Video tour: Bluefish editor

Video tour: Bluefish editor

Bluefish is a GUI-based text and code editor that runs on "most (maybe all?) POSIX compatible operating systems including Linux, FreeBSD, Ma cOS X, OpenBSD, and Solaris." It has an impressive feature list, and is both lightweight and speedy. It is not currently under heavy development primarily because it is a mature program that already does exactly what it is supposed to do with no fuss or complaint.



Financial Crisis Offers Opportunity for Linux, Open Source

Financial Crisis Offers Opportunity for Linux, Open Source

Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundations says technologies like Linux and open source software can help enterprises cut costs during tough economic times. Zemlin says users should look to open source and Linux, systems management tools, and virtualization technology to keep budgets in line.
- In lean times look for technologies such as Linux and open source to do well. The current financial crisis may just be one of those times. Well, you might expect to hear that from the leader of one of the most influential Linux organizations around. But in an interview with eWEEK, Jim Zemlin, execu...



Keep tabs on your finances with HomeBank

Keep tabs on your finances with HomeBank

"Where does all my money go?" If you want to know the exact answer to that question, you need HomeBank, a personal finance manager that can help you keep track of your income and expenses with consummate ease.



Reducing Boot Time On a General Linux Distro

Reducing Boot Time On a General Linux Distro

Linzer writes "In this blog entry, Fred Crozat (head of Mandriva's engineering team in France) explains in great detail how his team has been detecting and getting rid of bottlenecks in the boot process, from the early stages to loading the desktop environment, thus decreasing overall boot time. An informative tour of the nuts and bolts of the boot process and how they can be tinkered with: initrd, initscripts, udev, modprobe calls. The basic tool they use for performance analysis is bootchart, which produces a map of process information and resource utilization during boot. The final trick: preloading desktop environment files while waiting for the user to type her password."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



The Perfect Desktop - gOS 3.0 Gadgets

The Perfect Desktop - gOS 3.0 Gadgets

The Perfect Desktop - gOS 3.0 Gadgets

This tutorial shows how you can set up a gOS 3.0 Gadgets desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge. gOS is a lightweight Linux distribution, based on Ubuntu 8.04, that comes with Google Apps and some other Web 2.0 applications; gOS 3.0 Gadgets uses the GNOME desktop.



x2x is a software alternative to a KVM switch

x2x is a software alternative to a KVM switch

Unless you have fully embraced the virtualization movement, you probably have more than one machine in your home or office, particularly if you run more than one operating system, and you probably have more than one keyboard and mouse on you desk. If you would like to regain some desk space without having to purchase a KVM switch, x2x may be the solution. Simply put, x2x takes advantage of the X Window System's ability to run a display over a TCP/IP network. In this case, you are not running a display as much as you are taking charge of another display's mouse and keyboard.



Centralized Backup Server With Amanda On CentOS

Centralized Backup Server With Amanda On CentOS

Centralized Backup Server With Amanda On CentOS

This document describes how to set up a centralized network backup with Amanda. We will use virtual tape to store the backup.



Setting up your own certificate authority with gnoMint

Setting up your own certificate authority with gnoMint

gnoMint is a desktop application that lets you easily manage your own certificate authority (CA). Many secure communications technologies use digital certificates to ensure that the party or service they are connecting with is not an impostor. For many people, the main exposure to digital certificates comes when they visit an HTTPS Web site and see a certificate to validate that they have contacted the right Web server.




Tools for editing vector graphics in GNU/Linux

Tools for editing vector graphics in GNU/Linux

Over the last decade, vector graphics have gone from being a revolutionary format to a standard method of rendering computer images -- so much so that they are standard in the KDE 4 desktops. This popularity is based on the fact that, because they represent images as mathematical equations -- usually in SVG format -- vector graphics open faster, render better on screen, and can be resized more readily than raster graphics, in which an image is created pixel by pixel. Free software includes a number of options for working with vector graphics, including several simple ones: OpenOffice.org's Draw, KOffice's Karbon14, and Inkscape, which is currently the premier vector graphic editor in free software.



Simplify email with Smail

Simplify email with Smail

A mail transport agent (MTA) provides the "plumbing" for your email system by taking mail from a client application such as Evolution or Mozilla Thunderbird and routing it to the correct location on the right machine. There are plenty of good MTAs, such as Postfix, Sendmail, and qmail, but these popular mail servers require a large amount of configuration, and may be overkill for users who merely want to set up an MTA to test a Web development project or need to move mail around locally. Smail is a better alternative for these scenarios because it generally requires no configuration, and its memory footprint is less than the more fully featured MTAs.




Apple’s Darwin Streaming Server On Centos 5.2

Apple's Darwin Streaming Server On Centos 5.2

Apple's Darwin Streaming Server On Centos 5.2

This tutorial will run you through the installation, configuration and preparation of media for Apple's Darwin QuickTime Streaming Server on Centos/RHEL 5.2. Darwin QuickTime Streaming Server is capable of serving H.264 and mpeg4 file formats via the RTP/RTSP streaming protocols.




New GNOME 2.24 is an incremental improvement

New GNOME 2.24 is an incremental improvement

Last week marked the release of GNOME 2.24. Those who already use GNOME will appreciate the new additions, but there's nothing compelling enough in the new version to convince fans of other desktop environments to make a switch.