If you want to keep tabs on your deadlines, you don't need a fancy project management application -- often, a simple spreadsheet can do the job. To see how, let's create a spreadsheet that tracks task deadlines, shows the current status of each task, and highlights scheduling conflicts. In the process we'll learn a few useful Calc techniques.
 |
The Perfect Server - Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (Ubuntu 8.10)
This tutorial shows how to set up an Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (Ubuntu 8.10) server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters: Apache web server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH and TLS, BIND DNS server, Proftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Courier POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc.
In the early days of desktop virtualization, there were few low-priced alternatives to VMware Workstation that didn't involve a steep learning curve. Even the freely available VirtualBox didn't affect Workstation's market domination and instead faced competition from the newly rebranded VMware GSX server, which was offered for free as VMware Server. Despite being an entry-level server virtualization product, many people used VMware Server on the desktop. Taking that into consideration, you have to look at the recently released VMware Server 2, from two angles -- as an entry-level server virtualization platform and as an alternative to desktop virtualization products like VirtualBox. With its performance and other improvements, it does enough to keep existing customers happy, but probably not enough to get others to switch.
 |
How To Install Intel Pro Wireless 3945 On CentOS Linux
In this tutorial, I will guide you through the necessary steps to install ipw3945 wireless adapter on a CentOS / RHEL based distribution.It is written for CentOS 5.2. However, it might work on other CentOS 5.x based distributions as well.
Sun's recently released VirtualBox 2 is one of the best virtualization applications for desktop users. It's available in two wallet-friendly flavors, with a few extra features in the closed-source variant. The software sports a nice graphical user interface, but few users realize that it can also be completely controlled via a powerful command-line interface.
Does your OS or distro choice change with the weather? How fickle are you when it comes to operating systems or flavors of Linux? Take the poll. by Selena Frye
cyberpead writes "With GCC 4 comes a new optimization framework (and new intermediate code representation), new target and language support, and a variety of new attributes and options. Get to know the major new features and their benefits in this article."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
|
How To Upgrade Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) To 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) (Desktop & Server)
Today the new Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) has been released. This guide shows how you can upgrade your Ubuntu 8.04 desktop and server installations to Ubuntu 8.10.
eldavojohn writes "Mark Shuttleworth, the millionaire bankroller who keeps Ubuntu going strong, has revealed 'Canonical is not cash-flow positive' just as version 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) of the popular Linux distribution is released today. In a call, he said he 'had no objection' in funding Canonical for another three to five years. He did say, however, that if they concentrated on the server edition of Ubuntu that they could be profitable in two years."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Many people use SSH to log in to remote machines, copy files around, and perform general system administration. If you want to increase your productivity with SSH, you can try a tool that lets you run commands on more than one remote machine at the same time. Parallel ssh, Cluster SSH, and ClusterIt let you specify commands in a single terminal window and send them to a collection of remote machines where they can be executed.
Yesterday we took a look at BashDiff, a patch for the bash shell that adds new capabilities. We've already looked at some of the additions that BashDiff makes to bash's commands and string parsing abilities. Today we'll look at modifying positional parameters, parsing XML, talking to ISAM and relational databases, creating GTK+2 GUIs, and a few other tricks and issues.
|
Ubuntu: Using apt-p2p For Faster Upgrades From Hardy To Intrepid
ernest has today published on TorrentFreak a great howto on how to lessen the burden of the Canonical Servers for the upgrade to the new stable release of Ubuntu 8.10 - Intrepid Ibex. With his permission I publish this howto here also.
Five of the top 10 most downloaded distributions on Distrowatch use the Debian package system. It has developed a rich infrastructure of utilities -- not just the core commands apt-get and dpkg, but also such less well-known commands as apt-cache, apt-spy, and apt-listbugs. In addition, an array of other scripts, some mashups of existing utilities, and some original, are regularly available on sites like openDesktop.org. Such scripts help to streamline the process of keeping a Debian-based package system in working order, and provide information to help you make better decisions about software installation.
 |
Automatic And Up-To-Date Fedora 9 Installations With Kickstart And Novi
Kickstart allows you to do automatic Fedora/RedHat/CentOS installations (i.e., you do not have to sit in front of the computer and answer the questions of the installer). This is useful and time-saving if you have to deploy tens or hundreds of similar systems (e.g. workstations). Kickstart reads the installation settings from a Kickstart configuration file. The problem with Kickstart is that it usually uses the distribution's packages from the time the distribution was released, i.e., it does not consider updates which means you would have to update each system manually after the Kickstart installation. This guide explains how you can do up-to-date Kickstart installations with the help of a tool called novi.
New Linux users may be content with automatic updates and the package information shown by desktop tools, but more experienced users are generally more cautious and demanding. Experienced users, for instance, may want to assess the risk of an upgrade by studying its dependencies before they begin, or to overcome a package conflict by using versions from an older repository. Because of Debian's long history of providing for advanced users, this sort of information is available from several different sources -- from the apt-cache command, from distribution Web sites, and, in Ubuntu, with the new Ubuntu Simple Package Crawler. Unfortunately, no single source has all the features you are likely to want.
ThousandStars writes "According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft has been making a concerted effort to promote Windows in Africa, pushing Windows over Linux in very poor countries that haven't been locked into a single operating system. From the article: 'To that end, it has established a presence in 13 countries, donated Windows for thousands of school computers, and funded programs for entrepreneurs and the young. It also has used aggressive business tactics, some aimed at its biggest threat in the region: Linux ...'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 |
Installing ISP-fw (Firewall) On Linux
ISP-fW is a firewall script that provides port forwarding, packet filtering, stateful packet inspection, port redirection, masquerading, SNAT/ DNAT, TOS, and never the last it generates htb rules for bandwidth management. With ISP-fw, you can turn a PC into a gateway with shaping capabilities.
Burning discs reliably ceased to be an area of concern for Linux a long time ago, thanks to tools such as K3b and GnomeBaker. Another tool, AcetoneISO2, aims to be the Swiss army knife at managing disc images. This utility can convert many different image formats, such as .nrg, .bin, and .img, to ISO, and can generate, compress, encrypt, extract, and mount ISO images. It can also mount Mac OS *.dmg files as images, rip DVDs to Xvid AVI files, split and merge images, and more.
Vincent Danen introduces open source DropBox, a file synchronization service that works for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows clients. DropBox can be used to share documents, configuration files, photos, music, or anything else you want between systems linked to your account.
After two years of litigation, the parties involved in an Israeli law suit that centered on the validity of the GNU General Public License (GPL) have settled out of court. The result leaves the legal status of the GPL in Israel unresolved.
AlexGr writes to tell us that Microsoft apparently has plans to embrace a little known messaging standard called AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol). Red Hat, a founding member of the AMQP working group, was very excited about the news and wrote to welcome Microsoft to the party. "Suffice it is to say that AMQP is to high-value, reliable business messaging what SMTP is to e-mail. The proprietary message oriented middleware (MOM) products on the market today like IBM's MQ or Tibco's Rendezvous fulfill the same function as AMQP. But they operate exclusively in single-vendor fashion and utterly fail to interoperate with each other. They are also — perhaps not by coincidence — burdensomely expensive. As a result their use is mostly limited to wealthy organizations such as Wall Street banks (at least the ones who are still in business) that need to exchange huge volumes of business messages very reliably and very quickly. But AMQP's supporters feel the market for such reliable messaging could be much larger if a less expensive and truly open solution became available."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
|
Appnr - Synaptic For Your Browser (Ubuntu)
Appnr is a web-based directory for Ubuntu packages (including the official repositories and third-party packages from Medibuntu, Google, and the Canonical Partner repository). You can use it to browse and install packages directly from your browser. It's like Synaptic for your browser.
BashDiff is a patch for the bash shell that can do an amazing number of things. It extends existing bash features, brings a few of awk's tricks into the shell itself, exposes some common C functions to bash shell programming, adds an exception mechanism, provides features of functional programming such as list comprehension and the map function, lets you talk with GTK+2 and databases, and even adds a Web server right into the standard bash shell.
An anonymous reader writes "Phoronix has a new article where they provide Ubuntu 7.04, 7.10, 8.04, and 8.10 benchmarks and had ran many tests. In that article when using an Intel notebook they witness major slowdowns in different areas and ask the question is Ubuntu getting slower? From the article: 'A number of significant kernel changes had went on between these Ubuntu Linux releases including the Completely Fair Scheduler, the SLUB allocator, tickless kernel support, etc. We had also repeated many of these tests to confirm we were not experiencing a performance fluke or other issue (even though the Phoronix Test Suite carries out each test in a completely automated and repeatable fashion) but nothing had changed. Ubuntu 7.04 was certainly the Feisty Fawn for performance, but based upon these results perhaps it would be better to call Ubuntu 7.10 the Gooey Gibbon, 8.04 the Hungover Heron, and 8.10 the Idling Ibex.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
OpenOffice.org Writer is as much a desktop publishing program as a word processor. That fact, however, has yet to have much influence on the extensions created for Writer -- perhaps because most users prefer manual formatting to organizing themselves with page styles, templates, and other elements of document design. Still, extensions for layout are starting to appear, as demonstrated by four extensions that help you automate layout: Alba, which manages page orientation; Pagination and Pager, which manage page numbering; and Template Changer, which allows you to change the template, and therefore the entire layout of documents, on the fly. And all but one of these extensions use styles and templates, the way that OpenOffice.org is built to work, which means that they are highly stable.
 |
Preventing MySQL Injection Attacks With GreenSQL On Debian Etch
GreenSQL (or greensql-fw) is a firewall for MySQL databases that filters SQL injection attacks. It works as a reverse proxy, i.e., it takes the SQL queries, checks them, passes them on to the MySQL database and delivers back the result from the MySQL database. It comes with a web interface (called greensql-console) so that you can manage GreenSQL through a web browser. This guide shows how you can install GreenSQL and its web interface on a Debian Etch server.
Some computers are never turned off, or at least rarely see any state less active than "standby," but others (for power savings or other reasons) need rebooting — daily, or even more often. The New York Times is running a short article which says that it's not just a few makers like Asus who are trying to take away some of the pain of waiting for computers, especially laptops, to boot up. While it's always been a minor annoyance to wait while a computer slowly grinds itself to readiness, "the agitation seems more intense than in the pre-Internet days," and manufacturers are actively trying to cut that wait down to a more bearable length. How bearable? A "very good system is one that boots in under 15 seconds," according to a Microsoft blog cited, and an HP source names an 18-month goal of 20-30 seconds.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Openfiler is a high performance operating system tailored for use as a SAN/NAS appliance. This configuration will enable two Openfiler appliances to work in an Active/Passive high availability scenario.
GSmartControl presents your hard drive SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) health information in a graphical display. With GSmartControl you no longer have to fish around in /dev/disk/by-id to find the drive you're interested in and then inspect the output of smartctl trying to figure out which SMART attributes have values that you should care about.
The Linksys PAP2T is an analog telephone adapter (ATA) widely used in VoIP applications to connect an analog phone to a digital IP network. Some PAP2T units are locked and dedicated to a particular VoIP service. Others are capable of using a process called provisioning to ensure that important parameters remain fixed despite local attempts to change them. By employing open source tools such as PHP and MySQL, you can manage these latter kinds of units while they are out in the field.
Gufw is a graphical frontend for managing an iptables firewall on an Ubuntu 8.04 desktop. It is based on ufw and enables you to allow or block pre-configured, common p2p, or individual ports. This guide shows how you can install and use Gufw on Ubuntu 8.04.
Shared libraries that are dynamically linked make more efficient use of disk space than those that are statically linked, and more importantly allow you to perform security updates in a more efficient manner, but executables compiled against a particular version of a dynamic library expect that version of the shared library to be available on the machine they run on. If you are running machines with both Fedora 9 and openSUSE 11, the versions of some shared libraries are likely to be slightly different, and if you copy an executable between the machines, the file might fail to execute because of these version differences. With ELF Statifier you can create a statically linked version of an executable, so the executable includes the shared libraries instead of seeking them at run time. A staticly linked executable is much more likely to run on a different Linux distribution or a different version of the same distribution.
|
Installing The Adobe Flash Plugin 10 On A 64bit Ubuntu 8.04
This tutorial shows how you can install the Adobe Flash plugin 10 on a 64bit Ubuntu 8.04 desktop. Although Adobe does not provide a Flash 10 plugin for x86_64 Linux, this is possible with a little script provided by queleimporta.com.
|
Installing The Adobe Flash Plugin 10 On Ubuntu 8.04 (i386)
This tutorial shows how you can install the Adobe Flash plugin 10 on an Ubuntu 8.04 desktop. Although this sounds quite trivial, there are a few problems along the way, especially if Flash 9 is already installed.
javipas writes "A simple analysis of the most updated version (a Git checkout) of the Linux kernel reveals that the number of lines of all its source code surpasses 10 million, but attention: this number includes blank lines, comments and text files. With a deeper analysis thanks to SLOCCount tool, you can get the real number of pure code lines: 6.399.191, with 96,4% of them developed in C, and 3,3% using assembler. The number grows clearly with each new version of the kernel, that seems to be launched each 90 days approximately."
Hadoop is a distributed computing platform that provides a framework for storing and processing petabytes of data. Because it is Java-based, Hadoop runs on Linux, Windows, Solaris, BSD, and Mac OS X. Hadoop is widely used in organizations that demand a scalable, economical (read commodity hardware), efficent, and reliable platform for processing vast amounts of data.
By choosing the Eclipse Public License (EPL) as the license for the software to come out of the Symbian Foundation, the group takes a road safely chosen. The Eclipse Foundation welcomes the foundations support. But what about the GPL?
- LONDON -- With the Symbian Foundation throwing its weight behind the Eclipse Public License (EPL), the cache of that license has grown a great deal. But what prompted the foundation to go with the EPL. Was it just a total aversion to the GNU General Public License (GPL)? Well, David Rivas, vice pre...
 |
Virtual Users And Domains With Postfix, Courier, MySQL And SquirrelMail (Mandriva 2009.0 i386)
This document describes how to install a Postfix mail server that is based on virtual users and domains, i.e. users and domains that are in a MySQL database. I'll also demonstrate the installation and configuration of Courier (Courier-POP3, Courier-IMAP), so that Courier can authenticate against the same MySQL database Postfix uses. The resulting Postfix server is capable of SMTP-AUTH and TLS and quota (quota is not built into Postfix by default, I'll show how to patch your Postfix appropriately). Passwords are stored in encrypted form in the database (most documents I found were dealing with plain text passwords which is a security risk). In addition to that, this tutorial covers the installation of Amavisd, SpamAssassin and ClamAV so that emails will be scanned for spam and viruses. I will also show how to install SquirrelMail as a webmail interface so that users can read and send emails and change their passwords.
|
Keeping An Eye On Your Internet Speed With Netspeed (GNOME/Ubuntu 8.04)
Netspeed is a GNOME applet that shows the current down- and upload bandwidth of a network device. You can use it to keep an eye on your Internet speed, for example. This guide shows how to install it on an Ubuntu 8.04 desktop.
|
Installing Xbox Media Center (XBMC) On Fedora 9 (i386)
The Xbox Media Center (XBMC) is a media center application for Linux, Mac, and Windows that allows you to manage/watch/listen to/view your videos, music, and pictures. It has a nice interface, can be controlled from the desktop or a remote control or via its built-in web interface, and it can be extended by custom scripts. This guide shows how you can install XBMC on a Fedora 9 desktop (i386).
 |
Logical Volume Manager: How can I extend a Volume Group?
It is a good choice to use LVM on Linux. It provides flexible storage management than any other traditional physical partitoning. With LVM, you can easily create, delete, resize storage volumes. First of all, if you want to know what LVM is, there are many documents on the Internet. In this example we will learn how to extend a Volume Group size.
Heise.de's Kernel Log has a look at the ext4 filesystem as Linus Torvalds has integrated a large collection of patches for it into the kernel main branch. "This signals that with the next kernel version 2.6.28, the successor to ext3 will finally leave behind its 'hot' development phase." The article notes that ext4 developer Theodore Ts'o (tytso) is in favor of ultimately moving Linux to a modern, "next-generation" file system. His preferred choice is btrfs, and Heise notes an email Ts'o sent to the Linux Kernel Mailing List a week back positioning ext4 as a bridge to btrfs.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
We loaded and ran the 2009 (10th Anniversary) edition of Mandriva Linux One, which we reviewed earlier this week. It's pretty, it's smooth, and it had a few problems with the GUI software install/remove utility that would leave a new user scratching his head, but overall, it's a nice update to a distro that started out with the idea that ordinary, non-technical computer users should be able to install and run GNU/Linux without expert help -- and that still adheres to this principle.
The Linux world's three most influential community distributions, Fedora, OpenSUSE and Ubuntu, are each undergoing beta testing toward a late fall release. eWEEK Labs takes a look at some of what's new in this Linux OS trio.
|
The Perfect Server - Mandriva 2009.0 Free (x86_64)
This is a detailed description about how to set up a Mandriva 2009.0 Free server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters: Apache web server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH and TLS, BIND DNS server, Proftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Dovecot POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc. This tutorial is written for the 64-bit version of Mandriva 2009.0.
fsniper lets you monitor specified directories and execute scripts on any new files that are created in them. Because fsniper uses inotify to monitor its directories, the actions you define are executed as soon as filesystem changes happen. This makes fsniper both more immediate than an hourly cron job and more efficient.
Microsoft delivers the beta of a download manager and packaged open-source applications to make it easier for Web developers to install Web products. The move follows Microsoft's support for an Eclipse Foundation project related to Silverlight and precedes sponsorship of the Government Open Source Conference. GOSCON will take place in Portland, Ore. Meanwhile, OpenLogic announces a slew of professional services to help companies interested in trying open-source software during the economic downturn.
- Microsoft and OpenLogic both made moves Oct. 15 to further their open-source initiatives, with Microsoft releasing new software for Web developers and OpenLogic announcing new professional services to help companies increase their usage of open-source software. Microsoft delivered the beta of ...
|
How To Install OpenOffice.org 3.0.0 On Ubuntu 8.04
This guide shows how you can install the new OpenOffice 3.0.0 office suite on your Ubuntu 8.04 desktop. Your current OpenOffice installation will not be removed unless you uninstall it with Synaptic or on the command line, so you can run both versions in parallel if you like.
Although many Linux distributions can run on either a desktop or server platform, few provide by default a raft of applications aimed specifically at server usage. Server Optimized Linux is an exception -- a distribution aimed squarely at servers. That's an appealing prospect, but the reality is more underwhelming.
Secure SSH Using WiKID Two-Factor Authentication And TACACS+
These instructions are designed to help you configure and test using the WiKID TACACS+ protocol module via Linux PAM on Red Hat. This document has been updated to cover pam .99 and higher. We assume that you have already installed the open-source WiKID Strong Authentication Server Community Edition.
If you have ever found yourself in the position of having to reboot quickly or several times, you know that it's not a very quick process, particularly if you have SCSI devices or other initialization-intensive system devices. A package called kexec can speed up your reboots -- if you understand the rules.
|
Drupal + Postfix Integration Under Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy)
This document will guide you through the necessary steps to configure a Drupal driven mail server. It provides the following features: Drupal managed email accounts, support for virtual domains, automatic forwarding, Postfix quota support, silent BCC monitoring, anti-spam, anti-virus.
Back when Mandriva was called Mandrake, the distribution had the reputation of being the most user-friendly Linux distribution. Financial difficulties, personnel changes, and the rise of Ubuntu changed that, and somehow Mandriva never quite regained its reputation. With this week's release of Mandriva 2009, Mandriva has continued to work on user-friendliness. Aside from a poorly organized installation program and a few scattered problems, Mandriva 2009 offers a desktop experience that is at least the equal of any other distribution for everyday use and that has a strong claim of being the most advanced available for system administration.
nerdyH writes "As recently as 2007, Linux users waited six months for Flash 9 to arrive. Now, with Microsoft pushing its Silverlight alternative, Adobe is touting the universality of its Flash format, which has penetrated "98 percent of Internet-enabled desktops," it claims. And, it today released Flash 10 for Linux concurrently with other platforms. Welcome to the future." Handily enough, Real Networks released this summer RealPlayer 11 for Linux, the first release for which they've included a .deb package, and offers nightly builds of their Helix player, for which Linux is one of the supported platforms.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Typically, each new version of the Python programming language has been gentle on users, more or less maintaining backward compatibility with previous versions. But in 2000, when Python creator Guido van Rossum announced that he was embarking on a new version of Python, he did not sugar coat his plan: Version 3.0 would not be backward-compatible. Now that the first release candidate of Python 3.0 is out, with final release planned for later this month, developers must grapple with the issue of whether to maintain older code or modify it to use the new interpreter.
 |
Integrating APC (Alternative PHP Cache) Into PHP5 And Lighttpd (Fedora 9)
This guide explains how to integrate APC (Alternative PHP Cache) into PHP5 and lighttpd on a Fedora 9 system. APC is a free and open PHP opcode cacher for caching and optimizing PHP intermediate code. It's similar to other PHP opcode cachers, such as eAccelerator and XCache.
Analysis: Red Hat, Canonical and Novell are enhancing the security features in their Fedora, Ubuntu and OpenSUSE Linux distributions, which all are slated for release later this year.
- Linux-based operating systems are built through an open-development model, which can afford organizations an early view of and an opportunity to influence the technologies and implementations that will eventually work their way into these companies' infrastructures. What's more, these early looks ...
The Linux Foundation releases the first public beta of Linux Standard Base (LSB) 4.0, which reduces the differences between various Linux distributions for developers. LSB 4.0 features a new application checker, a new shell script checker, and a new multi-version software development kit (SDK).
- The Linux Foundation has released the first public beta of its solution to enable developers to more easily build applications that run on different Linux distributions. The foundation, on Oct. 14, announced the availability of the first beta of Linux Standard Base (LSB) 4.0, which introduces a new...
A common charge against free and open source software (FOSS) is that it lacks the ability to innovate. To that charge, the lifelong research of Eric von Hippel, professor and head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management, offers a thorough and scholarly refutation. Having studied the sources of innovation for more than three decades, von Hippel has found in FOSS both a confirmation and an elaboration of his ideas.
Whiteox writes "The Australian Prime Minister's plan to equip high schools with 'one laptop per child' may go open source. Kevin Rudd's $56 million digital revolution will include 'laptops [that will] run on an open source operating system with a suite of open source applications like those packaged under Edubuntu. This would include Open Office for productivity software, Gimp for picture editing and the Firefox internet browser.' So far this has been considered for New South Wales and I think other states may follow."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
|
The Perfect Server - Mandriva 2009.0 Free (i386)
This is a detailed description about how to set up a Mandriva 2009.0 Free server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters: Apache web server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH and TLS, BIND DNS server, Proftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Dovecot POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc. This tutorial is written for the 32-bit version of Mandriva 2009.0.
Vincent Danen introduces GNOME Do, an application-launching utility, similar to Mac's Launchbar, which features a number of plugins that boost its usability and efficiency. by Vincent Danen
I take a sort of sick joy in using a computer as long as possible, so I've become interested in lightweight Linux distributions like TinyMe 2008.0 that help prolong the life of a computer. TinyMe is based on PCLinuxOS, but at about 200MB, it's considerably smaller than that 700MB distribution. The software included, such as the Openbox window manager, is lightweight, which makes TinyMe old-hardware-friendly.
When they hear the word PAM, most people think of a certain blonde Canadian Playmate, but readers of this Web site surely will recognize the basic element of Linux security: the Pluggable Authentication Modules. So let's talk about how this PAM works, and look at some examples of how it is used.
Video and audio support will soon be built directly into Firefox, by way of the free Vorbis and Theora codecs, and Mozilla is using the opportunity to advance multimedia accessibility for hearing-impaired and seeing-impaired users. Although HTML 5 does not officially include Ogg Vorbis and Theora as baseline codecs for the new VIDEO and AUDIO tags, Mozilla has adopted them for its own implementation. Researcher Silvia Pfeiffer is leading a Mozilla Foundation-funded effort to integrate support for closed captioning and other multimedia accessibility features into the Ogg formats and their implementation in Firefox.
|
The Perfect Desktop - Mandriva One 2009.0 With GNOME
This tutorial shows how you can set up a Mandriva One 2009.0 desktop (with the GNOME desktop environment) 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.
A. B. VerHausen writes to tell us that over 200 release-critical bugs continue to push back Debian Lenny's release date. Originally slated for a September release, there is still a long road to be traveled before Lenny sees the light of day. Project leader Steve McIntyre says they may consider dropping some packages for the release if they continue to cause problems, and while an end of October release is the goal, only time will tell.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
OpenOffice.org 3.0, which is being released today, is not the great leap forward in look and feel that version 2.0 represented, but it justifies its label as a major release with dozens of changes, some major, some minor, but in all more than can be easily summarized.
Google's Picasa is all about photos -- it helps you instantly find, edit, and share all the pictures on your computer. Although it isn't released as open source it is free to download and use from Google's Web site. The new version 3, which is currently in beta, is available for Windows as well as Linux.
Virtualization software can help you run programs that your native Linux distro wouldn't. While Linux users have many virtualization options, none comes close to the all-encompassing VMware Workstation 6.5. Introduced last month, VMware Workstation 6.5 continues the tradition of outshining and outpacing the competition with a host of useful new features, and boldly goes where no virtualization software has gone before -- into the realm of virtual machines with accelerated 3-D graphics. Despite the advances, some of the new features are still in beta, so Workstation 6.5 might not be the best virtualization option for everyone.
|
The Perfect Server - CentOS 5.2 x86_64
This tutorial shows how to set up a CentOS 5.2 server for x86_64 platforms that offers all services needed by ISPs and web hosters: Apache web server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH and TLS, BIND DNS server, Proftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Dovecot POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc. This tutorial is written for the 64-bit version of CentOS 5.2.
Yesterday, I looked at the major applications in the first beta for KOffice 2.0. Now it's the turn of the rest of the beta: The KPlato project manager, KChart, the vector graphics editor Karbon, and the raster graphics editor Krita.
David Gerard writes "Wikimedia, the organization that runs Wikipedia and associated sites, has moved its server infrastructure entirely to Ubuntu 8.04 from a hodge-podge of Ubuntu, Red Hat, and various Fedora versions. 400 servers were involved and the project has been going on for 2 years. (There's also a small amount of OpenSolaris on the backend. All open source!)"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
diegocgteleline.es writes "Linux 2.6.27 has been released. It adds a new filesystem (UBIFS) for 'pure' flash-based storage, the page-cache is now lockless, much improved Direct I/O scalability and performance, delayed allocation support for ext4, multiqueue networking, data integrity support in the block layer, a function tracer, a mmio tracer, sysprof support, improved webcam support, support for the Intel wifi 5000 series and RTL8187B network cards, a new ath9k driver for the Atheros AR5008 and AR9001 chipsets, more new drivers, and many other improvements and fixes. Full list of changes can be found here."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Adam Williamson writes "Mandriva has today released Mandriva Linux 2009, the new major release of the popular distribution. 2009 is a bold release which brings the new KDE 4 as the default desktop, along with a re-designed installer and Mandriva Control Center and many other new features. Other significant updates include GNOME 2.24, OpenOffice.org 3, Mozilla Firefox 3, and kernel 2.6.27. Key features include new graphical in-line upgrade capability, netbook compatibility, class-leading hardware support, and further improved support for working with mobile devices. For more details, see the Release Tour and the Release Notes. Get it at the download page, or go straight to the torrent list."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 |
The Perfect Load-Balanced & High-Availability Web Cluster With 2 Servers Running Xen On Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron
In this howto we will build a load-balanced and high-availability web cluster on 2 real servers with Xen, hearbeat and ldirectord. The cluster will do http, mail, DNS, MySQL database and will be completely monitored. This is currently used on a production server with a couple of websites. The goal of this tutorial is to achieve load balancing & high availability with as few real servers as possible and of course, with open-source software. More servers means more hardware & hosting cost.
Whether you believe that punctuality is "the politeness of kings" or "the art of guessing how late the other fellow is going to be," you can count on your Linux box for information about local times across the globe, so that you can plan a punctual VoIP call, stock transaction, or meeting. Here are some world clocks that work well on the desktop.
KOffice has been trailing the office application leaders for a long time. Despite years of development, it has yet to match OpenOffice.org feature for feature, although its features are complete enough that they have attracted a loyal community. Judging from the first beta, KOffice 2.0 will still not rival OpenOffice.org or other free software rivals, but it should be a major step in that direction.
|
Integrating APC (Alternative PHP Cache) Into PHP5 And Lighttpd (Debian Etch)
This guide explains how to integrate APC (Alternative PHP Cache) into PHP5 and lighttpd on a Debian Etch system. APC is a free and open PHP opcode cacher for caching and optimizing PHP intermediate code. It's similar to other PHP opcode cachers, such as eAccelerator and XCache.
As important as security is, remaining current with every development is hard, and evaluating possible vulnerabilities across a network can be quite a chore. You need a way to both automate tests and make sure you're running the most appropriate and up-to-date tests. Open Vulnerability Assessment System (OpenVAS) is a network security scanner that includes a central server and a graphical front end. The server allows you to run several different network vulnerability tests (NVT) written in Nessus Attack Scripting Language (NASL), which OpenVAS updates frequently.
Few free and open source software projects have attracted such a range of reactions as Mono. On one hand, as an implementation of Microsoft's .Net that's sponsored by Novell, it has been vilified both for the company it keeps and as a possible source of patent claims, should Microsoft choose to get nasty. On the other hand, Mono has been the platform of choice for such major projects as Second Life, which uses it to increase the efficiency of its servers. This week, as the Mono project reached version 2.0, Miguel de Icaza, the project's founder and maintainer, talked with Linux.com about the history of the project, its application and the criticism leveled at it, and where the project goes from here.
|
Running Linux Live-CDs On Windows With MobaLiveCD
This article is a short introduction to running Linux Live-CDs with MobaLiveCD. MobaLiveCD is a standalone Windows application (i.e., you do not have to install it - it runs by clicking on the executable) that uses the Qemu emulator to run Linux Live-CDs on your Windows desktop.
If I had had SpeedCrunch or Qalculate! during high school, finishing homework really would've been child's play. From breaking down complex algebraic equations, to solving your calculus problems, to performing geometric computations and providing statistical answers, SpeedCrunch and Qalculate! are tools that offer quick solutions to difficult questions.
A reliable network monitoring and management solution must accurately detect network devices such as routers, servers, and client workstations. It must be able to display a map of the whole network, monitor the health and performance of each device, and have a way to notify someone of a problem by email, text message, or other form of communication. It should be able to fix a problem by restarting services or running specific programs. It should generate detailed reports that you can analyze easily to help prevent future incidents. Finally, a decent monitoring system must be easy to use, deploy, and customize according to your monitoring needs. Let's use these standards to see if GroundWork Monitor Community Edition is up to the task.
Sidux, a relatively new desktop Linux distribution, is based on Sid, the unstable developmental branch of Debian. The developers strive for an easy-to-install and easy-to-use modern Debian derivative, and pride themselves on remaining true to the principles and values of the Debian project. Despite a few inconveniences, I like Sidux a bit more each time I use it.
If you're thinking about making the switch to Linux, Jack Wallen is all for it -- but only if you approach the migration with your eyes open. He recommends that you evaluate a number of key issues before taking this big step. by Jack Wallen
Many audio, video, and graphics professionals would like to make the switch to Linux, but don't want to deal with the hassle of figuring out multimedia on Linux or are scared off by the purported lack of such tools. I created Vector Linux Multimedia Bonus Disc (MMBD) to address this problem and perception. It's a complete multimedia creation and production system that contains hundreds of the best multimedia applications available on Linux.
The first essays of the school year are coming due, and with the essays comes the need to outline and plan. GNU/Linux users are fortunate to have a number of outlining applications from which to choose. True, some outliners have become obsolete, and you will be lucky to get programs like GNOME-Think or the once-popular KnowIt to run on a modern distribution. But you can still choose among OpenOffice.org, TuxCards, NoteCase, Emacs, and VimOutliner for doing your planning.
Running The Chromium Browser On Ubuntu 8.04 With CrossOver Chromium
Chromium is an open-source browser project that is the basis for Google's Chrome browser. Right now, Chromium doesn't support Linux natively, but Codeweavers has created a Linux port called CrossOver Chromium that can be installed free of charge. This guide shows how to install CrossOver Chromium on Ubuntu 8.04.
John Sokol writes "I just heard from a good friend and Linux kernel hacker in Brazil that they have just finished their municipal election with 128 million people using Linux to vote. They voted nationwide for something like 5,000 city mayors. Voting is mandatory in Brazil. The embedded computer they are using once ran VirtuOS (a variant of MSDOS); it now has its own locally developed, Linux-based distro. These are much nicer, smaller, and cheaper than the systems being deployed here in the US. Here is a Java-required site with a simulated Brazilian voting system. It's very cool; they even show you a picture of the candidate you voted for."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
FreeBSD is a Unix-like open source operating system that can trace its ancestry back to the original Unix. It's well known and well respected in the server marketplace, but until recently FreeBSD lacked an easy-to-use desktop version. In 2005 the PC-BSD project was started to provide just that. This month PC-BSD version 7 was released. I downloaded and installed it to see how it squares up to user-friendly Linux distributions like Ubuntu. I came away a little disappointed.
Several readers noted the release of Mono 2.0, which is compatible with Microsoft's .NET Framework 2.0. According to Miguel de Icaza, "...users can move over server applications built for .NET and client applications built with Windows Forms." InternetNews points out that only about half of the .NET apps out there will work on Mono 2.0, for a variety of reasons including (but not limited to) legacy Windows-only libraries and Microsoft's progress on .NET 3.0 and 3.5 APIs.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Do you want to install VMware on Linux? You no longer have to do it via command line. VMware has released a Linux "no hassle" user interface install. by Steven Warren
 |
Create CentOS 5.2 Domu on Ubuntu Hardy Dom0
This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install Images of xen on an Ubuntu Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 8.04) server system (i386). Linux distributions that can run as Xen guests out of the box, obviating the need to create your own custom filesystems. The filesystems on jailtime.org have already been tweaked to deal with Xen's idiosyncracies, and are also designed to be lightweight and minimally divergent from the original distribution.
Maintaining filesystems can be a real administration burden. Over time you might start getting multiple copies of the same file, soft links that point to files that no longer exist, temporary files that have been hanging around longer than they should, and binaries that have been installed and not had their debugging information stripped out. fslint can help you find these troublesome files so you can clean up your filesystem.
Linux turns 17 today (Oct 6th) and Techrepublic wants to know how and when you first got started using the Linux operating system. by Jack Wallen
Meshach writes "Over at the Linux Journal, Doc Searles is noting that today marks 17 years since Linus posted to Usenet, starting Linux (post). As a Linux user at work and at home I say, thanks Linus!" The anniversary is also featured on the top page of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
|
Installing Xbox Media Center (XBMC) On Ubuntu 8.04
The Xbox Media Center (XBMC) is a media center application for Linux, Mac, and Windows that allows you to manage/watch/listen to/view your videos, music, and pictures. It has a nice interface, can be controlled from the desktop or a remote control or via its built-in web interface, and it can be extended by custom scripts. This guide shows how you can install XBMC on an Ubuntu 8.04 desktop.
After much searching and hair pulling Jack Wallen has finally found a means to get a laptop to hibernate. It's not perfect but it works every time. Read this open source entry and discover how to enjoy a full-featured laptop on Linux. by Jack Wallen
ivoras writes "An interview with MSI's director of US Sales, Andy Tung, contains this interesting snippet: "We have done a lot of studies on the return rates and haven't really talked about it much until now. Our internal research has shown that the return of netbooks is higher than regular notebooks, but the main cause of that is Linux. People would love to pay $299 or $399 but they don't know what they get until they open the box. They start playing around with Linux and start realizing that it's not what they are used to. They don't want to spend time to learn it so they bring it back to the store. The return rate is at least four times higher for Linux netbooks than Windows XP netbooks.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
ruphus13 writes "There are still places on the world where having anonymity might mean the difference between life and death. Covering one's tracks is considered to be of such paramount importance that we are now witnessing the rise of a Linux distro catering to the most paranoid. The 'alpha-alpha' version of ParanoidLinux is now out. But is this the best way to protect oneself? Couldn't it be easily circumvented? The article asks, 'Why is it necessary to put the applications and services designed to protect anonymity, to encrypt files, to make the user nameless and faceless, all together, in one distribution? Let's think in a truly paranoid manner. Wouldn't it be far easier for a nefarious government organization to target that distribution's repositories, mirror that singular distribution's disk images with files of its own design, and leave every last one of that distribution's users in the great wide open?' What should truly paranoid user do?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
ruphus13 writes "As mentioned earlier, there was a kernel bug in the alpha/beta version of the Linux kernel (up to 2.6.27 rc7), which was corrupting (and rendering useless) the EEPROM/NVM of adapters. Thankfully, a patch is now out that prevents writing to the EEPROM once the driver is loaded, and this follows a patch released by Intel earlier in the week. From the article: 'The Intel team is currently working on narrowing down the details of how and why these chipsets were affected. They also plan on releasing patches shortly to restore the EEPROM on any adapters that have been affected, via saved images using ethtool -e or from identical systems.' This is good news as we move towards a production release!"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The KDE community has released KDE 4.1.2, which is codenamed "Codename." KDE 4.1.2 is a monthly update to the KDE 4.1 series of the popular free Linux desktop environment. The community will continue with monthly updates ultimately reaching the next major release, KDE 4.2, in January 2009.
- The KDE Community has announced quot;Codename, quot; which is actually the codename for KDE 4.1.2, the latest version of the popular free desktop for Linux. Officials at KDE e.V., the non-profit organization that represents the KDE Project, said KDE 4.1.2 is a bug-fix and maintenance update for th...
Pidgin, formerly known as Gaim, is a popular Instant Messaging (IM) client for Linux. It works with 16 different IM services, including AIM, Yahoo, MSN, and Google, and can handle simultaneous connections to as many of them as you like. This 10-minute video is a brief introduction to Pidgin that shows how easy it is to install, in this case on OpenSUSE 11, how easy it is to set Pidgin up to use an existing IM account, and how to find and join an IRC channel with Pidgin.
An anonymous reader writes "Blogger and ex-Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony reports that Michael Robertson has been sued by a Linspire shareholder to get to the bottom of what happened to Linspire's assets. One hundred shareholders have been left uninformed as to what happened to the company and its assets after Linspire was sold to Xandros a few months back."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
When a network is small and most of its users interact chiefly with services on the Internet at large, it's easy to get by simply by assigning numeric Internet Protocol addresses to your nodes rather than names. As the network grows, however, and as internal services (wikis, mail servers, media servers, and more) come online, recalling numeric addresses becomes unwieldy. One solution is to implement Domain Name Server (DNS) and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) with dnsmasq, and thereby cache external DNS addresses for performance reasons, dynamically assign IP addresses to all of the members of your network, and manage everything from one location. This article shows you how.
With Xapian and Omega you can quickly build a powerful search interface for your Web site. You'll be able to index your HTML, PDF, and PHP content and search for it by metadata or words contained in the documents.
|
The Perfect Server - CentOS 4.7 Server
This tutorial shows how to set up a CentOS 4.7 server that offers all services needed by ISPs and web hosters: Apache web server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH and TLS, BIND DNS server, Proftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Dovecot POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc. This tutorial is written for the 32-bit version of CentOS 4.7, but should apply to the 64-bit version with very little modifications as well.
nerdyH writes "Dell is preparing to ship two enterprise-oriented Windows Vista notebooks with an interesting feature — a built-in TI OMAP (smartphone) processor that can power instantly into Linux. The 'Latitude ON' feature is said to offer 'multi-day' battery life, while letting users access email, the web, contacts, calendar, and so on, using the notebook's full-size screen and keyboard. I wonder if someday we'll just be able to plug our phones into our laptops, switching to the phone's processor when we need to save battery life? Or, maybe x86 will just get a lot more power-efficient. Speaking at MontaVista's Vision event today, OLPC spokesperson and longtime kernel hacker Deepak Saxena said the project is aiming for 10-20 hours of battery life during active use, on existing hardware (AMD Geode LX800 clocked at 500MHz, with 1GB of Flash and 256MB of RAM)."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
pfSense is a free, powerful firewall and routing application that allows you to expand your network without compromising its security. Started in 2004 as a child project of m0n0wall -- a security project that focuses on embedded systems -- pfSense has had more than 1 million downloads and is used to protect networks of all sizes, from home offices to large enterprises. pfSense has an active development community, and more features are being added in each release to further improve its flexibility, scalability, and, of course, security.
Nine years after Sun Microsystems bought StarOffice, the resulting OpenOffice.org project is ready to roll out its 3.0 release. Enhanced format compatibility and features puts it on par with Microsoft Office.
- When Sun Microsystems bought the little-known StarOffice productivity suite in 1999, and soon thereafter released the product's code base as open-source software, it was unclear how far the arguably quixotic initiative might reach and what damage it could possibly wreak on Microsoft's ironclad grip ...
Google unveiled the first Android-powered cell phone last week, a T-Mobile-branded device dubbed the G1. Comparisons to Apple's iPhone were immediate -- and that is a good thing for Android, when you consider what a raucous and contentious week it was for iPhone developers.
chromatic writes "Kernel hackers Arjan van de Ven and Auke Kok showed off Linux booting in five seconds at last month's Linux Plumbers Conference. Arjan and other hackers have already improved the Linux user experience by reducing power consumption and latency. O'Reilly News interviewed him about his work on improving the Linux experience with PowerTOP, LatencyTOP, and Five-Second Boot."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Converting an old PC into a home or office server may look like a good idea on paper, but in reality, the idea has a few serious drawbacks. For starters, old PCs tend to be noisy, power-guzzling monsters, and older components make them less reliable. Turning an old PC into a server also means installing and configuring all the necessary software, which can be a time-consuming and laborious process. If the drawbacks of this approach outweigh for you its possible advantages, consider instead Bubba Two, a nifty Debian-based device that can be used for a variety of tasks.
|
Installing Adobe AIR 1.1 For Linux Beta On Ubuntu 8.04
Adobe AIR is a technology that lets you run Internet applications on the desktop. With AIR you do not need a browser to run such desktop applications. This tutorial explains how you can install Adobe AIR 1.1 for Linux beta on an Ubuntu 8.04 desktop and how you can install AIR applications.
After marking the GNU Project's 25th anniversary with an endorsement by Stephen Fry and the relicensing of OpenGL, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) is concluding the month-long celebration by relaunching its high priority list, which enumerates as-yet unwritten software needed to run a completely free computer system. Instead of being simply a page on the FSF's Web site, the list will become a campaign, and be actively promoted and discussed, and given a new emphasis in the Foundation's activities.
|
Integrating APC (Alternative PHP Cache) Into PHP5 And Lighttpd (Fedora 9)
This guide explains how to integrate APC (Alternative PHP Cache) into PHP5 and lighttpd on a Fedora 9 system. APC is a free and open PHP opcode cacher for caching and optimizing PHP intermediate code. It's similar to other PHP opcode cachers, such as eAccelerator and XCache.
Collabtive is a modern Web application that allows teams to collaborate on projects, manage tasks, milestones, and files, and send instant messages to each other.
No Linux distribution can bundle every package that users might want, so most distros host software repositories from which users can download and install additional applications. Since 2006 Slackbuilds.org has served as a high-quality repository for Slackware users, but using it requires several steps and switching between a Web browser and a virtual terminal. Sbopkg is a new ncurses-based utility that helps users build packages from SlackBuilds.org and seamlessly integrates the repository with the operating system.
Does Linux have what it takes to meet the needs of the corporate desktop? Jack Wallen thinks so. Here's his list of office apps that can handle everything from word processing to project management to data backups. by Jack Wallen
Online office suites are attractive for organizations with modest document processing needs, especially due to their low cost (read: free). But if you don't like the idea of storing your documents outside your network, try OpenGoo. It's an online office suite that installs on your local network and allows users to collaborate with others both inside and outside the network. The open source software, still under active development, is an easy to install and use, and if it's not quite ready for real-world large-scale deployment, it's getting there fast.
Using Zivios Identity Management
Zivios is an open source web based identity management application featuring single sign on, certificate authority, user, group and computer provisioning with remote management of services. Zivios is an n-tiered PHP-5 application and uses MySQL and OpenLDAP as it's data store, with OpenLdap being the primary back end for identity management and application integration and MySQL being used for panel specific data.
With VMware Workstation you can intall VMware on the Linux platform and then load Windows guest operating system. Are you curious how to do this? Follow these steps. by Steven Warren
The Uncomplicated Firewall (UFW) is a new tool from Ubuntu whose goal is to make configuration of the built-in Linux packet filter less complicated and more secure for novice users.
The CC Network Filesystem (ccgfs) lets you mount filesystems over the network using either the push or pull model for connections. Most network filesystems use the pull model, where the client mounts a network share and all connections originate from the client. Using the push model for network shares means that all connections originate from the server. The push model has advantages when you want a machine on your network demilitarized zone (DMZ) to access a file server through a firewall.
Posts
All Comments
