Out of the box, Linux runs just fine for many uses. But if you find yourself needing to ferret out performance problems or tune the kernel for better performance, Linux has more than enough tools to measure and tweak system performance. In this guide, we'll take a look at five of the best utilities to measure system performance and tweak the Linux kernel.

You'll find many, many, many utilities for measuring and improving Linux system performance. The utilities discussed here are chosen because they're widely available, and provide a good scope functionality. Also, I chose to avoid tools that have too steep a learning curve. As an example, SystemTap is a bit more complex than should be covered in an overview article. I left out some of the more basic tools such as ps and top because most Linux users are exposed to them fairly early on. And I didn't try to tackle any application-specific tools.

This won't be the last word on system performance and administration on Linux.com, so don't worry. In future tutorials, I'll dive in a bit deeper with specific tools and tuning: but this should be a good starter kit for newer Linux admins.

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Last night a colleague of mine was giving me a lesson in accounting (as I am going to start rolling out Point Of Sale systems with him). The lesson was valuable and, in a word, confusing (accountants do have a language of their own). At one point in the lesson I brought up open source, and he nearly turned red saying, “Nothing is free.” That statement got me to thinking about free, open source, and open source projects. He is right - nothing is free. At some point, someone had to make some sort of investment into a project to bring it to life (be that investment money, time, labor, etc). This thought sparked another and led me to, are you ready…

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PIDA is the Python Integrated Development Application. It is an IDE (integrated development environment) written in Python and the GTK+ graphical toolkit. Pida is an IDE, but one that is slightly different from other IDEs. Rather than attempting to write a set of development tools of its own, Pida uses tools that the developer has available. In this regards Pida can be used as a framework for putting together your own bespoke IDE.

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Gli screencast stanno lentamente acquistando importanza per il prezioso ruolo svolto nel settore dell'e-learning. Uno screencast non è altro che una registrazione dell'output di uno schermo, quindi è un semplice video che mostra ciò che appare sullo schermo di colui che sta effettuando la registrazione.

In questo articolo facciamo la conoscenza di due software che in ambiente Linux ci permetteranno di creare degli screencast di ottima qualità.

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GNU Octave è un ambiente completo destinato alla risoluzione di problemi di calcolo numerico; è sviluppato da oltre 15 anni, una lunga gestazione che ha prodotto tre grandi versioni. Esso offre una compatibilità parziale con MATLAB, in particolare alcuni script funzionano perfettamente su entrambe le piattaforme; sono inoltre perfettamente supportati i sistemi operativi Windows, Mac e Linux. Esso è rilasciato con licenza GPL.

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