on Ubuntu."
GNU is Not Unix

100% Libre, Trisquel 4.5 STS 'Slaine' Released 207

Posted by timothy from the good-enough-for-rms dept.
Aldenissin writes "Trisquel 4.5 Slaine comes with a new boot manager for the live images, an improved installer which showcases the project highlights, and new programs like the Remmina remote desktop client, the social network client Gwibber or the backup tool Deja-dup. The web browser received several changes to improve attributes like speed by enabling http pipelining and other methods, privacy with blocking third party cookies and moving to Duck Duck Go search engine — both as default, and usability with the preinstalled FlashVideoReplacer plugin that allows watching videos from YouTube, Vimeo and many others. The main packages include: Linux-libre 2.6.35, Xorg 7.5, GNOME 2.32, Mozilla based web browser 3.6.15 and OpenOffice.org 3.2. Slaine is based on Ubuntu 10.10, and as always with Trisquel, it contains just free software. Available are 32 and 64 bit flavors, and being an STS release it will be supported for a year. This release will be the "live" operating system included in the Free Software Foundation member cards from now on, in replacement of Trisquel 4.0."
Android

Submission + - Motorola To Ditch Android, Revive ARM Partnership? (itproportal.com)

Submitted by siliconbits
siliconbits writes: It looks as if Motorola Mobility, could be mulling plans to build an alternative to Google's mobile platform. Several independent sources have confirmed that the mobile phone company is working on a web-based mobile operating system to, as one observer put it, have more control on its own destiny. There's another piece in that puzzle; Motorola Mobility could take even more ownership of its destiny by reviving its ARM license as it depends at the moment on TI and Nvidia to provide with the SoCs that power its products; Motorola did produce ARM system on chips in the past.
Linux Business

Red Hat Nears $1 Billion In Revenues, Closing Door On Clones 201

Posted by timothy from the playing-within-the-rules dept.
darthcamaro writes "Red Hat is almost at its goal of being the first pure-play open source vendor to hit $1 billion in Revenues. Red Hat reported its fiscal 2011 revenues this week which hit $909 million. Going forward, Red Hat has already taken steps to protect its business by changing the way it packages the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 kernel, making it harder for Oracle to clone. 'We are the top commercial contributor to most of the components of the Linux kernel and we think we have a lot of value and we want to make sure that, that value is recognized,' Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst said. 'In terms of competition, I don't think we necessarily saw anything different from before but I'd say better to close the barn door before the horses leave than afterwards.'"
Red Hat Software

Submission + - Red Hat Nears $1 Billion, Closing Door on Clones (internetnews.com)

Submitted by darthcamaro
darthcamaro writes: Red Hat almost at its goal of being the first pure play open source vendor to hit $1 Billion in Revenues. Red Hat reported its fiscal 2011 revenues this week which hit $909 million. Going forward Red Hat has already taken steps to protect its business by changing the way it packages the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 kernel, making it harder for Oracle to clone.

"We are the top commercial contributor to most of the components of the Linux kernel and we think we have a lot of value and we want to make sure that, that value is recognized," Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst said. "In terms of competition, I don't think we necessarily saw anything different from before but I'd say better to close the barn door before the horses leave than afterwards."

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