Red Hat Continues Feature Expansion with RHEL 5.2
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

As is traditional with Enterprise Linux releases from Red Hat, the latest RHEL 5.2 update that began shipping last week has a bunch of patches to make it work better on recently announced processors and related I/O peripherals. The update, which went into beta in March, also has the usual refresh of the open source stack for Linux as well as bug fixes and security patches. Significantly, the updated Linux kernel also includes support for more scalable processor clusters, for both physical machines and virtual machines. READ MORE >

Novell Delivers Service Pack 2 for SUSE Linux
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Commercial Linux distributor Novell got Service Pack 2 for its SUSE Linux variant of the popular open source operating system out the door just before the holiday and just as rival Red Hat launched its own 5.2 release of its Enterprise Linux distribution. Once again, Novell is pushing the envelope, offering more scalability for servers and a more recent update of the Xen hypervisor compared to the RHEL alternative. READ MORE >

The Server Biz Enjoys the X64 Upgrade Cycle in Q1
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

There is a lot of vintage server iron out there in the world, and most of it could only be classified as energy efficient if the characterization was being done by a pathological liar. The same holds true for a lot of RISC/Unix iron. And with energy costs rising, companies wanting to scale their applications without paying for new data centers, and the desire to have systems that can better exploit virtualization, server makers enjoyed a pretty good first quarter for shipments and sales from January through March, according to statistics compiled by Gartner. READ MORE >

As I See It: The Programmer as Artist
by Victor Rozek

It has been variously described as art, science, a teachable skill, a creative process, and an exercise in logic. And because it can boast of having all those properties, the nature of programming remains as elusive as good government. The challenge in pinning down the essence of programming is that no single descriptor is exact or sufficient. Almost anything you can say about it elicits a 'yes, but. . .' reaction. READ MORE >