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Thursday, April 12, 2012

Kubuntu Linux Gets New Sugar Daddy

Kubuntu — the version of Ubuntu Linux that uses the KDE desktop interface rather than the standard Unity desktop — has a new sponsor.
Open source outfit Blue Systems will take over the project after Ubuntu sponsor Canonical said it would no longer pay for the development work on Kubuntu. Open source projects such as Kubuntu and Ubuntu typically require ongoing funding from for-profit ventures.
“Canonical needs to make money, and after dropping support for Gnome, support for KDE couldn’t be far behind,” read a blog post from Jonathan Riddell, lead developer for Kubuntu, referring to the two desktop interfaces dropped from the Ubuntu project. “Then I got e-mails from companies, governments, and individuals saying they depend on it, use it every day for themselves, their clients and their families. It turns out Kubuntu is very popular and important, people really use this KDE stuff I’ve been working on for the last decade.”
Riddell said that with the new-found sponsorship, Kubuntu would soon branch out into ARM chips, the low-power processors that power many smartphones and tablets. He even hinted that Kubuntu could be transformed into a server operating system.
“With this new sponsorship we will have the independence to give the project new wings and take the excellent KDE Software to new audiences,” read a statement from Riddell on the official Kubuntu website. Blue Systems sponsors other open source projects such as NetRunner and Linux Mint.
The name Kubuntu derives from the Zambian language Bemba and translates roughly to “towards humanity.”

Credits:http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/04/kubuntu-blue-systems/

Cloud Foundry aiming to be 'the Linux of the cloud'

 Credits : http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/12/cloud_foundry_linux/

Cloud Foundry aiming to be 'the Linux of the cloud'

One year in and VMware adds new features

Steve Herrod, CTO of VMware, has high ambitions for the company's app development platform Cloud Foundry, saying he wants it to be the Linux of the cloud.
Speaking at the one year anniversary of the Cloud Foundry rollout, Herrod said that the company was betting on open source and open cloud management as the future of the sector, and introduced a new range of features designed to make the platform much more scalable and easier to use on a variety of platforms.
"We really are aspiring for this to be the Linux of the cloud," he said. While VMware is continuing to add to the Cloud Foundry code base, he reported that the majority of code for the platform was contributed by third parties.
VMware was adding a major part of the code base with BOSH components that enabled large scale deployment of the system over multiple cloud vendors. The new code would take Cloud Foundry into the large scale deployment field he promised, without tying the code to a particular vendor.
"This is not a collection of shell scripts or pile of Perl," said Mark Lucovsky, VP of engineering at VMware. "It's built for large scale clusters using hundreds of VMs and useful for small multi-node and tier clusters."
VMware was also speeding up the process for testing and deploying code on Cloud Foundry Lucovsky explained. The testing procedures had been streamlined to allow for better code checking and faster deployment. While VMware was still contributing code, it had been outpaced by third parties developing their own forks, he said.