Details:
Price:

Pros: Solid mid-range PC is reliable and comes with SLED 11, a major bonus
Cons: Not a terribly fast computer, or particularly exciting in any way

In an age when Linux has become a powerful platform for development work, graphics processing and video production, it’s a welcome relief to see a mid-range system built for people who may or may not have experience with Linux. The HP Elite 7000 Microtower is quite capable: it has an Intel i7 860 2.8GHz quad-core processor with an 8MB L2 cache and an ATI Radeon HD 4550 graphics card built for Blu-ray movie playback. Meanwhile, with just 3GB of RAM, an 160GB SATA hard disk and little design flare, the Elite 7000 is not exactly a performance rig. The saving grace: the system can come equipped with Novel SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 and is extremely easy to upgrade.

The all-black design screams ‘corporate deployment’ more than any sort of style statement. In fact, other than a silver plate with an HP logo, you might think the Elite 7000 is home-built, and the understated design is likely intentional. HP used a hex locking nut on the back of the PC as if to warn the non-technical that they should not mess with the innards. We did, of course, noticing that the spacious interior is just ripe for upgrades, especially more RAM (up to 8GB) and a larger drive.

However, we still tested the stock version and came away impressed. For the vast majority of computing tasks – using Evolution to check your POP mail, burning a DVD disc using LightScribe (included with this SLED build) and even playing games or watching movies – the Elite 7000 is up to the task. Where we noticed a performance degradation is when we compared Linux-to-Linux between this system and a home-built PC that uses an SSD drive, an Nvidia Quadro CX graphics card and has 6GB of RAM. There was no comparison, of course – the home-built system was snappier even for popping up Firefox, copying files and running simulations with a program like Autodesk Revit Architecture (which normally prefers a workstation PC).

The mid-range nature is what makes the Elite 7000 less than a top-end PC, even if it is a good all-round performer for most computer tasks.
Thankfully, the system is easy to upgrade – which at a good mid-range price is something that makes sense. The Elite 7000 has a few other extras thrown in just to add to the deal. There’s a 6-in-1 one flash card reader located on the front of the device. Our system came equipped with one standard DVD and one Blu-ray drive. The HP Elite uses an ATI 4550 card that should support Blu-ray movie playback, although we could not get the movie Miracle At St Anna to work (HP said SLED 11 systems are normally not equipped with Blu-ray drives).

One of the most important specs on the Elite 7000 is hard to notice, however. Over several weeks, we used SLED 11 on the system for a variety of tasks: email, word processing, gaming and web browsing. We never experienced a crash of any kind. What this means is that the hardware itself is engineered with extra precision – this is no home-built machine. Most importantly, by fine-tuning SLED 11 for the system, HP has accomplished a lofty goal. Sure, other systems by Dell offer a Linux version, but HP has tweaked this install for extreme reliability. Even the SLED 11 recovery disc is well engineered, providing a way to rebuild the system from scratch in an unattended mode in less than 20 minutes.

For the price, the Elite 7000 is a rock-solid system. Several key upgrades would enhance the performance – such as more RAM, or a larger-capacity drive (or a RAID). As it stands, the PC is a reliable Linux box for just about any purpose.

Verdict: 4/5
Rock-solid PC for just about any purpose. Does lack some design flare (on purpose, we think) but is easy to upgrade.
John Brandon

This article originally appeared in issue 84 of Linux User & Developer magazine.

Linux User & Developer, one of the nation’s favourite Linux and Open Source publications, is now part of the award winning Imagine Publishing family. Readers can subscribe and save more than 30% and receive our exclusive money back guarantee – click here to find out more.

Advisor:
Kunal Deo

Resources:
eBox installer

Linux is an excellent choice for a server operating system, no matter what the size of business. However, it is still not very easy to administrate. Recently many distributions have launched their own interface to configure these server components (like Apache and Samba), but really failed at delivering an easy-to-use interface to configure it. That alone turns off many SMB (small and medium business) folks. eBox is trying to fix this particular issue. eBox (or eBox Platform, to give it its full name) can play multiple roles. It can act as a network gateway, an infrastructure manager, a unified threat manager, an office server, a unified communication server or a combination of any of these. eBox is delivering these functions using already popular open source software with a solid administration interface.

As of the current release of eBox (1.2), eBox ships with the following profiles…
eBox Office: File server, print server and groupware server. eBox Office includes ebox-samba, ebox-printers, ebox-egroupware, ebox-antivirus, ebox-ebackup, ebox-software and ebox-monitor.
eBox Communication: Mail server, chat server and VOIP server. eBox Communication includes ebox-mail, ebox-jabber, ebox-asterisk, ebox-mailfilter, ebox-antivirus, ebox-ebackup, ebox-software and ebox-monitor.
eBox Security: Proxy server, intrusion detection system, firewall system and VPN server. eBox Security includes ebox-firewall, ebox-ids, ebox-squid, ebox-openvpn, ebox-mailfilter, ebox-antivirus, ebox-ebackup, ebox-software and ebox-monitor.
eBox Gateway: Proxy server and firewall system. eBox Gateway includes ebox-network, ebox-squid, ebox-firewall, ebox-trafficshaping, ebox-l7-protocols, ebox-ebackup, ebox-software and ebox-monitor.
eBox Infrastructure: DHCP server, DNS server, web server, and NTP server. eBox Infrastructure includes ebox-network, ebox-dhcp, ebox-dns, ebox-openvpn, ebox-webserver, ebox-ntp, ebox-ebackup, ebox-software and ebox-monitor.

Joomla is a very easy-to-use content management system. There’s also plenty of information on the internet about all aspects of its use. Yet this book is still very welcome, at least for those who’d like to know more about Joomla 1.5 and 1.6 – for grey-haired, experienced PHP developers, it’s superfluous.

Using Joomla gives you guidelines for planning and creating your content, along with some useful information about how to create and use Joomla templates – something that a lot of people never get to grips with. An explanation of components, modules and plug-ins is carefully given so that the reader can begin to understand some infrastructure. In the later part of the book, useful examples are given of how to set up an online store calendar, photo gallery, discussion forum and more. The final section gives some ideas about security precautions to protect your site from attackers.
Written by Ron Severdia and Kenneth Crowder, Using Joomla gives you, in 383 pages, everything you might want to know about your favourite content management system.
Richard Ibbotson

This article originally appeared in issue 84 of Linux User & Developer magazine.

Linux User & Developer, one of the nation’s favourite Linux and Open Source publications, is now part of the award winning Imagine Publishing family. Readers can subscribe and save more than 30% and receive our exclusive money back guarantee – click here to find out more.

Words by:
Dave Walker

The next version of Ubuntu – codename Lucid Lynx – will be the 10.04 release, and is scheduled to be released and declared stable in April.  As a long-term support version, coupled with increasing popularity, this is undoubtedly the most important Ubuntu release to date.

I was privileged to be invited to the Canonical offices in London recently to preview the image changes and comment on how we might adopt them; offer opinions on how I feel the community would interpret the changes, and offer feedback.  I expected this to be an art and design type meeting, meaning I did have some concerns about how useful I would be since I can’t even attempt a bluff at being artistic.  However, it did turn out to be useful, with lots of fruitful discussions.

For the last 6 years, Ubuntu has traditionally had a theme of brown and earthy colours; which I feel many have come to accept, and perhaps even like.  Over the years we have witnessed the colour being toned down and having less significance in the desktop.  Following some 8 months of work the colour has been dropped from the distribution design, so it was quite a risky move.  The design has attempted to focus and convey Precision, Reliability Collaboration and Freedom.  It will undoubtedly take time for the changes to cascade into all usages.

The new colours have a heavy focus on orange, and aubergine (purple). The colour orange is intended to represent Ubuntu community focus, with aubergine symbolising Canonical commercial interests; with a varying ratio of both for things depending on the type of use.  However, the designers at Canonical have been very careful to keep crucial elements of the previous designs to ensure some of the brand is kept familiar.

I don’t think I have ever fully appreciated the work involved in being an artistic designer.  When I’ve encountered artwork designs previously, there has been an ever-increasing move towards minimalism which, to me, implied that the work and effort involved to create it was equally minimal.  However, viewing the designs and being talked through the process of how they evolved gave me a new found respect for designers.

The changes aren’t simply limited to palette change, but more a whole brand unification and polish.  The whole rework was an effort to help Ubuntu “grow up” to reflect it’s increasing maturity.  It is thought that the current Ubuntu font, named “ubuntu-title”, had an almost childlike appearance and on reflection I think this statement has merit.

The new font, which will be simply called “ubuntu” has been designed with cooperation between Canonical designers and a world class design agency.  At the time I saw the proposed versions the full alphabet wasn’t yet complete, and I became aware of the huge attention to detail that these committed people were working towards.  One thing that particularly caught my eye was the discussion on things such as how the edge of the letter ‘C’ should finish, “Should it be sharp and flush or slightly angled”.  The wider masses would never be aware how much effort had been put into this.

Advisor:
Sukrit Dhandhania

Resources:
Omnis Studio Cross-platform Rapid Application Development tool

Omnis Studio is a cross-platform (Windows, Mac and Linux) Rapid Application Development tool. It allows you to quickly build applications using a combination of graphical elements as well as a code editor. It integrates the graphical interface, database and other elements of your application to make things easy for you. We’ll look at how to get Omnis Studio installed on an Ubuntu computer and then we’ll get familiar with the tools that it provides us with.

Installation
01 As we are using an Ubuntu-based computer we can not use the RPM binaries provided by Tiger Logic. Instead, we will use the ‘.tgz’ version of the application installer. So go ahead and download the latest release of Omnis Studio from the project’s download section here.

02 As many of the steps during the installation require administrator privileges, you could either use sudo for the commands or switch to the root user. To switch to the root user, use the command ‘# sudo bash’ in a terminal window. You will be requested to enter your user’s password. Then you should be the root user.

03 Create the directory where you want to install Omnis Studio. We installed it under ‘/usr/local/’. Use the command ‘sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/tigerlogic/’ to create the directory. Once the download is complete, extract the file using the command ‘# sudo tar -zxf Omnis-Studio-5.0.i386.tgz -c /usr/local/tigerlogic/’. This command will create a new directory and extract the Omnis Studio files under ‘/usr/local/tigerlogic/os50’.

04 Kick off the installation by changing into the Omnis directory, ‘# cd /usr/local/tigerlogic/os50’. Now execute the script ‘omset’ by running ‘./omset’. This script will create a new file, ‘omnisI386’ in the directory. ‘omnisI386’ is the launch script for Omnis Studio. You need to execute this script every time you want to launch Omnis Studio.

05 Let’s wrap up the installation by setting the user permissions to the Omnis Studio directory. Execute the command ‘# chmod -R 775 /usr/local/tigerlogic/’ to set the correct permissions to the Omnis files. Then run ‘# chown -R calvin:calvin /usr/local/tigerlogic/’ to become the owner of the Omnis files. Replace ‘calvin:calvin’ with your username, followed by the name of the group your user is in.

06 The installation is now complete. You may log out of the root user in the terminal window. To launch Omnis Studio, execute the script ‘/usr/local/tigerlogic/os50/omnisI386’. You should be presented with a window asking you to enter the serial number for the product. You can get a free serial from here if you haven’t bought a copy. Then you’ll be asked to agree to the company’s terms and conditions. If you choose to agree, you will see the Omnis Studio main interface pop up.

Details:
Price:

Pros: All-in-one nettop uses the powerful Nvidia Ion chipset for fast graphics
Cons: Games ran a bit slow for an IGP that is supposed to bump up graphics speed

When we reviewed the Lenovo IdeaCentre Q100 not long ago, we had one critical complaint: while the system looked sleek, it ran too slow for even rudimentary tasks. For example, even though the system is meant as a web terminal or for knowledge workers who just need access to enterprise services at a company, the slow processor and sub-par graphics made the original Q100 inadequate for power-user tasks.

That main complaint has been partially solved with the successor, called the IdeaCentre Q110. The higher model number denotes a fairly important change: the Q110 uses the Nvidia Ion chipset to handle graphics performance. This also means the Q110 has an HDMI port for connecting the device to your home entertainment system for both audio and video, or to a monitor that supports the connection. Suddenly, the Q110 becomes more interesting. The stylish design, with an angular look and an all-black exterior, fits well in your entertainment room and the Q110 plays movies and games at reasonable speeds, making it one of the most well-suited computers for the coming generation of downloaded content.
We say ‘the coming generation’ because some popular movies are still heavily encrypted – and Blu-ray still reigns supreme. The Q110 does not allow you to download any movie at any time and watch it on your big screen. Instead, the Ion chipset is a good match for those who already have high-def films stored on a network server and need a dumb terminal to play them. In several tests with movies like District 9 encoded as hi-res MPEG files, the Q110 managed to play them off a server over Ethernet without any problems. We also used FFmpeg to encode movies and noticed similar speed improvements over the Q100.

For games, the Q110 was less powerful. This may have to do with the fact that Nvidia never made any claims about the Ion chipset dramatically improving frame rates or graphics realism, especially compared with the firm’s desktop cards. Testing Wolfenstein 3D on a ViewSonic HDMI-enabled projector, there were frequent graphical pauses and slow gameplay. This is not a major surprise, since the Ion chipset is actually the same one used on Apple MacBook laptops which are notoriously under-powered for games compared to PC laptops that use the latest Nvidia chipsets that handle first-person shooters just fine.

In every other way, minus the HDMI port and exceptional movie playback, the Q110 is similar to the original Q100. The Q110 is also 38cm by 45cm in size, or small enough to stash away on a bookshelf or tuck behind a PC monitor out of sight entirely. (The Q110 does not support a method to actually attach the nettop to the back of a monitor, as is true of the Acer Aspire Revo.) The system comes with 2GB of RAM, but still runs the Intel Atom N230 processor at just 1.66GHz.

For those interested in a nettop, the older Atom processor is still acceptable given that the follow-on, the Atom N450 introduced at the 2010 CES trade show, is primarily designed for longer battery life and not a speed improvement. (If you buy a netbook, make sure it uses the N450, however.) Like the Q100, the Q110 has four USB ports on the back of the unit and two on the front for a total of six. There are also headphone and microphone sockets, an Ethernet port and a 160GB hard drive that runs a bit slow at just 5400rpm. The Q110 is a marked improvement over the Q100 for movie playback and thin-client computing, especially in Ubuntu Remix for Netbooks.

Verdict: 3/5
A great entertainment-room PC with fast movie playback.
John Brandon

This article originally appeared in issue 84 of Linux User & Developer magazine.

Linux User & Developer, one of the nation’s favourite Linux and Open Source publications, is now part of the award winning Imagine Publishing family. Readers can subscribe and save more than 30% and receive our exclusive money back guarantee – click here to find out more.

Just who are you?

Then, as a sideline, I do other stuff like the NCR voyager port (a Micro Channel non-APIC-based SMP system, the last production year for them being 1999). At Plumbers last year, Qualcomm gave me an Android developer phone, so I’ve also been hacking on that, although mainly user-space stuff to make it work the way I want it to.
I’m also quite heavily involved on the ‘governance’ side of Linux (if our system of management can be called that). I’m chair of the Linux Foundation technical advisory board (its main job is to act as a resource for the Linux Foundation and its members on matters of open source, and also to raise issues we have which we’d like the LF to help with). As part of that job, I’m also on the board of the Linux Foundation itself.

What are the exciting changes for .33?
I think the most exciting change is that after years of arguing, the DRBD (Distributed Replicating Block Device) finally got accepted into the mainline. It’s the foundation of a lot of high availability and disaster recovery solutions (including our own SLE HA extensions).

The next new piece of technology is I/O bandwidth controllers. There had been about two competing ideas about how this should be done, and it took two rounds of discussion at the Linux file system and storage summit and finally a troubleshooting session at the kernel summit to get final agreement. (I/O controllers allow for much better fine-grained control over how I/O bandwidth is allocated to virtual machines.)

Finally, the ftrace subsystem acquired dynamic tracing in 2.6.33. That’s a step to taking it a lot closer to rivalling the functionality of Sun’s dtrace.
I’m afraid these three are all pretty much enterprise features. The most visible change for users is probably the merging of the Noveau driver, which is a reverse-engineered driver for the Nvidia graphics chipset. Hopefully it will finally allow us to move towards ending the pain a significant number of desktop users have with the Nvidia binary graphics driver.

Was there some sort of kerfuffle about the Completely Fair Scheduler slowing down certain video processes?
I assume you’re referring to the Kasper Sandberg benchmarks?

I wasn’t aware of that specific one, but I am aware that we’ve been getting a lot of latency problems with the CFS scheduler, which seem to be at the root of the benchmark problems the graph shows. Arjan van de Ven has been doing the most work on this with his LatencyTOP tool (the performance issues show up on the desktop, which is why Intel is concerned). LatencyTOP found some significant bugs in the CFS implementation on .32, which have hopefully been fixed in .33 …although there will surely be more to uncover and fix.
The process scheduler is about the most complex heuristic system we have in the kernel, so completely rewriting it was bound to have a few teething troubles (although it’s fair to say that the scheduler has always been a sore spot with a variety of people). It’s probably going to take another few kernel releases to get the rough edges smoothed off. The problem with this type of smoothing is that although the scheduler people try to test with a variety of workloads, they can’t match the diversity of real-life situations. So scheduler tuning ends up being a very public affair because you have to do it iteratively as the results come in.

It becomes even more fraught because when you have an optimally implemented system (as in no bugs sucking performance), the tuning is a zero sum game – improve the performance under workload X and you can end up penalising workload Y – so not everyone agrees where the optimal point in the tuning space lies. However, I know the scheduler people quite well, and I’m confident they have the ability and the tenacity and the commitment to give us as close to the best possible tuning as is humanly possible.

Advisor:
Swayam Prakasha

Sometimes there will be a need to maintain historical versions of the software that we develop and also to co-ordinate the development activities between numerous programmers located in various parts of the globe. When multiple people are working on a software project, it is also important that changes need to be synchronised so that one developer’s work will not overwrite another’s. When we make several releases of a specific project (product or service), we may be interested in retrieving the source code corresponding to a specific release. Concurrent Versions System (CVS) is used as a source code repository in the majority of software projects. The basic idea behind CVS is that whenever a developer makes changes to the source, these changes are checked into the CVS repository. The repository holds the master copy of the code. It also contains details representing historical information about various files (ie revision history). The repository will be normally located on a networked environment somewhere. With CVS, one can obtain the current version of the code or any version committed in the entire history of the code. We will be able to identify these versions on a file-by-file basis. We can also retrieve differences between any two versions of the code.

The first thing that we need to do as far as CVS is concerned is to establish a repository. The repository holds the data from the CVS program itself, which consists of files, their source code and entire history. When we commit changes, the repository gets updated and when we check out code, it comes from the repository.
CVS is one program, but it can perform many different actions – such as updating, committing and diffing. So the user needs to specify which action needs to be performed when he invokes CVS.

Another feature of CVS is that it can enable remote access to the repository. It means that each and every developer can work on a separate machine, but each one of them will be able to commit and fetch their code (ie check out their code) from a single centralised repository. CVS handles network details completely and transparently. CVS can be set up in a number of ways to allow network access. One method is to use programs such as rsh or ssh. ssh is a popular way as it not only uses a secure public key authentication system, but also encrypts the data while in transit.

Before we invoke CVS for the first time, we need to set up the environment. This means that we need to set the value of a specific variable, CVSROOT. Assuming that we will have a directory ‘cvsroot’ in our home directory, we can set the value of this variable with the following command.

$ export CVSROOT=$HOME/cvsroot

It is best practice to add the above line to your ‘.profile’ file, such that it will be automatically set whenever you log in.

$ echo  $CVSROOT
/usr/home/cvsroot

The first line above tries to display the value of the variable that was set earlier, while the second line displays its value (where /usr/home is the HOME directory).
The next step is to log in to the CVS server. Thus the developer needs to have a valid set of user ID and password.
The most common method of accessing the CVS server is known as the ‘pserver access method’ (pserver stands for password-authenticated server).

$ cvs  -d pserver:john@mycvs.com:/usr/home/cvs login
CVS password:

In the above statements, the long path following the ‘-d’ option tells CVS to use the pserver access method, with the username john and on the server mycvs.com, having a CVS repository at /usr/home/cvs.

Contrary to popular belief, open source software isn’t written by a couple of disorganised hippies who live in San Jose in California. Many hundreds of thousands of people sit around using the internet to develop high-quality software. At the heart of all top-notch software there is a testing group. Without testing software, it is nothing. Reputations for programmers and multinationals are won or lost if the testing team do not do their job properly. In the world of open source programming you might also find more than a few amateur programmers – people who write software for fun in their spare time.

Beautiful Testing is something that any professional or amateur programmer should read. Leading professionals reveal how they improve software. Microsoft’s Alan Page, who knows a lot about large-scale test automation, shows off some of his best ideas. Scott Barber explains why performance testing needs to be a collaborative exercise – something that open source programmers are good at. With 23 essays written by 27 leading testers and developers, Beautiful Testing is one you should read if you are a software developer or tester. If you go to the O’Reilly website, you can browse the contents of the book. Well worth a look.
Richard Ibbotson

This article originally appeared in issue 84 of Linux User & Developer magazine.

Linux User & Developer, one of the nation’s favourite Linux and Open Source publications, is now part of the award winning Imagine Publishing family. Readers can subscribe and save more than 30% and receive our exclusive money back guarantee – click here to find out more.

Advisor:
Kunal Deo

Not more than two years ago, 3D graphics would only mean either something to a gamer or a CAD engineer. Now, 3D has entered into mainstream computing. It has essentially reinvented the way we use our desktops. It has not only made our desktop more beautiful but also more useful. In this article, we will talk about an open source solution that has brought 3D to every Linux desktop: Compiz.

Compiz is one of the first compositing window managers for Linux. It uses the hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to create impressive effects, speed and usefulness. In recent times, the Compiz project has undergone numerous changes. These changes have caused a little bit of confusion in the community. To clear those up, let’s look at exactly what has happened…

1. First was Compiz.
2. Beryl, another compositing window manager, started its life as a fork of Compiz.
3. After one year, Beryl was merged back with Compiz to make Compiz Fusion. Note that, at this time, Compiz and Compiz Fusion were different projects with their own set of goals.
4. Around the fourth quarter of 2008, two separate branches of Compiz were created: Compiz++ and NOMAD. Compiz++ aimed towards the separation of compositing and OpenGL layers of the window manager. NOMAD was geared towards remote desktop performance of Compiz.
5. In February 2009, Compiz, Compiz++, NOMAD and Compiz Fusion were merged into a single project with the name Compiz.

Installation
Each Compiz distribution has its own way of installing. Many still go by the name of Compiz Fusion, but will always install the latest package

System requirements
Regardless of which Compiz distribution you elect to use, it is important to have a hardware-accelerated graphics card installed in your system. For Nvidia- and
ATI-based graphics cards it is recommended to have the proprietary drivers rather than the open source ones, since proprietary drivers provide the best hardware-accelerated 3D support.

To find out if your system supports hardware-accelerated graphics, perform the following command…

$ glxinfo | grep direct
direct rendering: Yes

If the result given is ‘direct rendering: No’, then you will need to install the proper drivers for your graphics card. Intel graphics chipsets support 3D by default. For Nvidia drivers go here; for ATI drivers go here.

Installation on openSUSE
Installing Compiz on openSUSE is a fairly straightforward process, thanks to openSUSE’s one-click installer.
On openSUSE 11.2: go to the following link to start installing Compiz.
For KDE Desktop
For GNOME Desktop

Installation on Mandriva Linux
Mandriva Linux has its own way of installing Compiz. Open Mandriva Menu>Tools>System Tools>Configure Your Computer. Select Hardware under the Configure Graphics section, open ‘Configure 3D Desktop Effects’. Select Compiz Fusion on the next screen and click OK. This should install all the necessary packages except Simple-CCSM. Install this package using the package manager software.

Installation on Ubuntu Linux (or any other Linux)
Ubuntu installation is generic and can be applied to other Linux distributions as well. Just keep in mind that the package management commands would need to
be respective to whatever distribution you are using.

Perform the following command to install Compiz Fusion and plug-ins:

$ sudo apt-get install  compiz compizconfig-settings-manager  compiz-kde compiz-fusion-plugins-main compiz-fusion-plugins-extra  emerald librsvg2-common