Making UEFI Secure Boot Work With Open Platforms

"UEFI Secure boot” is a technology that offers the prospect of a hardware-verified, malware-free operating system bootstrap process that can improve the security of many system deployments. Linux and other open operating systems will be able to take advantage of secure boot if it is implemented properly in the hardware. UEFI is meant to replace the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) firmware interface present in all IBM PC compatible personal computers.

openSUSE 12.3 Released

openSUSE 12.3 has been released. This release of openSUSE contain many features, and improvements under the hood.

Some of the endearing features of this new release of openSUSE are as follows :

Ubuntu - A Rolling Linux Distribution ?

Will Ubuntu switch to a rolling release ? This is the big question that is playing in the minds of Ubuntu users and developers alike.

A rolling release model refers to a continually developing software system. In a rolling release, the user will never have to install a new version of the software. Rather, the updates to the software and the system will be pushed to the user as and when the changes are made.

An example of a Linux distribution that conform to a rolling release is Arch Linux.

Mark Shuttleworth - the founder of Ubuntu - says he is not convinced about rolling releases yet though he is keeping an open mind.

He went on to elaborate on the direction he wishes for Ubuntu in his blog post. Some noteworthy views he aired are as follows.

• Canonical is still undecided on whether to make Ubuntu a rolling release Linux distribution. LTS point release mechanism has been quite successful for Ubuntu and Mark feels this is the way to go when targeting end users. "Rolling releases are not real releases" - says Mark Shuttleworth.
• The real cost of supporting an architecture is way outside the scope of Ubuntu’s non-commercial commitments. Hence Ubuntu support for fringe architectures such as PowerPC may not happen. PowerPC was an officially supported architecture for Ubuntu between versions 4.10 and 6.10. From 7.04 onwards it is a community supported port. 
• The vision that Mark Shuttleworth holds is for Ubuntu to  run on a wide range of consumer devices - not just computers. This includes phones, tablets, PCs and other devices. The idea is for Ubuntu to be a viable alternative and a competitor to the big shots - Android, Chrome, Windows and Apple. This is the goal of the Unity desktop.
•  Put succinctly, he "doesn't want to miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a free and open platform that is THE LEADER across both consumer and enterprise computing".

Linux Ate My RAM - Help!

Help! Linux ate my Memory. Did it indeed?

I was curious where my memory had gone because, when I fired up a terminal and typed the command -

CentOS 5.9 has been released

The CentOS is an acronym for The Community ENTerprise Operating System. It derives its sources from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and aims to be 100% binary compatible with it.

Fedora 18 has been released

This is the latest version of the Fedora Linux operating system code named "Spherical Cow". Fedora 18 "Desktop Edition" is made available as a Live CD so that you can try out Fedora 18 without needing to install it on your PC.

Book Review : PGP & GPG : Email for the Practical Paranoid

Sending email unencrypted can be compared to sending a postcard. Anybody who choose to can read the contents of your email. You should know that there are various tools available that makes it easy for strangers to snoop into email you send to your people. If you want to ensure your email is secure and it is read only by its intended recipients, then you should consider encrypting your email.