Compute-intensive workflows are the environments in which the newly developed JMR SiloStor NVMe family of SSD drives is designed to show its colors. Ideal for HPC, data centers, genome research, content creation, CGI/animation, codec processing and gaming, among others, the SiloStor drive family comes in three NVMe/PCIe configurations: single-drive module, x4 PCIe connectivity in 512GB/1TB/2TB capacities; dual-drive, x8 connectivity in 1TB/2TB/4TB capacities; and quad-drive module, x8 connectivity, available in 2TB/4TB/8TB capacities. The dual- and quad-drive cards incorporate a PCIe switch, and the drives can be striped (on a single card) for additional performance. All SiloStor designs incorporate active heatsink coolers on the drive modules themselves, maintaining low operating temperatures even during intensive sequential write operations. Key performance metrics include <1 mS average access time of <1 mS, 2 million hours MTBF, 1,200 TBW minimum endurance, 90,000/70,000 IOPS random 4K read/write speed and 4,000/3,000 MB/sequential read/write speed.
Promising the world's best office experience for the Linux community, WPS Software presents WPS Office 2016 for Linux: a high-performing yet considerably more affordable alternative to Microsoft Office that is fully compatible with and comparable to the constituent PowerPoint, Excel and Word applications. The WPS Office suite, with more than 1.2 billion installs across all platforms, is a complete office suite, including Writer, Presentation, Spreadsheets and a built-in PDF reader. Linux, Windows, Android and iOS versions are available. WPS Office 2016 for Linux offers enhancements for the international Linux user community including remote file sharing, added search functionality, updated WPS export to PDF hyperlinks and improved IO operations for improved WPS file access speed. Compatibility with Microsoft Office document formats includes PPT, DOC, DOCX, XLS and XLSX. The Linux edition of WPS Office is compatible with Fedora, CentOS, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Mint, Knoppix and other platforms, supporting both 32- and 64-bit computing environments. The latest update is made possible with the support of the WPS Office Linux community.
At last abandoning WINE and launching native Linux support, TeamViewer announced the availability of a new preview version of its Linux Host with native Linux support. The new release of TeamViewer, a solution for remote support, remote access and online meetings, addresses additional critical system administrator requirements, including support of Wake-On-LAN, assignment of TeamViewer accounts via GUI and additional regulation capabilities. Wake-On-LAN support givers users the power to wake up Linux devices that are in standby mode and connected to a power supply. Meanwhile, account assignment via GUI on the TeamViewer client permits account owners to share their contacts with each other to support the wider team as well as maintain devices around the clock 24/7. Finally, a “Confirm all” setting lets users ensure that all actions must be directly confirmed from that device, which improves overall security. The TeamViewer Linux Host requires at least Qt 5.2, Linux Kernel 2.6.27 and GLIBC 2.17.
The motto “open to anything” underpins Nativ's development philosophy on all of its audio solutions, including its new Nativ Vita, “the world's first High-Resolution Music Player” and touchscreen control center that is designed to function as the central access point for one's entire music collection. This philosophy is evident in Nativ Vita's Linux and open-source internals, offering advantages like support for virtually any music service—even lesser-known and regional services like Jango Radio, KKBox and Paradise Radio—and extensibility far beyond pure audio applications. Naturally, Nativ Vita supports mainstream music services like Apple Music, SoundCloud, Vevo, Spotify, TIDAL, Pandora and Amazon Music, among others. Nativ Vita can store up to 4TB of music on its internal hard disk drives or SSDs and can access remote files on a PC, NAS or smartphone. Wireless streaming to multi-room speaker systems is achieved utilizing popular solutions like SONOS and Bluesound and to high-end headphones via Bluetooth aptX. A high-end digital output stage with myriad outputs ranging from AES/EBU to USB Audio Class 2.0 connect the Vita to an amplifier or USB DAC for best-in-class sound performance.
The Linux Foundation Certified Engineer (LFCE) certification is for administrators seeking to increase their breadth and depth of knowledge beyond the Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator (LFCS) level. Professionals among us striving for this greater expertise have at their disposal a new LFCE-oriented educational resource, Sander van Vugt's Linux Foundation Certified Engineer (LFCE) Video Course, featuring ten hours of comprehensive video instruction. Containing everything that exam candidates require to prepare for and pass the LFCE exam, this comprehensive training includes whiteboard concept teaching to illustrate difficult concepts, live CLI instruction to demonstrate Linux in action, screencast teaching, hands-on labs, solution videos and practice exam walk-throughs. Author van Vugt, with his 20+ years of practical Linux teaching experience, covers the LFCE material in five modules: Managing Networking, Managing File Services, Managing Web Services, Managing Mail Services and Managing Infrastructure Services. Publisher Pearson IT Certification adds that the resource is also appropriate for engineers or administrators who want to develop their Linux skills or write software for Linux.
Author Zed A. Shaw makes a simple promise in his Hard Way series of books from publisher Addison-Wesley Professional: “It'll be hard at first. But soon, you'll just get it—and that will feel great!” Shaw's latest book in the series is called Learn Python 3 the Hard Way: A Very Simple Introduction to the Terrifyingly Beautiful World of Computers and Code. In the book, readers learn Python by working through 52 “brilliantly crafted exercises” in a purposefully proscribed manner. After reading the exercise, readers type the code precisely—with no copying and pasting! Then readers fix their mistakes and watch the program run. The process teaches essentials of how a computer works, what good programs look like, and how to read, write and think about computer code. Shaw teaches even more in 5+ hours of video where he shows readers how to break, fix and debug code—live, as he's doing the exercises. Lessons cover topics from installing a complete Python environment to working with code, basic mathematics, variables, looping and logic, object-oriented programming, Python packaging, automated testing and much more. Readers bring the discipline, commitment and persistence to Shaw's formula, and the output will be a Python programmer!
In the fabric-embedded sensors space, all controllers need to be accurate and fast. “If latency is more than 6–8 milliseconds, you are out of the band”, cautions BeBop Sensors Inc., maker of the new Marcel Modular Data Glove solution for virtual and augmented reality OEMs. Utilizing BeBop's patented fabric sensor technology and designed for accurate, real-time control and navigation in these environments, the BeBop Data Gloves are available to OEMs in 5, 10 and 14 sensor versions. They provide haptic—that is, kinesthetic—feedback and sense knuckle and abduction motion of the human hand. BeBop's basic configuration provides high-speed sensor processing as well as a 6 or 9 degrees-of-freedom inertial measurement unit that measures acceleration and angular rate. Fast, deterministic sensing provides sub-frame latency at 120Hz for real-time control of games and environments. Mezzanine boards can be added to the printed circuit board assembly stack to add functionality, such as translation and haptic electronics. A haptic audio creation kit is available, enabling content creators to customize and add to the haptic library.
Instead of relying on servers concentrated in one large data center, the new Kubermesh is designed to simplify data-center architectures for smart factories by elegantly and cost effectively leveraging a distributed network of computing nodes spread across the enterprise. Developed by Ocado Technology, a division of Ocado (the world's largest online-only supermarket), the Kubermesh package uses container-based technology and the Kubernetes system to implement an on-premises private cloud architecture in which desktop computers can be configured as nodes supporting the compute or storage functionality typically delivered by high-performance servers in a data center. Ocado Technology observes that Kubermesh-based nodes are fault-tolerant, secure, flexible and designed to process the generous amounts of real-time data generated in smart factories. By distributing data-center functionality into a mesh network of nodes, Kubermesh alleviates the need for a dedicated data center and complex networking infrastructure, resulting in significant reductions in not just energy consumption but also the capital and significant operational expenditures that come with maintaining in-house high-performance servers. With Kubermesh, Ocado Technology hopes for internal gains through unlocking the potential of container technology and external gains as the Open Source community deploys and develops Kubermesh in new and exciting ways.
