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LinuxCon 2013 Europe was this week... and videos from it have started being published. Here's a video with our favorite Linux leader about the future of the Linux kernel. Enjoy!

Oh, and here is the Kernel Developer Panel

I saw this mentioned on the Fedora Planet. Andy Grover gives a presentation on The Linux Way and how while it is based on The Unix Way, it has been updated for a new era. The real content starts about 4 minutes into it. Enjoy!

KVM has supported USB for some time... although I hadn't had a reason to try USB inside of a KVM virtual machine until now. I got a hand-me-down USB webcam. I plug the webcam into any of my desktop systems and it works great... but can I use it in a KVM virtual machine? Can I use my webcam with any KVM virtual machine even if the virtual machine isn't running on the same physical machine where the webcam is plugged in? It turns out that the answers are all yes... thanks to USB support being added to qemu and the SPICE remoting protocol and client applications.

Here is my scenerio. I have a rack mount server that I run a number of KVM virtual machines on. Some of the virtual machines are setup as servers and don't run any graphical environment whereas others are desktop virtual machines with graphical environments. I have a physical desktop system where I run a SPICE client application that allows me to graphically connect to the desktop VMs. The SPICE remoting protocol does a good job of giving me a good user experience complete with bi-directional sound... which means I can both play back sound and I can create new sound with a sound input like a microphone. I found a recipe for using USB devices with KVM:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsbNetworkRedirection

After following those instructions I was able to record the following video with the USB webcam and microphone (regular audio jack) plugged into my physical desktop but used within the remote KVM virtual machine. As you can hear, the sound is a bit weird and I'm not sure why that is but it seems to work.

Direct link, right-click save as:
usb-webcam-inside-kvm-vm-20121112.webm (6.2 MB)

If you have been paying any attention to the development work going on with Fedora 18, you're probably aware that they have been running into repeated delays because of a complete rewrite of the anaconda installer. I've been working on remixing Fedora 18 and generally it is in fantastic shape with the exception of a few pieces of the installer that I'll not mention now. Below is a video of me booting the latest build, installing it, doing a firstboot, and then showing off some of the new desktops.

I do the install on top of an existing KVM virtual machine so that's why I nuke the partitions that were already there. The desktops shown are Mate, GNOME 3, and Cinnamon. Also included but not shown are KDE, LXDE, XFCE, openbox and a few other window managers. The latest Firefox, Flash plugin-in, and Google Chrome are included along with several of the multimedia apps and codecs provided by rpmfusion.

There is no sound. I guess I could have put some Euro-synth-pop in there but nooooo....

Direct link, right-click save as:
montanalinux-f18-beta-boot-install-run.webm (25.7 MB)

Here's a video made by the Linux Foundation that does a good job of explaining what markets Linux is dominating in and how it is developed. Enjoy:

I was asked to put together a presentation on Virtualization... and wasn't quite sure what the audience would want... so I put together a basic introduction that I can easily improvise on as the audience asks questions.

I designed the slides using Prezi which is a freemium web-based presentation site. It has lots of motion so watch out... but I did keep it rather simple - no pictures nor embedded videos. :)

virtualization-prezi.webm (12.7 MB)

After looking around for a good introduction video to GNOME 3 I found this one. It is the best one I've found so far. Unfortunately it seems to only be available in flash format. Since Fedora 15 was one of the first distros to ship GNOME 3, it also covers Fedora some. Enjoy.

Here's a video for all of you Ubuntu fans... Mark Shuttleworth's Keynote from the Ubuntu Developer Summit.

Sorry it is Flash-based. If anyone can give me a link to an alternative format or something I can download and convert, I'll repost.

I first blogged about webm the day Google released it. It has taken some time but now I have full support for webm in my preferred Linux desktop distro (Fedora 13). I've been doing some testing and I have to say I'm impressed.

Why even care about webm? Because I prefer to use royalty-free file formats that are based on open standards and free / open source software. Any other questions? :)

I'll cover both webm playback and encoding.

Linux Server Hardening Tips and Techniques by Gary Smith.