It seems Oracle is hellbent on destroying whatever good Sun had done to the Open Source Ecosystem. The latest product to get the axe seems to be none other than the Flagship Virtualization program xVM VirtualBox.

[....]

All tests show that VirtualBox 3.2 lacks any semblance of stability, crashing any operating system running on it randomly. VirtualBox 3.1.8, using the binary-only release for Linux, works like a charm. It is also apparent that VirtualBox 3.2.6 is a lot slower and sometimes unresponsive, as compared to version 3.1.8.

A fresh install of VirtualBox 3.2.0 on Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Edition even managed to completely crash the Windows Networking Subsystem, necessitating the uninstallation of VirtualBox

via Is Oracle trying to kill VirtualBox? | Muktware.

The article is either a bunch of baloney or the test system as got some serious hardware/software compatibility problems. Oracle VirtualBox 3.2 has been absolutely rock solid, smoother than ever before. Seamless mode is awesome, and I managed to resurrect my dead Windows installation by installing a Windows 7 VM using Oracle VirtualBox and then making a bootable Windows 7 USB pen drive (long story worth a blog post, will do soon!). The article doesn’t mention how many test systems were used to test the software – if its a single box then drawing a conclusion that Oracle is killing VirtualBox based in just one system is pretty stupid.

And heh, the author calls himself “BaloneyGeek“. Go figure.

If you check the latest versions of IronRuby, IronPython or the Dynamic Language Runtime you will see that Microsoft has now relicensed the code from the Microsoft Permissive License to the Apache 2 License

via Microsoft Licensing Changes for IronRuby and IronPython – Miguel de Icaza.

Couple of days ago, there was a huge debate (argument ?)  between Matt Mullenweg  - developer of WordPress and Chris Pearson – developer of Thesis premium theme over twitter which then extended to Mixergy.

Crux of the argument is the disagreement amognst the two over the licensing terms. Matt believes that Thesis should adopt GPL which as Wikipedia states:

The GPL is an example of a powerful copyleft license that requires derived works to be available under the same copyleft.

Chris, on the otherhand disagrees with this. The full transcript of their discussion is available on Mixergy, here are some quotes which I found interesting:

[...]

Recently, I bought a pair of those new Western Digital Caviar Green drives. These new drives represent a transitional point from 512-byte sectors to 4096-byte sectors. A number of articles have been published recently about this, explaining the benefits and some of the challenges that we’ll be facing during this transition. Reportedly, Linux should unaffected by some of the pitfalls of this transition, but my own experimentation has shown that Linux is just as vulnerable to the potential performance impact as Windows XP. Despite this issue being known about for a long time, basic Linux tools for partitioning and formatting drives have not caught up.

The problem most likely to hit you with one of these drives is very slow write performance. This is caused by improper logical-to-physical sector alignment.

via Linux Not Fully Prepared for 4096-Byte Sector Hard Drives | OS News.

If you’re going to grab some new hard drives, the above article is worth reading. The article dates to Feb, 2010 – so I’m not sure if this situation still exists. Further more,

These drives are on the market now. We’ve known about this issue for a LONG time, and now it’s here, and we haven’t fully prepared. Some distros, like Ubuntu, use “parted”, which has a very nice “–align optimal” option that will do the right thing. But parted is incomplete, and we must rely on tools like fdisk for everything else. But anyone manually formatting drives based on popular how-tos that pop up at the top of Google searches is going to cause themselves a major performance hit, because mention of this alignment issue and how to fix it is conspicuously absent.

A whole linux distro, Slackware based I believe, to train you in the dark arts. This distro is deliberately insecure, containing out of date packages, mis-configured apps, and loads of training material. It comes as a live dvd download, so you can run it up as and when you want to practice your skills.

via Damn Vulnerable Linux.

Will be interesting to check it out.

I’ve been using openSUSE for quite some time now, but this is definitely the first time that I’ve noticed this ( though probably because I tend to use zypper or the 1-click install rather than entering YaST).

Edit:
Output of zypper lr -u
http://pastebin.com/awfeBeLP

Output of zypper se -s -i -t pattern
http://pastebin.com/DJc8HsLG

Output of zypper sl -d
http://pastebin.com/LxLREddG

Edit 2: Andreas Jaegar comments on the above:

Found it: The pattern is part of Mono Community pattern. As these ymp-patterns have no category, the software manager picks a pretty much random order. And it happens to be under proprietary software in this case.

Top 10 Totally Amazing Wallpapers Made Using Inkscape

Amazing stuff.

via Top 10 Totally Amazing Wallpapers Made Using Inkscape | Tech Drive-in.

Mixxx is described as a complete package for amateur and professional DJs alike, providing everything you need to create and perform live mixes. It can run without connecting turntables and mixers, which makes it a replacement for traditional DJ setup. For professionals, it supports advanced features like comprehensive MIDI controller support, vinyl control, and multi-core CPU support.

via Virtual DJ Software for Linux: Mixxx | TechSource.

Seems nice. Packages are available only for Ubuntu, though.

1: The pager

I am always shocked at how few people actually use the Linux pager. It’s been around forever and has always served the same functionality — it offers the user multiple desktops to keep the desktop better organized. I employ the pager like this: With four workspaces, I dedicate each workspace to a different use. My layout looks like this:

* Desktop 1 is for networking tools.

* Desktop 2 is for writing/office tools.

* Desktop 3 is for graphics or video.

* Desktop 4 is for miscellaneous items.

This layout pretty much covers it for me. I’m sure you could find a four-desktop scheme that would better suit your needs.

via Five tips for a more efficient Linux desktop | Five Tips | TechRepublic.com.

More or less my pager usage too.

openSUSE India IRC Channel LIVE !

This is to notify all Lizards (openSUSE Lovers) that the openSUSE India Channel on IRC Freenode–> #opensuse-in , is now Live and registered . So if you have something to ask, share or want to spend some time with openSUSE Indian users , do visit