As an open-source supporter, I am glad to have the possibility, at my workplace, to work with software such as GNU/Linux, Firefox and many others…

The usage of Linux is fostered within the company : each employee has access to LinuxCOE (which is a HP product and licensed under the General Public License) and can install his favorite distribution pretty easily on his personal computer. Ubuntu, openSUSE, Gentoo and others are at disposal and HP even provides licenses for SUSE and Red Hat.
Since MS Office is the most widespread office suite and most of my colleagues have Windows XP, it is unfortunately hard to work without it. However, HP provides a license for Crossover, which is a product based on Wine and which allows you to use the MS Office suite as well as Internet Explorer 6 (*sigh*…).
The officially supported instant messaging protocol is Jabber, which is ideal to use in a GNU/Linux environment (for instance with Pidgin).
Due to the massive demand of employees, Firefox is officially supported by the internal IT service, in addition to IE.
On the customer side, HP is committed to Linux : the ProLiant servers are the most sold servers running GNU/Linux on the world and the Integrity servers shipped with the Itanium processors also run RHEL 5 and SLES 10 SP1. Moreover, there are lots of people at the company working as developers for open-source projects or kernel developers.

Nevertheless, the situation is not perfect for GNU/Linux or alternative software desktop users.
Linux is not officially supported by HP’s IT and there is an evident lack of communication around LinuxCOE. I even personally made senior technical consultants aware of it.
Not all internal web-based applications run correctly with Firefox and some multimedia streamed videos are encoded with codecs Linux cannot play.
I cannot share my calendar with my colleagues because Evolution does not work perfectly with Exchange 2007 (even if my e-mails and meetings invitations work fine) and there is no native application to take part to Netmeeting conferences (did someone try this solution ?). The move to Vista and MS Office 2007 is also planned but, so far, Crossover does not support this version so I hope there will be a workaround until here.

So far, using GNU/Linux as a primarily desktop operating system as an HP employee was not hard and I have been pleasantly surprised by the LinuxCOE offering, among other things. Even though I experience a little loss of productivity, I prefer to stay a little longer at work than use an other OS than GNU/Linux. If things need to do something which is really urgent and only doable under Windows, I have a VMware virtual machine ready to boot, however, this happens really rarely. So if you are hesitating to apply for a job or an internship at HP, thinking that you will not have the right/possibility/authorization tu run GNU/Linux, I hope this article will help to change your mind.

Of course, HP is a huge company and from an IT perspective, support multiple operating systems is a big effort. One the other hand, this is the best example of the advantages of respecting standards (real ones…) in order every user to have access to the information, independently of his OS.

As you know, Microsoft made an offer last week to buy the number two on the Internet market, Yahoo.
This merger makes economically sense for both companies :
Although Yahoo is a giant, its annual revenues and profits both deceived investors. Its products are technically good and innovative but Yahoo cannot compete alone against Google, especially on the very profitable market of the online advertising.
Microsoft is still a major player in the software industry, but the increasing market shares of open-source products and its relative weakness on the Internet market obliged them to a reaction… and what a reaction !

Both companies could save a lot of money if they would put their IT infrastructures in common, and their different target audiences make them natural partners. Talks between both companies in order to merger already took place two times in the past but they could not be achieved. Now, Microsoft is investing a lot of money to counter Google on its own ground : the web.

As we have seen, this merger really seems to be a great deal for both companies.
Now I will explain the bad consequences this could have.

First, the fact that Microsoft is one of the most evil companies regarding the privacy of the users is really not a good sign. Just to know that Redmond’s guys can take over such products as Flick’r, Yahoo Mail or Yahoo 360° and their huge user basis sends shivers down the spines of anybody willing to keep an acceptable privacy on the Internet.

Then, and this also a real concern for Free Software supporters, Yahoo is one of the biggest fund provider for the development of projects such as PHP or FreeBSD and a great sponsor of OSS (Open Source Software) in general. Given the MS policy against Free Software, this is not good news for them and for those who use them, that is to say, everybody (at least indirectly).

Last but not least : one of the most promising open-source project, let’s say the jewels of Yahoo’s open-source crown, Zimbra, is directly threaten. This project is an alternative to Microsoft Exchange and is a really promising tool. If MS takes Yahoo over, there will be no surprise if Zimbra dies.

Instead of having the 3 components
- MS Active Directory
- MS Outlook
- and MS Exchange

the companies could have chosen these 3 programms for their collaboration suite :
- openLDAP
- Evolution (on Ubuntu)
- and Zimbra

I think Microsoft cannot tolerate such a direct threat to one of its core products, so maybe it is time for the guys of Zimbra to remove the last barrier that could ensure the future of their baby : put it under the General Public License and save it from a licensing change !

Even though this merger could benefit both companies, this will not do any good to Free Software and I really hope, that Zimbra, at least, will be preserved for the future.

Why did I post an article about Xen a few months ago ?
First because this is a great technology. Then, that is the subject and of my degree dissertation (German : Diplomarbeit) I have been writing between June and September 2007.

I have been doing an internship at Hewlett Packard Germany between April and September in the Technology Solution Group division (the business division of HP for servers, storage and so on…), in the Outsourcing part of TSG.
This degree dissertation is a report of a disaster-recovery program implemented for the German bank MLP located in Wiesloch. This program has been designed by both MLP an HP people and implemented by HP colleagues and myself.

Basically, the concept is to shift a complete productive environment from one data center to another. This is achieved by a virtualized environment based on two servers SuSE Linux Enterprise 10 SP1 with Xen, two EVA 8000 (SAN solution of HP) and a HP product named “Continuous access” that mirrors constantly the content of one SAN to another.

If you want to learn more about my work, here is a link to my degree dissertation (only in German available).
I am still waiting for my grade yet and, after that, I will be done with my studies !

Xen is a tool that allows a computer to run multiple instances of an operating system.

This means Windows and Linux can not only run on the same PC (they can since almost the beginning). This means that they can run at the same time. This technology is truly amazing!

This allows you, for example, to write an article with Microsoft Word in Windows, to release the cursor, to switch the window just as if MS Windows was a simple application of your operating system and to go on your work with Ubuntu or any Linux flavour (that supports Xen, however).

Basically, Xen is based on a guest OS (the dom0). It is in general a GNU/Linux distribution, but some other operating systems (such as NetBSD or OpenSolaris ) supports it. This dom0 is modified, so that it can welcome the guests (the domU’s).

If your hardware is good enough, the domU’s will not have to be changed. You can boot your MS Windows as you ever did (this is the so called full-virtualization – the guests are absolutely not aware that they are running virtually). If not, you’ll have to find a suitable modified distribution (most Linuxes for example) that will allow you to run multiple instances. This is called the para-virtualization.

Even though the performance is a little reduced, it remains excellent (especially for the para-virtualization, because the guests are designed for this technology). Moreover, you can determine what hardware you will assign to which virtual machine VM. Your Windows need a new network card? Just add one! You need to add a hard drive to one of your VM’s? No problem!

This sounds great. Ok, the reality is not as simple as I described above (especially if you have a PC with multiples network interfaces), you will have to find some tricky solutions, work with the command line and edit files, but it the end, it works ! As soon as the Xen developers will build an intuitive graphical interface, this technology will become one of the killer-features of GNU/Linux for the desktop.

The desktop market is the ultimate goal for Linux. But behind the lights, where Linux is not an exception anymore (and little people are aware of that fact), Xen is going to be one of the reasons why system administrators should leave, for example, Netware.

The most striking argument in favour of Xen on the server market is the cost: why should companies continue to pay for 6 average servers when they can build 6 virtual machines on top hardware. This can cut costs in energy, administration, and networking.

Last but not least, Xen is Free software. It means that the basic version is free (whereas Xen Enterprise and Xen Server are not) and you can get the source code, modify it, and adapt it to your needs.

To me, Xen is the ultimate example of how innovative and attractive free software can be. VMware, the proprietary solution is also a good product, but as Xen respects the GNU General Public License, it will be included in a lot of Linux distributions (it is already part of openSUSE) and thus, its community will grow very quickly. It will so benefit from the feedback of millions of the users and developers.

Free software (I will try to give my point of view on it later) does not necessarily mean software communism: XenSource (the company behind it) sells its enterprises versions. I hope they will make money with it and will continue to improve their product -with the support of the open-source community- so that end-users and companies can improve their productivity or have simply have fun with it!

I am very happy to announce that I successfully passed the second exam of the first certification level of the Linux Professional Institute !

I obtained the LPIC-1 certification after I had written the LPI101 exam in Cologne last year and the LPI102 this year in Berlin.

My goal is now to go on on this way, take the following levels of the LPI certification (i.e. LPIC-2 and LPIC-3) and become more and more qualified and effective !

This weekend, I go to Berlin to the LinuxTag, a fair where geeks meet geeks and/or IT professionals

It will be a great opportunity to meet the people of Ubuntu-de again and of other open-source communities, to discover new projects and to attend interesting conferences. Moreover, I will write there the second exam (LPI102) of the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) to obtain the first level of the Linux certification. Last but not least, I come right for the OpenSolaris love day!

I also have been in Wiesbaden last year for the LinuxTag 2006 and I hope this event will be at least as good as the previous one !

This meeting, which slogan is “where .org meets .com”, is traditionally put under the patronage of the… German minister of Interior Department, Wolfgang Schäuble ! (see my last article). I wonder how he will be accommodated by the open-source and Free software supporters, who do not seem to appreciate his will of supervising people’s computers…

This is a short script which allows an automatic update of a subversion repository on Linux :

Create a log-directory into your Subversion repository

$mkdir logs

and save the following script into the repository as svn_cron.sh


#!/bin/bash
#
# Variable REPOS is the path to the repository on the server

REPOS=.

echo ""
date +"%B %d %Y"

test $# = 0 || ( echo "Please enter the path to the local copy"; exit 1 )

cd $1 2>&1 >/dev/null || ( echo "$1 does not exist"; exit 2 )

/usr/local/bin/svn info 2>&1 >/dev/null|| ( echo "$1 is not a working copy"; exit 3 )

if [ `/usr/local/bin/svn update $1 | sed -n "/^C/p" | wc -l` -ne 0 ]
then

# Collects all files and directorys which are to add on the repository
/usr/local/bin/svn status | sed -n "/^\??*/p" | sed "s/^\? *//g" > $REPOS/logs/toadd

# Collects all files and directorys which are to delete on the repository
/usr/local/bin/svn status | sed -n "/^\!?*/p" | sed "s/^\! *//g" > $REPOS/logs/todelete*//g" > $REPOS/logs/todelete

# Add and delete Subversion actions
cat $REPOS/logs/todelete | while read line; do /usr/local/bin/svn delete "${line}"; done
cat $REPOS/logs/toadd | while read line; do /usr/local/bin/svn add "${line}"; done

# SVN commit in order to save the changes with a log message
if !(/usr/local/bin/svn commit -m "Daily commit for changes done directly on the server")
then echo "A problem has occured during the commit"
exit 3
fi

else
echo "Problem with the daily update, there may be a conflict within the following files \! "

# Displays the files which are currently in conflict
svn status $1
exit 4
fi
exit 0

Then edit the crontab

$crontab -e

or if you want the uploads to be done by another user

$crontab -e -u username

Of course, the user must have enough rights to write on the logs-file

when using vi, put the following lines at the end of te file

##Automatic update of the Subversion repository every day at 0:00
0 0 * * * /path_to_your_repository/svn_cron.sh /path_to_your_local_copy >> /path_to_your_repository/logs/script_cron

I have been using Ubuntu for three years and since then, this operating system has fully been meeting my expectations such as programming, listening to music, watching movies chatting, browsing the web, administrating my remote server, and so on…
However as soon as I use the proprietary Nvidia drivers in order to benefit from Beryl and its great 3D-Desktop effects, the sound drivers ALSA release an error :

[17183700.972000] codec_ready: codec 0 is not ready [0xffffffff]

and the loudspeaker makes awful random sounds !

I will write a report on this issue to the Linux kernel team, so that they fix this bug.
Anyway, this little problem has been interesting, because I tried OpenSuse 10.2, which is a very good Linux distribution as well. The RPM package management is not as good as the Debian system but it worked fine… and Beryl also let the sound server crash !

I am now back to Ubuntu -in 2D though-, I wait for its next release (codename : Feisty Fawn) and I hope the integration of the Nvidia drivers will be better on the next version of the kernel

PS : This article must not prevent you from using Linux ! Just be sure of what you do and if there is any risk to try something on your operating system and everything will work fine ! Keep also in mind that Beryl has been released as a beta version and is not supposed to be stable !

As Vista’s release, the new Microsoft operating system, had been several times postponed, some observers noticed it could benefit Linux and increase the number of users of the free OS : it is now clear it didn’t and the monopoly of Microsoft on the market still remains.

Microsoft takes advantage of its market domination and, above all, of the pre-installation of Windows on new computers (75% of all new PC’s have Windows pre-installed on it). If only the real price of the operating system was clearly written on the buyer’s bill, a lot of consumers would think twice before paying 150$ and not having the choice at all.

The advantages of Linux are well known and for something you don’t have to pay charges for, this operating system is simply great. Distributions such as Suse or Ubuntu can technically obviously compete with Microsoft Vista but it is actually not the problem. It is somewhere else.

If you compare the show paid by Microsoft for Vista’s release and what happened for the release of, for instance, Dapper Drake, you just become aware of how big the advantage of Microsoft is. The strength of MS is its impressive marketing power : people who just do nothing but using their computers (and not living through it ) will know about Vista. CNN offered a 15 minutes show to Gates (with some soft criticisms though). The day Mark Shuttleworth will get 5 minutes on television for the release of the next Ubuntu has not come…

Such a marketing campain is precisely what Linux companies can’t afford : if Canonical could pay for it, the whole world would talk about Edgy Eft, Beryl or Compiz and how innovative those softwares are.

The life cycle of XP is still not over (its support has been stretched until april 2009), but during this time, there has been no revolution in the way people use their computers, even if new technologies (many of them supported first by open-source and free softwares) appeared.

The only way analysts think the RSS feeds will become popular is their introduction into Internet Explorer 7, even if Thunderbird and Firefox (which are also available for Windows) already propose this feature. It is nothing new that Microsoft picks up the best of the other’s technology, integrates it in its products and spreads it everywhere as if it was their own.

But this time, open source and free software companies are supported in their development by giants of the sector (IBM, Sun, …), what should be a good source of income through support and services.

Moreover, the main strength of the free softwares is their communities. Thousand of involved users bring a lot of innovation : all the employees of the Redmond’s firm cannot be as inventive as hundred of thousand involved users who can directly communicate with the developpers.

Now that Linux is accepted as a competitive solution for servers and enterprises, it has to become popular on the desktop’s markt and need a powerful marketing campain in order to compete with Windows.It may have to get rid of this geeky image and show the consumers it is an innovative and professionnal product that anyone can use.

We have seen it since the beginning of the software industry : not the best product wins, but the one which has the best advertising campain.