Every filesystem provide for commonplace attributes like read, write, execute, access and modification time etc. However, when if comes to a filesystem, every measure should be taken so that it can be extended in future. Filesystems like ext2, ext3, ext4, XFS, JFS and reiserfs allow extended attributes which can be used to add tags to files as name-value pairs. This is by design and different from tagging in TMSU. Probably Tracker takes the benefit of this feature. Continue reading Extended attributes & filesystems
Category: TECHNICAL
iPXE: open source PXE alternative
PXE (Preboot eXecution Environment) is an Intel specification to boot from the network after BIOS POST. It comes embedded in the firmware of network cards in most desktop/server class devices available in the market today. When booted in the network mode, PXE code executes and sends out a DHCP request packet. The DHCP server in the LAN responds and the device gets an IP. The DHCP (or ProxyDHCP) also points at the next server from where the device can download the next boot file over TFTP. Continue reading iPXE: open source PXE alternative
Brotli: open source compression from Google
It’s not the first time Google is experimenting with compression algorithms. Around 2 years ago they announced Zopfli which got incorporated into compression solutions like PNG optimizers and web content preprocessing. Google also came up with SPDY which uses gzip and deflate compressed headers, though SPDY didn’t get such wide acceptance and is superseded by HTTP2. Continue reading Brotli: open source compression from Google
Mycroft: Linux AI
If you are a fan of Sherlock Holmes you already know who Mycroft Holmes is. The Mycroft we will discuss in this article is no less fascinating. It is a software based artificial intelligence that understands natural language. Continue reading Mycroft: Linux AI
zram: speed up old computers
Modern devices have GBs of RAM and swapping is not very common without running lots of applications together. But what if you have a older device with 512MB or less RAM? You’ll see a lot of data being swapped in and out of your hard disk swap partition. Hard disks are much slower than RAM and thus swapping enables you to use virtual memory at the cost of performance. Continue reading zram: speed up old computers
Wrong passwords take longer to verify
Did you ever notice that when you enter a wrong login password to your system, it takes longer to verify? Doesn’t it seem an anomaly because verifying a correct password would mean all the characters match while in case of a wrong password only in the worst case the last character entered would fail to match, other attempts should fail earlier? Continue reading Wrong passwords take longer to verify
Shashlik: run Android apps on KDE
If the work Shashlik sounds similar to Dalvik (Android’s port of JVM) it’s not mere coincidence. The KDE team is actually working on something that will excite Android users: run Andoid apps natively on the Linux desktop environment. Continue reading Shashlik: run Android apps on KDE
ext4 encryption support
The idea of adding encryption support natively to ext4 originated in Google for the Android platform. However, ext4 arguably being the most popular Linux filesystem today, the patch found its right place in the Linux kernel too. Continue reading ext4 encryption support
Nand2Tetris: build a computer from scratch
A challenging goal for a Computer Science student or a hobbyist would be to learn to build a computer on his own. However, it’s a vast paradigm and Computer Science courses or online tutorials do not often cover everything in a single go. Continue reading Nand2Tetris: build a computer from scratch
s2n: TLS from Amazon
s2n (signal to noise) is a new TLS security protocol implementation announced by Amazon yesterday. It’s home-grown by Amazon as an alternative to OpenSSL’s TLS implementation. Amazon Web Services is a product with high security requirements and the recent series of vulnerability discoveries in OpenSSL was the driving factor behind developing s2n. Continue reading s2n: TLS from Amazon
