News: Linux Top 3: Sputnik, spherical cow and secure boot

Every few years, it seems as though yet another hardware vendor is your hand once more to construction and release of Linux hardware.

The last-in is laptop Dell Sputnik, aka Dell XPS 13 ' inch developer edition. The Sputnik of Dell uses Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (here not 12.10). A meaty beast with a CPU of Intel is i7, 8 GB of RAM and a 256 GB SSD.

It goes beyond having only Ubuntu Linux installed on higher end hardware Dell, Dell has also included a couple of community projects in Sputnik. Profile tool provides easy access to projects from github, allowing users to easily setup development environments.

The second tool is the Launcher of the cloud. According to Dell, "cloud Launcher allows you to create 'microclouds' on your laptop, simulating an environment to scale, and then implement that environment without problems to the cloud".

The price for all this goodness of hardware $1,449 for Linux.

Dell and Red Hat are no stranger, though not as part of the Sputnik project.

Red Hat Fedora community was busy week pass pushing out of the beta of Fedora 18 much delayed, also known as the spherical cow. The beta version of Fedora 18 includes a long list of new features that start at the beginning of the installation.

A new OS offline update capacity means that, ".."updates are downloaded in the background and the user will be informed about available updates once they are really ready to be installed.

GNOME desktop users also get a desk return with matte, a fork of Gnome 2.x original project and alternative to Gnome 3/Shell by default.

The final version of Fedora 18 is set for January 08, 2013

One of the elements that did not land in the Beta of Fedora 18 is a solution for Secure Boot UEFI. Secure boot problem is one of critical importance for the Linux desktop and who could now finally have a real solution.

Microsoft hardware certification process window 8 involves the use of secure boot UEFI which needs to be signed to allow an operating system to run. Former Red Hat Mat Garrett software engineer has been working on a solution for nearly a year and the first workable version is now available.

The Linux Foundation is also working on a solution, which has yet to be released.

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the network of edge of business IT, the network for technology professionals to follow on Twitter @TechJournalist.

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