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News in General

Red Hat Delivers Linux HPC Platform

In October, Red Hat announced its integrated Linux-based High Performance Computing (HPC) platform with the Red Hat HPC Solution, an all-in-one stack to deploy, run, and manage their HPC clusters. First announced in collaboration with Platform Computing in November 2007, the HPC Solution is available through Red Hat Network with 24x7 customer support services.

Historically, building and managing HPC clusters is a cost and expertise challenge for IT departments. Red Hat HPC Solution includes all of the components to build and manage a complete HPC cluster in an end-to-end solution that can be deployed in under one hour.

The Red Hat HPC Solution incorporates all of the components necessary to deploy and maintain HPC clusters, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 and Platform Computing's cluster software framework, Platform Open Cluster Stack 5. The solution also includes device drivers, a simple cluster installer, cluster management tools, a resource and application monitor, interconnect support and Platform Lava, a powerful job scheduler.

"With our HPC Solution, we're enabling our customers to focus on their business goals and competitive advantage without needing to worry about the challenges of deploying and managing their HPC cluster - we're taking care of this for them," said Scott Crenshaw, vice president, Platform Business Unit at Red Hat. "We're delivering the first Linux-based solution that allows our customers to deploy a fully integrated high-performance computing environment in minutes rather than in weeks or months."

For deploying and managing HPC clusters, Red Hat, Dell and Platform Computing have also partnered to offer customers a comprehensive cluster computing package, Platform Open Cluster Stack (OCS), to ease cluster deployment, management and operation of the Red Hat HPC.

The Red Hat HPC solution is available from Red Hat with prices starting at $249 per node. For more information about the Red Hat HPC solution, visit http://www.redhat.com/hpc/.

Sun Updates Java 6, Supports Java Widgets on Desktop

Sun Microsystems announced availability of Java Standard Edition 6 Update 10 (Java SE 6u10), which improves the usability and performance Java on desktop computers everywhere. It can be download at: http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp.

This update is optimized with new features that include: a radically improved startup time for Java applications and applets, the ability to drag Java applets directly from the browser to the desktop and have them run as widgets, more powerful application graphics, and a new cross-platform look and feel. Java Quick Starter also significantly improves the start-up time for any Java application or applet.

Developers also benefit from the enhancements in Java SE 6u10. The built-in Deployment Toolkit ensures end users run the most recent version of Java SE. A new Java plug-in provides full browser independence, complete interoperability with Web 2.0 technologies and supports different versions of Java running at the same time on the same machine.

Java SE is present on over more than 800 million desktop computers - 91 percent of Internet-connected PCs worldwide, according to Sun.

Java Kernel - Lighter Than a JRE

The Java Kernel is a new method of getting Java software up and running faster. Instead of installing the full Java Runtime Environment (JRE(TM)), users download the Java Kernel, which includes the most commonly needed JRE components. Additional components are then downloaded by the JRE as they are needed.

Java SE 6u10 includes a brand-new implementation of the Java Plug-in that allows consumers to drag and drop applets that are running in their browser directly onto their desktop, which provides a widget-like experience for all of their Java applications and applets.

The graphics pipeline for Java on Windows has been rewritten to leverage Direct3D for everything from simple fills and copies, to translucency, gradients, arbitrary transformations and other more advanced 2D operations. This capability also improves the runtime performance of Swing applications.

IBM Breaks Performance Records with SSDisk

Engineers and researchers at the IBM's Hursley development lab in England and the Almaden Research Center in California have demonstrated groundbreaking performance results that outperform the world's fastest disk storage solution by over 250 percent.

The results were achieved using Flash solid-state technology coupled with IBM's industry leading, highly scalable storage virtualization technology. Under the codename "Project Quicksilver", IBM achieved groundbreaking results in transferring data at a sustained rate of over one million Input/Output (I/O) per second - with a response time of under one millisecond (ms). Compared to the fastest industry benchmarked disk system, Quicksilver improved performance by 250 percent at less than 1/20th the response time, took up 1/5th the floor space and required only 55 percent of the power and cooling.

Quicksilver is part of IBM's focus on leveraging emerging systems technologies to deliver advanced data center capabilities. Performance improvements of this magnitude can have profound implications for business, allowing 2-3 times the work to complete in a given timeframe for classic workloads and creating opportunity for entirely new information warehouse and analytic solutions.

For more information about IBM and IBM System Storage, visit http://www.ibm.com/storage.

VIA Collaborates with OpenChrome on Open Source Video Driver

Support from VIA's software development team will enrich the OpenChrome driver's feature support for VIA IGP chipsets.

Building on the recent release of the VIA graphics driver available on the VIA Linux Portal (http://linux.via.com.tw), VIA is actively collaborating with the OpenChrome development team on their Open Source graphics driver - initially assisting with multi-head support and RandR function.

"This cooperation between the community-based OpenChrome developers and VIA's staff developers will enable everyone to shift towards one code base, combining the features and strengths of both drivers," said Mr. Welte. "It also shows that VIA is not only releasing source code and documentation, but actively moving towards a much more open and collaborative driver R&D process."

More information about the OpenChrome driver can be found here: http://www.openchrome.org/.

IBM and SUN Kick Off ODF Tools Initiative

At the OpenOffice Conference (OooCon 2008) in Beijing, Sun and IBM announced support for the Open Document Format (ODF) Toolkit Union and the new ODF Toolkit, an open source software project that will make productivity suites more versatile and useful.

Sun made the initial code contribution and IBM will followup in the Open Document Format Toolkit Union, a project to make it easier to use ODF.

The ODF Toolkit seeds the ground for a new generation of applications and expands the potential of existing productivity suites. Starting with an initial code contribution from Sun, the ODF Toolkit is an open source software project that provides developers with an easy-to-use API for reading, writing, and manipulating ODF documents.

The ODF Toolkit lets developers:
- Automatically create reports in response to database queries;
- Index or scan documents to support search services;
- Scan documents to support anti-virus services;
- Scan documents for regulatory compliance, legal, or forensic purposes;
- Convert data from one editable format to another;
- Render data as audio or video in a unified communications document;
- Import data from an Office document into a non-Office application (for example, import spreadsheet data into a statistical analysis application for business intelligence use);
- Render and import documents for display and editing on mobile devices.

Read more at: http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/3838211/250473354/149203/0/.

AMD New Quad-Core "Shanghai" Opteron Processor Goes GA

AMD has released an enhanced 45nm Opteron chip that offers better power efficiency and up to a 40 percent increase in virtualization performance. Among the new features in Shanghai family is a 6MB L3 cache with a shared 512KB L2 cache.

Going to a smaller die-size allows the new Opteron CPUs to offer up to 35 percent more performance with up to a 35 percent decrease in power consumption at idle. The new processors deliver faster "world switch" time, which enhances virtual machine efficiency, and feature improved Rapid Virtualization Indexing, AMD's innovation in AMD-V that reduces the overhead associated with software virtualization.

This will make the new chips competitive with the new "Nehelam" Intel Xeon processors, also released in November. AMD also plans to bring higher-performance and more energy efficient 45nm processors to the desktop PC market in Q1 2009 with the AMD platform codenamed "Dragon". This platform will be the second generation AMD quad-core desktop platform and is designed to leverage AMD 700 Series chipsets and ATI Radeon HD 4000 series graphics.

As a competitive comparison, AMD claimed that its Opteron Model 2380 processor only used 138W at Active Idle compared to the Quad-Core Intel processor using 179W at Active Idle. The Quad-Core AMD Opteron Model 2380 had a SPECpower_ssj2008 overall rating of 731 ssj_ops/Watt and 308,089 ssj_ops at 100% target load. The Quad-Core Intel processor had a SPECpower_ssj2008 result of 561 overall ssj_ops/Watt and 267,804 ssj_ops at 100% target load.

For more information on the enhanced Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor including FAQs, development tools, online press kits and other general information, please visit http://multicore.amd.com.

AMD and Red Hat on Virtual Machine "Live Migration"

AMD and Red Hat demonstrated for the first time a "live migration" of a virtual machine across different chip platforms. Live migration enables the movement of running virtual machines (VMs) from one physical server to another without disrupting service, something that had only been demonstrated across systems based on one vendor's platforms. This live migration demo in November moved a live VM from an dual socket Intel Xeon DP Quad Core E5420-based system to a 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor, utilizing Red Hat's high-performance open source virtualization software. See the demonstration on the AMD Unprocessed YouTube Channel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuhU6jJjpAQ or at AMD's site http://www.amd.com/amdlivemigration01.

Linux Foundation Hosts First End User Summit

The first ever Linux Foundation End User Summit was attended by over 140 people, including end users of Linux, as well as kernel developers and commercial vendors, with the goal of providing new lines of communication between these groups. The event was held during October in New York City, and allowed Unix users at many major financial institutions to attend.

The two-day event demonstrated a desire on the part of the end user community to understand how Linux works on a deep technical level and how their companies can participate more in Linux or benefit more from its features. Keynotes for the event included a discussion from Anthony Williams, author of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, and Jonathan Corbet, editor of Linux Weekly News and creator of the Linux Weather Forecast.

The first day was marked by several panel discussions, which allowed attendees to get some specific questions answered, such as how Linux fits in current enterprise operations and how corporate end users can participate more in the Linux development process.

The second day of the conference was divided into four tracks of sessions: Legal/Business, Futures, Operations, and Performance. Many attendees also used the opportunity to get into smaller groups and go over their specific needs. Several Linux kernel developers, including James Bottomley, Andrew Morton, and Theodore T'so, were in attendance at the Summit.

By design, the event was invitation-only so end users were encouraged to be free about their concerns. No members of the Press were allowed to attend. The Linux Foundation is planning another End User Summit in 2009.

Below, are links to slides from many of the sessions at the summit: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/events/enduser/slides

Ikoula Teams Up with R1Soft to Provide Backups

Ikoula, a hosting and data center solutions provider in France just announced partnership with R1Soft to provide a backup solution for self-managed dedicated servers and managed hosting.

"After searching for a backup solution for over a year, we finally found R1Soft CDP. While backups are not a daily top business priority for most, people truly value them on the day they need them and thanks to R1Soft we are able to provide our customers with available, working and easily accessible backups when it counts," said Arnaud Tayac, Ikoula Marketing Director. "We are excited about offering this new technology as part of our services and feel that R1Soft will provide a better sense of security and help facilitate long, lasting relationships with our customers."

More information about the partnership can be found on http://www.r1soft.com/company/press-releases/[...].

Linux Foundation Helps Linux Distros Obtain IPv6 Certification

The Linux Foundation's IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6) Workgroup is enabling the major Linux "distros" to meet the U.S. Federal Government's Department of Defense (DOD) mandate and certification requirements for the new Internet protocol. IPv6 is the next-generation Internet protocol designed to replace IPv4, in use for nearly 20 years. Due to the explosive growth of the Internet, it is expected that IPv4 addresses will be exhausted within just a few short years.

To accelerate IPv6 migration, the U.S. Federal Government issued a mandate for all of its agencies to meet the next-generation Internet protocol requirements for any computing and networking equipment they acquire.

The Linux Foundation, with leadership from Venkata Jagana, Senior Technical Staff Member and Chief Architect of Networking within IBM's Linux Technology Center, formed a Linux IPv6 Workgroup to collaboratively address this major undertaking and enable Linux-based machines to be IPv6-ready out of the box. Other active workgroup participants included HP, Nokia-Siemens, Novell and Red Hat.

The Linux Foundation IPv6 Workgroup reviewed the mandate requirements and performed a detailed IPv6 gap analysis to identify where Linux needed to be adapted. As a result, existing Linux features, such as ICMPv6, DHCPv6, MIB support and IPSec for IPv6, are now updated to conform to the Department of Defense requirements.

"The IPv6 mandate and ensuing requirements are such major undertakings that it makes it difficult for any one company to deal with it all on its own," said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. "This is exactly the kind of work and collaboration that the Linux Foundation can facilitate, and which results in real technology advancements for the Linux operating system."

For more on the Linux Foundation's IPv6 Workgroup and its analysis, visit the IPv6 Workgroup website. http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/IPv6.

Sun Introduces ZFS-based Storage Appliances

Sun took the wraps off of its innovative Unified Storage Systems - the Sun Storage 7000 family, code-named "Amber Road." Based on industry standard components and Sun's software stack, this new storage family offers high-end diagnostics and troubleshooting capabilities, optimized performance, one-fourth the energy consumption, installation and configuration in under five minutes and up to 75% cost savings - compared to competing storage systems. To learn more, go to http://www.sun.com/unifiedstorage.

The Sun Storage 7000 family features three products in its initial release: Sun Storage 7110, 7210 and 7410 - each part of a new and broad family of Unified Storage Systems. These storage systems fully exploit Flash Hybrid Storage Pools within Solaris ZFS to optimize performance while lowering power and cooling requirements.

Breaking the industry trend that charges per individual storage features, all Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems include comprehensive data services at no extra cost, such as snap/clone, restore, mirroring, RAID-5, RAID-6, replication, active-active clustering, compression, thin provisioning, CIFS, NFS, iSCSI, HTTP/FTP and WebDAV.

The Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System begins at $10,000 for the Sun Storage 7110. The Sun Storage 7210 starts at $34,995 and the Sun Storage 7410 starts at $57,490 for a single node version (12 TB) and $89,490 for a clustered 12TB configuration.

Sun hosted a live Webcast of the Amber Road launch from the CEC show in Las Vegas in November. See: www.sun.com/launch for more details.

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Conferences and Events

SpringOne Americas

December 1 - 4, Hollywood, FL

VMware Virtualization Forums

December 3, San Diego, CA
December 11, Boston, MA

CMG'08, for the Computer Measurement Group

December 7 - 12 , Paris Hotel, Las Vegas, NV

USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI '08)

December 8 - 10, San Diego, CA

Join us at the Paradise Point Resort for this symposium covering the most innovative systems research, including over 20 high-quality papers in areas including OS architecture, cloud computing, and monitoring, as well as a poster session. Don't miss the opportunity to gather with researchers from across the systems community in what has become a premier forum for discussing the design, implementation, and implications of systems software.

http://www.usenix.org/osdi08/lgb

Data Center Dynamics 2008

December 11, New Delhi, India

Gartner Mobile & Wireless Summit 2009

February 23 - 25, 2009, Chicago,IL

Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco

Co-presented by O'Reilly Media and TechWeb
March 31 - April 3, 2009, San Francisco, CA

DrupalCons 2009

March 4 - 7, 2009, Washington, D.C.

MySQL Conference & Expo

April 20 - 23, 2009, Santa Clara, CA

RailsConf 2009

May 4 - 7, 2009, Las Vegas, NV

Velocity Conference 2009

June 22 - 24, 2009, San Jose, CA

OSCON 2009

July 20 - 24, 2009, San Jose, CA

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Distro News

TinyMe 2008.1 Beta 1

The first beta for TinyMe 2008.1 is trying to improve on version 2008.0 by making TinyMe even smaller. TinyMe 2008.1 is an effort to get down a 150 MB ISO.

Future users of smaller ISO the will be able to:
- Boot up the LiveCD;
- log in to a graphical desktop environment;
- configure a system with the PCLinuxOS Control Center;
- install TinyMe to the hard drive;
- install programs with Synaptic.

More information on this distro can be found on the project page, here: http://www.tinymelinux.com/

FreeBSD 6.4 RC Out

The first release candidate of FreeBSD 6.4 is now available. This is the first of two expected release candidates.

ISO images for Tier-1 architectures are now available on most of the FreeBSD mirror sites.
The primary download site is: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/${arch}/ISO-IMAGES/6.4/

Fifth Beta Build of SimplyMEPIS 8.0

The fifth beta build of SimplyMEPIS 8.0, a desktop distribution based on Debian "Lenny", was released in November.

The core of MEPIS is being kept in sync with the upcoming Debian stable release, Lenny. Recently, NSPluginWrapper 1.0.0, VirtualBox-OSE 2.0.4, OpenOffice.org 3.0.0, and Firefox 3.0.3 were updated in SimplyMEPIS and in the MEPIS 8.0 pool.

SimplyMEPIS 8.0 beta 5 updates several packages. ISO files of the fifth beta of SimplyMEPIS 8.0 are available for 32-bit and 64-bit processors. In this release the kernel has been updated to upstream version 2.6.27.5 and the extra drivers have been rebuilt for the new kernel. GRUB has been updated to 0.97. It is hoped that this will resolve the problems a few users have reported with not being able to access a bootable CD.

SimplyMEPIS is available at: http://www.mepis.org/mirrors

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Software and Product News

StarOffice 9 Now Shipping

A major update to Sun's office productivity suite, StarOffice 9 and the corresponding Asian-language StarSuite 9, is now available. Sun's office productivity suite is open source, natively supports Mac OS X, and delivers new versions of its word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, database, and drawing software. StarOffice 9 is easy to use with StarOffice and OpenOffice ODF files, Microsoft Office files, and PDF documents.

StarOffice 9 is completely open-sourced, with the same binaries as OpenOffice.org 3.0. In this release, StarOffice has a fresh new look, with a new start center, new icons and a host of usability improvements. Many new features - multiple page editing in Writer, an optimization Solver tool and 1024 columns in Calc, native table support in Impress, and effective handling of poster-size graphics in Draw - increase productivity and make StarOffice 9 very easy to use.

For more info, visit: http://www.sun.com/software/staroffice/index.jsp

Super Talent Launches SSDs for Asus Eee PCs

Super Talent Technology, a manufacturer of Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, has a new line of mini PCI-Express SSDs, available in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB capacities, that were designed explicitly for the Asus Eee PC.

Standard Eee PCs have maximum 20GB of storage. These cost-effective upgrade cards offer up to 64GB of solid state storage. Super Talent's Mini PCIe cards have been tested extensively with Asus Eee PCs to ensure performance and compatibility.

TrueCrypt Provides FOSSw Security to USB Drives

TrueCrypt secures external disk drives, especially USB thumb drives. Now in its 6th release version, TrueCrypt shows how Open Source Software adds value to every day activities. The software installs on a computer and offers choices about how to encrypt the external drive. The basic choices involve selecting an encryption algorithim and then either creating an encrypted container on the USB flash drive (this is safest and easiest) or encrypting the entire drive (but losing the password effectively trashes the drive).

Here are the main features for version 6a:
- Creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk;
- Encrypts an entire partition or storage device such as USB flash drive or hard drive;
- Encrypts a partition or drive where Windows is installed (pre-boot authentication);
- Encryption is automatic, real-time (on-the-fly) and transparent;
- Provides two levels of plausible deniability, in case an adversary forces you to reveal the password:
1) Hidden volume (steganography) and hidden operating system;
2) No TrueCrypt volume can be identified (volumes cannot be distinguished from random data);
- Encryption algorithms: AES-256, Serpent, and Twofish;
- Multi-core and multi-processor parallelized encryption and decryption.

And much more. For more information, please see: http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=version-history

Wine 1.1.8 Development Release

This new Wine development was released in November. Here's a summary of what's new :
- substantial parts of inetcomm implemented (for Outlook);
- better crypt32 support;
- memory management improvements;
- theme support for buttons;
- many bug fixes.

The source is available now. Binary packages are also being built.

The October Wine 1.1.7 release included some support for Direct3D 10 and installer fixes, particularly for IE 7.

Ingres Launches Ingres 9.2 Open Source Database

Ingres Corporation, a provider of open source database software and support services, announced the availability of Ingres Database 9.2.

Ingres Database 9.2 is secure, reliable, and scalable for use with business intelligence, content management, data warehousing, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and logistics management. Ingres Database also offers added features to further improve the 24x7 availability required by the enterprise.

To download the latest version, go to: http://esd.ingres.com/product/Ingres_Database/9.2

Free beta of Hot Copy for Linux

R1Soft announced the release of a free beta version of its Hot Copy for Linux, a new command line utility that takes readable and writable snapshots of disks or volumes on any Linux server, without interrupting applications on busy Linux servers. As block level changes are made to the device, Hot Copy makes a backup copy of only the changed blocks instead of replicating the entire drive. These changed blocks are then efficiently stored in the unused space on the hard disk.

"Hot Copy is big news for anyone that has to maintain a Linux server. With Windows you have Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). There is nothing really like VSS for Linux servers. It's a big missing piece for Linux Enterprise IT. You have LVM snapshots of course, and the challenge with LVM is that most servers don't run LVM, and even if they do the LVM volumes have to be configured ahead of time with spare disk space. Linux server admins need a simple command that allows snapshots on any Linux server at any time. This is what Hot Copy does. After installing the Hot Copy RPM or .deb package it's one simple hcp command and they have an instant point-in-time snapshot on any Linux disk," said David Wartell, Vice President of R1Soft, a division of BBS Technologies, Inc.

The free Linux Hot Copy beta version is scheduled for release in late November. Pre-registration (http://www.r1soft.com/products/linux-hot-copy/linux-hot-copy) is available for those interested in downloading Hot Copy prior to the general release date.

JBoss News and Information

Red Hat announced GA of JBoss.org Portal project v2.7.

Portal's new features include JSR 286 support for standards-based eventing between portlets and a Portlet Bridge supporting JSF, RichFaces and Seam-based portlets. Portal 2.7 provides the technology for the upcoming JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform 4.3. The JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform is an integrated open source platform for hosting and serving a portal's web interface, aggregating, publishing, and managing its content, and personalizing its experience.

Red Hat SOA Offers Next-Gen ESB on JBoss

Red Hat announced updates of its enterprise offerings for SOA deployment with the release of JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform 4.3 and JBoss Operations Network 2.1. The newest versions of JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform and JBoss Operations Network allow for the remote monitoring and management of open source SOA deployments and include new enterprise service bus (ESB) and rules features.

New features in JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform include:
- New ESB Features - New gateway listeners, a declarative security model, improved web services integration and additional scripting languages that can accelerate enterprise adoption of open source SOA by enabling simpler web services integration and deployment;
- New Rules Features - Stateful Rules services, decision tables and Rule agent support which enable business event processing with an event-driven architecture (EDA), as well as allow non-developers to construct business rules and enable rapid deployment.

JBoss Operations Network 2.1 Brings Enhanced Management for JBoss

Enterprise SOA Platform, helping to reduce the cost of enterprise SOA deployments. New capabilities in the JBoss Operations Network 2.1 include:
- Scalable and centralized management for JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform;
- Remote platform configuration and deployment;
- Automatic ESB service inventory discovery;
- Monitoring metrics;
- Patch management;
- JBoss ESB service monitoring.

"As SOA deployments expand, so does the need for more robust, automated monitoring and management techniques," states Sandra Rogers, Program Director for SOA, Web Services, and Integration research at IDC. "Tracking and ensuring service performance and policy enforcement at multiple levels, and across varied SOA infrastructure elements, is crucial for supporting more dynamic and complex configurations."

JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform is built from open source projects such as JBoss ESB, JBoss jBPM, and JBoss Rules. JBoss Operations Network provides enterprises with a customizable management tool set.

JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform 4.3 and JBoss Operations Network 2.1 are expected to be available by the end of October 2008.

To learn more about how open source SOA can help your business and to take a free online SOA Assessment, please visit the JBoss SOA Resource Center at www.jboss.com/resources/soa.

For more information about JBoss, please visit http://www.jboss.com.

Copyright © 2008, Deividson Luiz Okopnik and Howard Dyckoff. Released under the Open Publication License unless otherwise noted in the body of the article. Linux Gazette is not produced, sponsored, or endorsed by its prior host, SSC, Inc.

Published in Issue 157 of Linux Gazette, December 2008

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