iotop is a console application for monitoring the I/O usage of processes on your system. It is especially handy for answering the question “Grrr, sloooowness, why is my disk churning so much?”
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iotop is available in Debian since Lenny and in Ubuntu (universe) since Intrepid.
Source: DebianTimes
Forty years ago this summer, a programmer sat down and knocked out in one month what would become one of the most important pieces of software ever created.
Computerworld.com has a nice article about the history and some prediction on the future of Unix.
Source: computerworld.com
Why do 66% of all IT projects fail, 20% go over time and budget ? With over 20 years of IT experience, Sander Hoogendoorn talks about project anti-patterns stereotyping them as Titanic projects, Golf course projects and many more.
You can see this talk on Parleys.com. Its about one hour and teach you how to fail a project. You may know some of the anti patterns. But it’s always good to be reminded about it.
Modern CPUs are great. They have all sorts of advanced power saving features, which is one of those nice cases where everyone can save money, gain performance and claim environmental credentials at the same time. Everyone’s a winner.
Well. Everyone’s a winner as long as your software doesn’t suck.
Matthew Garret talks about the current state of power saving abilities of modern CPU’s and how software is trying everything to make things worse.
Some people write software that lets you choose different power profiles depending on whether you’re on AC or battery. Typically, one of the choices lets you reduce the speed of your processor when you’re on battery. This is bad. It is wrong.
The people who implement these programs are dangerous. Do not listen to them. Do not endorse their product and/or newsletter. Do not allow your eldest child to engage in conjugal acts with them.
[…]
Failure to do so will result in me setting you on fire[4].
Source: Lwn.net
“We are completely rewriting the Windows operating system from the ground up,” he says. “Basically we took Microsoft’s crown jewel, that they’ve had billions of dollars to develop using tens of thousands of developers, and we, the open source community, have essentially re-implemented that. We are the scrappy underdogs. Here’s where the Hollywood music comes up.”
This is what White (the CEO of CodeWeavers) is telling about Wine.
Wine is a software application which aims to allow Unix-like computer operating systems on the x86 architecture to execute programs that were originally written for Microsoft Windows. Wine also provides a software library known as Winelib which developers can compile Windows applications against in order to port them to Unix-like systems.[1] (wikipedia)
The interviews goes on
So, in 2008, the 1.0 version will hit the streets and the timing could not be more perfect. White admits that not every Windows application will work flawlessly on Wine, but many a critical one for the enterprise has been specifically optimized. These include Microsoft Office, Lotus Notes, Microsoft Project and Visio, graphics applications like Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, Flash MX, and Adobe Photoshop. Several Linux distros ship with Wine, too, White says.
As I’m using Wine now and then for windows programs (for example to test webpages with Internet Explorer on linux) I know how helpful wine can be.
Give it a try!
Source: Lwn.net
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