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Everyone knows what a Linux shell is -- you open up a Linux terminal window (such as Konsole or xterm), type in some commands, and there you are, using your Linux shell. Write your commands to a file, make it executable, run it, and you're a shell programmer. But did you know that there are different shells that you can use, and that each shell operates in a slightly different way? My personal favorite is the Korn shell; by the end of this article, it may be your favorite as well.

Linux Journal Products Editor, James Gray, spoke with Jim Lacey, Linux Professional Institute's President and CEO, about Linux certification today and its outlook for the future.

Entrepreneurs in Kenya are putting Linux to work to cut costs and maximise profits as they look for new ways to bring computing to users.One of these entrepreneurs is Patrick Mathenge, CEO of Mullard Electronic Limited, a firm trading in hardware and software from its Mombasa Road offices. The company is distributing Linux software that can turn a single computer into up to 10 workstations.

The Sony Play station 3 is a DLNA compatible device, DLNA is a framework where home electronics can share digital media and content seamlessly. This tutorial will provide instructions on setting up your Ubuntu hardy computer to share your video, music and photos, allowing you to play them through your DLNA compatible devices. Although several other open source media servers exist, I chose to use Fuppes due to its built in support for transcoding.

WordPress plugins for multimedia can make your blog more interesting. These four plugins make it possible to automatically generate and configure multimedia, making your site a richer experience for your visitors and for you. Odiogo is a free service that converts your blog posts into audio podcasts. The Odiogo Listen Button plugin for WordPress makes it easy for your visitors to listen to and even save the audio version of your posts.

A mere three years after starting the OpenSolaris project, Sun Microsystems today releases the first official OpenSolaris version. OpenSolaris includes the all-important Project Indiana, a project from Debian founder Ian Murdock to make OpenSolaris’ package management system more like that of Linux.

The aim of this article is to provide the user with a starting point for improving the security of a Linux machine. Basic system security (e.g. having a regular backup strategy, using hard-to-guess passwords, removing services that you don't need) is essential administration in protecting your data. But you need a more sophisticated approach to keep intruders out.

When I demonstrate software for Linux Journal, I tend to use Ubuntu as my operating system. The reason is simply because Ubuntu is extremely popular, but it begs the question, should the Linux community standardize on a single distribution?

[Geez, how did I know that Ubuntu would get the nod on that one.. - Scott]

Both big open source vendors have in the past month expressed intentions to stay within the enterprise space. Red Hat said in a blog post the consumer space does not pose a viable business proposition for it at present: "The desktop market suffers from having one dominant vendor, and some people still perceive that todays Linux desktops simply dont provide a practical alternative...building a sustainable business around the Linux desktop is tough, and history is littered with example efforts that have either failed outright, are stalled or are run as charities."

When I think of open source software Microsoft is rarely the first word that comes to mind. Actually it's not even on of the first ten words. However, there are probably more Microsoft Windows users using open source software than on any other operating system. Despite this Microsoft's stance on open source is changing evidenced by recent initiatives into open source software development. Today Aras a provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software for companies that develop products announced the release if Version 9 of the Aras Innovator® suite. Version 9 delivers the first model-based service-oriented architecture (SOA) for PLM and includes single-instance multi-language capabilities and support for the latest Microsoft platform products; Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Microsoft Windows Server 2008, and Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. Aras is the first Microsoft Gold Partner to offer an open source solution.

The first supported first version of Sun Microsystems' OpenSolaris, AKA Project Indiana, makes its debut today with additional backing from Amazon's Elastic Computing Cloud. Sun is introducing three levels of paid support for the OpenSolaris 2008.5 code drop for developers and end users. Support starts at $49 per incident for developers and runs to $2,160 per system per year for tailored customizations, and includes 24x7 phone support along with fixes and updates.

PHP is the latest language getting the NetBeans treatment, with a PHP version of Sun Microsystems' open-source environment hitting early access today. Built on the same generic scripting framework that Sun used for Ruby, the NetBeans PHP bundle includes project management tools with refactoring and code completion to ease deployment. Sun hopes these features will, finally, wean users off Emacs and Bill Joy's vi.

Welcome to this year's 18th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! A week of many excellent releases - a brand new Slackware 12.1 (read our first-look review of the world's oldest surviving Linux distribution), an updated OpenBSD 4.3 (check out the exhaustive interview with the project developers at ONLamp.com), a hot new Puppy Linux 4.00 (with pretty artwork and a large number of state-of-the-art features and packages), and an Xfce edition of Mandriva Linux 2008.1 (complete with Compiz support on an installable live CD). But the excitement never ends here at DistroWatch; as we go to press, the first-ever stable release of OpenSolaris is hitting the download mirrors, together with a plethora of related announcements and Planet posts from the growing OpenSolaris developer and user community. There is also more news on the latest beta of openSUSE 11.0, information about the first alpha release of PC-BSD 7.0, and the usual columns, including a donation of €250 to the GSPCA project for its amazing work developing Linux webcam drivers. There is lot more, so enjoy the read!

Regular readers will know that I’ve rallied against Microsoft’s so-called “Get the facts” site for the last fortnight. Rather than give legitimate comparisons facing off Windows servers vs Linux options the site opts for bunkum and hogwash with sensational headlines that have no underlying substance. Here’s the state of play. First, let’s get the facts on Microsoft’s “Get the facts” campaign. Some readers have correctly pointed out this was something Microsoft promoted heavily a couple of years ago. While most all feedback has been very kind and positive some did question just what relevance this old campaign is to modern readers.

Zimbra, the open source email platform owned by Yahoo, gets a new lease on life now that the Microsoft-Yahoo discussions appear dead. Here's the scoop from The VAR Guy.

BIOSLEVEL.com looks at Sapphire’s Radeon HD3870 TOXIC edition videocard, and benchmarks it under both Linux and Windows. Is it enough to beat nVidia’s 8800GTX?

The International Organization for Standardization's OpenDocument Format standard is broken and needs to be mended, according to an expert who claimed to have carried out tests on the format. Alex Brown, a document-format expert who is convenor of the process to standardize Office Open XML (OOXML), posted a blog this week reporting the results of tests which he claimed revealed that OpenOffice documents did not conform to the International Organization for Standardization's (ISO's) version of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard.

Those people who frown at the Linux GUI (Graphical User Interface) haven’t actually experienced the 3D effects provided by Compiz. Compiz is a composite manager that adds visually pleasing 3D effects to your desktop - these include the cube effect and other window minimization effects that make things very appealing on your screen. For instance, drag a window and the window wobbles. Compiz also has plugin support which means that you can add more such effects to decorate your desktop’s look.

I was cleaning up my /home partiton when I noticed I had several tiny distros hanging around waiting to be tested. So I thought this might be a good time to write an updated Mini-distro Roundup. Unlike last time, the five contestants are all less than 88 MB in download size. The five contestants are CDlinux 0.6.1, Damn Small Linux 4.3r2, Puppy 4.0rc, Slitaz 1.0, and Austrumi 1.6.5. All of these are the latest stable except Damn Small and Puppy, that are release candidates. So, we'll cut them just a bit of slack in the stability department if need be.

Dell, HP and Lenovo have promised to push chipset vendors to make open source drivers for Linux. Representatives from Dell, HP and Lenovo made the commitment at a Linux Foundation conference last week, promising to include wording in their hardware procurement processes to "strongly encourage" the delivery of open source drivers for integration into the Linux kernel.