GigaTux has written a technical paper detailing how we have worked with the Turnkey Linux team to enable this to work with the DTC control panel, enabling automatic installations of these appliances. Essentially, this means you can set up a VPS running MySQL, Django or a Torrent server (to name a few) within a few mintes.

See the article on the technical site.

Turnkey Linux comprises a set of free, Ubuntu-based software appliances that are primarily available for server-type usage scenarios, such as setting up database, web, forum, wiki and photo gallery servers. Each appliance is preconfigured to work out of the box, with ease of use being the primary goal behind the Turnkey Linux project.

This is extremely useful in itself, but if you wanted to experiment with these appliances, potentially to evaluate or otherwise test them, it would be great if you could perform installations with the absolute minimum of effort.

GigaTux is proud to announce that its new server, a replacement for our first server, has been built and is now in action with five live VPS customers. This has been in testing since the end of November 2009 and is proving to be an incredibly reliable server with amazing performance (e.g. hard drive speeds well in excess of 200MB/sec!)

The specifications of this server are as follows:

• 1 x Intel Xeon E5520 (similar to a Core i7 920) - a second CPU will be added at a later date.
• 12GB DDR3 ECC RAM - upgradable to 48GB
• 4 x 1.5TB hard drives in RAID 10
• Space for 2 x 2.5" hard drives which may be SSDs in the future

We are running Debian Lenny with an extremely reliable OpenSUSE kernel that supports Xen dom0.

Now that the new server is in place and performing as expected, GigaTux has updated all prices on its VPS packages offering huge discounts. Please check out our VPS page for more information.

Link: http://www.gigatux.com/press/turnkey-linux-2009-10.php

Following the recent announcement from the Turnkey Linux team detailing the availability of new Ubuntu-based appliances, GigaTux have prepared these appliances for use on their Virtual Private Server packages. Automatic installs and reinstalls of any Turnkey Operating System, including all 25 new appliances, can be performed through the GigaTux DTC web interface, and basic support is provided.

The new appliances enable users to easily deploy primarily web-based applications within an entire Linux kernel and Ubuntu-based package set. Once a distribution is chosen within the control panel, the install is fully completed within a few minutes and ready to be customised. This enables a rapid deployment of a tested setup, with full update and security support provided by the Turnkey Linux and Ubuntu package maintainers.

The following new Turnkey Linux appliances are immediately available for automatic install:

• Turnkey Linux Bugzilla
• Turnkey Linux Deki
• Turnkey Linux DokuWiki
• Turnkey Linux Domain Controller
• Turnkey Linux Amazon EC2 SDK Appliance
• Turnkey Linux ejabberd
• Turnkey Linux File Server
• Turnkey Linux Gallery
• Turnkey Linux Google App Engine SDK
• Turnkey Linux Mantis
• Turnkey Linux MoinMoin
• Turnkey Linux Moodle
• Turnkey Linux MoveableType
• Turnkey Linux Open Bravo
• Turnkey Linux OTRS
• Turnkey Linux phpBB
• Turnkey Linux ProjectPier
• Turnkey Linux Redmine
• Turnkey Linux Revision Control
• Turnkey Linux Roundup
• Turnkey Linux Symfony
• Turnkey Linux Torrent Server
• Turnkey Linux Trac
• Turnkey Linux Tracks (Getting Things Done)
• Turnkey Linux TWiki
• Turnkey Linux Zimbra

Please see the full press release for further information.

Link: http://ho.io/

GigaTux is proud to launch its own URL shortening service that can be used by all users for any purpose. The idea behind these is that you convert a long URL, e.g. https://www.gigatux.com/distro.php?distro=turnkey into a short version like http://ho.io/g which will automatically take you to the original URL.

As we're primarily a hosting company, we have the advantage that this service does not significantly drain our resources, so can commit to it being available pretty much as long as the Internet is around!

GigaTux has been running a tor server on one of its reliable VPS products for quite some time now, using unused bandwidth on the GigaTux servers to support anonymised Internet traffic.

We are happy to announce that we have now contributed 15 terabytes of bandwidth from the primary GigaTux tor node. Our node name is imaginatively called 'gigatux'.

Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security known as traffic analysis.

Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. Tor works with many of your existing applications, including web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, and other applications based on the TCP protocol.

Hundreds of thousands of people around the world use Tor for a wide variety of reasons: journalists and bloggers, human rights workers, law enforcement officers, soldiers, corporations, citizens of repressive regimes, and just ordinary citizens. See the Who Uses Tor? page for examples of typical Tor users. See the overview page for a more detailed explanation of what Tor does, and why this diversity of users is important.