Due to many of the Fedora 21 changes/features not being ready in time, the release schedule has been pushed back by three weeks…
Read more at Phoronix
Skype for Linux Redesign Is Ugly but Functional
Read more at LinuxInsider
diff -u: What’s New in Kernel Development
Once in a while someone points out a POSIX violation in Linux. Often the answer is to fix the violation, but sometimes Linus Torvalds decides that the POSIX behavior is broken, in which case they keep the Linux behavior, but they might build an additional POSIX compatibility layer, even if that layer is slower and less efficient. more>>
Read more at Linux Journal
Linux Foundation SysAdmin Eric Searcy Lives By Regex
This profile is part of a series on Linux Foundation system administrators leading up to SysAdmin Day on Friday. Do you have a super-hero sysadmin you’d like to recognize? Send your nomination to
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by July 25 and enter them to win a free ticket to LinuxCon and CloudOpen North America taking place in Chicago August 20-22, 2014. (See the full contest announcement for more details.)
Eric Searcy is the IT Infrastructure Manager at the Linux Foundation. Here he tells us how he got started as a sysadmin and at the Linux Foundation, describes his typical day at work, and shares his favorite sysadmin tools, among other things.
How long have you been a sys admin?
Eric Searcy: My first sysadmin job was in 2002, when I set up and began maintaining a Slackware Linux server as a Samba domain controller, file/print server, and DNS server for an office that had about a dozen Microsoft Windows 98 desktops.
When did you start at the Linux Foundation and how did you get the job?
I’ve been with the Linux Foundation for 3 years. John Hawley, who was managing kernel.org, knew me from the Oregon State University Open Source Lab [osuosl.org] and referred me when the IT Manager position opened up.
What do you do for the Linux Foundation? What’s your specialty?
As the IT Infrastructure Manager, I am responsible for the design and architecture of the systems that power our core programs, like our Events and Training websites, as well as collaboration platforms for our workgroups. I also handle a lot of the actual setup work and maintenance for these services. My specialties are in web performance scaling, automation, security, and monitoring. I also am pretty good at faking being a DBA (database administrator). 🙂
Will you describe a typical day at work for you?
I spend the majority of my time maintaining and improving our services, which includes updating or patching software, watching our monitoring systems for indications of bugs or capacity problems, and tuning things for more performance. When I’m not maintaining our existing services, I’m handling user support requests or working to set up new software platforms.
Pretty much everything comes back to typing at a command prompt or in a text editor for the majority of the day, though.
What’s your favorite part of the job and why?
I love elegant solutions. Taking a complicated situation and transforming into something simple is a lot of fun for me. It can be a lot of work, and a seamless transformation from the former setup to the new setup can look more messy than how it started, but it’s a huge payoff in the end when you have a more robust, flexible infrastructure.
What is your nightmare scenario? How have you prepared for it?
Carpal tunnel. Aaagh!
What is your favorite sysadmin tool and how do you use it?
This is always a hard question for me. At the top of my list are probably Vim, rsync, Git, pt-query-digest, Drush, GNU Screen, GraphViz, and Valgrind. So many awesome tools out there.
The one thing I couldn’t live without as a sysadmin, even if it’s not exactly a tool, is regex (regular expressions). Mastering regex, especially a lot of the features of PCRE (Perl-compatible regular expressions), makes all sorts of tasks simpler, whether it’s crunching web server logs to answer a one-off question about traffic or being able to quickly write complex URL redirections.
What’s your favorite story about working at the Linux Foundation?
It wasn’t even work related! Last year we had an employee team-building day at one of our conferences and had a competitive cooking competition. So much fun!!
What do you do for fun, in your spare time?
A big part of my life is being active in my church, where I serve as a deacon. I also enjoy cooking, landscaping, and social ballroom dancing, and my wife and I routinely host board-game nights with our friends.
Linux Foundation SysAdmin Clint Savage Reminisces on Weeklong Hackfest
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Linux Foundation SysAdmin Michael Halstead’s IT Career Started at Age 15
Linux Foundation SysAdmin Andy Grimberg Loves New Tech and Snowboarding
To Linux Foundation SysAdmin Ryan Day, Elegance is the Best Tool
AllSeen and All-Embracing Alliance for Symantec
Symantec is an AllSeen Alliance Community Member, one of the world’s largest software companies and a leader in security, backup and availability solutions. Roxane Divol, SVP Product and Services Acceleration Group for Symantec, shares why the company decided to join the AllSeen Alliance and how they plan to contribute to AllJoyn for a connected experience that will change the Internet of Things.
I’m delighted to report that Symantec has now added its full weight as a Community Member to the AllSeen Alliance open source consortium – the broadest cross-industry effort to address fundamental use cases, in order to accelerate the reach and impact of the Internet of Everything or Internet of Things (IoT).
The Alliance intends to achieve this goal by providing interoperability across all devices, operating systems, embedded software, utilising any form of connectivity, under a common language for communication. This should drive the widespread adoption of products, systems and services that support the IoT through an open, universal development framework.
This open source framework provides the core building blocks developers need to address discoverability, connectivity, security and management of dynamic, ad-hoc networks between nearby devices. Using the Alliance’s AllJoyn technology would help make the brand into a sign of device interoperability. Though numerous use cases are focused on the home environment, AllJoyn protocols enable extension of interoperable services to the car and enterprise, too.
Why does this have such appeal to us? Primarily because that framework, based on AllJoyn, will enable companies and individuals to create interoperable products that can discover, connect and interact directly with other nearby devices, systems and services, regardless of transport layer, device type, platform, operating system or brand.
Read more at AllSeen Blog
Firefox OS-Based Chromecast Competitor Coming Soon
The details were unclear back in late June, but it looked like Mozilla may have been playing some role in delivering a competitor to Google’s popular Chromecast dongle, with Mozilla’s based on the Firefox OS platform. The rumors abated shortly after they arose, but some people missed the fact that Mozilla confirmed the news in a recent blog post, noting the following: “Mozilla is working with Panasonic to develop next generation SmartTVs running Firefox OS, and Abitcool will launch an HDMI streaming device later this year that allows the user to fling content from compatible mobile or Web apps to an HDTV.”
If you thought Mozilla’s strategy with Firefox OS is restricted to phones, think again.
Read more at Ostatic
Distribution Release: Oracle Linux 7.0
Oracle has announced the release of Oracle Linux 7.0, a distribution rebuilt from source code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, but featuring a custom “unbreakable” kernel: “Oracle is pleased to announce the general availability of Oracle Linux 7. Oracle Linux 7 offers the latest innovations and improvements….
Read more at DistroWatch