Welcome to Day One of the new Linux.com. This is a day that culminates a lot of marathon work by our team of web developers and content staffers to bring to life a really exciting, community-focused Linux.com.

I have to admit, it's really exciting to watch people come in and use the site. We've been working so intensely on its construction, it's become a virtual home for the web team these past months. So to see new content show up exactly as we'd hoped would happen is very gratifying.

As we also expected, there've been some bugs showing up along the way today, and I am grateful to the admin team for getting  some of them cleared already. Remember, please send bugs and glitches to the This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it e-mail address.

For ideas on what you would like to see added (or removed) from Linux.com, please continue to use the IdeaForge site. That will allow your fellow community members to vote on the ideas and enable us to keep track of the myriad of brainstorms that have been coming in today.

 Again, so glad you're all here! Please pardon the dust while we implement the immediate fixes, and welcome again to the first day of  the new Linux.com.

There are going to be some big changes at my company.  And they will hardly be noticed.  While the users will keep using their Windows XP/Office 2007 desktops, the backoffice will undergo a major overhaul.  The Microsoft Small Business Server  that, honestly, has served us well will be going away as we move to full featured systems without limitations.

I hired a consultant to design a system with high availability for mission critical functions and a 72 hour disaster recovery window.  I stressed I wanted to use open source wherever practical.  They have done the environment discovery and will be presenting their recommendations in a couple of weeks.   We have talked about using a Windows Server as a DC to provide Active Directory authentication, Windows Software Update Services, DNS, DHCP, WINS, etc.,  We will also keep our Sharepoint Services 3.o intranet.  Everything else will be running on CentOS5 servers.  Email will be Kerio Mail Server, file sharing/storage will be Samba.  Website will be Joomla.  While the Kerio Mail Server is not open source itself, it does rely heavily on open source products such as Apache, MySQL, ClamAV, SpamAssassin, et al.   I'll be extremely happy to see Exchange Server go and the end users will not see much difference at all with their Outook connected to KMS.

In the meantime, I'm learning CentOS.  Most of my Linux work has been on Ubuntu both server and desktop.  I set up a test server with Kerio Mail Server on CentOS 5.3 and I'm very impressed with the CentOS system.  I'll probably replace the Ubuntu desktop on my notebook with CentOS to help me get used to the differences in file structure and package management.

The eventual goal will be to replace the Windows DC with Samba when Samba will handle Active Directory and WSUS.  I don't know how we'll ever get off Sharepoint, though.

Exciting times. 

With the new push by the Linux foundation towards improving the public image of Linux through the new sites, we think about what are likely to be the new challenges Linux as a social phenomenon.

One arena that IMHO Linuxers everywhere should invest is in the education market (meaning: kids). My son (11 yrs old) got an Intel classmate for school last this year and it came with windows and a half-baked Linux distro, I'd rather not mention the name. After I told him about the multiple advantages of free software and Linux he started to use Linux as his preferred operating system on his new computer. It bothered me however that the outdated version of the Classmate came with did not do justice to what a first Linux experience should be.

Soon enough I proposed to him we installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix on the classmate. He agreed and when I asked him some partitioning questions like how much space he wanted to give each operating system, he surprised me by asking me to completely wipe off Windows. Of course nothing would give me more pleasure, but I asked again: "are you sure? what if you need windows for something Linux can't do?" he then laughed in my face and said: "There's no such a thing!".

Now, at school all the other kids envy his brand new Linux system and how much better it performs than the original OSs.

Kids are always willing to try new things. And if we introduce them to Linux early enough, they won't settle for inferior operating systems in the future, and definitely won't accept software which restricts their freedom to use their computers to their full extent.

Hey, I like this site!  I was glad to get an invite to the linux.com beta, and am just now having a play around with all the features - and it seems there are quite a few.

I noticed that at least some of it is running on Joomla, which is cool, but I must admit to expecting to find it Drupal powered.  Obviously there is a lot more going on behind the scenes, so I'll be looking forward to hear a bit more about that. (who knows, maybe it's Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress all at the same time - it almost feels like it).

Well done to those at the Linux Foundation for the work on this site!  I'm sure there will be plenty of improvements as the site gets going, but I'm impressed with what you have done so far.

Keep up the good work!

To me Linux is the mother of all open source software/platform/stack/OS and Social networking concept and platforms.

Over the years, we have learnt how to work effectively and efficiently with in the norms of a community. This knowledge triggered  a plethora  of ideas to folks to actually follow the path laid by Linux community to develop so many other software stacks. The whole concept of community development drove hordes of people to think of networking online or in today's words - social networking. In my opinion Linux have had a positive influence on society at large to actually create sense of togetherness and unity among people from all walks of life. For once we should all be proud of Linux's accomplishment to treat every one equal irrespective of race, color, caste, creed or religion. 

To the whole world - Watch out - Linux.com is coming very soon to a browser near you!! We will rock the world.

 

Linux.com is not only a great source for information, it can also be the home for your own ideas and opinions regarding the world of Linux and open source software.

Every registered Linux.com user will have the ability to contribute to the Community Blogs section, using the My Blog interface.

Ashwin's paper on implementing Plan 9 authentication and capability device for Linux is now available for free from the ACM Archives along with the rest of the special issue on the Linux kernel that I helped co-edit: http://portal.acm.org/toc.cfm?id=1400097

The slides I presented at KVM forum on using 9p over virtio to provide a paravirtualized file service are available on the <a href="http://kvm.qumranet.com/kvmwiki/KvmForum2008">KVM wiki </a>